"Fire from Hell," or "You are the Salt of the Earth." On the Interpretation of Matthew 5:13
Abstract
This essay is an attempt to explore different contexts of the phrase “you are the salt of the earth” found in Matt 5:13, one of the most confusing expressions used in the whole of the New Testament. The author deals with its original meaning, exposing in the process the earliest layers of transmission of Jesus’ sayings. Versed in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus combined the meanings of MLḤ in Exod 30:35 (incense salted is potent/good/pure/holy) with that in Isa 51:6 and Jer 38:11–12 (something MLḤ might vanish away/wax old/become rotten) and put it in a new context. Jesus’ pun – loaded with multiple layers of meanings and shades of meanings – was lost in translation as simply “salt.”
Keywords:
Matthew 5:13, Gehenna, fire of Hell, Babylonian Talmud, Judeo-Aramaic and Palestinian Arabic, Dead Sea, Salt Sea, Trito-Isaiah, Sermon on the mountainReferences
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Bar-Ilan University
Dan Shapira is a Full Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. He is the author of about 200 publications in such fields as Iranian Studies, Turkic Studies, Karaite and Khazar Studies, Armenian and Georgian Studies, and more. https://biu.academia.edu/DShapira
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