209 THE LAST BEATITUDE. JOY SUFFERING IN Can this tradition go back to Jesus? Even though the elements concerning joy and suffering are present in the preaching of Jesus and the whole logion bears a deep Christological dimension, there are some difficulties concerning its authenticity 114. According to Bultmann, persecution in itself could lie beyond what Jesus expected 115. However, accepting the possibility of a Messianic conscience would help to recognize that Jesus could foreknow in some sense the consequences of His sacrifice and self-giving through suffering. The last beatitude and its development in the early Christian community shows a redactional milieu, which emphasizes the eschatological dimension of the proclaimed kingdom and the person of Jesus speaking with the authority of God 116. Some parallels are present in Jewish apocalyptical writings, but none of those texts are able to express God’s age of salvation and grace that comes in the announcement of the blessings. The words of this last beatitude go back to Jesus insofar as they caused a great stir in the early Christian community. And 1 Pet is a good witness of that reality. Pontificia Università della Santa Croce Bernardo ESTRADA Via dei Farnesi, 82 - 00186 Roma SUMMARY The motive of joy in suffering for Jesus’ sake, makes the last beatitude in Matt 5,11-12 and Luke 6,22-23 different from the former blessings. The persecution form present in this beatitude seems to be an authentic saying of Jesus, subsequently widespread in NT literature. Such a motive, in fact, does not appear in Judaism and in intertestamental or in apocryphal literature. The First Letter of Peter is instead a special witness of “joy in suffering”. Cf. DUPONT, Béatitudes II, 380. 114 Cf. R. BULTMANN, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen 115 1961) 115: “Traditionsstück (...) ex eventu, und also von der Gemeinde 5 gebildet ist ”. Cf. SCHWEIZER, The Good News According to Matthew, 97. 116