The Sermon of the Mount Magna Carta of Christian Ethics - Essay Example

The Sermon of the Mount: Magna Carta of Christian Ethics (A Structural Analysis of Jesusian Ethics as presented in the Sermon of the Mount) Introduction The Sermon of the Mount has been the cornerstone of Jesusian ethics for about twenty centuries now. As such, it is evident that all schools of Jesusian faith have approached the Sermon in their own ways and put forward their specific interpretations. In fact, much of the Jesusian behavior of each school has been defined by its specific interpretation of the Sermon of the Mount. There are two major interpretative approaches towards analyzing the 'Sermon of the Mount'. There is the structuralist approach that dissociates the work from the immediate socio-economic realities that produced it or to the problems of its application to the socio-economic realities of a different milieu. This approach deals with the 'Sermon of the Mount' as largely a textual phenomenon, looking for intra-textual and inter-textual matrices that lead to its exposition. On the other side of this approach, resides what we can call an operational approach, which looks at the Sermon as an ethical guidebook to be followed by Jesusians in particular, and human beings at large to the best of their abilities; a pacifist handbook that can resolve internal strife and at a more idealistic level - worldly rivalry. This approach has its own share of problems as different ages have appropriated, diluted and adapted the Words of the Sermon to suit the peculiar social and political environment of its own times. The differences between the Roman Catholic views (particularly post Vatican II) and the Protestant views also emanate largely from this problem of temporal applications of the edicts delivered during the Sermon. This paper will try to present a survey of the major ethical legacies of the Sermon of the Mount. However, even while delineating the myriad approaches to the text, one should remember that the structuralist and the semantic complexities of the 'Sermon of the Mount' make it difficult to pursue any of these approaches in an uncomplicated monolithic manner. There are fissures, differences, gaps and complexities within each. What we call the structuralist and the moral are application based, being two broad generalities that have lots of contrary voices within them, and even at times, overlaps. This study will, therefore, start with a structuralist approach and then try and present an overview of the practical applicability of the Sermon as appropriated and adapted by the various interpretative schools of Jesusianity over the ages. Sermon of the Mount: Inter-text A problem with an interpretation of the Sermon of the Mount is that the ethical and the structural cannot be always clearly and simplistically isolated. Particularly because the Sermon of the Mount, as delivered in Matthew, is not an isolated and stand alone set of ethical tenets with no parallel elsewhere, either within the Prophetic Laws or the Gospels, or the dominant Pagan philosophical trains of thought that were popular at that time. It does not, in essence, lie in isolation. Jesus, while delivering the Sermon, speaks very much from within an ethical and juridical tradition, and addresses these traditions with an acute consciousness of his own political and social reality. Even if we leave the immediate social and political implications that are expressed within the Sermon of the Mount, and close read it in a more strictly Formalist way, we still find that it operates from within a clear Prophetic and legal tradition, which is very clear from the beginning of the narrative itself. Meier states that 'Matthew recast and combined two major liturgical and catechetical documents of his church: the gospel of Mark and a collection of Jesus' sayings which scholars call "Q"'. 1 B.W. Bacon undertakes a detailed discussion of Matthew's position within the structure of the Synoptic Bible, and talks about the commonalities between Mark and Matthew, as well as the Q Source, on which Matthew probably relied a lot. However, even after conceding this reliance, what Bacon foregrounds is Matthew's 'redactional' agenda; in the way he re-arranged the entire sources available to him on the basis of topicality. Bacon discovers Matthew's formula of presenting the teaching as well as the way he restructured his Gospel in a way as to give a primary position to the Sermon of the Mount: the central corpus of Jesusian teaching. 2 One of the greatest structuralist studies in placing the entire Gospel of Matthew vis--vis the Old Testament and highlighting the Moses figure of Jesus was done by Bacon. Bacon unearths a structural schema within the Gospel that has a narrative followed by a teaching. Depending on this, the entire Gospel can be sub-divided into the following parts: Preamble: Chapters 1-2 Book I: Concerning Discipleship (3.1 - 7.29) Book II: Concerning Apostleship (8.1 - 11.1) Book III: Concerning the Hiding of Revelation (11.2 - 13.53) Book IV: Concerning Church Administration (13.54 - 19.1a) Book V: Concerning the Judgment (19.1b - 26.2) Epilogue: 26.3 - 28.20 Although the division is not directly connected to our study of the ethical ramifications of the Sermon of the Mount, yet an understanding of the five-part structure of the Gospel of Matthew is important. It is a replication of the Pentateuch of the Old Testament, and thus tantamount in establishing Jesus as the new Moses. Bacon thus sees Jesus as a Teacher, and, more specifically, as a new Moses, the supreme legislator. In the light of Bacon's subordination of old salvation history to the Law, the period of the old Moses and the old Torah was the time of preparation for the fulfillment of the new Moses and the new Torah.3 The very act of raising the Mount and seating himself places Jesus immediately within the rabbinic tradition; and moreover clarifies his stance vis--vis Moses, as the very scene duplicates and comments directly towards Moses' receipt of the Torah on Mount Sinai. The posture of seating is also a clear hint on the authority of Jesus. The Jewish religious leaders always sat while delivering speeches and lessons to their students, disciples or gatherers - seating betrayed moral and religious authority, and by this act, Jesus immediately makes his position clear - he is the one with authority and he will address well within and directed to the Mosaic tradition. Two hypotheses develop from the very setting of the event. A critic like Kodjak would believe that the Sermon was delivered by Jesus as one communion. He would, as a result, consider the setting of the event as authentic. Not only does he not consider the event to be a collection of materials found scattered all over the Sermon of Luke brought together simply by Matthew's inherent tendency of ordering and categorizing his material, Kodjak opines that it is in fact an abridged version of a standard sermon that Jesus in fact delivered. 4At the same time however, Kodjak also confesses that he has no clear idea as to why would Matthew compress and abridge standard sermon, and why is the same sermon scattered all over Luke.5 On the other hand, many critics opine that the Sermon was a collation of advises imparted by Jesus at various points of his life at various places. However, even if the entire Sermon was not a single event, Matthew's collation and the emphasis on the setting, makes its significance clear: establishment of Jesus as the last major interpreter of the Torah and the new Messiah from God. It was, in that case, an extremely monumental event in his life and the spread of Jesusianity, because this is the first time that Jesus, through bold assertions (see the antithesis below) proclaims himself as the assigned lawgiver from God, as well as one of the most radical interpreter of the Mosaic Laws, all through a single significant action. This establishment of Jesus as a Messiah as well as the final interpreter of the Mosaic Law had both spiritual and political implications. It must be made clear at the outset, that what Jesus was attacking was a kind of political hegemony of the Romans as well as the rabbinic oppression of the common folk. In its original context, the Sermon of the Mount was far from a pacifist handbook, in fact it is at times hostility at its most radical again some of the dominant power structures of its time. The multitudes that gathered around Jesus mainly drew from the common folk - oppressed by Roman imperialists and a certain section of the religious leaders of the time - and for them these were words that amounted to radical activism. The trope of hostility is best expressed by the motif of dualism that runs throughout the Sermon, and is established in the Beatitudes itself. The Beatitudes present values in opposition, which makes it clear that underlying the now widely accepted pacifism of the 'Sermon of the Mount' was a feeling of anxiety, fear, and violence. The Beatitudes are delivered with a clear social purpose in mind - the purpose of ethnic unity. Unity among of the Jews - of which there were many factions - was needed to fight the common external enemy of the Romans, and it was this cause of unity within a community that Jesus was addressing. The Beatitudes and the Antithesis thus form a continuous whole: the Beatitudes promise the future, and the Antithesis lays down the ways to achieve it. In that case, Matthew's assertion that the entire Sermon of the Mount was basically given at one go, seems to hold truth. The Antithesis is the most telling part of the Sermon when it comes towards Jesus' attempt to locate himself within a prophetic culture with Judaic roots and to transcend it from there. Jesus in fact places his saying in direct concurrence or contrast to the revealed truth of the Torah. However, one should at this point of time, avoid the mistake of considered the Torah as an unproblematic and monolithic representation of Judaic thought that was prevalent in the 1st Century AD. The Jewish community itself was greatly divided on the interpretation of the Mosaic Laws after the breakdown of the temple. The Sadducees, the Pharisees and the rabbinic traditions were clearly in opposition to each other on certain parts of the Torah; and this difference was largely accorded to the very system of the recording of the Talmud itself. 6 As such, for Jesus, the multitudes that he was addressing had a combination of Jews who probably subscribed to different sections of the Jewish theological schools; and that considerably determined their degree of acceptance of Jesus' formulations. Jesus, thus, through the Antithesis places him directly vis--vis the Old Testament prophets. The question that immediately comes to our mind is the way Jesus posits himself in relation to the Mosaic Laws. Is he calling the older set of Laws to be altogether incomplete, if not irrelevant, and basically placing a new set of demands for his followers Or is he taking the role of a religious interpreter so common with the Judaic rabbis The way he went up the hill and sits himself down before the beginning of the Beatitudes strongly emphasizes the second point. It is, therefore, important to find out Jesus' own views on the Torah before trying to analyze his understanding of the Laws. Before his beginning of the antithesis, Jesus strongly recommends the truth of the Torah. Do not think that I cam to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17 - 19)7 It is therefore clear to us that Jesus places great importance on the Laws, and accept them as revealed truths that are eternal and universal. At the same time, he also states that a strict following of the Torah is the only way towards revelation and to get into the kingdom of heaven, unless one surpass the righteousness of the saints in his or her righteousness; which is an impossibility. The same sentiment is echoed in Luke, where the Law is placed before heaven and earth, creations by God in the early part of the Genesis: And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one title of the law to fail. (Luke 16:17) If, however, the Laws are stated absolutes, of which not a word or a title can be appropriated, then the entire Antithesis becomes an exercise in interpretation. There are two grains of thought that run against each other, and can be thought to be mutually exclusive. In the first case, the difference is maintained between the Torah and its interpretation at the times of Jesus. Kari Syreeni writes that 'one of Matthew's concerns was to juxtapose Jesus' teaching with the piety taught by contemporary Jewish authorities'.8 Similarly Robert E. Obach and Albert Kirk state 'our Lord is not contrasting an old Law with a new one. He is contrasting a Jewish interpretation of the Law with His own'. 9It can therefore, be said, that Jesus as God's last Messiah, takes on him the work of giving the final analysis and interpretation of the Torah to the gathering multitudes. W.D. Davis, among others, endorses the same view. He denies Jesus' views on the Mosaic to be exegesis rather than antithesis in the strict sense of the term. According to Davis, Jesus is 'offering His own interpretation' of it. 10 Pinchas Lapide also endorses the same view. 11On the other hand, it can be seen as a proper reinvention on the Torah; through extension, and thus affecting the validity of the Torah in the word. Even if Jesus' intention is purely hermeneutic, to give a new interpretation of existing Laws, even then the gathering multitudes are given a choice. There are really two ways to look at it, and there is no point of commonality between the two. First, the message of Jesus and the Torah are concurrent, and thus Jesus is a disciple; or they are contrary, and Jesus is not a disciple. Matthew, at least, follows the radical school of thought, and asserts that the Torah, even if true in itself, is true only when understood in the light of Jesus' understanding of it. Any other interpretation is false, and thus establishing the interpretation as a new set of Laws in itself; in continuation but in radical contrast to the original Mosaic Laws. For Gardner, 'The church does not simply take over the law as given to those of ancient times. The radical part of Matthew's stance is that the law remains valid as redefined by Jesus'. 12 However, in many parts of the Antithesis, particularly in issues of divorce, legal retaliation and oaths, there seems to be an absolute negation of the previous Law. Jesus, here, places himself in direct opposition to the Mosaic Covenant. Irrespective of what is stated in the Torah, under the new Ministry there is going to be no divorce, legal retaliation and no oaths. 13 Eduard Schweizer similarly contends that there are parts of the Antithesis where 'Jesus annuls not only the Jewish interpretation but the Old Testament Law itself'. 14 Francis J. Moloney not only supports this view of Jesus going an extra mile to annul and at times contradict the earlier Laws of the Old Testament, he in fact places himself as the 'Son' of God, as an authority who derives his status not from any higher source, but validates his authority himself. It is to be remembered in this context, that Moses received the Law from Jehovah, but Jesus gives the Law himself. Ethical Ramifications of the Sermon of the Mount One of the biggest debates around the Sermon of the Mount has been its practical applicability. It is often believed that the teachings are to be followed in spirit and not in letter, as that would make it a highly impractical in the real world. Of particular problem is the overt Pacifist view of the Sermon. The attitude that Jesus preaches about the way a true Jesusian should approach the issue of enmity is a case in the point. But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5: 45) This was bound to create some kind of a problem in a world where expansion of Kingdom, imperialism and crusades was to define the general behavioral pattern of the ruling class. Typically, Catholic Jesusianity presented a view of the so-called double standards in its application. Most of the sayings, according to the Catholic Faith, were to be clearly divided between implication and order. While some are to be maintained by Jesusians in general, others are to be maintained specifically by the religious groups, like the monks and the friaries, which is going to be a more literal understanding of the Sermon. Similarly, there was a distinction made between action and the inner revelation. The issue of enmity was thus settled: killing one's enemy as a mode of