Jesus's Manifesto

The Sermon on the Plain

Roman A. Montero

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532676055
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Jesus's Manifesto: The Sermon on the Plain is a historical analysis and exegesis of the Sermon on the Plain found in Luke 6:20-49. Going into the historical and literary context of the Sermon on the Plain, it examines how the message fits into the world of Jesus and his audience. Jesus's Manifesto demonstrates how the Sermon's ethical injunctions and eschatological message interacted with contemporary ideologies, and how these injunctions were meant to be taken as normative commandments by Jesus in light of his eschatological message. Many have attempted to dampen the ethical teachings of Jesus by trying to relativize them, or by trying to make them compatible with the wider culture and the dominant ideologies; however, when understood in its historical context, the Sermon's message was not only incompatible with the wider culture and the dominant ideologies, but it stood in opposition to them. Jesus's Manifesto provides the necessary historical and anthropological tools to fully appreciate the profound and seemingly radical message of the Sermon of the Plain.

1

Jesus’s Manifesto

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, “manifesto” is defined as “a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.” Among the most famous manifestos in history are the Declaration of Independence of the United States, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the Communist Manifesto. These manifestos have changed the course of human history and have in many ways created the modern world. The Sermon on the Plain has often been thought of as an ethical text, or an ethical sermon, and it certainly is that; however, I claim that it is more than that—it is a manifesto. I claim that the Sermon on the Plain is far more important, profound, and morally pressing, than all the fore-mentioned manifestos put together.

Much of one’s interpretation of, and classification of, the Sermon on the Plain will depend on how one interprets both the goal of the writer of the Gospel of Luke (or his sources), as well as the ministry of the historical Jesus. My position is that the message of the Sermon on the Plain largely goes back to the historical Jesus—and that it is a manifesto for an eschatological community: a community dedicated to serving God in light of and in support of God’s eschatological plan. My position is that the historical context of the Sermon is that of early first-century Jewish polemics about the interpretation of Torah regulations and scripture; as well as a Jewish apocalyptic worldview, and a Galilean population under domination by Rome and exploitation by the local elites. I claim that the Sermon on the Plain lays out an eschatological vision: a vision of what God is doing and what he will do in the future—followed by a declaration of what must be done in light of that vision and in support of it. It is in this way that I say that the Sermon on the Plain is Jesus’s manifesto.

Although much work has been done in redaction criticism, in breaking down the words of Jesus as recorded in the gospels to find layers of redaction and the use of various sources; overall, much of what is recorded in the Sermon on the Plain—at least the vision and ideas within the Sermon—can be attributed to the historical Jesus. I do not mean here to enter into the exhaustive (and exhausting) debate over sources and criteria of authenticity; my argument takes a different tack. The task I have given myself here is to make sense of the Sermon and see if it can be made sense of as a reflection of Jesus’s teachings within his context. A good model for thinking of the Sermon on the Plain’s relationship to the actual words of Jesus, I propose, is the way the sermons of the 14th-century peasant revolutionary and Lollard priest John Ball were presented in the account of a contemporary, Jean Froissart, in his Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and other places adjoining. In that work Jean says the following about John Ball:

A crazy priest in the county of Kent, called John Ball, who, for his absurd preaching, had been thrice confined in the prison of the archbishop of Canterbury, was greatly instrumental in inflaming them with those ideas. He was accustomed, every Sunday after mass, as the people were coming out of the church, to preach to them in the market place and assemble a crowd around him; to whom he would say,—

“My good friends, things cannot go on in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common; when there shall neither be vassal nor lord, and all distinctions levelled; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill have they used us! And for what reason to they thus hold us in bondage? Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can they show, or what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves? Except, perhaps, in making us labour and work, for them to spend. They are clothed in velvets and rich stuffs, ornamented with ermine and other furs, while we are forced to wear poor cloth. They have wines, spices, and fine bread, when we have only rye and the refuse of the straw; and, if we drink, it must be water. They have handsome seats and manors, when we must brave the wind and rain in our labours in the field; but it is from our labour they have wherewith to support their pomp. We are called slaves; and if we do not perform our services, we are beaten, and we have not any sovereign to whom we can complain, or who wishes to hear us and do us justice. Let us go to the king, who is young, and remonstrate with him on our servitude, telling him we must have it otherwise, or that we shall find a remedy for it ourselves. If we wait on him in a body, all those who come under the appellation of slaves, or are held in bondage, will follow us, in the hopes of being free. When the king shall see us, we shall obtain a favourable answer, or we must then seek ourselves to amend our condition.”

