Ebook: Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: Mandating a Better Righteousness

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is the best-known repository of the teachings of Jesus and one of the most studied. Amid the considerable erudition expended on the Sermon, however, Jack R. Lundbom argues that it has proven too easy to deflect or disregard the main thrust of the Sermon, which he characterizes as a mandate to holy living and a "greater righteousness." Through careful attention to the structure of Matthew's Gospel and the place of the Sermon within it, keen sensitivity to the patterns and themes of Israelite prophecy, and judicious comparisons with other Jewish and rabbinic literature, Lundbom elucidates the meaning of the Sermon and its continuity with Israel's prophetic heritage as well as the best of Jewish teaching. By deft appeal to Christian commentators on the Sermon, Lundbom brings its most important themes to life for the contemporary reader, seeking always to understand what the "greater righteousness" to which the Sermon summons might mean for us today.

Review
"It is a great privilege to have the thoughts and reflections of a wonderful Jeremiah scholar on the Sermon on the Mount. Jack Lundbom has done a great job in signaling out its many echoes from the Jewish Scriptures. He convincingly shows that the Sermon of the Mount does not constitute an unattainable ideal, but that its views need to be lived out in the imitatio Dei." --George van Kooten, University of Groningen

About the Author
Jack R. Lundbom is a professor at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Jeremiah: A Study in Ancient Hebrew Rhetoric(1997), the three-volume commentary Jeremiah (1999-2004), and from Fortress Press, The Hebrew Prophets: An Introduction (2010).