On Matthew 5:19

Welcome back to the most exhaustive Gospel study you will ever read.  This will be an endeavor of many years, as we work our way straight through the entirety of the Gospels of Jesus Christ, line by line.  We are only five chapters in, and already our study approaches 100,000 words.  (There are a daunting 88 chapters in the sum of the Gospels.)

If you want to start over from the beginning, click here.

Last week, we began to explore Jesus' "Teaching about the Law."  Near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which we are still in the middle of, Jesus is offering his thoughts on the application of Jewish religious law by his followers.  We made special note that Jesus is not referring to any State apparatus here when he describes the "law and the prophets," but, rather, to the ancient Hebrew scriptures and traditions.

We continue to stick close to the reading this week, as we consider what Jesus means by "commandments," and first hear Jesus speak of the coming "kingdom of heaven."

Happy reading.  Here it is.

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Matthew 5:19

19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

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There's a lot present here, so we will take this verse alone.  Today, we will explore what is meant by the phrase "kingdom of heaven."  Then, we will look at the word "commandments," and try to understand just what Jesus is talking about when he refers to them.

Anyone familiar with the Gospel of Matthew is familiar with the phrase "the kingdom of heaven."  If you'll recall, chapter 3 of the Gospel According to Matthew began with John the Baptist proclaiming the coming of the "kingdom of heaven."  We glossed over the verbiage at the time, but today we will gloss no more.

Understanding what Jesus means by "kingdom of heaven" is critical because, as you will see, he talks about this kingdom all the time in Matthew.  First, let's do the most rudimentary due diligence here by looking at some of the original Greek from this verse.  The word "kingdom" is being translated from the Greek "basileia," meaning "reign, kingship, royalty, or regality."  The Jews had, off and on, been ruled by a series of kings throughout their history, and many Jews of Jesus' time awaited a messianic, conquering king that would unite the people Israel, instituting a time of great glory in the promised land - a new Jewish kingdom.  To ancient Jews, a "kingdom" was a familiar, earthly thing.  

The other word of interest here, "heaven," as we learned last week, is from the Greek "ouranos," meaning "the vaulted sky," or the region inhabited by the many gods.  "Kingdom of heaven," then, might be translated or understood as the heavenly rule of an earthly kingdom - a Jewish State instituted by God himself on Earth.

One of the most interesting things about this phrasing is that we do not find it anywhere else in the Bible outside of the Gospel According to Matthew.  In the whole of the ancient Jewish scriptures, we find zero reference to the "kingdom of heaven."  In the rest of the New Testament after Matthew, we find zero reference to the "kingdom of heaven."  

Please note, however, that Mark and Luke do use the similar phrase "kingdom of God" seemingly in the place of Matthew's thirty-some references to the "kingdom of heaven."

Scholars have differing views when it comes to explaining Matthew's use of the "kingdom of heaven" phrasing in place of the more frequently attested "kingdom of God" phrasing.  Some have postulated that the author of Matthew used the alternative wording in order to avoid offending sensible Jews, who preferred not to utter the name or title of God.  By this view, "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" are equivalent.  This argument stands on shaky ground, however, because the Gospel According to Matthew actually contains the phrase "kingdom of God" a handful of times as well, meaning the the author would have been sensitive to Jewish taste only by degrees.  

Other scholars believe that the author of Matthew meant something different by the two phrases.

A common view among Bible scholars is that the "kingdom of heaven" represents the eschatology of Jesus.  In this view, "kingdom of heaven" meant the "end times" or a time of great transformation driven by some divine intervention; the coming of a new age.

We will encounter this phrasing over and over again, and will eventually develop our own opinion about what Jesus meant by the "kingdom of heaven," if he ever said the words at all.  For now, just know that we at the Moral Vision believe, like some others have, that Jesus' "kingdom of heaven" was something far more personal and profound than a harbinger of the end of the world.

Let's move on to these so-called "commandments."

Most westerners today will be immediately familiar with the "Ten Commandments," the ten laws that God was said to have inscribed onto stone tablets for Moses to bring down Mount Sinai to his people.  These Ten Commandments would probably be the first thing that a modern Christian or Jew would think of when reading today's verse.  

As a refresher for the lapsed or uninitiated, the Ten Commandments appear in the Book of Exodus, chapter 20, as follows:

1 Then God spoke all these words: 

2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 

3 You shall not have other gods beside me. 

4 You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; 

5 you shall not bow down before them or serve them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; 

6 but showing love down to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 

7 You shall not invoke the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. For the LORD will not leave unpunished anyone who invokes his name in vain. 

8 Remember the sabbath day—keep it holy. 

9 Six days you may labor and do all your work, 

10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God. You shall not do any work, either you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your work animal, or the resident alien within your gates. 

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. 

12 Honor your father and your mother, that you may have a long life in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 

13 You shall not kill. 

14 You shall not commit adultery. 

15 You shall not steal. 

16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 

17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.*

Many, if not most, Christians today know these commandments by heart.

What many modern Christians might not know is that, in the whole of the Jewish Law, there are many many more commandments than these ten.  In fact, it is commonly understood in the Jewish community that the Torah lays out six-hundred and thirteen separate commandments for the diligent Jew to follow.  

That's right.  You can read it again.  Six-hundred and thirteen.  That is a lot of commandments.  These many commandments are commonly known as the "mitzvot," the plural of the Hebrew "mitzvah," which means "commandment."

The list of six-hundred and thirteen commandments is manicured differently depending on whose version of the list we are using.  One of the more commonly accepted lists is that of Maimonides, a very well known twelfth-century Jewish philosopher about whom we will talk at length one day.  For a full list of these commandments per Maimonides, you can click here.

Some of the six-hundred and thirteen commandments are as follows:

128. If a man's brother dies without leaving an heir, he must marry his brother's widow.  From Deuteronomy 25:5.

132. If a man rapes a virgin who is not married, and is caught doing it, he must pay the girl's father fifty silver shekels, and he must marry her, because he has violated her.  From Deuteronomy 22:29.**

185. Don't eat maggots.  From Leviticus 11:44.

194. Don't eat the sinew of the thigh.  From Genesis 32:33 

348. Salt must be applied to all offerings of grain.  From Leviticus 2:13

373. Two lambs must be sacrificed at the Temple of Jerusalem each day, so that God can enjoy the pleasing aroma of the barbecue.  From Numbers, 28:3.

504. If you buy a Hebrew slave, you can only enslave him for six years.  From Exodus, 21:2.*** 

The mitzvot cover all manner of subject.  They describe how Jewish court systems should work.  They explain exactly how, where, and when to offer which kind of sacrifices.  They explain how to treat converts to the Jewish faith, and they explain exactly who one can or cannot have sexual relations with in excruciatingly awkward detail.

Last time we met, Jesus said that not the tiniest part of the tiniest letter of the Jewish law would be undermined by his ministry.  He assured his followers that the law would stand permanent in its totality.  Today, he drives this point home by saying that one who breaks "the least of these commandments" will be "least in the kingdom of heaven."

As the nature and character of Jesus Christ begin to reveal themselves more fully, we will see that, as we mentioned briefly in our last segment, there is an incongruity between the law of the Old Testament and the philosophy and moral prescription of Jesus.  For instance, we will find that Jesus has little care for the sacrifices that are being offered morning and night at the Temple.  We will find that Jesus has little care for dietary aspects of the law.  We will find that Jesus does not condone divorce, where the Jewish law does, and we will find that Jesus is completely against violence of any sort, where the Jewish law condones and prescribes violence in many instances.

So we are left reeling by this question: what could Jesus possibly have meant when he said that he had not come to abolish any portion of the law, but rather to uphold it one-hundred percent?

We here at The Moral Vision are of the opinion that Jesus' "Teaching about the Law" is likely an invention of the author of Matthew, and not a genuine teaching of Jesus Christ.  The invention of these verses was to ease the fretting mind of the vigilant Jews whom the early Jesus Movement aimed to convert.  These verses reassure the first-century Jew: "no, Jesus isn't taking the Jewishness out of Judaism.  You don't have to abandon all that you've known."

