To avoid the unpleasant admission that one of two inspired Evangelists must be in error,—which is inevitable if in relation to the same discourse one of them makes Jesus deliver it on the mountain, the other in the plain; the one sitting, the other standing; the one earlier, the other later; if either the one has made important omissions, or the other as important additions;—the ancient harmonists pronounced these discourses to be distinct,[2] on the plea that Jesus must frequently have treated of the essential points of his doctrine, and may therefore have repeated word for word certain impressive enunciations. This may be positively denied with respect to long discourses, and even concise maxims will always be reproduced in a new guise and connexion by a gifted and inventive teacher; to say the least, it is impossible that any but a very barren mind should repeat the same formal exordium, and the same concluding illustration, on separate occasions.
The identity of the discourses being established, the first effort was to conciliate or to explain the divergencies between the two accounts so as to leave their credibility unimpeached. In reference to the different designation of the locality, Paulus insists on the ἐπὶ of Luke, which he interprets to imply that Jesus stood over the plain, and therefore on a hill. Tholuck, more happily, distinguishes the level space, τόπος πεδινὸς, from the plain properly so called, and regards it as a less abrupt part of the mountain. But as one Evangelist makes Jesus ascend the mountain to deliver his discourse, while the other makes him descend for the same purpose, these conciliators ought to admit, with Olshausen, that if Jesus taught in the plain, according to Luke, Matthew has overlooked the descent that preceded the discourse; or if, as Matthew says, Jesus taught seated on the mountain, Luke has forgotten to mention that after he had descended, the pressure of the crowd induced him to reascend before he commenced his harangue. And without doubt each was ignorant of what he omits, but each knew that tradition associated this discourse with a sojourn of Jesus on a mountain. Matthew thought the mountain a convenient elevation for one addressing a multitude; Luke, on the contrary, imagined a descent necessary for the purpose: hence the double discrepancy, for he who teaches from a mountain is sufficiently elevated over his hearers to sit, but he who teaches in a plain will naturally stand. The chronological divergencies, as well as the local, must be admitted, if we would abstain from fruitless efforts at conciliation.[3]
The difference as to the length and contents of the discourse is susceptible of three explanations: either the concise record of Luke is a mere extract from the entire discourse which Matthew gives without abridgment; or Matthew has incorporated many sayings belonging properly to other occasions; or, lastly, both these causes of variety have concurred. He who, with Tholuck, wishes to preserve intact the fides divina, or with Paulus, the fides humana of the Evangelists, will prefer the first supposition, because to withhold the true is more innocent than to add the false. The above theologians hold that the train of thought in the Sermon on the Mount, as given by Matthew, is closely consecutive, and that this is a proof of its original unity. But any compiler not totally devoid of ability, can give a tolerable appearance of connectedness to sayings which did not originally belong to each other; and even these commentators are obliged to admit[4] that the alleged consecutiveness [[336]]extends over no more than half the sermon, for from [vi. 19] it is a string of more or less isolated sentences, some of them very unlikely to have been uttered on the occasion. More recent criticism has therefore decided that the shorter account of Luke presents the discourse of Jesus in its original form, and that Matthew has taken the licence of incorporating with this much that was uttered by Jesus at various times, so as to retain the general sketch—the exordium, peroration, and essential train of thought; while between these compartments he inserted many sayings more or less analogous borrowed from elsewhere.[5] This view is especially supported by the fact that many of the sentences, which in Matthew make part of the Sermon on the Mount, are in Mark and Luke dispersed through a variety of scenes. Compelled to grant this, yet earnestly solicitous to avert from the Evangelist an imputation that might invalidate his claim to be considered an eye-witness, other theologians maintain that Matthew did not compile the discourse under the idea that it was actually spoken on a single occasion, but with the clearest knowledge that such was not the case.[6] It is with justice remarked in opposition to this, that when Matthew represents Jesus as ascending the mountain before he begins his discourse, and descending after its close, he obviously makes these two incidents the limits of a single address; and that when he speaks of the impression which the discourse produced on the multitude, whose presence he states as the inducement to its delivery, he could not but intend to convey the idea of a continuous harangue.[7] As to Luke’s edition of the sermon, there are parts in which the interrupted connexion betrays deficiencies, and there are additions which do not look genuine;[8] it is also doubtful whether he assigns a more appropriate connexion to the passages in the position of which he differs from Matthew;[9] and hence, as we shall soon see more fully, he has in this instance no advantage over his predecessor.
