title: Those who heard it first: The political implications of the sermon on the mount to Jesus’ Jewish audience

authors: Roger Ewald, Lang Jr

subjects: Sermon on Mount

abstract: This dissertation examines the Sermon on the Mount (in the Gospel of Matthew) from the perspective of politics and peace. It investigates not what Jesus meant, but what his audience heard and were likely to have understood. It does this in order to ascertain the novelty or otherwise of Jesus’ teachings on peace with regard to Jewish thought and political understandings of his time. His audience was primarily Jewish, and the political implications they drew from Jesus’ teachings would have been influenced by established Jewish thought on ethics and governance. This dissertation researches specifically this: how would Jesus’ Jewish listeners have interpreted the peace sayings of the Sermon on the Mount? This dissertation finds that the Jewish intellectual framework within which Jesus’ first audience heard the Sermon on the Mount contained many specific sayings found in Pirkei Avot, and also a history of practice of non-violent action found in Jewish tradition, and that the oral law and the Sermon on the Mount both reflect Jewish ethical ideologies of non-violent resistance.

This dissertation argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, a very Jewish Jesus – a man true to the religio-political views of his day – reaffirms a Jewish ethical form of non-violent resistance. The most important evidence available is the Gospel of Matthew itself, Jewish ethical writings such as Pirkei Avot, other Mishna writings, and writings on the lex talionis. The evidence points to an audience that would have perceived Jesus as teaching non-violence in a context of resistance rather than completely passive submission. The overall finding of this dissertation will be that the writer of Matthew depicts a Jesus who, in style, form, and content, builds on a Jewish ethical foundation to promote non-violent assertion of equality and human dignity in the widely known and oft-cited Sermon on the Mount.

text: Those who heard it first: The political implications of the sermon on the mount to Jesus’ Jewish audience This dissertation examines the Sermon on the Mount (in the Gospel of Matthew) from the perspective of politics and peace. It investigates not what Jesus meant, but what his audience heard and were likely to have understood. It does this in order to ascertain the novelty or otherwise of Jesus’ teachings on peace with regard to Jewish thought and political understandings of his time. His audience was primarily Jewish, and the political implications they drew from Jesus’ teachings would have been influenced by established Jewish thought on ethics and governance. This dissertation researches specifically this: how would Jesus’ Jewish listeners have interpreted the peace sayings of the Sermon on the Mount? This dissertation finds that the Jewish intellectual framework within which Jesus’ first audience heard the Sermon on the Mount contained many specific sayings found in Pirkei Avot, and also a history of practice of non-violent action found in Jewish tradition, and that the oral law and the Sermon on the Mount both reflect Jewish ethical ideologies of non-violent resistance.

This dissertation argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, a very Jewish Jesus – a man true to the religio-political views of his day – reaffirms a Jewish ethical form of non-violent resistance. The most important evidence available is the Gospel of Matthew itself, Jewish ethical writings such as Pirkei Avot, other Mishna writings, and writings on the lex talionis. The evidence points to an audience that would have perceived Jesus as teaching non-violence in a context of resistance rather than completely passive submission. The overall finding of this dissertation will be that the writer of Matthew depicts a Jesus who, in style, form, and content, builds on a Jewish ethical foundation to promote non-violent assertion of equality and human dignity in the widely known and oft-cited Sermon on the Mount.

year: 2013

title: By rule or by rote? To what extent does children’s spelling improve as a result of learning words with the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX strategy, compared with phonological spelling strategies?

authors: Dymock, Susan

abstract: The present study was a randomised controlled trial designed to compare the effects of two spelling interventions on spelling of taught words and transfer words. The sample consisted of 55 seven-year-olds, including proficient and less proficient spellers, in two Year 3 classrooms. The spelling interventions were for three lessons per week, 20-minutes per lesson, over 10 weeks. In the first intervention we taught eight spelling strategies that showed children how to stretch out the sounds in words and how to use different phonological spelling strategies, including how to spell short and long vowel sounds and phonics strategies, such as use of the silent e marker, how to break long words into syllables, and the doubling rule. In the second intervention students learned the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX strategy along with putting words to be learned into alphabetical order and writing each word in a sentence. They were not taught any strategies or rules. The control group completed comprehension, vocabulary, and punctuation activities. In order to see if the control group might implicitly learn the words, all groups in all lessons were exposed to the same words by reading a story to them that contained the words. Results for taught words showed that both intervention conditions increased participants’ spelling at an equivalent rate, greater than that of the control condition. For transfer words not taught but that followed similar patterns to the taught words, the strategy intervention showed greater transfer to spelling new words with similar patterns compared with the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX condition and the control condition. For this reason we conclude that although both intervention approaches had strong local effects in terms of learning to spell specific words, teaching rule-based spelling strategies had more global effects in terms of transfer to new words than the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX for both proficient and less proficient spellers.

text: By rule or by rote? To what extent does children’s spelling improve as a result of learning words with the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX strategy, compared with phonological spelling strategies? The present study was a randomised controlled trial designed to compare the effects of two spelling interventions on spelling of taught words and transfer words. The sample consisted of 55 seven-year-olds, including proficient and less proficient spellers, in two Year 3 classrooms. The spelling interventions were for three lessons per week, 20-minutes per lesson, over 10 weeks. In the first intervention we taught eight spelling strategies that showed children how to stretch out the sounds in words and how to use different phonological spelling strategies, including how to spell short and long vowel sounds and phonics strategies, such as use of the silent e marker, how to break long words into syllables, and the doubling rule. In the second intervention students learned the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX strategy along with putting words to be learned into alphabetical order and writing each word in a sentence. They were not taught any strategies or rules. The control group completed comprehension, vocabulary, and punctuation activities. In order to see if the control group might implicitly learn the words, all groups in all lessons were exposed to the same words by reading a story to them that contained the words. Results for taught words showed that both intervention conditions increased participants’ spelling at an equivalent rate, greater than that of the control condition. For transfer words not taught but that followed similar patterns to the taught words, the strategy intervention showed greater transfer to spelling new words with similar patterns compared with the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX condition and the control condition. For this reason we conclude that although both intervention approaches had strong local effects in terms of learning to spell specific words, teaching rule-based spelling strategies had more global effects in terms of transfer to new words than the LOOK, SAY, COVER, WRITE, CHECK, FIX for both proficient and less proficient spellers.

year: 2017

title: Proposing an indigenous power of veto in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Te Aho, Linda

abstract: Tom Fookes was an architect of New Zealand's Resource Management Act passed in 1991 (RMA). When interviewed about his life's work, Tom responded that he had sought to create a 'fair, integrated consideration of the decisions and policy to do with the social, economic and environmental conditions of our people'. I am told that he worked hard to provide a fair opportunity for all people to have a voice in decisions that affect them and places they care about. Processes were included in the RMA to allow this to occur, with particular provisions for a distinctive Maori voice. Because of these provisions, and the Act's lodestar of sustainable resource management, the RMA was promoted as one of the 'world's finest national environmental policies'.

text: Proposing an indigenous power of veto in Aotearoa New Zealand Tom Fookes was an architect of New Zealand's Resource Management Act passed in 1991 (RMA). When interviewed about his life's work, Tom responded that he had sought to create a 'fair, integrated consideration of the decisions and policy to do with the social, economic and environmental conditions of our people'. I am told that he worked hard to provide a fair opportunity for all people to have a voice in decisions that affect them and places they care about. Processes were included in the RMA to allow this to occur, with particular provisions for a distinctive Maori voice. Because of these provisions, and the Act's lodestar of sustainable resource management, the RMA was promoted as one of the 'world's finest national environmental policies'.

year: 2015