That's right.  Ultimately, we are forced to discard this saying and these verses as inauthentic, because of their glaring incongruity with the emerging morality of Jesus Christ.  These verses are good PR on the part of the author of the Gospel According to Matthew, but cannot be considered as critical data regarding the morality of Jesus.

And, just think: if the "Teaching about the Law" were authentic, then it would mean that all Christians are guilty of grievous sin whenever they deviate even a little bit from Jewish Orthodox law.  Suddenly, no one can eat BLT's anymore.  A grim vision.

Next time, we will wrap up Jesus' "Teaching about the Law."  For now, just be asking yourself: "if Jesus didn't believe exclusively in the existing Jewish moral traditions, then what did he believe, and what should his followers believe, about the moral fabric of the universe?"

Thank you so much for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love

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* Yes, just like the founding fathers of America, the God of the Hebrew Bible was a-okay with slavery.  Eventually, we will address this in detail.  For now, just be asking yourself: "how can a perfect God, who loves all of humanity equally, be okay with one human enslaving another against his will?"

** Yes, according to Moses, the God of the Hebrew Bible wants victims of rape to be forced to marry their aggressor, and for the victim's father to be paid as if he was some kind of ancient pimp.  Eventually, we will address this in detail.  For now, just be asking yourself: "how can a perfect God, who loves all humanity equally, force a victim of rape to marry her aggressor?"

*** I ain't makin' this up...

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:17 through Matthew 5:18

Hello. Welcome back. If this is your first time here, you might want to utilize the Introduction, which can be found here.

I apologize for my recent absence.  Life has been very busy of late.  Rest assured that this never-for-profit writing will not cease until it is completed.

Today, we're sticking close to the text again.  The "Sermon on the Mount," which we are in the middle of, constitutes some of the most important data we have in regard to Jesus' morality and his prescriptions to his followers, so there's no reason to take any side-trips at the moment.

Last time, we finished up our quick work on the Similes of Salt and Light.  This week, we get into Jesus' "Teaching About the Law."  Let's proceed.

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Matthew 5:17 through Matthew 5:18

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 

18 Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.

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The verses we are addressing today are among the most pertinent that Jesus is ever purported to have spoken.  These verses get right to the heart of what Jesus thought about the universe, if he actually said them.

Today, we'll discuss some of the original Greek of these verses.  Then, we'll talk about what Jesus means by "the law or the prophets."  Next, we'll discuss Jesus' overall meaning in these verses.  Last, we'll talk about the relation of the word "law" here to the concept of a State, ancient or modern.

Matt 5:17-18 have a few interesting terms in them.  Understanding those particular terms will enhance our overall comprehension of the verses.  First, we have the word "iota," which we see translated as "smallest letter."  The word iota, in Greek, represents the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet.  Since the letter iota is represented by such a tiny marking, iota also came to mean "something very small."  "Iota" is sometimes translated as "jot."  Jesus is using this word to emphasize the importance of the totality of the "law."

The next word of interest is "keraia," which literally means "little horn," and which we have translated as "smallest part of a letter."  The Greek phrasing refers to the little horn-like endings of pen strokes in ancient alphabets.  "Keraia" is frequently translated as "tittle."  In using this word, Jesus goes from referring to a literal letter to a literal portion of a letter, further emphasizing his emphasis.

Another word of interest here is "amen," which Jesus utters here for the first time.  "Amen" comes from the Greek "amēn," which actually comes from the Hebrew "'āmēn," which means "truth" or "certainty."  "Amen," of course, came to be used as a standard ending for Christian prayers, and a form of it is also used in the tradition of Islam.  When we see Jesus use this term, which he will often, we can understand that he is stressing a point as being particularly certain.

The last Greek word of great interest here is "ouranos," which we have translated as "heaven."  To the Greeks, "ouranos" meant "the vaulted sky," "the home of the gods above the vaulted sky," "the universe in general," or anything shaped like the sky, i.e. a vaulted ceiling or a tent.  This is a Greek term that originated to describe a Greek universe, in which many pagan Gods existed.  Due to ambiguities within the multiplicity of first-century Jewish belief systems, it is difficult to say exactly what Jesus means here by the term "ouranos."

Now, let's identify the exact meaning of Jesus' phrasing "law or the prophets."  When Jesus talks about the "law" he is referring to the "Law of Moses," or the first five books of the Old Testament.  When he mentions the "prophets," he is referring to the books of the prophets who had spoken on behalf of God since the time of Moses.  Essentially, the "law and the prophets" were the intellectual basis for all of what made Judaism Jewish.  The "law and the prophets" are equivalent with the Tanakh.

As we've discussed before, however, the books of the Tanakh may not have been set in stone by Jesus' time.  Some texts that we recognize today as part of the Jewish canon may not have been recognized as such back then, and it is certain that there were texts in wide circulation then, i.e. the Book of Enoch, that were eventually excluded from the canon.  Because of our imperfect knowledge about what books Jesus might have considered canonical, we must allow room for ambiguity in this phrasing.  We do not known exactly to which prophets he might have been referring.  We can be certain, though, that Jesus meant at least to include the Pentateuch, of the five books of Moses, in this phrasing.

So, what is Jesus' ultimate meaning in Matt 5:17-18?  Let's consider the verses in context.

By Jesus' phrasing, we can imagine that there were some in the crowd who nervously thought that he had come to abolish the law and the prophets.  There were those in the crowd who suspected that Jesus was going to tell them "you don't have to be Jewish anymore.  You don't have to mind the sabbath anymore.  You don't have to circumcise your sons anymore."  The root of this apprehensive thought came from the Law of Moses itself, in the book of Deuteronomy, which teaches the Jewish people to be on guard for false prophets.

So, was Jesus there to get rid of the things that made Jewishness truly Jewish?

He speaks in very strong terms here.  He says that "until heaven and earth pass away" (read: forever), not a single letter of the law, or even the tiniest part of a letter of the law, will cease to be 100% true and relevant.  "No," he would not "take the Jewishness out of Judaism," he says.

According to Matthew 5:17-18, the entirety of Jewish law remains in play for all of Jesus' followers forever.

What is interesting to note here is the fact that Jesus will actually go on, later in the Gospels, to augment portions of the law and to negate others, as if he had never said what he says here.  Thus Matt 5:17-18 are one side of a built-in incongruity of the Gospels.

Before we wrap this up, I'd like to discuss the relation of Jesus' use of the word "law" and his opinion of Statism.

Eventually, I will make a compelling argument that Jesus Christ was a pure anarchist who would have abhorred the State in all the forms it has taken since his death in the first century.  It is a near certainty that this argument will be countered by references to today's verses.  I'd like to pre-empt this counter-point here.

Jesus Christ, in Matthew 5:17-18, is referring exclusively to Mosaic Law, which is a religious law that the Jews had had with them for centuries, regardless of the status of their statehood.  The "State," as it existed for Jesus Christ, was the Roman Empire, an oppressive force whose ideals were generally anti-Christian.

Jesus, in referring to "law," was not referring to Rome, or the judiciary of Rome, or even to an Israeli State or judiciary.  Jesus was certainly not referring to any modern form of "law" or State apparatus.  When (and if) Jesus said he came to fulfill the "law," he meant he had come to fulfill a religious law-code, not the coercive law-code of any State.

Jesus did not fulfill or bolster any State apparatus ever.

And with that, we will leave it.  Next time, the "Teaching About the Law" continues, as the Sermon on the Mount continues.  Until then, and always, thank you so much for reading.

Love.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:15 through Matthew 5:16

Welcome back, brother or sister, to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  This will be the most exhaustive, intensive, comprehensive gospel study you've ever read by the time we are finished here.  We're on pace to complete this study in... well... quite a number of years.  So sit back and relax and let the data wash over you.

If you desire to start from the beginning, you can find the introductory posting to this writing here.

