“Think not that I have come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. … For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5: 17-18, 20 (King James Version)

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount may not be William Shakespeare’s language, but a literature professor and theologian who will speak in Bangor next week believes that the values espoused by the Bard and the themes of his plays are rooted in Christian teachings.

The Rev. Peter Leithart, who teaches at New Saint Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho, will analyze Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” in a public lecture Monday.

The Rev. Brian Nolder, pastor of Pilgrim Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bangor, invited Leithart to Maine.

Nolder and Leithart grew up in the same Columbus, Ohio, suburb but did not know each other. They met about 15 years ago when Leithart visited Westminster Theological Seminary outside Philadelphia while Nolder was a student there.

“A lot of people think that the Christian faith is just for the religious slice of our life,” Nolder said. “I think one of the things [Leithart] will be doing is showing us how God can impact every area of life – work, literature, recreation – and he should impact all life because we believe Jesus is lord of all.”

All great stories mimic or reflect the Christ story in some way, Nolder said. That story is the drama of rescuing humanity trapped in sin, so all great drama is going to reflect that.

“Merchant,” categorized as a comedy, tells the story of the debt a Venetian noble takes on for a friend so he may seek a bride. When the noble’s ships are lost at sea and he is unable to repay it, Shylock, the Jewish moneylender he borrowed from, takes him to court and demands a pound of his flesh instead.

The court agrees, provided Shylock removes the flesh without causing the noble to bleed.

In the climactic courtroom scene, the heroine Portia, disguised as a male lawyer, tells Shylock, “This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.” The word “jot,” according to Leithart, not only denotes “a whit” or the “smallest amount,” it evokes Jesus’ claims about his relation to the law in the Sermon on the Mount.

“This allusion is doubly relevant,” Leithart wrote in December in a posting on his Web site. “First, because Shylock is clearly an example of the false righteousness of scribes and Pharisees, who insist on the letter of the law, but fail to recognize that mercy is the heart of the Torah.

“Second,” he wrote, “because the very point of the courtroom drama enacted in the play is that ‘not one jot or tittle of the law’ shall be annulled. Shakespeare was a good New Testament scholar. Jesus does not come to abolish but to fulfill; the Gospel does not annul the law, but confirms it.”

Leithart has said that Shakespeare used two basic models of biblical stories – the fall of man and his redemption – in his plays.

Christian themes are woven throughout “The Merchant of Venice,” Leithart said earlier this week in an e-mail response to questions.

“One of the basic things in the play is the contrast between the Old Testament (Jew) and the New (Christian)” he wrote. “That links up with a contrast between law, justice and mercy, a theme that comes to a climax in Portia’s ‘the quality of mercy’ speech in the courtroom scene.

“Mercy triumphs over justice in the play,” he said, “but interestingly, mercy doesn’t triumph by ignoring or dismissing justice, but by a strict application of the letter of the law. I always think of Paul when I work on this play – Paul says that grace doesn’t nullify the law, but fulfills it.”

By modern standards, Shakespeare’s portrait of Shylock is an unflattering and insulting stereotype. He “is a round character” by Elizabethan standards, according to Leithart.

“Shakespeare, in contrast to some of his contemporaries, goes out of his way to humanize Shylock,” he said in an e-mail. “At the same time, the imagery of the play makes it clear that Shylock is the villain of the piece. … the play ultimately turns back against the Christian characters, exposing their hypocrisy and lack of mercy. ‘Which the merchant, which the Jew?’ Portia asks when she arrives at court, and Shakespeare is raising that same question in the play.”

If you go …

Peter Leithart, professor of theology and literature at New Saint Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho, will speak at 7 p.m. Monday, April 3, at the Dyke Center for Family Business at Husson College in Bangor.

In his lecture, “The Spirituality of the Bard: Shakespeare as a Christian Playwright,” Leithart will analyze “The Merchant of Venice.” His lecture is sponsored by Grace Evangelical Center for Undergraduate Studies & Seminary and the Husson College chapter of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship.