Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BEATITUDES

A literary form best known from the nine plural “Blessed are” statements which begin Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3-12; cf. the four in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, Luke 6:20-23). These statements are examples of a common form known as macarisms (from Gk. makários, “blessed” or “happy,” which frequently introduces the statement) found in Egyptian, Greek, and Hebrew literature. The form seems to have belonged to liturgical contexts but appears for didactic purposes in literary material. It was used to provide a brief summary of essential doctrine. Often it assured and instructed about destiny in the afterlife or about divine justice, but in a way that has clear implications for present ethics and morality. Collections of beatitudes are also common at the beginning of literary works, as with the Sermon on the Mount.

In Jewish literature, beatitudes are most common in worship and wisdom traditions (e.g., Ps. 1:1-2; 32:1, 2; 33:12; 41:1; 106:3; 119:1, 2; Prov. 8:32, 34; Eccl. 10:17; Sir. 14:1, 2, 20; 25:8, 9; 34:17; 48:11; Wis. 3:13). They name a situation or action in which they declare God’s blessing or favor is experienced. Implicitly they exhort others to manifest this way of life or experience this situation. For those who do not, the blessing functions as condemnation.

Beatitudes also appear in apocalyptic literature (Dan. 12:12; 1 En. 58:2; 81:4; 82:4; 2 En. 42:6-14; 52:1-15). In a situation of crisis, the seer reveals the imminent reversal God is to bring about. Beatitudes tend to declare God’s judgment on the present, and/or promise God’s anticipated, favorable verdicts in the future. As such they require a way of life now that is based on and consonant with God’s righteous verdict. Beatitudes belonging to both the wisdom (Rom. 14:22) and apocalyptic traditions (Rev. 19:9; 20:6; 22:7) appear in the approximately 40 beatitudes in the NT.

The nine beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount have provoked much discussion. Scholars have debated their origins. The most common view sees three of the first four beatitudes, the blessings on the poor, the mourning, and the hungering (Matt. 5:3, 4, 6; cf. Luke 6:20-21), deriving in at least some form from Jesus. They exemplify Jesus’ concerns with the poor and maintain a tension between present experience and future blessing, which many see as reflective of a tension evident throughout Jesus’ ministry. Some scholars also claim on the grounds of multiple attestation that a fourth beatitude originates from Jesus, the blessing in 5:11-12 on suffering (cf. Luke 6:22-23).

On this view, these four beatitudes were present (in some form) in the collection of Jesus’ sayings known as Q (ca. 50s c.e.). This collection was probably expanded in the time before the Gospel was written (before the 80s) by the addition of four beatitudes to a form of Q known to Matthew’s community. Several of these beatitudes (Matt. 5:5, the meek; 5:8, the pure in heart) were probably formed by taking over beatitudes found in the Psalms (Ps. 37:11; 24:4). The writer of Matthew’s Gospel takes the collection of eight and makes further redactional changes, perhaps on the basis of Isa. 61, , and perhaps adds the beatitude found in 5:10.

Hans Dieter Betz, however, argues that the Beatitudes were by the 50s already part of the Sermon on the Mount, which had been composed to instruct Jewish Christians about being disciples of Jesus. Matthew took over the whole sermon from his version of Q and inserted it into the Gospel without changes.

There has also been considerable debate about how to interpret Matthew’s beatitudes. Do they promise eschatological rewards for the virtuous who manifest these characteristics in their lives, or do they proclaim God’s reversals for those who find themselves in these unfortunate circumstances? Are the Beatitudes ethicized “entrance requirements” exhorting readers to a way of life by which they might enter God’s reign? Or are they “eschatological blessings” announced on those who already encounter God’s reign in part? Or is it possible to read them in one consistent way? To “mourn” in Matt. 5:4 does not necessarily seem to be a virtue, while to be a “peacemaker” is not a situation that needs reversing.

Some have argued convincingly that the Beatitudes fall into three stanzas of 5:3-6, 7-10, 11-12. Each stanza has 36 words; the first and second end with a reference to “righteousness” (5:6, 10), and the first evidences alliteration of the letter p, in Greek and English (“the poor in spirit, the plaintive, the powerless, and those who pine for righteousness”; so David E. Garland). The first stanza underlines situations which God reverses, circumstances in which people are open to God’s saving activity. The second stanza shows qualities of a way of life created by God’s saving presence. The third addresses a consequence for the community’s life. One advantage of this approach is that it recognizes some connection between the Beatitudes and the Gospel of which they are a part. In Matt. 4:17-25 Jesus has demonstrated the presence of the reign of God in his healing and preaching among the afflicted crowds. The beatitudes of 5:3-6 elaborate the experience of 4:23-25, while 5:7-12 delineate further consequences of that present and future blessing.

Bibliography. H. D. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount. Herm (Minneapolis, 1995), 91-153; W. Carter, What Are They Saying About Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount? (New York, 1994), 12-25, 82-84; W. D. Davies and D. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. ICC (Edinburgh, 1988), 1:429-69; D. E. Garland, Reading Matthew (New York, 1993); R. Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount (Waco, 1982), 62-118; M. A. Powell, God with Us (Minneapolis, 1995), 119-40.

Warren Carter

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BEATITUDES

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)