self-protection and at the same time protection of the faith was justified by the Sermon. However, this enmity should not be perpetuated with animosity towards the specific enemy: but towards the views and the ideological position that the enemy represents. Thus, kill the enemy and say a prayer in silence. One of the founding problems of discussing the ethics of the Jesusian life as discussed and presented by Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount and its various interpretation is the suspicion associated with the interpretive motifs themselves. In Kierkegaard's words: 'The churches have not only never united, but have always been one of the chief causes of the disunion of men, of the hatred of one another, or wars, slaughters, inquisitions, nights of St. Bartholomew, and so forth, and the churches never serve as mediators between men and God [T]hey put up dead forms in the place of God'. (Kierkegaard) It is a choice between the Sermon and the Mount and the Council of Nice, the former representing the pure gospel of Jesus, and the latter the distortions of the church. 15 Despite this suspicion, we cannot choose but go through the various interpretations of the Sermon as presented and re-presented by the various Jesusian Churches, precisely because of the practical implications they continue to have in the Jesusian life. Probably the greatest problem in the New Testament ethics as compared to the ethics preached in the Old Testament is its doubt of corrective and retributive justice. Jesus at that point of time was considered to be radical because he was involved in establishing a right balance, a balance that would be preached and realized, between love and justice. Love, without justice, would be irresponsible, would sink to mere sentimentality and can even be harmful. The world is full of instances where evil has been perpetrated through 'well meaning' people. Justice, on the other hand, is the prerequisite of love. It is the means, rather than the end, towards the formation of a harmonious society built around the Church. The Jesusian emphasis on the Church and the community is immense, and any failure to reach that is ultimately a failure of the very motive behind its formation. The Lutheran emphasis on Grace Sermon of the Mount and Catholic Ethics The Catholic view on the ethical teachings of the Sermon of the Mount has undergone various changes over the years. As I have already stated, there can be no monolithic and uniform understanding of the ethical ramification of the Sermon even within a single Church tradition. There have been changes even within a tradition, where almost eight different approaches can be isolated within the Catholic tradition itself, as identified by Jeffrey Siker.16 However, without getting into the specificities of these approaches, it can be said that in a general way, the debate has been between the idealistic and as a realizable morality for life in this world. The difference between the demands placed of the disciples by the Matthean Jesus differs from that of the scribes and Pharisees only insofar as Jesus requires more righteousness of his followers; the teachings of the Jewish prophets should be obeyed, but the followers of Jesus are to add to those demands the command of Jesus for a rightness that is inward and that allows no incongruity between motive and action. 17 It is this intense rigor that Jesus demands of the disciples and his followers and its supposed impossibility in the present world that has led to a large variety of interpretive schools among the various Churches. The Catholic Church, for instance, has looked at the Sermon of the Mount as clearly an ideal, one that is supported by the eschatological coloring of the Scriptures. It states that the Jesusians living in this world cannot follow in a practical way the radical teaching of the Sermon of the Mount. At the same time, it will be a gross misrepresentation of Jesusian ethics, if the teachings are relegated unqualified merely to the sphere of the 'ideal', without practical ramifications. On the other hand, it gives a quality and a direction towards which all Jesusians should strive. Early Catholic teaching has typically promoted and certified a two-tier signification of the Sermon. The approach, followed by St. Thomas Aquinas as well as St. Augustine, divides the entire teaching of the Sermon into general precepts and specific counsels. While an adherence to the general precepts is essential towards salvation, the obedience to the precepts is a way towards reaching a higher level of Jesusian perfection. Again the issue of divorce has been recalled by the Catholic Church as a justification for this practically realizable view. Authoritative Catholic teaching and theology has seen the Matthean condemnation of divorce and remarriage in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9, and have promoted its rigorous opposition to the practices of divorce and remarriage, considering them as ideals. However, it at the same time can be a Matthean arbitration of a much stricter norm set by Jesus himself in cases of divorce, diluted by Matthews to make it practicable by the introduction of the term 'porneia'. Whatever be the meaning of the word, what is certain is that it is the setting forwards of an exception. Similarly, the Catholic Church itself allows a non-consummated marriage to be dissolved. Thus, the ideal of indissolubility would allow more exceptions today within the church. 