Sermon on the Mount - never happened

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I heard an explanation today of the Sermon on the Mount I’ve never heard before. Can anyone let me know if there is any validity to this interpretation:

This particular event probably never happened. The words in Matthew 5 explaining this event (“went up the mountain”) are symbolic for “something important”, not to be taken that Jesus literally went up a mountain/hillside to preach to his disciples. Jesus also more than likely never recited the Beatitudes as they appear in Matthew, but instead, Matthew took sayings of Jesus throughout his ministry and wove them into the story of the “Sermon on the Mount” as away to convey Jesus’ teachings.

Anyone ever heard of this??? If so, from where??
 
I disagree with most of what you heard, though, I am sure that the Sermon on the Mount is not a word for word record of what Jesus said on the Mount, but a summary. Here are some patristic interpretations of what is meant by “going on the Mount.”

**St. John Chrysostom **He ascended a mountain, first, that He might fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, Get you up into a mountain;(Isa 40:9) Secondly, to show that as well he who teaches, as he who hears the righteousness of God should stand on an high ground of spiritual virtues; for none can abide in the valley and speak from a mountain. If you stand on the earth, speak of the earth; if you speak of heaven, stand in heaven. Or, He ascended into the mountain to show that all who would learn the mysteries of the truth should go up into the Mount of the Church of which the Prophet speaks, The hill of God is a hill of fatness.

St. Hilary Or, He ascends the mountain, because it is placed in the loftiness of His Father’s Majesty that He gives commands of heavenly life.

**St. Augustine **Or, he ascends the mountain to show that the precepts of righteousness given by God through the Prophets to the Jews, who were yet under the bondage of fear, were the lesser commandments; but that at by His own Son were given the greater commandments to a people which he had determined to deliver by love.
 
catechizeme said:
I heard an explanation today of the Sermon on the Mount I’ve never heard before. Can anyone let me know if there is any validity to this interpretation:

This particular event probably never happened. The words in Matthew 5 explaining this event (“went up the mountain”) are symbolic for “something important”, not to be taken that Jesus literally went up a mountain/hillside to preach to his disciples. Jesus also more than likely never recited the Beatitudes as they appear in Matthew, but instead, Matthew took sayings of Jesus throughout his ministry and wove them into the story of the “Sermon on the Mount” as away to convey Jesus’ teachings.

Anyone ever heard of this??? If so, from where??
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What you heard today is an opinion - of a person. If you heard it in a homily at Mass, then still, as before, you heard an opinion held by a certain priest. It would be SO wonderful if all Catholics realized that they are perfectly free to categorize such unusual ideas in this way. If Rome hasn’t taught it, it hasn’t been taught.
 
**I wouldn’t say that it didn’t happen-but there was a theological point to placing on a mountain while Luke has the “sermon on the Plain” Matthew was writing to a primarily jewish audience. so his imagery would be more inclined to use Jewish Iconography. A mountain is where God gave Moses the Law -Jesus goes on the mountain to give a better Law.The tie would be clear to Jews.🙂
 
Matthew 5
1* Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him.
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Luke 6
And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; 18 and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19* And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came forth from him and healed them all. 20* And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
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Consider that Matthew was an apostle, who heard it on the mountain. Luke got his material from the others, who were in the crowd that heard it when He repeated it after coming down from the mountain.
 
In his latest book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI devotes a very large (and wonderful) chapter on the Sermon on the Mount. He nowhere even implies what you heard at Mass. I suggest you pick up this book and read this chapter to properly reset your perspective.

Sometimes homilists fall into the trap of presenting speculative biblical scholarship in the wrong venue and (erroneously) as the teaching of the Church. This sounds like one of those cases.
 
Is there some reason that Jesus couldn’t have preached on a mountain?:confused: It doesn’t seem far fetched that he would have climbed a mountain with his followers to preach.🤷 Not all mountains are like are jagged and steep, some are smaller and more rounded, making climbing them less difficult.
 
It could even have been part way up a mountain, using the sound properties of the mountain in back to project the sound of his voice outward. There are both literal and figurative aspects to all these stories.
 
catechizeme said:
I heard an explanation today of the Sermon on the Mount I’ve never heard before. Can anyone let me know if there is any validity to this interpretation:

This particular event probably never happened. The words in Matthew 5 explaining this event (“went up the mountain”) are symbolic for “something important”, not to be taken that Jesus literally went up a mountain/hillside to preach to his disciples. Jesus also more than likely never recited the Beatitudes as they appear in Matthew, but instead, Matthew took sayings of Jesus throughout his ministry and wove them into the story of the “Sermon on the Mount” as away to convey Jesus’ teachings.

Anyone ever heard of this??? If so, from where??
Click to expand...
His points are speculative in the sense that we don’t have corroborating evidence to verify if it is true or not. We must simply trust that the author gave a “true account”. Whether that “true account” be a litteral retelling of the events as they happened, or as a vehicle to illustrate Jesus’ teachings as Matthew must have heard them again and again throughout his 3 years of association with Jesus, we cannot know. What we can know is that they are a “true account”.

I’m of the opinion that they are a true account of Jesus’ teachings as Matthew understood them over his 3 years of association with him. At some point during these 3 years, Jesus must have preached from a mountain, and covered at least some of these points. In which case, the events are based on a litteral truth.

Some of the same teachings may have been preached from a plain, as described by Luke.

Both of these authors used what must have been real memories to craft their accounts.

God bless,
Ut
 
This sounds very much like the tripe spewed out about 15 years ago by a group of elitists who named themselves “The Jesus Seminar” They also opined that Jesus never taught the “Lord’s Prayer” and offered many other faith-sapping opinions. Of course, being founded on lies and ego, they are pretty much a footnote now.

Christ’s peace.
 
