The first verse in The Immanence Bible in Verse is from what is now called Chapter Five of Matthew. Of course, Bibles did not have verse numbers until more than 1,000 years after Jesus' appearance on the planet. We divided the writings into chapters early on. But verse numbers came much later. In TIBIV we go back in time: there are chapter numbers, but no verse numbers.
So, the first verse in TIBIV is this one:
Seeing the multitudes, he goes up
onto a mountain. When he sits down
those who are thinking
come to him.
Mountains are good places to learn and think. And a good place leave the multitudes behind. When Jesus goes up onto a mountain, those who wanted to engage with him, as they thought things through, headed in his direction. It is an interesting commentary on our culture that most of our Bibles translate the Greek word MATHETES as "disciple." That is not necessarily a bad translation. The problem is that this Greek word comes from the root sense of "learning." Not from "to discipline." TIBIV tries to reflect that etymology a little more clearly and perhaps let us hear Jesus in a fresh way.
That's the point of this new translation, The Immanence Bible in Verse. Jesus was not dictating precisely how a human life is to be lived. He was thinking through the idea of "the kingdom of heaven." Or, as TIBIV translates (very literally), "the realm of upward vision." Jesus wants us to think about life: about how we all might live in accord with the highest vision we have of human society. That's the point of this challenge/teaching as found in Matthew 5.
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