For the last two weeks, you'll recall, we've been learning about the Similes of Salt and Light.  These "similes" represent the first data that Jesus relays to his followers in the form of a metaphor.  Jesus, as a philosopher, seemed to have been quite prone to metaphor and parable.  This will become more and more apparent to us as we move forward.

Like we've done for the last couple of weeks, we are going to forgo any superfluous research here so that we can stay focused directly on our gospel text.  If nothing else, this is for my personal benefit.  The Similes of Salt and Light have been, in the past, challenging for me to understand clearly, so I want to make sure that we've really thought these through.

Let me not ramble on any more.  We'll get started.  

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Matthew 5:15 through Matthew 5:16

15 Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. 

16 Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

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Recall that Jesus is currently relaying the first parts of what is known as his "Sermon on the Mount."  He is standing, we believe, by himself, on an elevated spot overlooking a "great crowd."  The crowd has come to him because he is proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, and because he appears to have some kind of ability to cure or ease some of the frailties or illnesses in the people.

The crowd he speaks to is described as large, and all of the crowd are described collectively as disciples.  Since Jesus speaks here to a large, anonymous crowd, authoritatively doling out moral data to them, we can assume that these data are for the general public.  That is to say that the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are for the common follower of Christ, not for a select group of elite followers such as the Twelve Apostles.

I will repeat that: the Sermon on the Mount is not for the elite or seasoned follower of Christ.  It is for the common Christian.  It is for every Christian.

Last time, Jesus told the crowd before him that they were the "light of the world."  Today, he continues with the "light" metaphor.  In 5:15, he states the obvious: people don't light a candle and then put it under an obscuring cover.  If you light a lamp and put it under a basket, the flame will not light the room, and will possibly burn out rapidly for lack of air - a pointless exercise.  To the contrary, he says, a lamp, once lit, is placed on a lampstand, where it can "give light to all in the house."

In 5:16, Jesus tells his followers that, just like a lamp on a lampstand, their light must shine before others, so that "they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

There is a deceptively large amount to cover here.  First, we'll talk about the linguistics of the word "light" as it occurs in these verses.  Then, we'll discuss the way Jesus' use of the word "light" here compares to his use of the word "light" in the Gospel According to John.  Finally, we'll talk about the word "must," which Jesus speaks here for the first time, and which marks out critical moral data or instruction.

Linguistics

The word "light" appears three times here: 

- "...they light a lamp," 

- "...it gives light to all," and 

- "...your light must shine."  

Reading these verses in their original Greek, one would find not three repetitions of the same term, but three distinct terms.  For our understanding, we will take a look at each of these Greek terms.

The first word in question, the one from "...they light a lamp," is "kaió." "Kaió" is a verb meaning "to burn." The first instance of the word "light" here, then, represents only the very natural and common act of setting fire to something that was previously unlit.

The second word we have, from "...it gives light to all," is "lampó."  "Lampó" is the Greek verb equivalent to the English "to shine," "to glow," or even "to sparkle."  It is, fairly obviously, a deep root to the modern English word "lamp."

The third version of "light" we want to look at is the one represented in 5:16.  The use of "light" in 5:16 comes from the Greek "phós."  "Phós" represents radiant light, illuminating energy, and can even be related to the term "beacon."

Three distinct Greek terms, "kaió," "lampó," and "phós" get funnelled into one English word: "light."

Knowing the Greek roots of these words doesn't necessarily augment our understanding of these verses, but it does demonstrate how one-dimensional the English translation of the ancient Greek can sometimes be.  This highlights the importance, for us, of going all the way back to the original Greek as often as possible.  It goes without saying that when multiple terms get crushed into one term through the process of translation, we lose some of the subtlety and nuance of the original text.

It should go without saying, too, that subtlety and nuance are manna to you and I.

Light of the World: Matthew's Version, or John's?

Now I'd like to call attention to a verse from the Gospel According to John.  In John ch. 8, we read the following:

12 Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Did you do a double take?  You should have.  Let's revisit what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14.  Speaking to a huge crowd of anonymous followers, in Matthew 5:14, Jesus said the following:

14 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden." 

In Matthew, Jesus elevates and bolsters his followers, who are constituted by a crowd of unwashed, anonymous, middle-eastern humans.  He tells them explicitly that they are the "light of the world." In John, Jesus never says such a thing. In John, for some reason, Jesus has totally changed his mind on this "light of the world" issue. In John, Jesus says that he is the light of the world.

(The Greek word translated as "light" in the Johannine* verse here is, again, "phós," meaning "radiant light" or "illuminating energy.")

The phrasing from Matthew seems to contradict the phrasing from John.  How can Jesus' followers be "the light of the world" if Jesus himself is "the light of the world?"  What can we understand about Jesus' teachings from this apparent conceptual contradiction?

It seems to me that the Jesus we've seen so far in Matthew is both selfless and humble.  He humbly accepted the baptism of another human, John the Baptist.  He selflessly counsels and heals the multitudes.  He idealizes humble human characteristics in his Beatitudes, and he tells his humble followers that they are both wonderful and consequential.

Smash-cut to Jesus in the Gospel of John, who, as we will eventually see, is totally stripped of his humble airs.  The Jesus in John states that he is wonderful and consequential, and that his followers better believe that he is God, "or else."

Whenever we compare the gospels to one another, it is imperative to look at their relative dating.  The Gospel of John was the last one to be written, and would have been composed between sixty and eighty years after the death of Jesus.  The Gospel of Matthew was composed as early as forty years after Jesus' death.  Empirically speaking, then, the Gospel of Matthew carries more weight for us in the realm of the "historical Jesus," because there was literally less time for Christ's message to become diluted prior to its composition.  For this reason we will generally assume that, between two contradictory gospel excerpts, the oldest one is the more accurate.

That said, what we see happening here before our very eyes, between Matt ch. 5 and John ch. 8, is the deliberate alteration of the moral teaching of Jesus Christ over time by human writers.

I'll repeat that: since Matthew 5:14-16 contradicts John 8:12, and since John was written upwards of decades after Matthew was written, we know that someone changed or added to the words of Jesus as they had been passed along from the earliest sources.  We know that the Jesus appearing in John is qualitatively different from the Jesus appearing in Matthew, and we know that those differences were engineered by humans.

That's quite a bombshell for us.  I'd like you to keep this concept near and dear throughout the duration of our study.

The gospels do not always agree in their portrayal of the morality of Jesus, and it is a Christian's responsibility to parse through these differences with a skeptical eye, if they are to be as close as possible to The Man.

Pay Attention to the "Musts"

To conclude, today, I want to call attention to another particular word.  That word is "must."

First, a bit of background.

In an earlier version of my life, afflicted by unmanageable addiction, I availed myself of the Twelve-Step programs for relief.  The Twelve-Step programs are, like the Abrahamic religions, very literature-driven.  There are various books, workbooks, and inspirational compilation texts available in the major Twelve-Step programs, and the intimate study of those texts is critical to the sobriety and longevity of many of the Twelve-Steps' adherents.

I was guided through some of the Twelve-Step literature for a time by a strong man who always told me to pay special attention to the "musts" in said literature.

"I want you to go through the book and highlight every instance of the word "must" that you find," he told me.  "You always have to pay attention to the 'musts.'"

What he meant was that the literature at hand offered a lot of ideas and a lot of advice, but that a small percentage of those ideas or that advice was qualified by the word "must."  My sponsor meant merely to point out that when someone goes to the trouble to say or write the word "must," it is because they want to convey the absolute criticality of a thing.  If the text said that we "must" do something, then it wasn't a "suggestion," it was an absolutely critical requisite to success in sobriety.

I believe that my sponsor's wisdom about the word "must" carries over to our study of the gospel.

Jesus says: "your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

Not "might shine."  Not "could shine."  Not "should shine."

"Must shine."

Unless we find a contradiction to this statement in the older Gospel of Mark (which we won't), we will be taking this statement, henceforth, as an unequivocal command.  A follower of Jesus must be an illuminating light to the world through their good actions.