Moses went up the mountain to receive all the “Thou shalt nots”. Jesus went up the mountain to teach how to fulfill the “Thou shalt nots.”
 
katy said:
It could even have been part way up a mountain, using the sound properties of the mountain in back to project the sound of his voice outward. There are both literal and figurative aspects to all these stories.
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Exactly… This is why Jesus preached at the Sea of Galilee as well… Because there was a steep hill on the shore and it acted very much like an amphitheater… I guess cuz they didn’t have microphones and amplifiers back then… (or anywhere to plug them into) 😃
 
Fidelis said:
In his latest book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI devotes a very large (and wonderful) chapter on the Sermon on the Mount. He nowhere even implies what you heard at Mass. I suggest you pick up this book and read this chapter to properly reset your perspective.

Sometimes homilists fall into the trap of presenting speculative biblical scholarship in the wrong venue and (erroneously) as the teaching of the Church. This sounds like one of those cases.
Click to expand...
Exactly!!

What is the useful purpose of saying that Jesus was never on the mount or that the Beatitudes were uttered on the mount or to imply a shadow of doubt on the blessed event?
Except for the intellectuals who obviously need to know the useless details of whether Jesus was facing the constellation of Malnax when He spoke - the point is really moot.
Some homilists have a tendency of “fumigating” their intellect onto others…for what reason? I don’t know.
As far as I’m concerned - Jesus went to the mount, the crowds were naturally drawn to Him and He did utter those beautiful words just like the Gospel writer conveys.

The sound doctrine. How sweet it is.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.
 
I believe the Sermon on the Mount happened.

I am to make temporary promises in May for the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCDS) and the promise is to live the Beatitudes for 3 years. Then final promises for life after that.

I have to believe it happened. I will promise to live them.

credo

OCDS
 
catechizeme said:
I heard an explanation today of the Sermon on the Mount I’ve never heard before. Can anyone let me know if there is any validity to this interpretation:

This particular event probably never happened. The words in Matthew 5 explaining this event (“went up the mountain”) are symbolic for “something important”, not to be taken that Jesus literally went up a mountain/hillside to preach to his disciples. Jesus also more than likely never recited the Beatitudes as they appear in Matthew, but instead, Matthew took sayings of Jesus throughout his ministry and wove them into the story of the “Sermon on the Mount” as away to convey Jesus’ teachings.

Anyone ever heard of this??? If so, from where??
Click to expand...
All God experiences occured on mounts. What you heard is a bunch of …oh…what’s the word someone used on this thread…?
tripe!! Yes tripe - spewed from the mouths of homilists that want us to be amazed at the extent of their vast (useless) amount of knowledge. Tripe - from the Spanish word “tripa” which refers to pig intestines.
It’s a useless detail, however valid or accurate or otherwise - to what would otherwise be a beautiful homily.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.
 
If Rome hasn’t taught it, it hasn’t been taught.
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You know, in Islamic madrassas, students are taught to hate Jews, that Jews are the enemy and are responsible for everything wrong in the world, specifically the deteriorating state of the Islamic third world. And this teaching extends all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad who, if ever there were a man to have primacy in Islam, could easily serve as the Magisterium.

Having said that, knowing that the Sermon on the Mount might not have happened is not disastrous to one’s faith. Christianity, in case we’ve forgotten, is not a religion of the book nor is it a religion about the historicity of the Bible. What matters, in the case of the Sermon, is not its locale or its historicity because whether or not it happened changes little about the fundamental Christian faith: what matters is that Matthew managed to collect these statements of Jesus and organize them in a manner which has positively affected individuals for countless generations.
 
Does it really matter to the meaning of what was said whether it is a collection of sayings from various sermons or said all together in a single sermon?

Probably not.

Consider how vastly different the sermons of the Johanine Jesus are to those of the Synoptics. Highly doubtful that all of the sayings are from the same person. There must be editing and interpreting going on somewhere, but just where is debatable. Not that it matters in the end to what we believe.

Matthew
 
Epistemes said:
You know, in Islamic madrassas, students are taught to hate Jews, that Jews are the enemy and are responsible for everything wrong in the world, specifically the deteriorating state of the Islamic third world. And this teaching extends all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad who, if ever there were a man to have primacy in Islam, could easily serve as the Magisterium.

Having said that, knowing that the Sermon on the Mount might not have happened is not disastrous to one’s faith. Christianity, in case we’ve forgotten, is not a religion of the book nor is it a religion about the historicity of the Bible. What matters, in the case of the Sermon, is not its locale or its historicity because whether or not it happened changes little about the fundamental Christian faith: what matters is that Matthew managed to collect these statements of Jesus and organize them in a manner which has positively affected individuals for countless generations.
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AMEN!😃
 
I agree that were Jesus spoke the Beatitudes have no bearing on my faith but what is the point of questioning this in the first place? Its not as if it is unlikely that he could have climbed a mountain to speak to a crowd of people. I guess that I want to know what the reasoning for questioning this in the first place is?

I mean why don’t we question if Jesus wore sandals or was Jewish? That would be silly, especially as there seems no basis to question these things.

I guess that I am confused as to the ‘why’ behind this man’s assertions.:confused: Could someone explain to me the reasons behind not believing that Jesus taught on the mountain? Does he think Jesus couldn’t climb a mountain or that people wouldn’t have followed him up there?

I am being serious, I just don’t understand the reasonings behind the remarks that the op is quoted.:confused: 🤷
 
Well, if it’s all lies, and it was made up years later using allegory to prove the beliefs of a ‘community’, then yes, it never happened. If that’s true, I don’t know why you’d want to become a Priest though.

flush that’s the sound of the toilet, poo goes in it and dissapears, like like this stinky mess of an interpretation.
 
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