18 However, there are other ways of looking at the question of adultery than the tradition inward/outward problem, considering the congruency and dichotomies between motive and action. It may have been, in some way, a refashioning of contemporary ideas of vision with ultimately a social implication. Historically speaking, this action of taking on himself the role of the leadership, Jesus may be interested in fulfilling the highly political function of uniting a group of people that are otherwise scattered. Although a duality between the inner and the outer part of one's character and integrity are central to the all the antitheses, at least in some cases (like the highly debated second antithesis) it also has major social consequences. 'It implies that harmful actions of an individual have a direct consequence on the members of the larger community'. 19 The similar view of the eye can be found in the later part of the sermon, when the eye is compared to the lamp of the body. The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is clear, your whole body will be filled with light. (Matthew 6:22) Here too we see that the ray of the light, the very idea of vision itself is looked at as a kind of emanation, rather than a received sensation. Therefore, it is the light of the body, its purity and integrity that emanates from the eye, rather than the other way round; where the ray from the outside world enters the eye. This view of the world is found in a large number of Greek texts: in Plutarch, Pliny and others. It was also the view proclaimed by the medical treatises of the time, of which Jesus was well aware of. If the inside is corrupt, the same corruption emanates through the eye and corrupts the outside as well. In ancient Greece, customs of hiding one's wealth, or the beauty of a lady etc. were prevalent. The reason was to avoid harm that can emanate from other eye and pollute it. It is the same social concern that Jesus proclaims in this analogy of the lamp of the body. The re-orientation of the church position following Vatican II has all the more complicated the issue. Following the efforts of reconciliation by Vatican II, there was a marked changed in the applicability of the Sermon to one's own time and space. Commonly, there have been adaptations of the Sermon to suit one's specific social and political agenda. The Protestant Interpretation of the Ethics of the Sermon of the Mount The Protestants, on the other hand, was in direct contradiction to this view of 'double standards' as was preached by the Catholics, and believed in a more - by the letter- following of the ethical teachings as represented in the Sermon. The Protestant emphasis on Grace is found in the very structure of the Sermon itself, in the coming of the Beatitudes before the Antithesis and the commands. The source of the ethical teaching in the Sermon of the Mount, according to the Protestant school of interpretation, emerges not only from the content but from the very form of the Sermon itself. 'The momentum for keeping the following tough Commands flows from the grace of these preceding Blessingsthe peculiar sequence of biblical ethics is the sequence of blessing and then command, of support before challenge, of indicative before imperative'. 20 Protestants, particularly under the guidance of Luther, forwarded a different kind of duality in the interpretation of the Sermon. He forwarded what is usually called a two-level system: a system that makes a cleavage between the temporal and the spiritual world. Similarly, the Sermon is divided into obligation towards the temporal and spiritual world, and confusing the two would harm both the rigor of the Sermons on the one hand, and dilute important parts that need rigor on the other hand. Thus, a clear division between the two is of utmost importance. The Sermon, according to Martin Luther can be applied only to the spiritual world. A compromise is needed when it comes to its application in the temporal world. Thus, for every action there is an inner and an outer dimension. While the outer action should be mediated via a compromise that is needed to carry out action in the practical world, the inner spiritual integrity should not be compromised one. A judge, for example, should follow his secular obligations to sentence a criminal, but inwardly, he should mourn for the fate of the criminal. Related but different, although equally influential, interpretations of the Sermon are put forward by the eschatological schools. An impossibility of maintaining the codes of the Sermon of the Mount is also vouched and espoused by a large number of eschatological interpretations, bringing them closer to the traditional Catholic mode of interpretation, as has been already stated above. Of the many eschatological views that are predominant in the present spiritual environment, of foremost importance is the view proposed by Martin Dibelius. Dibelius concedes that the rules are unbending. However, he states that the world, at this point is fallen, and thus a strict maintenance of the codes as preached by the Sermon of the Mount is summarily impossible, despite the sincerest human endeavors. Jesus, he says, sets the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven as a precondition for the following of these laws. Thus, once the Kingdom of Heaven arrives, it will become possible to follow the Sermon strictly because life in general will be led on a godlier and purer manner. A similar eschatological view is also forwarded by the Plymouth Brothers. Commonly referred to as dispensationism this view states that