Sermon On The Mount

This blog explores the amazing internal structure of the Sermon on the Mount. Then shop work and a headline review.

The Work of Solomon

In last week's blog I suggested that Solomon was the editor who changed the language system and divine name to conform to the Jebusite tongue used at the city of Jerusalem. This would have been a fork of the inspired texts going into his day. Greek and Aramaic would run in parallel and use generic terms where the Hebrew uses an actual, but fictional, divine name.

Those other language traditions likely branched away before Solomon's day. But they had to keep up with the work of Solomon and the other future editors. We know from missing verses in the Aramaic that this work was not done very carefully.

Scribes in those other manuscript traditions had to do something with the divine name, but probably did not want to blaspheme the true divine name, so they abstracted references to the divine name that Solomon used in Hebrew with generic terms in Greek and Aramaic.

This model of what happened to the texts because of Solomon is satisfying. It provides a general understanding of how we got the texts that are eventually passed to us by history. Solomon was more severe of an editor than those who would follow. The rest followed in his shadow.

New Testament Confirmation

This past weekend Ryan and I stumbled across a New Testament reference that points at Solomon as having changed the divine name. It was a rather stunning discovery buried within the Sermon on the Mount. It nicely confirms what I wrote about last week.

But then we began to look in detail at the entire story of the Sermon on the Mount. We wanted to see if we were missing anything else that might be buried there.

That story is an intricately constructed and tightly woven work with internal links, both within itself and with external links out across the rest of the text. It is a long discussion of the editors, their work, and the problems they caused.

Ryan took this week to look at that story and carefully mark it up. This included adding another new notation into our scripture apps for marking structural cross references. He also combed through the Sermon on the Mount and included chiasm markup and numerous regular quote links. He also added extensive notes and tables at the back of the Book of Matthew in the BRB to help explain all the intricate stuff that is going on in that sermon.

These updates to the BRB and related apps go online as this blog goes out. What is going on in that passage is stunning. What follows here in the blog is an introduction. You can read Ryan's more extensive set of notes in the BRB yourself. In this blog I will focus on how the editors are a central focus of that sermon.

Sermon On The Mount

The link here is to Matthew chapter 5 in the BRB. The passage in question continues from the start of chapter 5 and runs through the end of chapter 7. It is a long passage taught atop a mountain.

The passage itself has tightly woven internal structure and internal cross references, which I will get to below. These are similar to quote links, but they are not pointing at direct quotes. What these links do is show off something like internal structure. This strange feature needed another, new, type of markup in order to track what is going on.

You can enable this new markup by using another new option in the options menu. On the top right side menu is a new "Interpretive Key" option. There are 3 choices, I suggest turning them all on, but for this blog the "Structure" choice is what needs to be enabled.

Within the apps themselves, these new options work about the same as regular quote links. These new links are displayed in blue. Like quote links, they link off to some other passage which usually includes a return link of the same type as the original link.

But, these are not actual quotes, they are not always pointing backward in the order of the time of writing. Some of these strange links point forward, which is very strange. These are structural references that provide interpretive keys, so they are not always exact quotes. This will turn out to be central to understanding the center piece of the Sermon On the Mount, the Lord's Prayer.

You will also want to make sure the "Enumeration" option called "Chiasm" is also enabled. The Sermon on the Mount is chiastic. The chiasm pairs are marked with A and A', then B and B' and so on, in the normal fashion, down through this passage. The center of the chiasm is marked with X, also in the normal fashion.

Overview

There are very few other places in the New Testament where a single story runs to 3 chapters. Maybe Revelation could be thought of as similar, but that book is broken up with narration and change in voice. Not here.

Across most of the New Testament writing we have short, episodic, accounts of things that Joshua said and did. Here we have something special. The green text, the divine voice, runs for 3 whole chapters without interruption.

Joshua does not stop talking to the crowd that was with him on the mountain. He is running long and taking his time to tell a long and intricate story. I would guess this was a written sermon that was passed off to the disciples to be included in the eventual written New Testament that we have now. It would be difficult for someone in the audience to recount this entire sermon from memory later on while still capturing all of the intricate detail.