Isolation and inaction, then, are true enemies of the good of Jesus.  The practising follower of Christ will be justified by the light they spread on earth by their works, not by some quiet, personal profession of faith in impossibilities they never witnessed.**

A follower of Christ must shine.

Shine on.

Love.
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* Johannine means "relating to, or of, John the Evangelist."

** The Gospel of John will proceed to contradict all of this, too.  Again, we will chalk that up to human error or deliberate human meddling, and err on the side of The Synoptics.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:14

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, your guide through the Gospels of Jesus Christ.  If this is your first time, you can check out the Introduction here.

Last time, if you'll recall, we read and digested Matthew 5:13, in which Jesus told his new followers that they were the "salt of the earth."  Remember that Matt 5:13 began a set of verses collectively known as the "Similes of Salt and Light."  Today, just like last time, we're going to dispense with any superfluous topics and focus directly on our gospel reading.  We have some interesting ground to cover, so let's get started.

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Matthew 5:14

14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.

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The metaphors are really flying now.  Last time, they were the "salt of the earth."  Today, they are called the "light of the world," and they are compared to a city set on a mountain.  None of this makes immediate sense, and none of it can be simply glazed over.  The use of metaphor insists that we pause and process.

Today, we'll highlight some linguistic differences between 5:14 and 5:13.  We'll work to ascertain Jesus' general meaning in 5:14 by digesting the language and looking at the traditional interpretation.  Then, we'll look around ancient Galilee to see if any cities were built on mountains in the time of Jesus, since a local "city on a mountain" might help to explain Jesus' choice of metaphor.  Finally, we'll look for attestation of these words in other gospels.

Linguistics

In Matthew 5:13, when Jesus calls his followers the salt of the earth, the word used for "earth" is "gês," a Greek word meaning "land," "earth," or "soil."  In 5:14, Jesus switches terminology from "salt of the earth" to "light of the world."  The Greek word used for "world" here is "kósmos," meaning "order," "mode," or "humankind."

In English, "earth" and "world" can be seen as synonymous, so it is interesting that the evangelist records Jesus as having used non-synonymous Greek terms here.  Let's postulate as to why the terms differ.

Jesus' use of the term "gês" in the salt metaphor makes sense because it refers to the literal earth beneath our feet.  Salt is a mineral found in the soil of earth, and "gês" refers to that soil.  When Jesus proceeds to discuss the "light of the world," he uses the term "kósmos," which detaches us from the physical earth and causes us to look for a broader vision.  His followers aren't the light of the soil.  His followers are the light of order.  His followers, he says, are the "light of humankind."  

Between 5:13 and 5:14, Jesus moves from a concrete, physical term to an abstract conceptual term.  Jesus is, perhaps deliberately, broadening the visionary aperture for his followers here.  It is possible that, by moving from "gês" to "kósmos," he means to tell his followers "don't go thinking that my teaching only applies here in your physical life, when in reality it applies broadly to the whole world, and across all time."

Interpretation

So, what is Jesus' specific meaning in this verse, as he moves a step toward the abstract?  By "light of the world," Jesus clearly means that his followers are to "enlighten humankind."  This is the standard traditional interpretation, with which I agree.  Another way of putting this is that Jesus wants his followers to be teachers of his school of thought. The teaching is not to be hoarded, but given away.

The next portion of the verse, "a city on a mountain cannot be hidden," will make more sense when we arrive at the last verse of these similes, but, based on what we've read so far, we can guess that Jesus is again referring to the relative placement of his true followers among humankind.  His followers, he says, are to be seen very clearly, even from a distance, and are not to hide themselves from the world.  His teachings are for all.

"You will give the world light that it needs.  You cannot hide your light from the world," he seems to say.  This is the traditional interpretation, with which I agree.

In 5:13, as Jesus compared his followers to precious salt, we noted that salt cannot become not-salty.  This seemed to indicate an irreversible status for the true follower of Christ.  Once salty, always salty.  Once a follower of Christ's teachings, always a follower of Christ's teachings.  This kind of irreversible status seems to be reflected again in today's reading, where Jesus says the city on a mountain cannot be hidden.  The visibility of the city is irreversible.  

The salt needed not do anything outside of its nature in order to remain salty, and the city on the mountain need not do anything outside of its nature in order to remain permanently visible.

The salt and the city make no effort, but are important and conspicuous by their very nature.  By these verses, Jesus means that his followers will need to make no effort in being the light of the world.  They will be the light of the world by their very nature - a beautifully empowering concept.

Cities on Mountains?

Moving on, I wanted to note that a city being built on a mountain was not a rare thing in the ancient world.  A mountain, or, more generally, any land that stood elevated above the land which encompassed it, was far more defensible in combat than level ground or low-ground.  Human military commanders have understood the tactical value of high-ground since prehistory.  That said, it is no surprise that many cities all over the ancient world were founded on hills, mountains, or elevated plateaus.

If we look specifically at the Galilee in the time of Jesus, the best example of a "city on a mountain" is that of Safed, which was known in Christ's time as Sepph.  Safed is the highest city in Israel, and is visible from a huge portion of Galilee.  If Jesus' Sermon on the Mount did indeed occur outside of Capernaum, on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, it is completely possible that Jesus and his followers could have seen Safed, sixteen miles to the north, during the Sermon.  Some scholars have wondered whether Jesus didn't actually gesture toward Safed while he said this.  "You will be as visible as a city on a mountain," he might have said, pointing north to the highest land on the horizon.

Whether or not Jesus indicated Safed to his followers or was thinking about Safed during the Sermon does not change our interpretation, but it is interesting to consider nonetheless.

Multiple Attestation

Lets cover one last thing here.  We need to discuss the multiple attestation of this verse.  First, I'll remind you what we mean by "multiple attestation."

In gospel scholarship, and especially in the context of the quest for the historical Jesus, there are specific criteria we use to determine historicity.  These criteria include the "Criterion of Dissimilarity," the "Criterion of Embarrassment," and the "Criterion of Multiple Attestation."  Admitting that the gospels arrive to us through the veil of history anonymous, and through copies of translations of copies, we do not immediately trust anything in the gospels as being true in and of itself.  Instead, we utilize the aforementioned criteria and others like them to suss out what might be true historical data and what might be conjecture or story-telling on the part of any given evangelist.

The "Criterion of Multiple Attestation," sometimes called the "Criterion of Independent Attestation," says, simply, that the likelihood of an event or saying in a gospel being historical increases proportionately with the number of times that said event or saying is recorded in other independent sources.

The word "independent" is key here.  When we look for "multiple attestation," we have to remember that Matthew and Luke share more than half of their material in common.  A huge percentage of the material in common between Matt and Luke comes directly from Mark.  The remaining material Matt and Luke share in common must have come from some other common source.  Whatever that source was, it is now lost to history.  Scholars call this lost source "Q," which stands for the German word "quelle," meaning "source."

That said, we cannot say that material common to Matt, Mark, and/or Luke has been "multiply attested," because Matt, Mark, and Luke are not independent from one another.  Material found common between Matt and Luke always came from either Q or Mark.  However, if some material is found in common between Matt, Mark, or Luke and, say, the Gospel of John, said material can be called "multiply attested," because John was written independently of the other three.

I say all of this to help demonstrate why it is important that today's verse is indeed attested in another gospel.  Given what you've just read, you might be surprised that the other gospel in question is not the Gospel of John.  No, this verse is actually multiply attested in the famed Gospel of Thomas.

We've discussed the Gospel of Thomas very little thus far.  I promise that, during the next few years, we will discuss it in depth again and again.  In short, the Gospel of Thomas is a "sayings gospel"* about the life of Jesus which was lost in antiquity and only recently rediscovered in the brilliant "Nag Hammadi" cache.

