skinumb

Moses set out a whole bunch of laws which I presume he got from God. What justification is given for Jesus ammending them (e.g. divorce, and adultery)? Did Moses misunderstand God's Word or has God changed his mind? I appreciate that consistency is not the Bible's strong point, but I assume Christian apologists have an answer.

dzim77

Many see the Sermon on the Mount as a kind of commentary on the OT law. More specifically Deuteronomy, IMO. It seems that Jesus is expounding on the 'heart of the law'... giving some more specific or up-to-date examples of how it should be applied, and in some cases taking it a step further. Yes he teaches 'as one with authority' to expound on the law, but there is nothing in his teaching that contradicts OT law, would you agree?

The Sermon on the Mount, IMO, is meant to be a guide for living in view of who God is and in reliance on God himself. In other words, Jesus is not giving a new -and more difficult- set of laws... he's painting a picture of how a person's life should look if they are indeed living in light of the nearness of the kingdom of God.

hatsoff

Well, much of Matthew SotM (such as the Beatitudes) is drawn from Q source material. Nobody can really be sure which parts are Matthean interpolations. And considering Q was so primitive and early, it's a good bet some of the teachings actually derived from Jesus. I would imagine Luke's SotP is closer to whatever Jesus actually said, however, assuming it has any degree of authenticism at all.

No Robots

From Spinoza's comparison of Christ and Moses:

If Moses spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend (i.e. by means of their two bodies) Christ communed with God mind to mind.

dzim77

If Jesus was a kind of 'itinerant preacher' he would likely have had standard material that he reused frequently... going from place to place, repeating similar teachings or even parables and perhaps making slight adjustments according to the audience.

In this view, perhaps the SotM and the SotP are an example of Jesus pulling out his common teaching material but making a slight adjustment for the occaision?

hatsoff

I don't think that's possible, considering the linguistic (as opposed to thematic) similarities between the two Gospel accounts. No, there was definitely written source from which both authors drew, whether you want to call it Q or something else. The source material was therefore most likely adapted to the individual accounts without regard to historical accuracy--that is, Matthew and Luke probably just tweaked the sermons using their own original additions and subtractions.

dzim77

Hi hatsoff

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps not. There are many possibilities.

If this was a common teaching of Jesus, how can you say he didn't actually use it once 'on the mount' and once 'on the plain'?

We don't have Q. We don't know if Q contains both the SotM and the SotP rendition of the material. We don't know if there was another common source besides Q.

But we *do* have the SotM and the SotP in Matt and Luke, respectively, so to say 'it's not possible' seems unwarranted.

aa5874

That is not unusual. People who believe in Gods always think highly of them.

Some of the sayings may have been copied from extra-biblical writings, I think Plato has been mentioned as one source, if my memory serves me correctly.

And some claim that with oral tradition, events get blown out of proportion with the passage of time, therefore using that hypothesis, if Jesus actually lived, he might not have said anything close to what was written.

mountainman

Many of the sayings in the gospel on the mount
have come from descriptions of the Essenic tradition
(which is largely Buddhist in outlook and organisation)
as reported by the writings of Philo of Alexandria (who
BTW never once mentions "jesus")

Here is a tabulation of the (purported) sayings of Jesus
with about 60 references back to the Essenes, the
most which pre-date Jesus.


Pete

hatsoff

To be sure, *anything* is possible. However, it is incredibly improbable. The likelihood of the differences between Matthew and Luke's sermon material being representative of historical variations between Jesus' actual preaching are too enormously far-fetched to be taken seriously without some very strong external evidence to back it up. At this time no such evidence has been uncovered. In the mean time, any way you explain the documentary relationship between the two Gospels, Q or no Q, the argument against historicity remains the same.