Parables and Rhetoric in the Sermon on the Mount: New Approaches to a Classical Text (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament, 351) - Hardcover

Baasland, Ernst

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3161541022 ISBN 13: 9783161541025

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck, 2015

Synopsis

Parable research has to a large degree ignored the Sermon on the Mount (SM) and for its part, research into the SM has likewise left the parables by the wayside. However, the use of parabolic language in more than one third of the SM influences its interpretation and indeed opens up a new approach to it. In the current volume, Ernst Baasland focuses on this important factor, whilst also taking the rhetoric of Jesus' teaching into consideration. The author maintains that rhetorical features have a great bearing on the interpretation of the text with the overall structure illuminating the entire composition of the sermon. Fresh insights into its oration therefore serve to challenge the source problem in a new way. The religious and philosophical settings of this most well-known of Christ's preachings are clarified by its parables and rhetoric; and the sermon's Jewish background has often been investigated. While the author continues with that particular task, he simultaneously affords more emphasis to the parallels in (Greek) Hellenistic literature. The combining of all these factors leads to a clearer comprehension of the Sermon on the Mount's philosophy of life and provides a better understanding of this classical text.

About this title

Review

"[...] No one doing serious work on the Sermon on the Mount can afford to bypass this book... Anyone working on this, perhaps the greatest speech in history, cannot afford to be without Baasland as a mountain guide." --Samuel Lamerson, Knox Seminary, Review of Biblical Literature 11.9.17

Edition details

• Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3161541022
• ISBN 13: 9783161541025
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 703