In blog post 1, I wrote about the rhetorical strategies used by Jesus during the sermon on the mount to reach a rhetorical audience of the people from the countryside who came to hear him speak. However, as much as the Book of Matthew is a documentation of this spoken rhetoric, Matthew’s writing is also its own piece of rhetoric, directed at a different rhetorical audience.  

Written around 30-40 AD, the transcription of the sermon on the mount, and Book of Matthew as a whole, was written as an eyewitness account of Jesus’ life and teachings specifically for a Jewish audience. The exigent situation for documenting this account was that many people of the Jewish faith, particularly those in power through Jewish religious institutions, were reluctant to accept Jesus’ teachings either because of a lack of belief or a lack of information. The Book of Matthew responds to this exigence by informing its audience about who Jesus was and what he taught, and it specifically attempts to convince its audience of Jesus’ identity by referencing scripture from the Old Testament – Matthew cites the Jewish prophesies such as Isaiah 50 and Micah 5 in connection with Jesus’ birth and life.  

In order to best inform his audience about the character of Jesus, Matthew uses a deliberate structure for his rhetoric. This can be seen throughout the whole book, as it is divided into 7 (conventionally considered a holy number) sections, with each section showing a segment of Jesus’ life, and then a portion of his teaching that were exemplified through his way of life. Within these sections there is structure too, and this is perhaps most pronounced in the section of the sermon on the mount. Given over multiple days, the sermon on the mount contained a lot of information in its teachings. Matthew organizes these teachings into one clear and flowing passage, which helps readers better understand the sermon’s meaning. He breaks the sermon down into 3 parts – Jesus’ explanation of God’s kingdom, his main teachings about how his followers should act, and a conclusion. The main teachings are then further sorted into 3 main parts, and each of these parts have 3 subsections to record the necessary detail to Jesus’ teachings while still presenting each theme in a straightforward and easily understandable manner.  

Overall, I personally find the rhetoric used to structure this book of the Bible makes it particularly informative and persuasive one, as it incorporates a strong logos through its logical organization, and it is based on the ethos of an eyewitness to the events transcribed.