The assemblage to whom the Sermon on the Mount was addressed, might from Luke’s account be supposed a narrow circle, for he states that the choice of the apostles immediately preceded the discourse, and that at its commencement Jesus lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and he does not, like Matthew, note the multitude, ὄχλους, as part of the audience. On the other hand, Matthew also mentions that before the sermon the disciples gathered round Jesus and were taught by him; and Luke represents the discourse as being delivered in the audience of the people ([vii. 1]); it is therefore evident that Jesus spoke to the crowd in general, but with a particular view to the edification of his disciples.[10] We have no reason to doubt that a real harangue of Jesus, more than ordinarily solemn and public, was the foundation of the evangelical accounts before us.
Let us now proceed to an examination of particulars. In both editions, the Sermon on the Mount is opened by a series of beatitudes; in Luke, however, not only are several wanting which we find in Matthew, but most of those common to both are in the former taken in another sense than in the latter.[11] The poor, πτωχοὶ, are not specified as in Matthew by the addition, in spirit, τῷ πνεύματι; they are therefore not those who have a deep consciousness of inward poverty and misery, but the literally poor; neither is the [[337]]hunger of the πεινῶντες (hungering) referred to τὴν δικαιοσύνην (righteousness); it is therefore not spiritual hunger, but bodily; moreover, the adverb νῦν, now, definitely marks out those who hunger and those who weep, the πεινῶντες and κλαίοντες. Thus in Luke the antithesis is not, as in Matthew, between the present sorrows of pious souls, whose pure desires are yet unsatisfied, and their satisfaction about to come; but between present suffering and future well-being in general.[12] This mode of contrasting the αἰὼν οὗτος and the αἰὼν μέλλων, the present age and the future, is elsewhere observable in Luke, especially in the parable of the rich man; and without here inquiring which of the two representations is probably the original, I shall merely remark, that this of Luke is conceived entirely in the spirit of the Ebionites,—a spirit which has of late been supposed discernible in Matthew. It is a capital principle with the Ebionites, as they are depicted in the Clementine Homilies, that he who has his portion in the present age, will be destitute in the age to come; while he who renounces earthly possessions, thereby accumulates heavenly treasures.[13] The last beatitude relates to those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus. Luke in the parallel passage has, for the Son of man’s sake; hence the words for my sake in Matthew, must be understood to refer to Jesus solely in his character of Messiah.[14]
The beatitudes are followed in Luke by as many woes οὐαὶ, which are wanting in Matthew. In these the opposition established by the Ebionites between this world and the other, is yet more strongly marked; for woe is denounced on the rich, the full, and the joyous, simply as such, and they are threatened with the evils corresponding to their present advantages, under the new order of things to be introduced by the Messiah; a view that reminds us of the Epistle of James, [v. 1 ff.] The last woe is somewhat stiffly formed after the model of the last beatitude, for it is evidently for the sake of the contrast to the true prophets, so much calumniated, that the false prophets are said, without any historical foundation, to have been spoken well of by all men. We may therefore conjecture, with Schleiermacher,[15] that we are indebted for these maledictions to the inventive fertility of the author of the third gospel. He added this supplement to the beatitudes, less because, as Schleiermacher supposes, he perceived a chasm, which he knew not how to fill, than because he judged it consistent with the character of the Messiah, that, like Moses of old, he should couple curses with blessings. The Sermon on the Mount is regarded as the counterpart of the law, delivered on Mount Sinai; but the introduction, especially in Luke, reminds us more of a passage in Deuteronomy, in which Moses commands that on the entrance of the Israelitish people into the promised land, one half of them shall take their stand on Mount Gerizim, and pronounce a manifold blessing on the observers of the law, the other half on Mount Ebal, whence they were to fulminate as manifold a curse on its transgressors. We read in [Josh. viii. 33 ff.] that this injunction was fulfilled.[16]