a strict following of the Sermon is impossible in the present age. However, once the Period of Grace is over, and the new age or dispensation arrives, then all these codes can be more strictly followed by the inhabitants of the new world. Conclusion Despite the various interpretive approaches towards the Sermon of the Mount, its status as the core text in Jesusian ethics and behavior goes unchallenged. Its richness allows for secular studies in structural as well as historical analysis, and at the same time it serves as a spiritual and ethical guide not only for Jesusians of all sects and schools, but for people from other religious affiliations as well. Generally speaking, the ethical legacy of the Sermon of the Mount can presently be observed in two different ways. In certain ways, this plurality of approach is characteristic of the entire interpretative history of the entire Sermon. One the one hand, we have a practical application of the edicts of the Sermon of the Mount used in contexts that are much different from the original context in which the Sermon if delivered. The world, depending on its temporal and spatial specificities have used and adapted the Sermon of the Mount in its own way, and throughout its journey, the reverence it has attracted remains unfaltering. From Tolstoy to Gandhi, from Chaucer to Guiterrez, the Sermon of the Mount has shone as a guiding light for leaders spiritual and political from all parts of the world. The particular richness of the Sermon is expressive in the way it has been used as a tool for the oppressed to revolt against oppressive power structures: Gandhi and Guiterrez' applications are of that manner. On the other hand, it has also been used as rhetoric of world peace and brotherhood, one that is devoid of hostility. In this way, it has been used by a large number of pacifists in the present world. The second approach is hermeneutic. The twentieth century has a seen a proliferation of critical methodologies: some are triggered by specific social and political agendas like the Marxist and the Feminist schools of interpretations. Others are more apolitical in their approach like the structuralist and the post-structuralist approaches that highlight a close reading of the text. Quite naturally, as one of the most influential texts in the history of mankind, the Sermon of the Mount has attracted a great degree of theoretical approaches. The changing situation of the world has allowed for more specific, more radical interpretations for the Sermon of the Mount. It has attracted the attention of critics with diverse ideological affiliations. The hermeneutic tradition related to the Sermon of the Mount itself continues to increase in volume and depth by the day. With the application of diverse ideological schools in the interpretation of the Sermon of the Mount, in a certain way, the circle of time seems to have completed a full circle. The Sermon of the Mount was, as we have already seen, the authoritative commentary on the Torah and an arbitration of the many interpretations of the Torah that were popular in the First Century AD. Similarly, there appears to be as many different interpretations of the Sermon itself. However, in our present pluralistic world, it is not for one authoritative version that we seek for. The many ways in which the Sermon can enlighten and guide people is a testimony to its endearing appeal and worth. For centuries the Sermon of the Mount has guided people - both pious and secular, believers and atheists in a profound way. With the interest in the Sermon still very much alive and increasing, it appears that its appeal is on the rise, rather than diminishing, two thousand years after its beginning. Bibliography 1. Bauer, David R. The Structure of Matthew's Gospel. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1989. 2. Bruner, Frederick Dale. Matthew: A Commentary. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004. 3. Curran, Charles E. The Catholic Moral Tradition Today. Georgetown University Press, 1999. 4. Davis, W.D. The Gospel and the Land: Early Jesusianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine. Scholars Press, 1990. 5. Duff, Paul. B. 64. 'Vision and Violence: Theories of Vision and Matthew 5:27-30'. Antiquity and Humanity: Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy : Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on His 70th Birthday by Hans Dieter Betz, Adela Yarbro Collins, Margaret Mary Mitchel. (Mohr Siebeck, 2001). 6. Gardner, Alice. The Conflict of Duties. T.F.Unwin, 1903. University of Michigan. 7. Kodjak, Andrej. A Structurala Analysis of the Sermon of the Mount. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986 8. Meier, John P. Matthew. Liturgical Press, 1980. 9. Obach, Robert E. and Albert Kirk. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Paulist Press, 1978. 10. Pinchas, Lapide. The Sermon of the Mount: Utopia or Program for Action. Trans. Arlene Swidler. Books on Demand. 11. Roland H. Worth. The Sermon of the Mount: Its Old Testament Roots. Paulist Press, 1997. 12. Schweizer, Eduard. Jew, Greeks and Jesusians. Bill Archive, 1976. 13. Syreeni, Kari. 'Peter as Character and Symbol in the Gospel of Matthew'. Chracterization in the Gospels. Ed. David M. Rhoads and Kari Syreeni. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999. 14. The New Jerusalem Bibl. Darton Longman and Todd: London, 1990 15. Wogman, Philip J. Jesusian Ethics: A Historical Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press, 1993. Read More