The Sermon on the Mount is so long that various parts of it have conventional names of their own. Ryan has added headings to show off all of these conventional breaks in the story. But, because Ryan now knows the structure, those breaks can vary from convention by a verse or so.

So now, let me work through the various parts of that sermon here in the blog.

Beatitudes

The Sermon on the Mount begins with a section which is itself known as the Beatitudes. This section is framing what is going to come later in the sermon.

With all markup turned on you can see this is a list of 12. But there are 3 different parts to each item in that list. First is a tribal name, second is a name from the original 12 writers of scripture, of course also in order, and then there is the chiasm letter which is pointing ahead into the Sermon on the Mount. Those chiasm letters are where each of these introductory phrase subjects are expanded.

Then for each of the beatitudes themselves, there is both a blue link down into the sermon itself and there is an orange quote link in the normal way back into the writing of each of the first 12 scripture writers.

At this point you can visually see that something very, very strange is going on with this entire sermon. What was so special that required such intricate cross referencing?

Let me plot spoil this by saying that Joshua is going to give commentary on the work of the 6 editors of scripture. He is going to make several points about each of those editors. He is writing this passage in a very tightly woven form to make it very difficult for the New Testament editor to add extra content.

At this point we think only 1 or 2 paragraphs are additions. All of the rest of the content of the Sermon on the Mount is original and inspired.

The tribal list here at the beginning is going down to Benjamin. From the perspective of the tribes list, Benjamin will capture nearly all of the content in the Sermon on the Mount because Joshua is speaking against that tribe. Though not all editors are expressly from Benjamin, that tribe carried their work forward across history, even to our day.

The author list is running from Enoch down through Samuel. This has a similar purpose to the tribe list. Samuel is the prophet/writer on the scene when the heirs of Jacob asked for a king. Samuel set in place the first of those kings, Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin. This careful structure is telling us to notice how the editors are the natural consequence of asking for a king.

Much of the content of the Sermon on the Mount is going to be commentary on those editors, and advice about how not to walk in the ways of those editors.

Starting at Matthew 5:13, Ryan has added headings that identify each of the editors which Joshua is going to focus on. They are of course listed in their normal historical order.

Let me use the editor list to frame the rest of this blog. Editors are interesting to me because I am getting ready to do manuscript recovery work. There are other ways to work through the Sermon on the Mount which reinforce many of these points. The chiastic folds are another way entirely to think about this sermon. See Ryan's notes in the BRB for much more.

Solomon

As I explained in last week's blog, Solomon is respelling the text, adding vowels at least, and changing the divine name. References to salt and to the "father" in Matthew 5:13 and 5:16 are about those actions of Solomon. Solomon caused the text, the salt, to loose its saltiness, his work, the Hebrew, needs to be tossed out. Salt is a white crystal, similar to snow, and is likely a new term for understanding this and is used here as a reference to the lamp based audit pattern. This can only be understood with a white lamp, which has only been in the shop a couple weeks.

The "father" reference here is complex and will be interpreted precisely later in the Sermon on the Mount. But let me explain some of what is going on. By changing the divine name, Solomon forced the abstraction of the personal name of god away from his actual personal name into generic terms.

"Theos" and "Master" being the terms from Greek and Aramaic. In this passage in Matthew, Joshua is abstracting his own personal name and using the term "father" in the same way as the Greek and Aramaic scribes did with Solomon's change in name. This is how Joshua is calling out Solomon as having changed the divine name.

This term "Father" will later, say in Constantine's day, become the basis for trinitarian theology. Ryan and I have taken father references like these as Ananias era edits. This is not always going to be correct. The use of "Father" in the Lord's Prayer, which we will return to below, is NOT a trinity reference but an abstraction of himself. He is calling himself out as being like a father. This is like the Greek scribes calling him god or the Aramaic scribes calling him Master.

