Ebook: The Earliest Perceptions of Jesus in Context: Essays in Honour of John Nolland on His 70th Birthday

In Hebrews 4, the author stresses the need for his readers to enter the rest referred to in Psalm 95. He expands on the meaning of rest by looking at it through Gen. 2:2, a midrashic technique (one of the Seven Rules of Hillel), known as gezerahshawah. He later refers to this rest in 4.9 as ‘the sabbatismos for the people of God’. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to explain the unique meaning of sabbatismosand its importance for understanding the author’s purpose in this chapter; second, how Jesus procured this sabbatismos and its relationship to the ‘rest’ mentioned in Mt. 11.28-29.
The Beatitudes of Matthew’s Gospel are much loved, but they can seem a slightly jumbled collection of blessed thoughts, cobbled together on the basis of ‘Q’. In fact they are skilfully and coherently crafted. There is a clear 4x4 structure, with the first four describing needy recipients of the kingdom, and the second four their changed lives. The sayings about the kingdom of heaven and righteousness bind them together. The beatitudes are both Jesus proclaiming good news to the poor (thus fulfilling Isaiah 61), and also introduce the great sermon that is to follow and its key themes.