Some Additional Reading.

No one should approach an exegetical study of the Beatitudes without some knowledge of the questions of Biblical Criticism which are involved. For example: how are the eight Beatitudes of St. Matthew related to the four of St. Luke? It was maintained by a great father (St Ambrose) that the two sets are virtually identical. But the whole question needs working out. It is sufficient to guide the reader to the learned discussion of this aspect of the Beatitudes in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, the Extra Volume, page 15 and ff.; and the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, page 176 and ff.

Every exegetical commentary on the Gospels devotes some space to the Beatitudes. Such a book as Wendt’s Teaching of Jesus sets the Beatitudes in their relation to the whole message of our Lord.

There is no more suggestive treatment of these themes in English than the relevant chapters in Bishop Gore’s book, The Sermon on the Mount. But the late Dr. Oswald Dykes is fuller and more practical in his Manifesto of the King. In a volume of sermons by the late Dr. Leckie, entitled Life and Religion, seven discourses are devoted to the Beatitudes. (Like many others, Dr. Leckie reckoned that there were seven, not eight, sayings deserving of the title.) The late Professor A. B. Bruce devotes two chapters of his popular yet very able work, The Galilean Gospel, to the Beatitudes. Simpler but not less helpful are the four sermons in the late Dean Stanley’s Sermons to Children. A ponderous volume, entitled The Charter of Christianity, published in 1886 by Andrew Tait, D.D., LL.D., a Canon of the Church of Ireland, gives 76 of its 628 pages to the Beatitudes. Bishop Boyd Carpenter has a volume of sermons on the subject, The Great Charter of Christ; and Bishop C. J. Ridgeway has a volume, The Mountain of blessedness.

On the word beatitude itself, which does not occur in the Bible, see Trench’s Study of Words.

On the proper rendering of μακάριος see Montefiore’s The Synoptic Gospels, from the point of view of scholarship, and from the far more important point of view of spiritual insight, the 9th chapter of the Second Book of Sartor Resartus.