Verse 32 of the Gospel of Thomas reads as follows:

32 Jesus said, "A city being built on a high mountain and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden."

Some scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas was written very early. Some scholars will even argue that the Gospel of Thomas is the oldest extant gospel. There are strong arguments to be made that Thomas was written completely independently of Matt, Mark, Luke, and John. If it is true that the author of Thomas did not have access to any of the other known works, then it stands a good chance that Jesus' use of the "city on a mountain" metaphor is historical.

Like... the historical Joshua actually said it.

This kind of measured probability is the closest we can get to standing among the crowd of Jesus' first-century disciples.  It is heartwarming to be so close to the Man, and I can't hide my smile as I consider it.

We will be increasingly on the lookout for the various Criteria of Historicity, and will eventually find cause to work a "Criteria of Historicity" section into each entry of our "sayings of Jesus" index.**  For now, just know that we here at The Moral Vision take nothing for granted.  We assume that any given bit of any gospel might be contrived, and we base our understanding of the historical Jesus solely on data that meet some Criterion of Historicity.

Whew.  That seemed like a heady mouthful.  I hope I didn't lose you to the jargon.

Next time, we'll continue with "The Similes of Salt and Light," as Jesus continues to expound upon his moral vision.  Until then, remember: Christ wanted his followers to be the "light of the world."  If you count yourself among his followers, perhaps you ought to enlighten someone this week.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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* A "sayings gospel" is a gospel that does not follow a narrative arch, but, rather, simply relates a list of things that Jesus was thought to have said.

** I know I've fallen far behind on the index work.  I promise to remedy that as soon as I have the time.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:13

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision.  The Introduction to this writing can be found here, for the uninitiated.

Last we met, we were wrapping up a broad-aperture study of paganism as context for the life of Jesus Christ.  Today, we're going to start immediately with our gospel reading.  The next few verses require more digestion than many of the ones that have preceded them, so we're going to take them very slowly and with special focus.

Let's get started, shall we?

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Matthew 5:13

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

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Matthew 5:13 through Matthew 5:16 are known collectively as "The Similes of Salt and Light."  Whereas the preceding Beatitudes were relatively easy to interpret and extract moral data from, these similes are marginally more cryptic.  Here in 5:13, we read the Simile of Salt, which is entirely encapsulated within one verse.

Jesus tells his disciples, who are still listening to him by the Mount of Beatitudes, that they are the "salt of the earth."  He then poses an odd question regarding the value of salt which has lost its flavor.  "If salt goes bad, what can you fix it with?" he asks.  He immediately answers himself by saying "you can't fix salt that's gone bad.  If it goes bad, it's only worth throwing on the ground and walking on."*

Traditional interpretations of this verse are somewhat dependent on the immediately subsequent verses.  As you will see over the next few weeks, the Similes of Salt and Light are most easily interpreted as instruction regarding the relative place of the disciples in the world at large.

If the Similes of Salt and Light are the answer, then the question would have been something like "Jesus: should your teachings and our adherence to them be secret, or public?"  In 5:13, Jesus responds to the hypothetical question by saying "you who follow my teaching are the most valuable commodity around!  The whole world needs to hear you!  But if you stop following my teachings, you'll return to a state of near valuelessness."

According to traditional interpretation, with which I agree, Jesus is telling his followers that they are necessary and welcome in the world as long as they are living by his teaching.

Interesting to note here is that Jesus seems to describe something that cannot actually happen.  Salt requires nothing to flavor it, and it cannot be washed of its saltiness.  It tastes salty even in its purest form.  If salt didn't taste like salt, it would no longer be salt.  Some scholars believe that Jesus understood salt as such, and meant to tell his followers that, just as salt cannot be washed of saltiness, his followers would not be able to be washed of their spiritual gifts.

We should note, too, that here in Matt 5:13 Jesus is coining a phrase that still has meaning in today's modern world.  The use of the phrase "salt of the earth" to describe character attributes of humans originates with Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew.  Today, "salt of the earth" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a very good and honest person or group of people."  Next time you hear someone use the phrase, you can let them know that they're using a Jesus Christ original.

So, "why is salt the chosen metaphor?" you might ask.  The answer is fairly obvious when one takes a look at the value of salt in the ancient world, which we will do now.

In the ancient world, salt was an absolute necessity for many people.  The primary tool of food preservation in ancient times was salt.  For those cultures that depended on being able to stockpile meat for consumption at a later date (read: most ancient cultures), salt was as important as the nourishing meat itself.  Butchered meat would commonly be dehydrated with salt, which eliminated the potential growth of microbes that cause food spoilage.  Once properly dried by the salt, meat could be stored for consumption months later.

Salt was also highly valued in the ancient world for its flavoring properties.  Before we had access to monosodium glutamate, Frank's Red Hot, and genetically modified super-peppers, humanity wanted badly for ways to make food more palatable.  Salt filled that void.  Whether for curing meat or for flavoring it, salt would have been a staple in any kitchen "worth its salt."

Speaking of things being "worth their salt," we can further highlight the importance of salt in the ancient world by tracing the term "worth one's salt" back to its origins.  In ancient times, Roman legionaries would often be paid a special stipend, along with their regular pay, which was explicitly for the purchase of salt.  Remember: salt was critical for the preservation of meat, and the preservation of meat was critical for ancient travel.  And just what were the legionaries constantly doing?  That's right.  Travelling.  The salt stipend was known as the "salarium," from which we get the English word "salary."  To be "worth one's salt," then, means to be worth one's wages, or to be an effective worker.**

Another common and important use for salt in ancient times, and one Jesus surely would have been keenly aware of, was its use in religious practice.  Most of the pagan world appears to have utilized salt in various rituals, especially during sacrifice.  Salt was so valuable that, in some cases, the mineral itself could be offered up to the gods as a sacrifice.

During his travels in Egypt in the fifth century BC, Herodotus of Halicarnassus noted the following ritual use of salt during the celebration of the Feast of Lamps in the city of Sais:

At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices, there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights in the open air round their houses. They use lamps in the shape of flat saucers filled with a mixture of oil and salt, on the top of which the wick floats. These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps.

The addition of salt to the lamp oil likely made the flame brighter.  Other sources tell us that salt would be caked onto lamp wicks in the ancient world, also to increase brightness.

We would be remiss if we didn't look at the utility of salt specifically in ancient Judaism.  In Leviticus Chapter 2, we learn about Moses' laws on "grain offerings."  Chapter 2 says that, in addition to meat, a Jew could offer grain as sacrifice.  The text then proceeds to describe exactly how grain might be offered.  It says that the person offering the grain is to spread oil and frankincense on it before giving it to the priests at the Temple.  The priests are to then burn a handful of the grain on the altar; the burnt handful is God's portion.  The rest of the offering becomes the property of the priests.***

Chapter 2 of Leviticus goes on to say the following:

13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt.  Do not let the salt of the covenant with your God be lacking from your grain offering.  On every offering you shall offer salt.

Even today, in many Jewish homes, the bread shared during the Shabbat dinner will be sprinkled with salt, or dipped in salt, before it is consumed.  This tradition comes directly from Leviticus Chapter 2.

For the ancient Jews, salt was also necessary for the preparation of a blood sacrifice.  Our old friend Josephus tells us about this in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book 3.  He says:

226 Suppose a private man offer a burnt offering, he must slay either a bull, a lamb, or a kid of the goats, and the two latter of the first year, though of bulls he is permitted to sacrifice those of a greater age; but all burnt offerings are to be of males.  When they are killed, the priests sprinkle the blood around the altar; (227) they then cleanse the bodies, and divide them into parts, and salt them with salt, and lay them upon the altar... 

Whether the offering was of grain or flesh, it is clear that salt was an important component in any Jewish ritual sacrifice.

To reiterate our original point, it is clear that salt had nearly unlimited value in the whole of the ancient world, and that Jesus thought of his followers as valuable in a similar way.  Jesus called his followers the "salt of the earth" rather than the "frankincense of the earth," or the "cedar wood of the earth," or anything else, because salt was more universally important than almost any other commonly traded commodity of the time.  Jesus chose salt as his metaphor because it was universally valuable, and specifically valuable to the Jews, who constituted all of Jesus' early followers.

