Okay, a meme is a template, a simple image that can be used to make one's individual point or sarcastic point by adding text over the top of a standard template, some kind of image. It can be anything, something from a movie, like three still shots of an exchange between a couple of characters who are really expressive from a movie, and it looks like maybe the characters are thinking or saying a certain thing, but it doesn't take on its full meaning until you put the text over the top. So, for example, a couple of classics. There's one of a really elegant lady with her hand to her head and a tear slowly rolling down her cheek. This is popular like eight or 10 years ago. It's the first world problems meme. And the picture is very dramatic and she's obviously very sad, but also very composed. And then what you put over the top is some ridiculous thing that isn't really that big a deal at all and shouldn't evoke that much emotion. And so the joke comes in two parts the part that is pre-supplied, that is the image, and then the part that you supply, that is the funny thing that you thought of, that is a first world problem. The distracted boyfriend meme, the pretty girl in the red dress is in front, he's walking along, and his girlfriend is like, What? Why are you looking at the girl in the red dress? And then you label the girl in the red dress something, you label the girlfriend something, you label the guy something. It makes some kind of political point. This concept of having a communication device that is half template, half you putting your own spin on it to illustrate a point is not only genius, it is also very, very old. We see this kind of thing being employed in Roman ruins, in Pompeii. You can see cartoons and caricatures and even political commentary that's graffitied onto walls that looks like it is following some kind of meme format. I think it's possible that the Beatitudes are exactly this kind of ancient meme. I think Jesus may have been drawing on a known format that we're going to talk about in just a minute, and that he may have expanded upon it or put his text over the top to illustrate a point on multiple levels. That point not just being, here's my overt speech, but you are very, very used to where this meme goes, and I'm gonna flip the meme on its head and double up the layers of meaning to this speech and have this hit the original audience even harder than it would have if it was just one completely original composition. Here's the deal: you've heard about the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were discovered in the middle of the 20th century, down near the Dead Sea, and there's a series of caves. I think the story goes that there was some shepherd boy in there, and he's like whipping rocks around, maybe or something. Maybe this is all an apocryphal legend. And he hears something clanking. He's like, Well, you know what I have going on in here? It shouldn't be a clang, that's not the sound that rocks make. So he goes back in the cave and he's like, What? It's the most important archaeological discovery in like the last 300 years. I gotta go tell somebody. And then he goes and tells somebody, and they come in and they excavate the thing and they find multiple caves with multiple scrolls that we figure out are a library, a set of archives that were preserved by a sect called the Essenes. Now, the Essenes were a sect that was contemporary with John the Baptist, contemporary with Jesus himself. They were one of kind of the four big schools of thought in that first century era of Judaism. They represented one of the mindsets or philosophies of how to respond to the crises of the day, the Roman occupation, the failure of the old Hasmonean or Maccabean dynasty. And so they they lived this really austere lifestyle out in the wilds. They really, frankly, looked a lot like John the Baptist. Some people have theorized that John the Baptist was an Essene or was at least profoundly influenced by them. Well, long story short, all of these different documents are a whole bunch of different things. It gives us a whole bunch of clarity on how the Bible works because there's a ton of Bible in there, and it actually affects the Bible that you have in front of you. The Dead Sea scrolls are part of, like, you know, the official record. Obviously, the New Testament didn't exist at that time, but for the Old Testament, or what we would call the Old Testament. Well, one of these scrolls that we have partially preserved comes from Cave 4, and it's called 4Q525. 525 is the important part of the code. Four tells you what cave it's in. At least I think that's the way it works. And what we find on this scroll, frankly, changed the way a lot of people thought about the Beatitudes, because what's on that 4Q525 scroll is a list of beatitudes that pre-date Jesus. Now it's corrupted, so we don't have all of it, but here is roughly the entire translation of this set of beatitudes that dates back to smart people estimate 50 years before the birth of Christ. So the opening line is words or proverbs of David, maybe Solomon, son of David, which he spoke by the wisdom God gave him to acquire the wisdom. I mean, it's all kind of broken up here, and discipline to understand and to increase knowledge or wisdom. And then what we see is that it's broken up into eight parts with a big chunk in the ninth spot. Part number one says blessed, and then we don't know. Part number two says blessed, and then we don't know. Part number three says blessed and then we don't know. Part number four says blessed, and then we don't know. Trust me, this is going somewhere. Part number five said, Blessed is he who speaks truth with a pure heart and who does not slander with his tongue. Now I'm not looking at the actual translation notes here, so I'm not sure about all of the details of how much of this we're precisely sure of, but I'm pretty sure the next four we're very sure of. The next line says, Blessed are those who cling to his statutes and who do not cling to her ways of perversity. Ah, so that tells me that we've got some kind of personification of lady folly that is maybe reminiscent of some extra biblical writings we're aware of from the intertestamental period. And lady folly would be the opposite of lady wisdom, who we read about in Proverbs. So this would seem to fit with what we know about Hebrew wisdom literature. Okay, we keep going. Blessed are those who rejoice because of her and to not do not spread themselves in the ways of folly. Ah, okay, more contrast between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. Blessed is he who seeks her with pure hands and who does not go after her with a deceitful heart. And then so that's eight beatitudes, or blessed are statements. The ninth statement is this: Blessed the man who has attained wisdom and walks in the law of the most high and applies his heart to her ways, who cherishes her lessons and ever rejoices in her corrections, but who does not repel her in the pain of his misfortunes or in the distress of trial. I guess we're not sure if that's exactly what it says, and in bad times does not abandon her, who does not forget her in days of terror and in his humility of soul, does not reproach her. So obviously, the first thing we notice is the structure looks very similar, doesn't it? You got eight blessed are or blessed is statements, followed by a ninth great big uh summary statement, or almost like a statement that launches off of that series of eight statements into a bigger observation that has to do with where the audience is, where the reader is sitting right now. That is exactly the same structure as the Beatitudes. Now, I know we've focused on the eight beatitudes, and we haven't dealt much with that ninth extended beatitude that would seem to be the uh the bonus part of this meme, but that's the part that that picks up after the blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, and it says, Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You're the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men. And then it goes on, and we're gonna break that down more. The exciting thing for me here, though, is I think we're getting some insight into another layer of what Jesus meant. Now, look, of course we could say, well, I was some wadded-up piece of parchment in a cave. We're gonna reimagine what we think Jesus is saying here based on this silly thing. Sounds like modernism, and I trust the Bible. