The New Testament Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The New Testament - Essay Example The purpose of such a fulfillment is the witness of the disciple being taught that he or she should be salt and light. The foundational basis for witness is heart attitude or beatitude as popularly known. Eight attitudes of blessedness or four pairs are given to the disciple, which will cause them to be the influence they need to be, while enjoying blessedness. Verse 5 is just one of the eight stating, â€Å"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.† Jesus or the gospel writer reporting Jesus goes directly to basic precept of being an influence for maximum impact and recall, and then builds the argument in a manner which is recognizable to any Jew of that day, with the purpose of testimony and Christ likeness placed consequent to the basic precepts of life being elucidated. B. Form of this passage: The content and form of this passage is a typical of a sermon by Jesus where he reads out a text and then sits down, whereby he invites them for a closer look into what he has spoken about. In terms of the source there is only a single obvious parallel of this verse and style, which is in Luke 6 (Though closer scrutiny shows connectivity to many writing of the OT). Based on the two source theory, if disciple Matthew and Doctor Luke had sources for these it would have been ‘Q’ and not Mark. â€Å"The evidence points to the fact that both Matthew and Luke were referring to the same passage. â€Å"Luke 6:17 means a "plateau" in a mountainous area 21 and there are striking similarities between the two sermons, then how do we reconcile Matthew's "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and Luke's "Blessed are the poor"? Must one be more historical than the other on the basis of redaction critical criteria? Not on the basis of an evangelical use of the tools. Matthew is emphasizing the spiritual side and Luke the economic side of the same original saying. In other words, both are equally historical.† (Osborne, 199) C. Structure: While paral lelism is a Hebraic poetic style and The New Testament is written in Greek it must not be forgotten that it is quoting Jesus who is from a Hebraic cultural milieu. Hebraic poetic parallelism does not use rhyming words but rhyming ideas and there is great merit in seeing Matthew 5:3-10 through this lens D. Redaction: While redaction refers to the author acting as an editor to suit the original content to his own objectives for writing, it does not necessarily mean that the content is rendered corrupt. If this argument is to be based on the two-source theory, then there is the possibility that Matthew arranged chapter 5 to show logical continuity of the Old Testament in the new historical setting to set Jesus above the pharisaic figures and the pharisaic teachings. This is well stated by Robert Imperato â€Å" While Pharisees were claiming that their lifestyle and teachings were the fulfillment of Jewish life, Matthew’s Gospel was claiming that Jesus was the fulfillment of Jew ish life (Imperato, 16) E. Keywords: From the point of view that Matthew has used parallelism, the keywords of 5:5 would be â€Å"Meek† and â€Å"Inherit the earth†. The other keyword that needs to be considered is â€Å"Blessed† in terms the context of the passage as well as the verse being exegeted. These words then have to be understood in terms of it’