The Sermon of the Mount Magna Carta of Christian Ethics Essay

The Sermon of the Mount Magna Carta of Christian Ethics - Essay Example 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.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 â€Å"Q†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢.... 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 itse lf. 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