Abstract
This paper explores the linguistic and communicative complexity of Matthew 5:1–12, commonly known as the Beatitudes, through the lens of Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP). As the opening segment of the Sermon on the Mount—where Jesus Christ preaches the foundational principles of Christian life—the Beatitudes introduce a vision of blessedness that is both spiritually resonant and rhetorically rich. The traditional title, derived from the Latin ‘beatus’ (“blessed, blissful, sainted”), anticipates the central motif of the passage: a series of declarations describing who is blessed and why, framed within the eschatological context of the kingdom of heaven. Despite their apparent simplicity, these statements are semantically and pragmatically dense, even ambiguous—a feature that becomes particularly significant under FSP analysis. Situated within the broader sub-genre of biblical poetic texts, the Beatitudes are marked by ritualization, syntactic repetition, and a high degree of semantic condensation. These characteristics, while serving their pedagogical and liturgical functions, also pose challenges for FSP, especially given the fixed and culturally embedded nature of sacred texts. The study argues that the more a text is ritually and formally stabilized, the less amenable it becomes to unequivocal FSP interpretation. In the case of the Beatitudes, multiple plausible distributions of communicative dynamism exist, none of which can be definitively privileged. Thus, this analysis highlights the need for a nuanced interpretative approach that accounts for the unique structural and theological properties of poetic religious texts, deepening our understanding of how they continue to communicate meaning and authority across diverse cultural and historical contexts.
Presenters
Martin AdamAssociate Professor, English Language and Literature, Masaryk University, Jihoceský kraj, Czech Republic
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Beatitudes, Information Structure, Functional Sentence Perspective, Communicative Dynamism, Semantic Density