Matthew 5:14 then references the lamp stand, how it must shine and give light. The lamp provides the 5 letters of the audit pattern. This is indicating that Solomon's respelling, say by adding vowels, is removed by shining the lamp on Solomon's written works. This means the audit work is what will fix Solomon's work. Joshua did this in his own day. We will do the same here soon.

Matthew 5:17-20 is also on Solomon's manuscript related changes. The BRB is using the terms "Yo" and "Tag." You may know this at "Jot" and "Tiddle." The meaning of the "Yo" appears to be the pinching of letters together into words and the Tag appears to be the use of punctuation, the Paleo Dot, Colon and Quad.

I take this passage to indicate that besides adding vowels, Solomon did something like changing word breaks within the character strings of running text.

Solomon was likely removing single letter words, forming what we know now as prefixes, and he was also likely creating compound words. 5:20 uses the term "scribes" to indicate Solomon was messing around with the scribal construction of the text itself. As I explained in last week's blog, careful scribes normally do not mess around with this level of the text. Solomon did.

Ahab and Jezebel

Matthew 5:21-26 is dealing with Ahab and Jezebel. They had Naboth arrested and killed on false pretenses. Joshua appears to be indicating that Ahab and Jezebel were condemned to hell fire over this, see Matthew 5:22. This is how Joshua is weighing in on the severity of some of what the editors were doing. Joshua may also be providing more back story on Naboth's problems with Ahab and Jezebel.

Matthew 5:27-30 is on the topic of adultery. This was likely also related to the Ahab and Jezebel story. Again, another reference to hell, see Matthew 5:30.

Mathew 5:31-32 is on the topic of divorce. Also likely an Ahab/Jezebel topic.

Finally, Matthew 5:33-37 is on the topic of oaths. By knowing this is in the Ahab/Jezebel domain, we know this to be the false trial used to condemn Naboth. In this passage Joshua goes so far as to say we should not take oaths at all, for any reason. If we never lie then there is no reason to ever say "I will not lie here in a particular context" like a court room. The need for an oath is a sign of a bigger problem.

Nebuchadnezzar

Joshua now turns to Nebuchadnezzar starting in Matthew 5:38-42. Here Joshua is saying to not resist when someone attacks and taxes.

This story is framed around the historical event when Nebuchadnezzar made Jerusalem his vassal. The historical story and context for this begins at 2 Kings 23:34-35. Pharaoh has made Jerusalem a vassal and the city, so the inhabitants, are being taxed to pay tribute to Pharaoh.

Nebuchadnezzar steps in and does the same taking that revenue stream created by Pharaoh and capturing it for himself. By 2 Kings 24:1 we see the rebellion against Babel, the king at Jerusalem does not want to become a Babylonian governor. At that point the pattern is set and eventually the city is destroyed and the people hauled away.

Matthew 5:43-48 is similar, dealing with praying for those who haul you away. Again, this is explaining how to live under empire, which Nebuchadnezzar is the first editor example. We still live that way now, with AIPAC being the arm of Nebuchadnezzar's work most visible within the US Government.

The Sermon on the Mount is saying to not fight this work, there is nothing most people can do to remove this system.

Mordecai

Mordecai is perhaps the most difficult to understand because the Matthew passage is making subtle references into the Book of Esther. We suspect Esther has been heavily edited by Mordecai himself.

Matthew 6:1-4 is where Joshua warns to be careful about doing things so that they can be seen by men. Public display cancels heavenly rewards.

The best example in Mordecai's day is when he was paraded around in public by Haman. See Esther 6:7-9 for the description of an honor seen by men. Haman was personally shamed, but Mordecai's reward was only to be seen by men.

Matthew 6:5-6 deals with the issue of public prayer. Joshua is indicating that most prayer should be in private. Esther 4:16 is where she turns a private issue of prayer into a public spectacle that lasts for 3 days.

Matthew 6:7 is were Joshua indicates that prayer should be brief, and then provides a model prayer. This is generally known as the "Lord's Prayer" which has been memorized by millions of people. This model prayer becomes the center piece of the sermon on the mount, sitting in the middle of the chiasm that structures this whole sermon.

