Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
- PART I PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS
- PART II THE CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING
- Chap. IV God as Father
- Chap. V God as King
- Chap. VI God as King: The Eternal Sovereignty
- Chap. VII God as King: The Kingdom in the World
- Detached Note C. The Terms ‘Disciple’ and ‘Apostle’
- Chap. VIII God as King: The Final Consummation
- Chap. IX Religion and Morals
- Detached Note D. On Mk x. 42–44
- Detached Note E. On Mk vii. 6–13
- Appendices I–VI
- Additional Notes
- General Index
- Reference Index
Chap. IX - Religion and Morals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
- PART I PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS
- PART II THE CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING
- Chap. IV God as Father
- Chap. V God as King
- Chap. VI God as King: The Eternal Sovereignty
- Chap. VII God as King: The Kingdom in the World
- Detached Note C. The Terms ‘Disciple’ and ‘Apostle’
- Chap. VIII God as King: The Final Consummation
- Chap. IX Religion and Morals
- Detached Note D. On Mk x. 42–44
- Detached Note E. On Mk vii. 6–13
- Appendices I–VI
- Additional Notes
- General Index
- Reference Index
Summary
THE ‘ETHICS OF JESUS’
THE main strength of Jesus lay in his ethical teaching. If we omitted the miracles and a few mystical sayings which tend to deify the Son of Man, and preserved only the moral precepts and parables, the Gospels would count as one of the most wonderful collections of ethical teaching in the world.
This is the verdict of a distinguished Jewish scholar. The same writer also says that
Jesus is, for the Jewish nation, a great teacher of morality and an artist in parable.… In his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code.… If ever the day should come and this ethical code be stripped of its wrappings of miracle and mysticism, the Book of the Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time.
These words doubtless reflect the opinion and the aspirations of many outside the Jewish fold. Many who are disgusted by ecclesiasticism, unmoved by ritual, and incredulous of dogma would gladly drop everything except the ‘Ethics of the Sermon on the Mount’.
It is therefore the more necessary to lay down at the outset that the ‘Ethics of Jesus’, in the sense in which Dr Klausner speaks of them and many others think of them, do not exist and never have existed. Nor will such a book ever exist save by the process of tearing some of the moral aphorisms of Jesus out of their true context and fitting them into another and probably alien context.
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- Information
- Teaching of Jesus , pp. 285 - 312Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1935