burt@sequent.uucp ([Burton Keeble]) (03/25/91)
But now, a question regarding the Beatitudes... I'll only belabor the first Beatitude: I have always believed that the Poor In Spirit were those who were discouraged, and that they would receive the Kingdom of Heaven as compensation. My wife shared this interpretation. I asked my son (12) what he thought it meant, and he said that the Poor In Spirit were those who weren't very religious. In the NIV, Matthew says "Poor In Spirit"; Luke says "Poor". In the TEV, Matthew says "spiritually poor" (this matches my son's explaina- tion). (Remember, this is an areligious, non-christian household-- I ask 'em questions to get their curiosity going.) But Fulton Oursler (The Greatest Story Ever Told) tells us: "The first of the rules was that a man must be poor in spirit; he must be gentile, practicing humility, not heady and proud and arrogant; if one had succeeded in some great task, he was not to sit and gloat and brag, but must go right on, planning another job, a harder and better one." Now, that's a fairly palateable explaination. But where does he get that interpretation? I don't find it in any of the bibles that I own (KJ, TEV, Scofield, RSV, NIV, or The Living Bible). In fact, where does one go for that kind of explaination? -burt@sequent.com [The Anchor Bible commentary on Matthew says that the there are two Hebrew words which would provide the background, both of which mean "poor", "afflicted", and "humble". They give as a parallel the Qumram War Scroll (1QM xiv 7) which says "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ... giving ... vigor to the shoulders of the bowed, and ... to the lowly spirits ... firmness to the melting heart." The commentator suggests that the form in Luke, "poor", is the original one (a fairly common view). They guess that the editor of Mat. felt readers wouldn't have enough background to understand the full implications of "poor" in this context, and thus he used a fuller expression based on the Qumran saying. "The poverty described is that of the man fully conscious of the poverty of all human resource, and knowning his need and desire for God." The best place to go on questions like this is a scholarly commentary such as the Anchor Bible. Issues like this have normally been studied by many scholars, and thus have a large technical literature. It's the job of a scholarly commentary to summarize that literature and give some pointers into it in case you want to explore further. Less scholarly commentaries will simply give you the author's judgement, but will not cite the literature or give you as much information on where the judgement came from. --clh]