Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: Mandating a Better Righteousness by Jack R. Lundbom

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: Mandating a Better Righteousness by Jack R. Lundbom James W. Barker jack r. lundbom, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: Mandating a Better Righteousness (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015). Pp. xxxiii + 341. Paper $49. Jack Lundbom, a prolific OT professor, has written a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount along with four introductory essays. Similar to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's exposition in his book on discipleship, L. emphasizes that Jesus's teaching is supposed to be attainable within the contemporary church (p. 54). L. intends to relate biblical scholarship to "students, pastors, and laypeople" (p. xiii), although most of L.'s secondary literature is dated. He [End Page 138] compiles OT, Second Temple, and rabbinic parallels while noting patristic reception and that of modern figures such as Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer. L.'s intent is commendable and the commentary is quite readable, but in the end I would not recommend it to his intended audience. Two inconsistencies run throughout the work. One concerns the attainability of Jesus's sermon. For the teachings to be applicable, L. changes their meaning considerably. According to L., the nonretaliation sayings deal with minor offenses such as insult, but Jesus's command "must not become a hard and fast principle" (p. 66; cf. pp. 177-78). It remains unclear why nonretaliation in minor instances should not be extended, based on the principle of the lesser to the greater—especially since L. highlights this rhetorical strategy elsewhere (pp. 232, 251). Although Jesus prohibits remarriage after divorce, L. restricts the meaning to a "love triangle," a divorce "in order to marry another person 'in waiting'" (p. 166); otherwise L. deems divorce and remarriage permissible. L. often quotes patristic sources, but here they are conspicuously absent and would contradict L.'s interpretation. Similarly, rabbinic sources are lacking regarding capital punishment. Rabbis debate whether it was even practiced, and John 18:31 claims it was not allowed, but L. assumes that adulterous women would have been executed (p. 168). When Jesus says not to look at women in lust, L. argues that the prohibition does not apply to "'male fantasies,' which have no end in view and generally go nowhere" (p. 158); contemporary statistics on rape and sexual assault warrant greater sensitivity and less dismissiveness about the objectification of women. Overall, L. never uses apodictic and casuistic terminology, but it would have been helpful. To make Jesus's sermon attainable, L. relaxes many teachings by imagining specific cases where Jesus made absolute pronouncements. The other inconsistency concerns Jesus's Jewish context. Frequently citing Beryl D. Cohon's Jacob's Well: Some Jewish Sources and Parallels to the Sermon on the Mount (New York: Bookman, 1956) and Samuel Tobias Lachs's A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1987), L. shows how closely Jesus resembled later rabbis. Yet Jesus's "better righteousness" explicitly surpasses the "hollow" righteousness of the Pharisees (p. 57), who were the rabbis' forebears. L. points out that, like the rabbis, Jesus built a fence around Torah (p. 153), but Torah itself "had . . . become a burden to everybody—Jew and Gentile alike" (p. 38). L. writes, "The story of the Old Testament is the story of covenant breaking" (p. 33), so he describes the need for a new covenant offering forgiveness of sins (p. 35); L. adds, "in fact, forgiveness of sins does not figure at all in this covenant's formulation in Exodus and Deuteronomy" (p. 35). L. deliberately suppresses Yom Kippur in Leviticus 16, the eternal statute whereby God annually cleanses Israel from all sin (L. refers to the Day of Atonement only vis-à-vis fasting [p. 214]). L. misleadingly presents righteousness and forgiveness as unattainable within Judaism, and L. nowhere considers that ancient or modern Jewish or gentile Christians might continue keeping Torah. L. uncritically espouses Christian supersessionism throughout the book, and lay readers would do well to counterbalance L.'s discussions with The Jewish Annotated New Testament (ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011]). [End Page 139] James W. Barker Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101 Copyright © 2019 The...