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Dead Sea Scrolls Research Council: Fragments

Beatitudes Found Among Dead Sea Scrolls

By Benedict T. Viviano

A recently published fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls contains beatitudes with some striking similarities to the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3–12) and in the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20–23)—and also some important differences. The fragment was published in 1991 by Emile Puech,a my colleague at the École Biblique in Jerusalem. From his analysis of the fragment, Puech claims to have solved a long-time scholarly crux concerning the beatitudes in Matthew and Luke (see sidebars, “The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount” and “The Beatitudes and Woes in the Sermon on the Plain”). […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Emile Puech, “4Q525 et les péricopes des Béatitudes en Ben Shira et Matthieu,” Revue Biblique 138 (1991), pp. 80–106.

2.

In the catechetical tradition, there are eight Matthean beatitudes. Modern literary analysis separates Matthew’s ninth beatitude from his first eight, putting it off into a new literary unit.

3.

The destination is found not only in Latin, but in Hebrew and Greek as well beatus (Latin) = ashre (Hebrew) = makarios (Greek) = happy (English); benedictus (Latin) = baruch (Hebrew) = eulogetos (Greek) = blessed (English).

4.

The Book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) is part of canonical or inspired scripture for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, who follow the longer canon or list of the Greek Bible, but not for Jews or Protestants, who follow the shorter canon of the Hebrew Bible, though the Talmud quotes the book with respect. Much of the book’s Hebrew text has been recovered over the last century. The book is useful for reconstructing the development of Jewish ethical thought in the centuries just before the birth of Jesus.

5.

The relevance of the number seven is that it shows that there was a pattern of longer lists of beatitudes as opposed to single isolated beatitudes, which are most common in the Hebrew Bible.