the beatitudes

1. The beatitudes are an integral part of the Sermon on the Mount and the structure of the book of Matthew. In more recent times the 5 fold structure of the book that had been accepted by scholars has been replaced with a 3 fold structure, using the idea that Matthew is a narrative rather than a series of 5 “books” with differing content(Drane:1999 pg 205). This then deals with several problems of the 5 fold division: that the birth of Christ be called preamble; that the death and resurrection be epilogue and that the climactic features of Matthew are the discourses (Stock:1994 p7) Using this 3 fold narrative structure, the Beatitudes are part of the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah and His presentation of himself to Israel. The Beatitudes are thus both an introduction to the sermon as a whole (Stanton:1992 p740) and also form part of the teaching of Jesus whereby He is revealing Himself to the Jews in His public ministry. This part of the structure begins”From that time on Jes...