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Herewith, I post another brief set of preliminary notes for (this time) a couple<\/em> of chapters in my projected book on the Beatitudes.\u00a0 The first two entries in this littler series are \u201cIntroducing a Blog Focus for the Sabbath\u201d<\/a> and \u201c\u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit.\u201d\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 So here, for whatever it\u2019s worth, is my third installment:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the King James Version of the Bible, Matthew 5:4 reads as follows:\u00a0 \u201cBlessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted [\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9].\u201d<\/p>\n The Greek word \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03b8\u03ae\u03c3\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 (in transliteration, parakl\u0113th\u0113sontai<\/em>) is the term that is rendered in the KJV as \u201cthey shall be comforted.\u201d\u00a0 It might perhaps ring a bell even with non-readers of Greek:\u00a0 The Holy Ghost is commonly called the \u201cComforter.\u201d\u00a0 The first place in the Bible where that term is used in that sense is John 14:16-17:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter [\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd], that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The word that the KJV renders as \u201cComforter\u201d is \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 [Latin paracletus<\/i>], which often shows up even in English as \u201c[the] Paraclete.\u201d\u00a0 It might also plausibly be translated as \u201chelper\u201d or \u201cadvocate.\u201d\u00a0 In any case, it\u2019s clearly a close relative of the Greek verb in Matthew 5:4, which suggests, quite truthfully, that mourners will \u2014 or, at least, can<\/em> \u2014 receive the Spirit, the Comforter.<\/p>\n This is certainly true for believers.\u00a0 Because of the assurance of life beyond the grave, and because of the miraculous defeat of death effected by the resurrection of Christ, they can have confidence that mourning is not the final word.\u00a0 To borrow language from the Psalmist, \u201cweeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning\u201d (Psalm 30:5).\u00a0 And resurrected life won\u2019t merely be a resumed<\/em> life.\u00a0 It will be a glorified<\/em> life.\u00a0 Moreover, as the Prophet Joseph Smith testified,\u00a0\u201cAll your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection.\u00a0 By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, though, our confidence in the future making-right of all things can and will be sorely tried and wrenchingly tested.\u00a0 (For some thoughts on that, see my recent remarks to the U.S. Haz\u0101ra Conference 2022, which have now been published as \u201cBeautiful Patience.\u201d<\/a>). Many of us have asked ourselves the perpetual question implicitly posed by the biblical Job:<\/p>\n \u201cThe tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure.\u201d\u00a0 (Job 12:6)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I remember when I myself began, as a teenager, to grow serious about the gospel.\u00a0 I quickly discovered that, where some of my high school friends could get drunk and be immoral and swear and do everything else with a seemingly clear conscience and in apparent happiness, I agonized over being late to priesthood meeting.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t fair.\u00a0 My newly-hypersensitive conscience seemed to make me less happy than they<\/em> were!<\/p>\n I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked . . .\u00a0 They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men . . .\u00a0 Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish . . .\u00a0 Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.<\/p>\n Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.<\/p>\n For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.\u00a0 (Psalm 73:3, 5, 7, 12-14)<\/p>\n Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord.\u00a0 Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?<\/p>\n Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?<\/p>\n And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.<\/p>\n Then they that feared the Lord spake often to one another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.<\/p>\n And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.<\/p>\n Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.\u00a0 (Malachi 3:13-18)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, that\u2019s a hasty first pass at Matthew 5:4.\u00a0 We now move on to an even hastier glance at the verse immediately following:<\/p>\n The King James translation of Matthew 5:5 is: \u201cBlessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n The first thing that leaps out here is the positive valuation of \u201cthe earth.\u201d\u00a0 This is very biblical.\u00a0 Consider, for example, the final verse of the creation narrative given in Genesis 1:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Such a positive attitude wasn\u2019t universally shared in antiquity, though, and it isn\u2019t universally shared today.\u00a0 In his dialogue Phaedo<\/em>, for instance, Plato has Socrates refer to philosophy as \u201cthe practice of death.\u201d\u00a0 What he seems to have meant by this is that the philosopher tries to remove herself from the distractions of the sensible world \u2014 in effect, to will a separation of mind or spirit from body \u2014 in order to reflect more perfectly on the eternal, unchanging, and invisible world of the Platonic \u201cForms\u201d or \u201cIdeas.\u201d<\/p>\n With this <\/em>sort of attitude, who would want<\/em> to \u201cinherit the earth\u201d?\u00a0 Why, for that matter, would anybody want to be resurrected<\/em>?\u00a0 Who would want that old, distracting physical body back?\u00a0 Who, after the liberation of death, would want to return to dragging a physical carcass around?\u00a0 \u00a0Consider, too, this passage about the great founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (204\/5-270 AD), from the first chapter of On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of His Work<\/em>, by his student, admirer, and editor Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 234-ca. 305 AD):<\/p>\n \u201cPlotinus, the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in the body.\u00a0 So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.\u00a0 He showed, too, an unconquerable reluctance to sit to a painter of a sculptor, and when Amelius persisted in urging him to allow of a portrait being made he asked him, \u2018Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you really think I must also consent to leave, as a desired spectacle to posterity, an image of the image?\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Perhaps influenced by Platonism, the gnostics wanted nothing more than to escape this world.\u00a0 And, curiously, they have been followed by generations of Christians \u2014 as is illustrated, I think, in hermeticism and monasticism, but not only there.\u00a0 Is a resurrected physical body really necessary for, or even relevant to, the notion of salvation as \u201cbeatific vision\u201d (understood by some, at least, as a largely if not purely intellectual contemplation of God)?\u00a0 Would it not, rather, be if anything an obstacle and a distraction?<\/p>\n However, what about the \u201cmeek\u201d who are pronounced \u201cblessed\u201d in Matthew 5:5?<\/p>\n Meek<\/em> comes from an old Germanic root meaning \u201cmild,\u201d \u201cgentle,\u201d or \u201csoft.\u201d[i]<\/a>.\u00a0 The Greek is \u03c0\u03c1\u03b1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c2, meaning not only \u201cmeek\u201d but \u201cgentle\u201d or, in the case of animals, \u201ctame.\u201d\u00a0 It can also have the sense of \u201cgentle,\u201d \u201clow,\u201d or \u201csoft\u201d when used with regard to sounds.<\/p>\n But we are certainly not talking, here, of anything weak or Casper Milquetoast:<\/p>\n \u201cNow the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.\u201d\u00a0 (Numbers 12:3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n