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, amigo. Easy there. I trust the Bible too. I'm excited about this as well. I am not suggesting that this rewrites the Bible. Rather, what I'm suggesting is I think this further points out the genius of Jesus as an orator, as a writer, and as a speaker. This format clearly existed. To me, the mind-blowing thing here is that Jesus deviates from the format of the meme that we see in Qumran Scroll 4Q525, because he adds details about what those blessings are going to look like. Now, here's my theory. I think that this meme format of blessed are statements, of Beatitude statements, eight chunks of blessed statements that lead you into a big ninth exhortation talking about the consequences of this for whoever the modern hearer might be. I think this format probably gained a ton of popularity post-Alexandrian conquest. So that's like late 300s BC. And I think the reason it gained that popularity is because the Jewish people have been bounced all over the place. It's been this horrible, difficult time that challenges identity. Alexander's generals were oppressive and tried to Greekify the Jewishness out of the Jews. Those Greek overlords acted in ways that were openly hostile toward the temple, toward the law, toward Jewish custom, toward Jewish dietary customs. Then along come other groups. And just when it looks like maybe we're gonna get back on our feet, here come the Romans. And eventually you've got these people who have known nothing for generation after generation after generation, but frustration and being just barely unable to permanently lay hold of their own identity and their own place in this world. And as a result, I got to think that this structure right here is a balm. It's it's something that could be repeated to say there's a blessing in poverty, there's a blessing in suffering, there are blessings in this world. Remember that God is real and that things are blessed, even in difficult times, and that meditating on wisdom and reflecting on what is right, regardless of what's going on in the world, this is just good. But why is it good? It's just intrinsically good because it's good for its own sake, because it's difficult to really identify the practical, national, blessed consequences of getting this stuff right. Jesus comes along with that exact meme and types different words over the top. He tells them why it is blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, the original audience, I think, would have been listening to this and they would have been like, oh, he's going to open with the old blessed R thing. Sure. I know this. It's like opening with the Pledge of Allegiance, or it's like opening with the national anthem. But then can you imagine if somebody started singing the national anthem and you're like, oh, I know what this communicates culturally, I know what we're doing here, and then the words were different, I think it would have had a similar effect on the audience here. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the next blessed? Oh, could they get something? For this is the kingdom of heaven, for they'll be comforted, for they will inherit the earth, for they'll be filled, for they'll be shown mercy, for they will see God, for they'll be called sons and daughters of God, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. If this beatitude structure was something the original audience already knew when they walked in and Jesus started talking, it means this opening shot of this sermon would have grabbed everybody's attention. It would have exclaimed loud and clear that the speaker believed he had some kind of authority that was even beyond this meme, beyond this structure. I can rewrite even the rules of this statement of blessings because I'm in a position to tell you what comes on the other side of that blessing, what the natural consequence in the kingdom that I'm bringing with me is for those blessed things that the meme can only talk about vaguely. He's taking something known and expanding on it in a way that is very personal and that comes with a sense of promise. I think what this communicates is that all of this vague hope that his audience on that hill was holding out about what might be coming down the pike or God doing something again someday is starting to be given flesh in Jesus. Pun is absolutely intentional. Some people are gonna look at this and say, oh, this is just another thing about Christianity in the Bible where they just rip off things that other religions were already doing or stuff that came from other places. And I don't see it that way at all. There's no way Jesus was gonna try to pass this off in front of a mountain full of people who already knew the meme as being like, I invented this meme. No, that's not the point at all. Instead, the extra layer of meaning here is I am the fulfillment of this meme. I am the fulfillment of what this meme is meant to evoke. And we're gonna talk a lot more about what that idea of fulfillment means as we get a little bit further on into chapter five of Matthew. So here's what we have next. You do not have to be convinced of this meme theory at all. You can go and Google the whole Beatitude Scroll, 4Q525 thing. I'll link to a very accessible version of this information from a guy named Steve Rudd that I found on the interwebs. That'll be down in the show notes so you can look it up for yourself. I do think that we get a hint at what the whole Beatitude thing means from this bit of information. But even if we didn't have this bit of information, I think we can really, with what we've already done, the work we've put in, the thought we've put in, I think we can get a pretty good sense of what this means and what it doesn't mean. And next time around, we're gonna run through that and highlight those things, and then we're gonna be on to that ninth chunk that comes at the end of this Beatitudes meme format. Like I said before, I know this one was long. I'm not gonna make a habit of it, but I don't want to break up this conversation into like five parts. It seemed like it would get confusing. So thanks also to everybody who's leaving reviews of the podcast on whatever podcast app you use. It turns out that really, really helps, and it's super encouraging just to hear that people are with me and enjoying the thing, getting something out of it. That means a lot. All right, we're gonna wrap it up there. I'm Matt, this is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.