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The Sermon on the Mount, Its Literary Structure and Didactic Purpose
The Sermon on the Mount Its Literary Structure and Didactic Purpose Author:Benjamin Wisner Bacon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPENDIX A ANALYTICAL NOTES (1) The Historical Setting Mk. 3:7-12 = Mt. 12: 15, 16; 4:24, 25 = Lk.6: 17-19 In Mark, our earliest gospel, the descrip... more »tion of the importunate multitudes flocking to Jesus as the result of his spreading fame as a healer introduces an important section of the biography. The preceding section, 2:1-3:6, had illustrated how Jesus' independent ways brought him into more and more serious collision with the authorities, culminating in the plot against his life, 3:6. The evangelist returns now to the point reached at the close of the first chapter, where the disobedience of those he healed to his injunctions of silence had resulted in serious injury to his real work of evangelization, " so that he was no longer able openly to enter a city, but was without in desert places, and they came to him from every quarter." In 3:76:12 the evangelist explains how Jesus met the problem (a) by the selection and training of a group of disciples, 3 :13-35, () by the teaching in parables, 4:1-34. The series of incidents in 4 : 35-5 : 43 are illustrative of 3 :14, 15, how Jesus trained the Twelve to " go forth and preach " and to " have power over demons." The episode of 3 : 19b-35 is introduced to show how Jesus gave his disciples the place of his earthly kin, and is itself forced apart by the insertion of the story of the unforgivable blasphemy of the scribes from Jerusalem, 3 : 22-30, by way of contrast with the pardonable fault of Jesus' mother and brethren. The episode of Jesus' rejection in Nazareth, 6 :1-6, stands where it does as a kind of colophon to the story of Jesus' personal preaching. " His own received him not." But a totally independent version of this saying and its occasion (My mother and brethren are " they that hear the word of God and keep...« less