c. Relation to the Old Testament.—Mt 5*"-* (ef, Lk 16”). The logical relation of these verses to what precedes is clear: Jesus has set forth the new Gospel norm of life (5%1*), and has enjoined His followers to live this life openly before the world (5!-16); now He proceeds to show the relation of this new Gospel norm to the Hebrew norm of life which in the OT had come down through the centuries and now held the field among His countrymen. Since Jesus’ ideal dif- fered so much from the current scribal standard (as any one could see), the question easily arose —not only among His opponents, the religious leaders of the day, but also among those who ‘heard him gladly ’—whether this revelation of God’s will by Jesus was a wholly new revelation superseding that made by Moses and the Prophets. Jesus gave the answer to this question when He said, ‘Think not that I came to destroy the law ua the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.’ *
Ph 215, 1 Th 55. The phrase of v.16 <3 ods Suay, means either ‘the light which is intrusted to you,’ viz. the Gospel (so H. Holtzmann, B. Weiss), or ‘the light which you are,’ as in v.14, *Mt 517 un vomionre ors GAbov xavartons vay youoy % Tous mpopiras* ob TAboy warericn: &AA& aAnpwoout. The customary phrase, 6 vous xo? of xpopirei, is a phrase which arises from the Jewish designation of the OT literature, the vss designating the first five books, the +pog%ra: the remainder ; while the whole phrase denotes the OT in its entirety and its unity. It is noticeable that in Mt 517 we have the disjunctive particle 4 instead of the usual z«/in this phrase. The variation is prob- ably intentional, introduced in order to suggest that the Law and the Prophets were distinct portions of the OT, and that a different attitude might be assumed by the same person towards
~the two divisions—He might abrogate either one without the
other, but He wishes to abrogate neither (so Tholuck, Meyer, Ibbeken, Bruce, Wendt, B. Weiss).
While Jesus mentions ‘the Prophets’ in 517, He does not again refer to them throughout the whole foliowing section, 518-48, All that He goes on to say pertains to the Law; He does not present any similar illustrations of how the teaching of the Prophets is to be perfected. This silence concerning the Prophets is explained in different ways. Achelis (Bergpredigt, p. 79) thinks that if what He said was true of the Law, that He came not to destroy but to fulfil, a fortiort it was true of the Prophets. The more common explanation is that He passed by the Prophets in the remainder of His teaching at this point because He was much more in accord with them, and because the contemporaneous religious teachers paid so little attention to the Prophets that He did not come seriously into conflict with them concerning the prophetic teaching. Recently Pro- fessor Briggs (Hapos. Times, viil. 398) has argued that Mt 517 as given by Jesus stood, ‘Think not that I came to destroy the law : Icame not to destroy but to fulfil,’ for ‘the Evangelist added ‘‘ the Prophets” in order to make the statement refer to the whole OT. This addition destroys the measure of the line, and has nothing in the context of this discourse or in the ex- perience of Jesus to justify it. He was constantly charged with violating the Law, but nowhere with destroying the Prophets.’ Bacon takes a similar view (Sermon on the Mount, pp. 87, 176). This hypothesis is worthy of consideration. The words 4 rovs xpogares might easily have been introduced subsequently to round out the original utterance of Jesus, for of course He did come to fulfil both Law and Prophets; even though on this historical occasion He had spoken only of the Law, His attitude towards which was liable to be misunderstood and needed careful ex- planation. The material contained in the First Gospel has perhaps been retouched at several points to show Jesus as the fulfiller of the entire OT, and especially of the Prophets ; the
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SERMON ON THE MOUNT
Jesus’ constant warfare during His ministry was
not so much against the OT standard of life in itself as against the interpretation of the OT standard which was held and taught in His day. For hundreds of years the priests and scribes had been busily engaged with the legal literature of their religion. These labours had resulted in an elaboration and externalization of the Law; so that when Jesus came the current Jewish teaching was In some respects extremely perverse: (1) it largely ignored the Prophetic portion of the OT, which was the very soul of the Hebrew_history and Bible ; (2) it exalted legalism until Judaism had become a system of precepts for the perform- ance of an innumerable series of great and small duties which few could know and none could fully obey ; (3) it so externalized the Law that religion came to consist chiefly in the observance of minute ceremonial performances, while the internal, spon- taneous, and genuinely spiritual elements of the Law were neglected or ignored. Against this scribal abuse of the OT, Jesus had on many occasions to assert himself, and He did so with vehemence. He would not keep their fasts (Mk 218); He would not observe the Sabbath according to their code (Mt 12-4, Mk 27-38, Jn 5118); He denounced, with a true prophetic insight and indignation, their whole legislation regarding the ceremonially clean and unclean (Mt 151°, Mk 7+-°, ef, Is 12°17, Mic 6*-§) ; He continually associated with the sinful and the despised who did not keep the Law, in order to do them good (Mk 211"), Such an attitude on Jesus’ part towards the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees was involved in His introduction of a higher standard. In this atti- tude He was not, in fact, opposing the OT ; rather, He was defending it against the false interpreta- tion which had become current. Nevertheless, and quite naturally, the Jewish leaders identified their conception of the OT with the OT itself— how could they be mistaken about it? Therefore Jesus was a traitor to the religion, the history, and the literature of the race ; He richly merited a traitor’s death. It seemed to them logical and conclusive, because in their bigotry they regarded their own ideas and interpretations as heaven- penetrating and infallible. To be sure, Jesus’ teaching went much deeper than the mere removal of the rubbish which had accumulated about the OT during the preceding centuries ; His work did not consist solely in re-establishing the OT as it came from the hands of its makers. But had the Jews been true to the OT in the breadth and height of its teaching, they would have welcomed Jesus instead of rejecting Him; they would have been prepared to appreciate and to receive the fuller revelation of God’s will which He brought into the world.