Worthy of Another Look: Reusages of the Words of Christ

Jesus quoted key phrases, often in inverted order, from the Sermon on the Mount (3 Nephi 12–14) in subsequent Book of Mormon chapters (3 Nephi 15–28), thus demonstrating that the sermon was accepted as an authoritative text establishing and defining Jesus’s kingdom on earth. Although rarely considered in this light, Peter, James, Paul, and the gospel writers quoted from all parts of the Sermon on the Mount, similarly substantiating the authoritative functions of the sermon as a foundational text in early Christianity. Literary analysis supports the ideas that these quotations were intentional, that an awareness of the sermon was widespread in the earliest decades of Christianity, and that audiences to which Jesus and his apostles spoke were familiar with the teachings and commandments found in the Sermon on the Mount.