Moses Interpreted by the Pharisees and Jesus: Matthew's Antitheses in the Light of Early Rabbinic Literature

The study deals with one of the central parts of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, commonly called the antitheses. Matthew 5:17-48 presents these contrapositions of the Pharisees and Jesus on certain biblical injunctions in an abbrevoated and biased form. By studying the antitheses in the light of early rabbinic sources we gain adequate background information enabling us to discover - apart from some points that do not correspond to present-day conceptions - valuable teachings and insights, many of which were shared by Jesus.