There is some ambiguity built into this verse.  Ultimately, its meaning is subjective and will continue to be interpreted subjectively.  What we can say for sure is this: in Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are of great importance.  "The salt of the earth."

That's enough of this saltiness.  Next time, we'll have more similes to unpack.  Until then, please share this writing.  Thank you for reading.

Love.
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* If the part about being "trampled underfoot" confuses you, think about the modern use of salt on slick surfaces to increase foot traction.  Ancients used salt in the exact same way, on occasion.

** The phrase "worth one's salt" is not actually recorded anywhere until the around the 19th century AD.

*** Seems kinda like a scam....

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:11 through Matthew 5:12

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If this is your first time to this gospel study, you may want to check out the Introduction, which can be found here.

I should apologize for not publishing anything last week.  I am sorry to have left my audience waiting two weeks for this posting.  I have a reasonable excuse in that I was out of my home state visiting family in Texas.  Making it more reasonable is the fact that, during the trip, I proposed marriage to the love of my life.  Thankfully, despite my many, many glaring flaws, she accepted my proposal.

Seriously, though, thank you for your patience in this and every regard.  Let me not delay today's writing any further.

Last time we met, we discussed some of the basic mechanics of Greco-Roman paganism.  That discussion was prompted by our need to further understand the religious world that Jesus Christ grew up in, which was influenced from all sides by pagan cultures.  It's time, now, to wrap up our mini-study on the pagan context of the first century.  Today, we're going to look at some of the specific similarities between the pagan world-view and the Biblical Jewish worldview.  After that, of course, we'll have our regularly scheduled gospel selection.

Happy reading.

Similarities Between Ancient Judaism and Paganism

For a little over two-thousand years, Christians and Jews alike have portrayed Judaism as being a thing totally separate from the old pagan religions.  The difference between Jew and Gentile, to hear some tell it, was like the difference between black and white.

Like so much of what is portrayed as truth about these faiths, the idea that Judaism and paganism were totally different is totally wrong.  An objective look at early Judaism shows a faith that is remarkably similar in its mechanics to all of the paganisms that surrounded the ancient Israelites.  In fact, I venture to say that an extraterrestrial intelligence, looking objectively at ancient Judaism side by side with any one of the paganisms, would assume that the two were just localized variations of the exact same religion.

We'll wind down this study now with four critical points of similarity between ancient Judaism and paganism.

1.  Both Jews and pagans had a priestly class.

When I was growing up, I wasn't aware that there were "priests" outside of the Catholic faith.  For whatever reason, I never learned, in my early years, that priesthood had pre-dated Christianity.  I guess I remember being taught, or somehow inferring, that all clerical works had originated with Jesus.  It seemed as if Jesus Christ himself had presented to his apostles the org-chart of the Catholic Church.

Of course, I know now that Jesus didn't do anything of the sort.  He offered no organizational chart, and he condoned no human authority.  I know now that the concept of "priesthood" predated Jesus, as the Jews had had a hereditary line of priests since Aaron, the first High Priest of the people Israel.  I am further aware that Jewish priesthood predated even Aaron, and that pagan priesthood predated the earliest Jewish priests.

The Egyptians had established priesthoods in the sixth millennium BC.  We know this from archaeological evidence of organized animal sacrifice dated as early as 5500 BC in Egypt.  Priests existed in extreme antiquity in Mesopotamia, too. In ancient Sumeria, around 2300 BC, there lived a priestess called Enheduana whose writings have survived until now.  Enheduana is known as the world's first poet, and predated the Israelites by centuries at least.  She wrote the "Sumerian Temple Hymns" and various devotions to her patron Goddess Inanna.  The priestly administration of the cult of Inanna may have dated back another thousand years or so from Enheduana.  Pagans had priests millenia before the story of the Israelites began.

Interestingly, priests even existed among the Israelites before the Torah was handed down to Moses on Sinai.  That is to say that there were priests among the Israelites before they had received the basic tenets of their faith.  In Exodus, immediately before establishing the Aaronic priesthood, God mentions other Israelite priests to Moses.  He tells Moses "Go down and come up along with Aaron.  But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord."  

When we consider that the office of "priest" existed in the pagan religions of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and that priesthood in general predated Jewish cosmology by a long-shot, we come to understand that Jewish priesthood was borrowed from, or was an evolution of, older pagan traditions.

The office of "priest" is not a Christian, nor even Jewish, invention.

2. Both Jews and pagans had methods of divination.

As we learned last time, the Greeks and the Romans both had ancient methods of divination.  The Romans would read bird livers or the patterns of bird flight, and the Greeks would visit an Oracle who spoke in tongues.  We can find other kinds of divination in almost any ancient pagan tradition. Most ancient people, it would seem, had some form of divine "Magic 8-Ball" to which they could turn for godly answers.

The ancient Jews were no different from the pagans here, either.  

The Old Testament describes what are known as the Urim and Thummim, or two engraved, sacred stones.  The Urim and Thummim were to be kept with the High Priest, on his breastplate, and could be consulted for divination.  This system, like the Sacred Chickens that we learned about last time, was binary.  The priest would ask a question, and then blindly reach into a pouch which contained both stones.  The answer to the question would be understood based on which stone was blindly grabbed.  It's like flipping a coin, asking God to determine the outcome, and then believing that God did determine the outcome.

Any modern Christian who scoffs at practices like augury or auspicy would do well to remember the Urim and Thummim that existed in their own ancient mother-faith.  The mother-faith, as we are beginning to see, was not that different from that of the pagans.

3.  Both Jews and pagans worshipped at temples which housed gods.

The Temple of Jerusalem (including both Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple) was, to the ancient Jews, the literal earthly housing for God.  God was understood to reside in the most sacred part of the Temple, the Holy of Holies.  The concept of a grand edifice being used to contain a god was not originated with the Temple of Solomon, however.  Pagan cultures the world over had, by the time of Solomon, been building temples to house divine beings for upwards of 10,000 years.  

Egyptians, Sumerians, Minoans and others had all developed varying types of temple architecture for worship prior to the advent of the Jewish faith.  Most pagan temples, just like the Jewish Temple, contained a particularly sacred area within that could only be entered by a member of the priesthood.  Most pagan temples were constructed for the benefit of a single local god as opposed to multiple gods, even though the people that worshipped at said temples would have believed in a whole pantheon.  Most pagan temples also had at least one altar on which to perform ritual blood sacrifices, just like the Jewish Temple did.

I find it suspicious that Yahweh, the "One True God," would arrive on the scene and basically request the same treatment that the "false" pagan gods had been receiving for millennia.  "Build me a Temple like those other gods have," Yahweh seems to have told the Israelites.

Suspicious.

4.  Both Jews and pagans appealed to the divine by the mechanism of blood sacrifice.

The Old Testament is full of blood sacrifices to God.  In scripture, Abraham, before he was even named "Abraham," can be seen slaughtering a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon for his new-found God.  The Bible gives us the sense that sacrifice was something that Abraham's people were already very familiar with by the time of God's revelation to Abraham.

From the time of Abraham, blood sacrifices continued to be offered by the Jewish people until 70 AD.  In year 70, as we've mentioned again and again, Rome knocked the Second Temple down.  Since the Torah says that blood sacrifices may only be performed at the Temple, blood sacrifice stopped with the temple's destruction, and, according to tradition, cannot resume until a Third Temple is built in Jerusalem.

The sacrifice of blood to a god was, like the temple itself, not an idea that originated with the Jews.

Again, Yahweh seems to arrive on the scene covetous of what the pagan Gods have been receiving for millennia before him.  He seems to say "I want you to spill blood on an altar in or near a gigantic beautiful building for me, just the way your ancestors used to spill blood for their various gods in Mesopotamia, and just the way the Egyptians spill blood for their gods in their temples.  Truly, those pagans treat their gods well."