The Lord's Prayer

This model prayer begins at Matthew 5:9 and runs through 5:12. It is a set of 6 couplets. Each couplet is a prayer against the work of one of the editors. They are given against the work of the editors and they are called out in order.

So every time this prayer had ever been recited it has been asking for the deliverance of the church world from the work of the editors who were either based in Jerusalem or working for Jerusalem. It is a prayer against the Jews.

1) Solomon

"Our father in the skies, holy be your name."

This is directly referencing how Solomon changed the actual divine name for a false name, Yahweh. The prayer is calling for this problem to be fixed. It is internally referencing the Sermon on the Mount, back to Matthew 5:16. Joshua's own name is the divine name.

2) Ahab/Jezebel

"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on land as in the skies."

This is directly referencing Ahab and Jezebel and how they were working against Joshua's will. It is internally referencing the Sermon on the Mount, back to Matthew 5:34-35 where he said not to swear at all, neither by the land nor by the skies.

3) Nebuchadnezzar

"Give us bread for our needs, from day to day."

This is referencing into the historical story of Nebuchadnezzar. Specifically the Daniel 5:5 story of Daniel refusing to eat of the king's food. They had correct food anyway, which this passage is interpreting.

Internal to the Sermon on the mount the exact vocabulary words are not used, but it is referencing Matthew 5:44 where he earlier instructed to bless those who curse you. Give food to the king, which was the problem in Nebuchadnezzar's era. Nebuchadnezzar was taking food away from the kings and people living at Jerusalem in order to feed his own royal court.

4) Mordecai

"Forgive us our offenses, as we have forgiven our offenders."

This is directly referencing the Mordecai story within the Sermon on the Mount at Matthew 6:14-15. This directly follows the Lord's Prayer itself, and is the summary for Mordecai. This is the center of the Chiastic structure of the entire Sermon on the Mount. If there is a single vocabulary word dealing with Joshua it is to forgive. Purim, and the events that created it, is not forgiving.

5) Ezra

"Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from trouble."

This is another direct reference into the Ezra story within the Sermon on the Mount. It is future pointing, past the recursion point we are now in. See Matthew 6:34 where he warns to worry about tomorrow for each day has enough trouble of its own. We will return to this below.

6) Ananias

"For yours is the kingdom, and power, and glory, forever and ever, amen."

This too is a direct reference into the Ananias story within the Sermon on the Mount. It too is future pointing. See Matthew 7:21. We will return to this below.

Ezra: Treasures in Heaven

After the Lord's Prayer, Joshua continues running the main list of editors in order. He has gone past an inflection point where he briefly addressed each editor. Now he is moving through the remaining editors in order. At this point he has moved on to Ezra, giving a warning about storing up treasures in heaven. Joshua makes 3 points about Ezra.

Matthew 6:19-21 deals with the problem of storing up treasure. In Ezra's case he has access to taxing authority and is out to fill a newly rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. Joshua points out that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. If you have treasure in a temple, your heart will be there too.

Matthew 6:22-23 deals with the eye as the lamp of the body. Joshua indicates that the lamp that was guiding Ezra was dark. Ezra may be the other prolific editor like Solomon, and this lamp reference would indicate that Ezra's work will be discovered and removed because of the audit pattern that is based on the lamp.

Matthew 6:24 deals with Ezra's problem of having 2 masters. He was supposed to be a priest serving god, but he was commissioned by the king. Ezra's problem was to try and serve god and wealth.

Matthew 6:25-27 deals with worry about provision. Ezra and his temple had a big operation and a grant from the king for that provision because he did not have provision from Joshua. Joshua's real systems are simple and do not need massive provision.

Matthew 6:28-34 deals with clothing and food and ultimately worrying about all such things. These become issues when we are outside of Joshua's will, as was Ezra.

Ananias

The last editor addressed in the Sermon on the Mount is Ananias. He was the New Testament editor. He is most famous for having given a prophetic word over the Apostle Paul in order for Paul to be healed of his blindness. Ananias would go on to become the high priest when Paul returned for his final visit to Jerusalem. Ananias was also most likely an elderly high priest when Jerusalem was burned down in the year 70.

