An exegesis of matthew

An exegesis of matthew An Exegesis of Matthew 5:1-12 Matthew 5:1-12, commonly known as the Beatitudes, has been loved by every generation since first pronounced by Christ two thousand years ago. Matthew writes this record of the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus, and he places this message soon after Jesus’ baptism and calling of the disciples. The Beatitudes are the opening section of the Sermon on the Mount, the longest recorded teaching during Christ’s lifetime. We will begin by looking at this section as it lays within the book of Matthew and then go to a more in-depth exegetical study. Literary Context The most popular approach to Matthew’s structure is the presentation of five major discourses, each ending with a formula statement that is foreign to other Biblical discourses, placed in a framework of narrative[1] (Talbert 15). In fact, â€Å"the five discourses are so clearly marked, from a literary point of view, that it is well-nigh impossible to believe that Matthew did n ot plan them† (Carson 63). Each of these discourses brings forth a topic of central importance for both the gospel rendition of the historical Jesus and the later experience of the church (Batdorf 26). The narrative section leading to the first discourse, from Matthew 3:1 to 4:25, chronicles not simply the biography of a man preparing for ministry, but the establishment of Messianic history and authority. We come to an understanding of Matthew’s first and foremost discourse, the Sermon on the Mount, only on the basis of chapters 1-4 (Batdorf 24). This sermon, which immediately follows the choosing of the twelve, marks the beginning of Jesus’ training of His disciples and a change in His method of teaching. It is His first systematic delineation of the kind of people and the conduct expected of them under the standards of God’s kingdom (Russell 8). Batdorf outlines the apex at which the Beatitudes stand: â€Å"If Jesus is the Messiah and his life on earth really does set the pattern that his disciples should match, then his [Matthew’s] words here and in all the following discourses make sense. If this is not so, then the bottom drops out of Matthew’s whole argument. In this light the Beatitudes become the hinge upon which the whole of Matthew’s structure turns† (Batdorf 28). At the forefront of Matthew’s first discourse are the Beatitudes, a collection of eight imperative statements of blessing. The term ‘beatitude’ derives from the Latin word beatitudo and is designated by many scholars as its own literary genre. As such, it is a literary form found in a wider spectrum of wisdom literature not limited to Jewish or Christian writing. Some scholars have even proposed Egyptian wisdom literature as a conceivable origin (Betz 92). Poetic parallelism can be found in the Beatitudes as a carryover from the poetry of the Old Testament. The arrangement in quatrains of parallel lines containing pa rallel or corresponding ideas is very common and Psalms 8 is a prime example (Russell 15). Matthew’s eight beatitudes are composed of two quatrains, each ending with the word ‘righteousness.’ The terminology generally used for this is an â€Å"envelope figure† and Matthew uses it again in Matt. 7:16-20. Although scholars often attribute this arrangement to the composer of the Logia, Russell points out that it is â€Å"highly probable that so poetic a spirit as Jesus, brought up as he was in the Hebrew tradition and accustomed from childhood to the poetry of the Psalms and other Old Testament literature, would use parallelism for his words of gnomic wisdom as well as for his utterances of exalted imagination and lofty feeling† (Russell 16).