Essays on the Sermon on the Mount

by Hans Dieter Betz (editor)

"A diligent and carefully argued exercise in the historico-critical method, Hans Dieter Betz' Essays present the Sermon on the Mount (SM) as a pre-Matthean composition coming from a Jewish-Christian community engaged in the polemical process of constructing an identity vis-á-vis mainstream Jewish (Pharisaic) groups on the one hand and emerging Gentile Christianity on the other. It is this process that prompts the SM compiler(s) to rethink and rework the inherited Jesus tradition. Since the first appearance of the Essays in 1985 - the classic Hermeneia commentary on the SM by the author would be published in 1995 - they have remained essential reading for students of the New Testament and its Hellenistic and Jewish settings. Today, the exciting new ways of reading the Sermon suggested in Betz' seminal work continue to inform our search for a fuller and clearer grasp of the multi-faceted and dynamic world of nascent Christianity, as well as the ongoing quest for the historical Jesus."
- Serge Ruzer
Hebrew University of Jerusalem "The perspective that unifies these essays is the assertion that the Sermon on the Mount should be recognized and studied as an independent composition that was compiled prior to its incorporation into the Gospel of Matthew... Betz argues that the Sermon on the Mount is an epitome, that is, a condensation of the teachings of Jesus, collected for the purpose of brevity and precision. Such a genre was useful, because it encouraged a follower or disciple to keep the teacher's entire system in mind."
- Theology Today

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Hans Dieter Betz is a German/American scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Chicago. He has made influential contributions to research on Paul's Letter to the Galatians, the Sermon on the Mount and the Greco-Roman context of Early Christianity.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a professor who felt Betz's seminal treatment of the Sermon of the Mount was the most important book ever written on the subject. In this (much slimmer) volume, Betz excerpts some material from the larger work and also includes some writings preliminary to its completion. To anyone interested in Christ's exposition on the Torah (the Sermon on the Mount itself) the early tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, or the formative period of the early church in general, this is a fascinating work.