With such words as these did John Ball harangue the people at his village every Sunday after mass, for which he was much beloved by them. (Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries, 652–653 [Johnes])

To be clear, the actual content of the sermon is not the important part for the model I am presenting. I included the whole sermon mainly because I find it to be an engaging and exciting sermon. What is important is the way Jean Froissart presents the sermon: This is what John Ball was accustomed to preach: “with such words.” So although Jean Froissart records a very detailed script that holds together and makes a coherent argument, he is not recording any one particular speech of John Ball; nor is he collecting quotes from various speeches and stringing them together in a kind of anthology. Instead, Jean Froissart is writing out a kind of prototype sermon, the “kind” of sermon that John Ball would give. Jean Froissart is basically saying that had you listened to any specific sermon of John Ball, it would sound very much like, and be making the same point as, the prototype sermon he is presenting.

This is more or less the model we should use when comparing the Sermon on the Plain to the actual historical teachings of Jesus. What is recorded for us in Luke 6:20–49 is not likely a word-for-word speech given by Jesus, or a translation of a word-for-word speech; nor is it a collection of Jesus’s sayings; nor is it an ideological representation of some teachings of the historical Jesus, which is ultimately mostly Luke’s (or Q’s) invention in the form we have it. It is, rather, more likely a literary prototype of the kind of speech that Jesus made (perhaps put in the context of an actual historical speech that Jesus gave), and a representation of Jesus’s teachings that is reasonably faithful to the teachings and speeches of the historical Jesus.1

Another parallel between Jean Froissart’s presentation of John Ball’s sermon and Luke’s (or Q’s) presentation of the Sermon on the Plain is that both presentations attempt to encapsulate the ideology and purpose of the relevant speaker; in other words, they are both presentations of a kind of ideological manifesto. Both of these “manifestos” (the Sermon on the Plain and John Ball’s sermon) are also completely contingent on the historical context: they are speaking to real people living under real conditions of oppression and exploitation, and they are engaging with other ideologies that are likewise also historically contingent. However, both of these manifestos are appealing to, drawing on, and expressing, what the speaker considers to be higher truths (such as ideas of equality, morality, and so on).

One of the reasons that I posit this model is that the Sermon, as we will see, makes more sense when read as the teachings of an early first-century apocalyptic Jewish teacher in Galilee interacting with other Galilean Jews about issues that concern Galilean Jews of the early first century. The Sermon also posits and expresses an overarching ideology and worldview that informs its teachings and vision.

What I hope to do in this book is to analyze the Sermon on the Plain as it is recorded in Luke and attempt to contextualize it and to reconstruct its original meaning to its intended audience.

Before moving on, I would like to add a little note about why I chose to focus on the Sermon on the Plain found in thirty verses of Luke rather than the more famous Sermon on the Mount found in three chapters of Matthew. One reason is personal: there is much literature focusing on the Sermon on the Mount; while there is comparatively little focusing on the Sermon on the Plain, and I happened to slightly prefer the Sermon on the Plain, both aesthetically and in terms of the actual ethical material. Another is that among redaction critics, the tendency leans towards saying Luke’s version maintains a less redacted and more original structure.2 I love both the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount, but if I was forced to pick one—in terms of historical value and ethical force—I would likely go with the Sermon on the Plain. With that, let us look at the context of the Sermon.

1. For a more detailed defense of this claim, see Allison, Constructing Jesus, 374–381.

2. Kloppenborg, The formation of Q, 171–172; Mack, The Lost Gospel, 188.

2

The Context

Historical Context

The Sermon on the Plain was delivered as part of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee.3 During the time of Jesus, Galilee and Judea were under occupation by the Roman Empire and had been going through rather tumultuous times—politically, economically, and socially. Judea was conquered by Rome by Pompeii in 63 BCE, thus reducing the Hasmonean rulers to being vassals of Rome.4 By the time Jesus was born, King Herod had replaced the Hasmoneans as the Roman vassal and ruler of Judea, Galilee, and Perea. King Herod secured his position of power with political maneuvering and brutality; he made sure that he controlled the high priesthood, replacing the Hasmonean high priest with one loyal to him,5 and as he got older he killed any family member he suspected of too much ambition.6 After Herod’s death in 4 CE his kingdom was split between three of his sons: Philip got Iturea and Trachonitis, Antipas got Perea and Galilee (Jesus’s home), and Archelaus got Judea, Samaria and Idumea. Only two years later however, Archelaus was dismissed and his territory was made a Roman province and placed directly under a prefect.7 ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Jesus’s Manifesto
• Chapter 2: The Context
• Chapter 3: The Blessings and Woes
• Chapter 4: The Ethics
• Chapter 5: The Parables
• Chapter 6: The Aftermath
• Chapter 7: An Eschatological Community
• The Sermon on the Plain and Translation
• Bibliography