The Sermon on the Mount never ceases to challenge readers in every generation. New methods and new insights into new surroundings have to be applied to the most influential speech ever given. In this study, Ernst Baasland takes a fresh look at the history of research done on it, both on its broad influence and on the variety of interpretations. The historical questions are seen from new perspectives. Is orality the key to a better understanding? To what extent can we reconstruct a pre-text and the question of authenticity be answered? These questions are seen through historiographical lenses. The author argues in favour of a universal addressee and maintains that the speech contains radical philosophical thinking. The first audience consisted of Jews, and the religiously based understanding of life is conceived within Judaism. However, its ethics of wisdom is developed in a Hellenistic setting and provides a radical philosophy of life.

"Parable research has to a large degree ignored the Sermon on the Mount (SM) and for its part, research into the SM has likewise left the parables by the wayside. However, the use of parabolic language in more than one third of the SM influences its interpretation and indeed opens up a new approach to it. In the current volume, Ernst Baasland focuses on this important factor, whilst also taking the rhetoric of Jesus' teaching into consideration. The author maintains that rhetorical features have a great bearing on the interpretation of the text with the overall structure illuminating the entire composition of the sermon. Fresh insights into its oration therefore serve to challenge the source problem in a new way. The religious and philosophical settings of this most well-known of Christ's preachings are clarified by its parables and rhetoric; and the sermon's Jewish background has often been investigated. While the author continues with that particular task, he simultaneously affords more emphasis to the parallels in (Greek) Hellenistic literature. The combining of all these factors leads to a clearer comprehension of the Sermon on the Mount's philosophy of life and provides a better understanding of this classical text"--