Why does the "One True God" demand what the masses of false gods had always received, rather than some alternative?

If Judaism was totally new and totally different from the paganisms that predated it, why did it so closely follow the pattern of those paganisms?

How were the pagans, without having the benefit of Yahweh's instruction, able to develop systems that were so close to the one the Jews ended up with by Yahweh's command?

Sorry about the rhetorical questions.  I just want to make sure you're with me on this as we wrap this up.

The similarities between the cosmology of the pagans and the cosmology of the ancient Israelites were numerous and not at all superficial.  The way history reads, it is almost as if blood sacrifice by a priestly class at a temple is some kind of natural law, and that Jewish cosmology was nothing more than a refinement of that law.  

I conclude that the religion Jesus Christ practiced all his life can, in a way, be seen less as Judaism 1.0 and more as Paganism 2.0.  It is critical to the rest of our studies to understand just how closely related these ancient thought systems were.  With that, we'll retire this line of questioning.

Now, back to the Gospel.

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Matthew 5:11 through Matthew 5:12

11 Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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The list of what are traditionally called "The Beatitudes" ended last time in Matthew 5:10.  Today, we have what is known unofficially as the "Ninth Beatitude."  Recall that these Beatitudes mark the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which is the first specific teaching that Jesus offers his disciples aside from "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

As far a moral data, these Beatitudes have been a boon to us already.  We've learned in the other Beatitudes that Jesus prefers the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peaceful, and the persecuted.  In the Ninth Beatitude, Jesus doubles down on his aforementioned preference for the persecuted.

Let's notice a couple of things about this reading.  First of all, Jesus doesn't say "if," he says "when."

"...When they insult you and persecute you..."  he says.

So, Jesus expects his disciples to be persecuted, insulted, and to have "every kind of evil" spoken of them.  We can infer, then, that he expects his followers to publicly buck some cultural mores, and to no small extent.  Otherwise, how would they ever find themselves persecuted?

Let's also take note of who Jesus is talking about when he says "they" in 5:10.  Does he mean the Jews?  Does he mean the Jewish authorities - the priests and aristocrats?  Does he mean the Roman occupying force?  We get a clue in 5:12.  He says that his followers will be persecuted in the same manner as were the prophets before them.  Looking back at the Old Testament, we can see that the prophets were mostly persecuted by those with great power.  Elijah, Amos, Micaiah, Hanani, Uriah and other prophets all faced retribution or persecution at the hands of some powerful human authority, either a High Priest or a monarch.

So, 5:11 and 5:12 show us that Jesus expects his followers to be persecuted by High Priests, monarchs, aristocrats, or other powerful humans.  There is no reason to think that Jesus is speaking in metaphor or parable here.  He truly seems to have expected this.

Now let's follow Jesus' expectation one step further with a question: why would High Priests, monarchs, or aristocrats want to persecute a person?

For our answer, we need only look at all of human history.  All of human history teaches us that the wealthy and powerful, as a rule, persecute anything that threatens their wealth and power.

So...

Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of his Galilean Ministry, is telling his followers that he expects them to threaten the power of the powerful.  He expects his followers to loudly undermine the status quo by default.  We've made no logical leap of faith here, and we've missed no secret meaning.  Today's reading shows unequivocally that Jesus intended for his followers to be revolutionaries.

This week, let's meditate on the many ways we can, in accordance with the teaching of Jesus Christ, threaten the power of human power.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:10

Welcome to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, a sprawling, exhaustive, and comprehensive gospel study.  If you are new to this study, you can start from the beginning by clicking here.

Last week, we were hanging out with a man, one part monster and one part Roman military mastermind, named Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.  We discussed Pompey's approach to Jerusalem in 63 BC, his siege of the city, and his siege of the holy citadel within.  We discussed the piety of the Jewish priests during that siege, who continued to do their priestly Temple duties even as Pompey's troops approached them to cut them down from behind.  This was all in the context of a study of ancient paganism and its interplay with ancient Judaism.

At first glance, Pompey might not be the most pertinent figure when we look at the historic space between paganism and Judaism.  The Jews had, after all, descended from pagans*, and the Old Testament is chock full of stories of the Jewish people interacting with pagans of all sorts.  There is also no doubt that the exile of the Jewish people to the pagan Babylon in the sixth century BC qualifies as one of the most powerful collisions between paganism and Judaism ever - enough to rival anything Rome ever did to the Jews.

So why the focus on Pompey and Rome?  Because of their proximity to Jesus, of course.  When Jesus grew up in the Galilee, Rome was the ultimate earthly authority in that area.  When a Galilean said "damn The Man," they were referring to Rome.  The immense cultural pressure Rome brought to bear on her subjects would have been palpable to Jesus and the whole population of Palestine at the time.

Still, we should understand that when Rome arrived in full force in 63, Palestine was already a thoroughly Hellenized place.  The people there had been familiar with Greek traditions and religion since, at the latest, Alexander the Great's conquest of the area in 332 BC.**  Pompey was, by no means, the first pagan to walk into Jerusalem.  He was merely the most powerful pagan to date to have ever stepped foot in the city.

Bearing the gradual Hellenization of the entire Mediterranean world in mind, today we'll continue our study by simply highlighting some of the main practical aspects of Greco-Roman religious belief.

Ten Broad Strokes on Greco-Roman Paganism

1. Greek and Roman pagan practices differed very little.

We call it "Greco-Roman" paganism because, in many ways, Roman and Greek paganisms were indistinguishable.  This statement is true for a vast majority of Greco-Roman history, and it is especially true of the first century BC.  At that time, in Roman towns and Greek towns alike, cult and temple worship of patron gods was the norm.  In Roman towns and Greek towns alike, religion was a transactional thing, wherein the adherent made continuing blood sacrifices to the gods in return for rewards here in this earthly life.  In Roman and Greek towns all over the Mediterranean and the near-east, religion looked pretty much the same.

The religion of the Greeks and the religion of the Romans can be separated from one another, but, for our purposes, Greco-Roman paganism can be viewed as a monolith.

2.  Greco-Roman paganism was not a system of morality, unlike the major modern religions.  

Greco-Roman paganism did not come with prescriptions for morality, generally.  The gods worshipped by the Greeks and Romans were themselves, by tradition, often morally reprehensible, and thus there was no imperative set for human behavior by the gods. For Greco-Roman pagans like Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus or Pontius Pilate, religion was strictly a system by which one appealed to the gods for favors in this earthly life.

This is not to say that the Romans or Greeks were without morality.  They certainly were not.  Their morality was just based on things like civic duty, personal honor, and the politics of war, rather than on duty to the divine.

We can say for sure that Pompey never once laid awake in bed thinking "I really hope Jupiter will forgive me for telling that lie I told earlier today."

Speaking of Jupiter...

3.  Jupiter = Zeus 

Jupiter was the King of the Gods in the Roman pantheon.  He was analogous to Zeus in the Greek pantheon.  Maybe "analogous" doesn't go far enough, though.  You see, the name "Jupiter" is a cognate of the Greek "Zeû páter," or "Zeus, father."  The prime Roman god, then, is literally the prime Greek god by a translated name.

One can actually take any name off the list of the primary Roman pantheon and find the mythological prototype of that character in the Greek pantheon.  The Greek Ares became the Roman Mars.  The Greek Poseidon became the Roman Neptune.  The Greek Aphrodite became the Roman Venus.  The two pantheons can almost be seen as a single pantheon of double-named deities.

4.  The Romans interfaced with the gods through birds and gore.

The Romans had various methods of divination***.  They engaged in practices such as haruspicy and augury.

Haruspicy is an ancient practice that the Romans had picked up from their Italian neighbors the Etruscans.  It involved the inspection of the entrails of a sacrificed animal, most commonly the liver of a bird, for divine signs of the future.  There is archaeological record of statues of bird livers used as reference for liver-readers on the Italian peninsula.

Augury was the practice of observing the flight patterns or other behavioral habits of living birds, interpreting them as messages from the gods.

