Steven Carr

Nicky Gumbel writes a lot for the Alpha Course, a worldwide evangelisation course.

On page 40, of his book 'The Da Vinci Code - A Response', he writes 'The teaching of Jesus is widely acknoweldged to be the greatest teaching that has ever fallen from human lips. Some who are not Christians say 'I love the Sermon on the Mount; I live by it.'

if they were to read it, they would realise that that this is easier to say than to do, but they acknowledge that the Sermon on the Mount is great teaching'.

Matthew 5:32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.


Most people are horrified by the view that people who marry a divorced woman is committing adultery.

Do apologists who praise the Bible do so , safe in the knowledge that not even many Christians actually read it?

I read a survey saying that many American Christians could not name the 4 Gospels.

David B

The trouble with the Sermon on the Mount is that so much of it is obvious crap.

The meek will not inherit the earth, and, if by some chance they did, some fucker with a gun would soon take it off them.

Men appreciate the sight of a sexy woman, and lust after tehm, but it doesn't mean they would do anything about it, even if they could.

And so on.

It really isn't great teaching.

Not a patch on bits of the Gita, Omar Khyam, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Aesop's Fables, even Ecclesiastes.

David B

mountainman

There seems to be nothing in the NT, not even the Sermon on the Mount
which is not a slightly modified rehash of substance and text that does not
appear earlier in the OT.

When Jesus summarises the entire first principles of the message
he reverts to the OT quote basket (On these 2 Laws hang all the
Law and prophets).

This supports a fiction theory, in which the wicked men who
fabricated the NT did not have any new or inspiring spiritual advice
to offer, but just repackaged the old wisdom of the Hebrew sages
along with the extant Essenic philosophy already reduced to textual
form by Philo and Josephus.


Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

Gamera

This is a total misreading of the Sermon on the Mount. The structure of it is in fact to distinguish what Jesus says from the OT.

Thus, the struture is "You have heard it taught . . . [i.e., in the OT], "but I say . . .[something different]

Thus Jesus says the OT teaches you to love your neighbor, but he teaches you to love your enemy.

I don't believe any ancient text teaches loving ones enemy. This was sui generis then, and frankly is pretty unique now. I bet you don't think you should love your enemy, right? That's how challenging this teaching is.

Here's a good site that discusses how Jesus SOTM differs from the OT Law.

http://net.metadynamics.com/JesusOnInerrancy.asp

RUmike

Gemara:

From the viewpoint of Matthew himself, I can understand that you say "the structure of it [the Sermon] is in fact to distinguish what Jesus says from the OT." But from a historical viewpoint, the antithetical formula you cite is particular only to Matthew's sermon, and it is not ascribed to Jesus in any other source. Therefore, most view it as Matthean redaction.

But I do agree that "love your enemies" is radically distinctive. It cannot be found in any of Paul's writings or Jewish wisdom teaching. Prov 25:21 is the closest I can think of, but even that is simply a command to aid one's enemies, not to love them.

Other things as well, such as "Congratulations, you poor", don't strike me as something the OT text would embrace, since wealth was often seen as a sign of divine favor.

BuffaloBill

"If a man taketh your cloak, givith him also"...what?

What?

What nonsense.

Gawen

I've always wondered how this squares with what may have been a somewhat polygamistic society.

mountainman

I disagree entirely, and earlier in another thread asked for comments
upon this specific issue:
See: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=160799
What is actually novel in the "spiritual advice" of the NT over the OT?

For example, quoted from the above thread:

Isaiah 50:6
I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting

Lamentations 3:30
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace

You claim that this [something different] was substantially
different from the OT. What specifically do you want to
use to support your viewpoint?



Pete Brown

pharoah

I believe that this dates from the 6th century B.C., long before Jesus.

This also dates from several hundred years before Jesus in India, although all present translations are based on Chinese copies that date at the earliest from the 2nd century AD. Both of the above passages can be found here.

Frankly, I would be a lot more impressed with this alleged saying from Jesus if he had practiced it. Instead he is quoted as saying things like "bring my enemies before me so I can slay them", "I came not to bring peace but a sword", "I came to set brother against brother", threatening towns that rejected his disciples message with a fate worse than Sodom and Gomarrah, and threatening unbelievers with hellfire. Don't get me started on his alleged future activities in the Book of Revelations.

RUmike

The first passage you gave says nothing whatsoever about loving enemies. The second does appear to, however. Regardless, I say, "so what?" Too many people around here discredit Jesus simply because he wasn't the absolute first to say "love your enemies", but so far as we know, he was the first of his culture to, which alone is impressive.

Well that's nice, but you need to make a distinction between the historical Jesus and the biblical Jesus. In actuality you are criticizing the biblical Jesus, something that even very few scholars would recognize as who Jesus really was, but it comes across (to me) as though you are criticizing the historical Jesus. Regardless, though, the passages you cited only indicate that if Jesus said them, he was just like everyone else: human.