Matthew 7:1-2 warns about being careful how you judge, as you will be judged the same way. This is likely a reference to Acts 23:3 when Paul calls out Ananias as a hypocrite.

Matthew 7:3-5 is dealing with the splinter in someone's eye, while he himself has a cross beam in his own eye. This is a reference to Acts 9:10 where Ananias is sent to Paul. Likely the beam is a reference to having watched the crucifixion.

Matthew 7:7-12 is dealing with asking. Presumably Ananias could have asked Joshua, and perhaps become an inspired writer. This was not to be.

Matthew 7:13-14 warns about narrow and wide gates. The wide gate would be what Ananias created in his editing work. He did not find the way to Joshua.

Matthew 7:15-23 becomes the last words on what Joshua thinks about Ananias. He was a false prophet, able to give a prophetic word over Paul, but false in terms of what he did to the New Testament. He did not bear fruit and will be cast into the fire. (Hell fire reference again.) He would not enter into the kingdom of the skies. Joshua never knew him, and was told to keep away.

Epilogue

The Sermon on the Mount ends with an epilogue that references to building a house on a rock, and not on sand. The rock would be the carved stones at Shechem, that show off the audit and language systems. That language system withstands rains and wind. Rain is melted snow which is a hidden reference to the lamp and audit patterns. Having the correct language system is what this sermon is about, and the people who tried to rewrite it for their own purposes, the 6 editors who created Babel.

This epilogue, with a possible alliteration to the storms of Noah, may be indicating when, in planetary history, this work is swept away. Sometime around the 7000th anniversary of Noah's flood.

More

Ryan has put many more notes into the BRB in order to explain the structural elements of the Sermon on the Mount. You can read those on a story by story basis in the BRB app itself. These notes provide the evidence that we need to trust most of this material will eventually pass audit.

If you pull up the BRB, and use the center menu to select the Book of Matthew, you will then see a second menu that normally calls out chapters.

At the bottom of that second menu are 4 new entries. Those are for notes kept at the bottom of Matthew that are more extensive notes on the Sermon on the Mount.

In that menu you will see an entry for a table showing the chiasm in the Sermon on the Mount. Also in that menu you will see a link to a table that maps from the stanzas in the Lord's Prayer to the editors. Finally you will also see a menu choice that links to a table that maps out the specific beatitudes to their expanded sections within the Sermon on the Mount.

All of these are helpful tools for anyone who wants to go deeper into this central passage of the New Testament.

Shop Work

This week the main focus in the shop was the finishing of the assembly of the 3rd Voron 3d printer. This printer had been sitting around for many weeks and needed to get finished. Most of the 3d printed parts had been done weeks ago as well, but a few parts had issues which needed either first prints or reprints.

I was trying to get this done quickly so I could clear the bench, so when I ran into parts that needed to be printed I would start those prints and then work on other tasks to get this printer assembled. This caused the strangest order of assembly I have ever done. Fortunately, I had previously built 2 others, so this was mostly from memory with the help of a couple wiring diagrams.

This printer was built absolutely stock to the Formbot kit. The only addition was a chamber thermister to monitor air temp within the enclosure. Software loads have been a problem in the past. There are 3 CPUs in the printer, each with different software needs. The loading process is not well documented. Mostly missing from the manuals, so a scavenger hunt for online forums with the correct links to working tutorials. The game is finding the current instructions lost somewhere on the Internet. I did find those instructions, and got this done in record time. The only real trouble was the clock speed for the bus that connects to the extruder. That had to be slowed down for everything to work.

Next up are checks for correct assembly and configuration, then calibration related test prints.

Vine Reprints

Also in the shop this week, the vine reprint was mostly finished, with a new set of yellow flowers for the vine. These reprints fixed tolerance issues with the branches so all parts for this exhibit now slip together without jamming or needing hand tools.