There's an interesting story about Roman augury that I like to retell.  You see, before initiating battles, Romans had a religious requirement to appeal to the gods for approval through augury.  A Roman commander would have with him in the field, or on his ship, a cage full of "sacred chickens."  When the Roman commander wanted approval from the gods for a battle, he would open up the chicken cage and spread some seed on the ground before it.  If the chickens came out to eat the seed, this was considered "good auspices" and the battle would go forward.  If the chickens did not eat the seed, it was considered a bad omen - a message from the gods that the battle should not be initiated.

During the First Punic War, a man named Publius Claudius Pulcher led the Roman naval forces into the Battle of Drepana against defiant Carthaginian blockade runners.  Before ordering his men into the fray, Pulcher was said to have opened up his cage of sacred chickens and ceremoniously thrown some delicious seed on the deck before them.  The chickens, on that day, may have been somewhat seasick, as evidenced by the fact that they did not leave the cage to eat the seed.  Pulcher, being unwilling to delay the battle on that particular day on account of the chickens, famously remarked "if the chickens won't eat, then let them drink!" and threw the whole lot of chickens overboard into the Mediterranean.  Pulcher's men, no doubt, looked on in horror.  It would have been considered terrible luck to defy the sacred chickens, much less to kill them all in a fit of anger.

Pulcher ordered his fleet to commence attacking the Carthaginians despite the inauspicious chicken reading, and was rewarded for his haste by having 93 of his ships captured or destroyed.  The sacred chickens had been right, and no one who heard this tale dared doubt the chickens for generations to come.

5.  The Greeks interfaced with the gods via Oracles.

The Greeks also had methods of divination.  Most famously, the Greeks heard oracles.  Most famously, the Greeks heard the wisdom of the Oracle at Delphi, also known as the Pythia.

The Pythia was a position held by one woman at a time.  She was one in a line of female seers, and was certainly the most powerful woman in the classical world.  Greek leaders appealed to her wisdom in all manner of inquiry for ages, and her influence is multiply attested in nigh countless ancient authors.  The Oracle at Delphi was established in the eighth century BC and was still used as late as the fourth century AD.

Located a hundred miles west and slightly north of Athens, the Oracle was the place to go for Greeks seeking to interface with the divine.  Generally speaking, at the Oracle, a seeker could pose a question to the gods and receive some kind of divine answer via the Pythia.

Some historians say that the Pythia, upon being asked a question, would inhale fumes coming out of a natural vapor spring.  The fumes would cause her to start speaking an unintelligible gibberish.  The Oracle priests would then interpret the gibberish into an answer in plain Greek for the seeker.  Other historians recall the Pythia intelligibly answering the seeker herself, in Greek.

Some of the most pivotal decisions in Greek history were essentially made by the Pythia, whoever she was at that time.

If the Romans wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could cut open an animal and look at its liver.  If the Greeks wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could go talk to a woman who had possibly driven herself mad with natural inhalants.

Different strokes.

6.  Greco-Roman paganism was tolerant of alternative religiosity.

Greco-Roman paganism, as we've mentioned before, was very tolerant of the religious views of other peoples.  This is probably because most peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world worshipped a non-moralizing pantheon of gods transactionally, just as the Greeks and Romans did.  When Alexander the Great went conquering, then, it was not a big deal for the newly conquered people to mix and match their existing gods with the new Greek gods.  When Rome conquered, it was the same thing.  Pantheons might get added together, and the names of some gods might change here or there, but the overarching structure of pagan religion was the same everywhere.

7.  The pagans originated the belief in an everlasting soul.

Greco-Roman pagans believed in an eternal soul.  Attitudes and beliefs about the afterlife evolved throughout antiquity, but eventually landed on something close to an afterlife-as-punishment-or-reward model.  A person who lived well and was remembered well would be rewarded by pleasure in a place called Elysium.  A person who lived impiously or was remembered poorly by others would have to, at least for a time, experience some measure of suffering in a dark place known as Tartarus.  Again, "good" and "bad" living were not defined by religion here, but were concepts rooted in civic duty and social order.

One can see the origins of the Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell in the Greco-Roman concepts of Elysium and Tartarus.  (One cannot, incidentally, find the origins of these concepts in Biblical Judaism.)

8.  They worshipped and sacrificed publicly at temples.

The temple was the center of public religious life for the Greco-Roman pagan.  Any Greco-Roman town of any importance had at least one temple, if not more.  Most towns would also have other smaller shrines where people could pray and sacrifice.  Most temples were associated with some divine or revered grave.  The space a Greco-Roman temple occupied was more sacred than the edifice itself, and thus the centerpiece of the temple, the sacrificing altar, was frequently located in the open air directly in front of the temple.  This also facilitated participation in ceremony by the locals.

9.  They worshipped and sacrificed privately in their homes.

The center of private religious life for the average citizen of Greece or Rome was the home.  Citizens would create shrines to patron gods in their homes and would personally burn small offerings there on a daily basis.  The patriarch of a family was the default advocate to the divine in any household, and it would have been his responsibility to see these reverences completed for the earthly benefit of his flesh and blood.

10.  Transactional, not salvational

I've said it before, but it gets its own bullet-point here: Greco-Roman religion was transactional in nature, not salvational.  Greco-Roman paganism was "practical and contractual."  The old Roman idiom was "do ut des," or "I give, that you might give."

One practiced paganism because one wanted to increase one's bounty in this life.

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There you have them. Ten broad strokes about the religious atmosphere that the Jewish people found themselves surrounded by at the time of Jesus Christ's Galilean Ministry.

Next time, we'll look at ancient Judaism broadly in this same way, seeking to find the starkest differences and the clearest similarities between it paganism.  Some of you might be surprised at what we find.  Don't miss it.

For now, let's get back to the gospel.

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Matthew 5:10

10 Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Here we have the eighth and final Beatitude as Matthew records them.

The original Greek word that we have translated into "persecuted" here is "dediōgmenoi" which is a prolonged and more intense form of the verb used to mean "pursue."  I think "persecuted" is a pretty good translation here.

The verb "to persecute," today, means "to subject (someone) to hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of their race or political or religious beliefs."

The original Greek word that we have translated into "righteousness" here is "dikaiosynēs," meaning fairness, equitability, justice, or even levelness.

For me, it is next to impossible to read this Beatitude without thinking about the mechanisms of power and empire as they existed in Jesus' time and as they exist now in modern times.  

Jesus assures his followers that those who labor for equality and fairness to the point that the authorities begin to harass, harm, or expel them are extremely blessed, and will be the rightful heirs of the "kingdom of heaven."

Those familiar with Christ's whole story know him as a political radical.  This verse shows Jesus, from the very outset, encouraging political radicalism in his followers, too.  Jesus tells his followers that they ought to expect to be persecuted for their mode of living.  In fact, in this Beatitude, Jesus offers his people a yardstick by which to measure themselves.  He seems to say "if you aren't being persecuted, you probably aren't advocating loudly enough for righteousness or justice."

Jesus wants his followers to be persecuted for the radical methods by which they advocate for righteousness.  

For a modern example of the persecution Jesus refers to here, consider the establishment's persecution and murder of Martin Luther King Jr for his work in civil rights, his advocacy for the poor, and especially for his work in the anti-war movement in the 1950s and 60s.  Here was a man very clearly "persecuted for the sake of righteousness."

Coincidentally, I will say that there are only a few figures in the history of Christendom that I now find worthy of the title "Christian."  Dr. King is one on that very short list.  I like to guess that the good Doctor took a lot of solace in this eighth Beatitude throughout the trials of his life.

For Jesus and for Dr. King: damn The Man.

Join us next time, and thanks for reading.

Love.

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* Joshua 24:2

** It was during the Hellenizing period between 332 and 63 BC that the Jews first adopted some of the beliefs of the Greek philosophers, like that of the "immortal soul," which did not exist anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.

*** divination: noun - the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.

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