Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5-7

He also takes into account the order of Jesus’ discourse, the distinction between character formation and decision making, and the question of whether or not the Jesus who speaks in the Sermon is a legalist. In his reading of the text, Talbert attends to the six large units of thought in Matthew 5-7, exploring the relationship of each to possible concerns of character formation and decision making. Section by section, he analyzes form and content, comparing Jesus’ directives with similar statements in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature. Talbert concludes that only when the text is read in three contexts - the whole of Matthew, the whole of the New Testament, and the entire biblical plot - can the Sermon on the Mount make a contribution to decision making.