Table Prints

Also this week, there was final parts printed for the Table exhibit. The punctuation letters are designed on small white plastic cards. Getting these parts to print well has always been difficult.

So this week I experimented with soluble supports but there were still fit and finish issues for the final parts when made this way. There were also slicer bugs which would leave out needed support layers.

After working around these problems I did get some test prints done using soluble supports. But, these need to be soaked in water to remove those supports. The "card" part of the design is thin, and not like a solid 3d part. That card part would warp when soaked in water after the print.

After messing around with this I felt the designs should not demand a 3d printer that could handle soluble filament. It is expensive, hard to get, and fussy to use. My normal rule is filament changes that can be done by hand on a single color printer are OK. But demanding the use of a multi-color printer is out of scope for this work.

So I made a design change to these parts to section them into multiple pieces that get glued together after the print. This is similar to the relief letters used on the Table and on the Vine.

This design change worked very well. These cards are now easy for anyone to print using any sort of 3d printer. It also produced very nice final parts, without strange textures created by rough support material.

Also, on the Table, the Dogs, that slide under the table itself, were reprinted. The change in lamp to 5 flames instead of 7, transmits to the dog designs. The purple insets in the dogs were always decorative and were never really needed. Now, with no purple source in the lamp, the purple can be removed from the dogs. This eliminates a serious source of confusion with students who might be using the dogs to learn the audit.

These Dog related parts do not fundamentally require a 3d printer with an MMU, but since I have an MMU, I did use clever MMU settings to eliminate a stray black line on the exterior edges of these parts. This was per feedback when we showed this off a couple weeks ago.

Watch Dates

Peaking ahead, we will see the first year of David's reign replay on 2025-12-08, then the first year of Solomon's reign, a co-reign with David, on 2026-01-14. We are mostly watching for 2026-01-18, the replay of the start of Solomon's temple. Nothing in particular to watch for this coming week.

Headline Review

The following headlines caught my attention this week.

Ukraine

No specific link for this. Last week I suggested the fall of Pokrovsk was the match to the replay of 911. Likely the Ukrainians lost the same number of soldiers as died in the twin towers. This hunch cannot be measured until the war is over and historians write it up.

But, the fall of Pokrovsk seems to have marked the start of a general collapse of the Ukrainian army across much of the line of contact. Depending on the source, the Ukrainians are falling back, surrendering, or refusing to fight.

The Russians have increased their electric war, leaving Ukraine without electricity nor heat for the coming winter. Russians are also capturing more territory every day. Putin has said the Russian army will go beyond their constitutionally mandated territorial plans and start taking back historically Russian territories, including Odessa.

There was also reports of a corruption scandal surrounding Ukrainian leader Zelensky. He is a Jew, with parents living in Israel. Depopulation of Christian Ukrainian men may well have been part of the military plan, both for Ukraine, and Russia.

In any case, Zelensky has always been working for someone invisible to the normal power of his office. So he cannot just be fired for poor performance. His Zionist boss must use some other strategy to remove him, normally planned since he first took office. Looks like financial scandal was the plan in Zelensky's case. This is cute. They paid these guys to commit crimes, and now will take back that money. There is no honor among thieves.

This media circus surrounding Zelensky means he will take the fall for the fall of Pokrovsk. Someone else will be given a new mandate and tasked to try a different strategy against Russia.

Epstein Files

The link here is to a post on X with a short clip of Rep. Thomas Massie explaining Trump's decision to hide the Epstein files instead of keeping his campaign promises to make them public. There have been many other posts recently on similar topics, in particular counting the many references to Trump in those files.

The Epstein files are more Zionist control of the US government through sexual blackmail. With the government reopened, the Democrats are dropping more Epstein files. This is likely to continue for some time. The news cycle can only handle a certain amount every day.

Trump is acting like he is covering for personal guilt, by say, calling those files a hoax. But, so far, there are no specific references to Trump in the publicly dumped files that point at such guilt. Very strange. Those files have had enough time in government hands to be carefully scrubbed.

More Later,

Phil