A Rabbi and his Students
Audience of the Sermon on the Mount (part 2)
“and when he sat down, his disciples approached him, and opening his mouth, he was teaching them, saying …” (Matthew 5:1–2).
Figuring out the audience for the Sermon on the Mount can be confusing. We spent one post examining the crowds as the audience, but in the final part of the introductory verse to the Sermon on the Mount, we discover a smaller one, the disciples: “and when he sat down, his disciples approached him.”
With a massive crowd of thousands, you might expect that Jesus would be standing, orator-like, so that he could be clearly seen and heard by all. But Matthew expressly states that Jesus sat down. Given his situation on the slope of the hill this did not present a problem for seeing and hearing, but it did change how the people related to Jesus as the speaker
He was not speaking directly to the crowd, but to his disciples or learners.
Disciples
When Matthew writes that Jesus sat down and his disciples came to him, for the first time in Matthew we detect the common scene of a rabbi sitting to teach his disciples—and in fact this is the first time the word disciple (mathētēs) occurs in Matthew, who uses the term 72 times. These few that Jesus called to follow him and who have witnessed his preaching and healing, now come to Jesus as learners.
Atypical learners.
Most students of a rabbi would come up through the synagogue system, learning first to read the Bible, then to study Torah, then to learn the past and current legal rulings from a teacher who had learned from teachers past (priests and Levites would have their own system in preparation for service in the temple). Though it is quite evident that Jesus knew the law and was aware of the oral law (he engages in debates about it), there is no indication that he progressed through the normal ranks; the surprised reaction to his teaching suggests otherwise. If Jesus had gone through the system, he fully rejected its accretions and sought to preach the plain truth of God’s kingdom.
Likewise, his students, the disciples, were fishermen (we don’t know of others at this point in Matthew—Matthew himself may have been the most educated but he does not come in till later. I’ll come back to Matthew in a moment.). Ultimately the twelve were a true hodgepodge of Jewish men. But their primary designation in the Gospels is disciple (233X), and only rarely apostle (10x).
Jesus called them to be with him and to learn. In Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount is their first lesson.
Teacher
A look through the Gospels shows that people addressed Jesus in three common ways: kyrios (sir or lord), didaskalos (teacher), and rabbi (from Hebrew: my lord or my teacher). Kyrios was the polite address of respect, while the latter two were specifically for teachers. Rabbi was an honorific address for a religious teacher—in a Jewish context the Greek didaskalos would be equivalent. In Matthew, both ordinary people and Pharisees addressed Jesus as didaskalos. As a didaskalos or rabbi, Jesus was known as one who took on disciples to learn from him and pass on his teaching. Up to this point in Matthew, Jesus has not been addressed with either term. He had called Peter and Andrew and James and John to follow him, but to make them “fishers of men.”
This hardly speaks of a typical rabbi.
By calling these followers “disciples” Matthew clued the reader to the teacher role, but it is the next verse that marks Jesus as teacher:
And opening his mouth he began to teach them.
With this statement Matthew formally initiates Jesus’s teaching ministry. He could have sufficed with a simple “and he taught them, saying.” But instead he adds what is technically extraneous information “and opening his mouth.”
Of course he opened his mouth!
Often in Greek there are phrases that seem to be throwaway statements, but are actually very important for narrative stress. In this case, “And opening his mouth” is a formal way of saying, “Watch out, something important is coming.” That important thing is the whole of chapters 5-7.
But there is more! Matthew changes tenses from the normal past tense (called the aorist) to a progressive past (called the imperfect): “he began teaching them” or more simply “he was teaching them.” This progressive tense highlights that this was not just an occurrence, but a long event. The add-on participle “saying” elaborates on “was teaching” and introduces the content.
Matthew, in calling Jesus’s followers learners and indicating that Jesus sat down and taught is, in a sense, throwing down the gauntlet that Jesus was a teacher par excellence. He may have preached, he may have healed, but teaching was the preeminent task of Jesus’s ministry. The fact that Matthew’s Gospel is significantly longer than Mark’s (while containing most of the same activity) with the extra length almost totally composed of Jesus’s teachings, affirms Matthew’s emphasis on Jesus the teacher.
The crowd and the disciples
We are still left with some ambiguity. When Jesus spoke, was he addressing the crowds or the disciples? The answer is “both,” but with some explanation.
The disciples had already chosen to follow Jesus, whereas the crowd was there out of curiosity. The disciples were ready to listen and learn (they approached him), but the crowd had no commitment. What did this miracle-worker have to say? Many would hear his words as strange, or difficult, or impossible. But the disciples (despite their own issues) were ready to learn—they had committed themselves to following Jesus.
Matthew
Where was the author of this Gospel in all this? Matthew does not record Jesus’s call to him until chapter 9. Where was he? Was he there at the Sermon? If so he was part of the crowd. Some in the crowd would go away perplexed, while others would long for more: Who was this Jesus? What are these radical teachings he is proclaiming about love for enemies?
Have you ever wondered how a tax-collector would immediately leave his lucrative business and follow Jesus? Likely because he was already tracking Jesus. He was already amazed and already wondering what following Jesus would be like. The Sermon (recorded in amazing detail) worked its way into Matthew’s heart and he was ready to leave everything when Jesus called.
An Invitation
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Observations on the Greek text
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“When he saw the crowds he went up to the mountain and when he sat down his disciples approached him and opening his mouth he began to teach them saying” (Matt 5:1–2).
Ἰδὼν δὲ τοὺς ὄχλους ἀνέβη εἰς τὸ ὄρος, καὶ καθίσαντος αὐτοῦ προσῆλθαν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ· καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς λέγων·
I quoted this entire two verses so we can observe the overall structure. Matthew composes three units joined by καί to one another. Each unit begins with a participial clause, then the main verb followed by other material. It sounds ordinary, but is anything but.
If we look carefully, there are seven discreet units of action that can be expressed in individual sentences:
He saw the crowds.
He went up the mountain.
He sat down.
His disciples approached him.
He opened his mouth.
He was teaching them.
He says.
Matthew takes these seven action units and deemphasizes some by making the indicative verbs into participles (saw—>ἰδών, sat—>καθίσαντος, opened—> ἀνοίξας, says—> λέγων). Putting the first three prior to the indicative verbs turns them to preparatory background information. By doing this Matthew places the stress on the indicative verbs ἀνέβη, προσῆλθαν, and ἐδίδασκεν which he joins with καί. He further stresses ἐδίδασκεν by changing from the simple past (aorist) to the progressive past (imperfect). We use similar strategies in English. Matthew deliberately uses grammar and syntax to convey the particular emphases he desires.
Another interesting feature is the middle unit. In the first and last, Jesus is the subject (“he”) of “went up” and “was teaching.” The disciples are the subject of “approached” … but Jesus is the subject of the participle sat! In Greek, a special construction allowed for this: a genitive absolute. The participle is placed in the genitive case (καθίσαντος) and the “subject” of the participle is also in the genitive case (αὐτοῦ).