Matt. 6:1-8. Left hand. Notes

DLL.1* . Disclaimer: I have no wish to judge any particular person or institution here.

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DLL.1a* . Several years ago I received, without cost to me, a cancer drug paid for by a foundation.

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DLL.2* . Please see the post
My About-face on the Shroud
https://newzioncall.blogspot.com/2020/01/wednesday-october-30-2019-my-aboutface.html

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DLL.X1. When Jesus prefaces his teaching with the word amen, he is quoting from the Hebrew Scriptures as a means of conveying the authority of his words. Though my paraphrases seriously and I mean it when I tell you get across the point as well as the traditional English renderings of verily and truly, we should keep in mind that the way Jesus uses amen should be heard as Jesus saying that a word of God is now being directly revealed.

According to the scholar Bruce M. Metzger,

The point of the amen before such sayings is to show that their truth is guaranteed because Jesus himself, in his amen, acknowledges them to be his own sayings, thus making them valid. The whole implication is that through this characteristic mode of speech Jesus affirms his unique authority, presenting himself as one who speaks in the name of and with the sanction of God himself. The reader is not surprised, therefore, to be told at the close of Jesus' 'Sermon on the Mount' that "the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes." (Matt. 7:28-29)

In the Sermon, the amen sayings are found at Matt. 5:18, Matt. 5:26, Matt. 6:2, Matt. 6:5 and Matt. 6:16. Metzger is quoted in his The New Testament -- Its Background, Growth, and Content (Abingdon 1965; second, enlarged edition 1983).