5 Minute Bible

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Browsing Posts tagged Jesus reading Scripture

Matthew and Luke both give short collections of Jesus teaching early in their Gospels  (Mt 5-7 and the second half of Luke 6) there are similarities, both e.g. have “The Beatitudes”  a series of sayings listing sorts of people who will be blessed by God, near the beginning but each sermon (or summary compilation of Jesus’ teaching) has a distinct focus and interests. In the Gospels we don’t have a transcript of Jesus’ life and teaching, but people’s retelling of Jesus’ life selected and told with the benefit of hindsight – so like all good biographies each Gospel gives us different things.

Did you notice how the B in Mat after the series of less and less surprising reversals Matthew ends the series focused on “you”. After the beatitudes, and the salt and light description of how Jesus’ followers are to be, Matthew spends some time on Jesus and the law (I have other podcasts on Jesus reading Scripture so follow the link ;) but as well as noticing the way in which Jesus turns laws (that invite us to look for loopholes) into commands (telling us which way we should be aiming) it closes with a command that simply does not work as law: “Be perfect”, not just really good, but perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect!

And then at the start of the next chapter advice not to pretend to be better than we are!

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We look at how Jesus reads other Bible passages (still in Matthew 5) to begin confirming the hypothesis that to read Scripture with Jesus is to make it so extreme that rules (casuistic law) become goals (apodictic command). Before you get to the next podcast it would be a good idea to listen to “What DOES “fulfil” mean?” and “Jesus as fulfilment of Scripture: Slavery and Spanking

 

In this I’ll tell you how I think Jesus offers the key to how we should understand the casuistic laws of the Old Testament. It’s simple, but as I’ll go on to show in later ‘casts profound. The clue is found in a passage we’ve looked at before (Matt 5) especially in Matt 5:17-22. (See here for that ‘cast, and here for a whole sermon ;) .
The distinction between casuistic and apodictic formulations of “legal” material in the Bible, seems like a prime example of scholarship which has lost touch with the needs of real Bible readers. Not least the abstruse technical language puts people off. Yet this distinction has deeply theological consequences, and Jesus seems to “fulfill” OT law (at least in part) by rephrasing the casuistic as apodictic.In this first part I’ll begin the boring stuff, and introduce what scholars meant by distinguishing casuistic from apodictic material in the laws of the Old Testament. Part 2 will get to the exciting stuff. (I know this is not the best way to gain your attention, but sometimes work is needed before the fun can start.)

More than 5 minutes, so not a podcast for here, but if you want to listen to something longer (like 30 mins plus question time) I’ve posted this morning’s sermon to my blog: Matthew 5:17ff. : How to Read the Old Testament. Taking the “difficult” passage from the sermon on the mount and asking what does it mean to say that Jesus “fulfils” the Old Testament.

Matthew often says that Jesus “fulfilled” some passage from the Old Testament. What does he mean? This ‘cast begins to explore this question.