BEATITUDES.—This word comes from the Latin abstract beatitudo, used in Vulg.

of Ro 4:6, where
David is said to ‘pronounce the beatitude’ or blessedness of the forgiven soul. Since the time of
Ambrose the term has been used to describe the particular collection of sayings (cast in the form of
which Ps 32:1 is an OT specimen) in which Christ depicts the qualities to be found in members of His
kingdom—as an introduction to the discourse known as the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:3–12 = Lk
6:20–23). Each of these sayings follows the form ‘Blessed (happy) are …, because …’ Mt. records
eight of these general declarations, with a special application of the last of them; Lk. has only four, to
which are added four corresponding Woes. There is no guarantee that even Mt. gives all the Beatitudes
pronounced by Jesus on different occasions, or again that those he does give were all pronounced on
that occasion. It is at least possible that in other parts of the NT we have quotations from sayings of the
same kind. Thus 1 P 4:14, Ja 1:12, Rev 14:13 might easily be supposed to rest on words of Christ.
According to the prevailing view of the history of our Gospels, the Beatitudes are derived from an early
collection of Logia, or sayings of Jesus, in the original Aramaic language. To a very large extent the
authors of Mt. and Lk. seem to have used identical translations of this document; but in the Beatitudes
there is a considerable divergence, together with some significant agreements in phraseology. Putting
aside Nos. 3, 5, 6, 7 in Mt., which have no counterparts in Lk., we see the following main lines of
difference—(1) Lk.’s are in the second person, Mt.’s in the third, except in the verses which apply No.
8 (5:11, 12); (2) Lk.’s are apparently external: the poor, the hungry, those that weep, receive felicitation
as such, instead of the commiseration (‘Woe’) which the world would give them. But since in Lk.
disciples are addressed, the divergence does not touch the real meaning. A theodicy is proclaimed in
which the hardships of the present, sanctified to the disciple as precious discipline, will be transformed
into abiding blessedness. Such a reversal of the order of this life involves here, as elsewhere, the
casting down of those whom men count happy (cf. Is 65:13, 14, Lk 1:52, 53, 16:25, Jn 16:20, Ja 1:9,
10). The paradoxical form of the sayings in Lk. produces a strong impression of originality, suggesting
that here, as often elsewhere, Mt. has interpreted the words which Lk. has transcribed unchanged. Mt.
has arranged them according to the form of Hebrew parallelism: observe how the first and last have the
same refrain, the poem beginning and ending on the same note—cf. Ps 8. His No. 8 sums up in the
form of the other Beatitudes the principle of the appendix vv. 11, 12, which Lk 6:22, 23 shows to be
original: he then inserts this as a comment, much as he appends a sentence of comment to the Lord’s
Prayer (6:14, 15). It may perhaps be doubted whether the Beatitudes peculiar to Mt. are in their original
context. No. 3, proclaiming the triumph of those who do not ‘struggle to survive,’ is quoted from Ps
37:11; No. 5 is found as early as Clement of Rome, in the form ‘Show mercy, that mercy be shown to
you’; No. 6 reproduces the sense of Ps 24:4; No. 7, echoed in Ja 3:18, may have been altered in form to
fit the appropriate context. We seem to be justified in conjecturing that Lk. inserts all the Beatitudes he
found in his source under the same context, and that he faithfully preserved the words as they stood: the
Woes likewise belonged to the same discourse. (Note the support given to them by Ja 5:1, and the use
of the commercial technical term ‘have received,’ so characteristic of the Sermon; cf. Mt 6:2, 5, 16).
The gloss with which Mt. interprets the Messing on the poor was not apparently known to St. James
(2:5), whose very clear allusion to the Beatitude in its Lukan form determines the exegesis. The rich
man could bring himself within the range of the blessing by accepting the ‘humiliation’ that Christian
disciple-ship brought (Ja 1:10); so that Mt.’s interpretation is supported by the writer, who shows us
most clearly that the exact words have not been preserved by him. In No. 2 Mt. seems to have slightly
altered the original (Lk 6:21). under the influence of Is 61:1—the prophecy from which Jesus preached
in the synagogue at Nazareth, and the obvious suggestive cause of the appearance of the poor at the
opening of the Beatitudes. It should be observed, however, that all attempts to ascertain the original
form of sayings of Jesus have at best so large a subjective element that we cannot afford to dogmatize.
There are scholars of great weight, reinforced most recently by Harnack, who regard Mt. as generally
preserving the lost Logia-collection in a more exact form than Lk. Moreover, we must always allow for
the probability that modifications introduced by Mt. or Lk. may often rest on early traditions, so that
elements not included in the principal Gospel sources may nevertheless be derived from first-hand
authority.
James Hope Moulton.