With the beatitudes, Matthew suitably connects the representation of the [[338]]disciples as the salt of the earth, and the light of the world ([v. 13 ff.]). In Luke, the discourse on the salt is, with a rather different opening, introduced in another place ([xiv. 34 f].), where Jesus admonishes his hearers to ponder the sacrifices that must be made by those who would follow him, and rather to abstain from the profession of discipleship than to maintain it dishonourably; and to this succeeds aptly enough the comparison of such degenerate disciples to salt that has lost its savour. Thus the dictum accords with either context, and from its aphoristical conciseness would be likely to recur, so that it may have been really spoken in both discourses. On the contrary, it cannot have been spoken in the sequence in which it is placed by Mark ([ix. 50]): for the idea that every one shall be salted with fire (in allusion to hell), has no internal connexion with the comparison of the true disciples of Jesus to salt, denoting their superiority: the connexion is merely external, resulting from the verbal affinity of ἁλίζειν and ἅλας,—it is the connexion of the dictionary.[17] The altered sequel which Mark gives to the apothegm (have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another) might certainly be united to it without incongruity, but it would accord equally well with quite a different train of thought. The apothegm on the light which is not to be hidden, as the salt is not to be without savour, is also wanting in the Sermon on the Mount as given by Luke; who, however, omitting the special application to the disciples, has substantially the same doctrine in two different places. We find it first ([viii. 16]) immediately after the interpretation of the parable of the sower, where it also occurs in Mark ([iv. 21]), It must be admitted that there is no incoherence in associating the shining of the light with the fructification of the seed; still, a judicious teacher will pause on the interpretation of a parable, and will not disturb its effect by a hasty transition to new images. At any rate there is no intrinsic connexion between the shining of the inward light, and the declaration appended to it by Luke, that all secrets shall be made manifest. We have here a case which is of frequent recurrence with this Evangelist; that, namely, of a variety of isolated sayings being thrown confusedly together between two independent discourses or narratives. Thus between the parable of the sower and the narrative of the visit paid to Jesus by his mother and brethren, the apothegm on the light is inserted on account of its internal analogy with the parable; then, because in this apothegm there occurs the opposition between concealment and manifestation, it suggested to the writer the otherwise heterogeneous discourse on the revelation of all secrets; whereupon is added, quite irrelevantly to the context, but with some relation to the parable, the declaration, Whosoever hath, to him shall be given. In the second passage on the manifestation of the light ([xi. 33]), the subject has absolutely no connexion, unless we interpolate one[18] with that of the context, which turns on the condemnation of the cotemporaries of Jesus by the Ninevites. The fact is, that here again, between the discourses against the demand for signs and those at the Pharisee’s dinner, we have a chasm filled up with disjointed fragments of harangues.
At [v. 17 ff]. follows the transition to the main subject of the sermon; the assurance of Jesus that he came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil, etc. Now as Jesus herein plainly presupposes that he is himself the Messiah, to whom was ascribed authority to abolish a part of the law, this declaration cannot properly belong to a period in which, if [Matt. xvi. 13 ff]. be rightly placed, he had not yet declared himself to be the Messiah. Luke [[339]]([xvi. 17]) inserts this declaration together with the apparently contradictory one, that the law and the prophets were in force until the coming of John. These are two propositions that we cannot suppose to have been uttered consecutively; and the secret of their conjunction in Luke’s gospel lies in the word νόμος, law, which happens to occur in both.[19] It is to be observed that between the parable of the steward and that of the rich man, we have another of those pauses in which Luke is fond of introducing his fragments.
So little, it appears from [v. 20], is it the design of Jesus to inculcate a disregard of the Mosaic law, that he requires a far stricter observance of its precepts than the Scribes and Pharisees, and he makes the latter appear in contrast to himself as the underminers of the law. Then follows a series of Mosaic commandments, on which Jesus comments so as to show that he penetrates into the spirit of the law, instead of cleaving to the mere letter, and especially discerns the worthlessness of the rabbinical glosses (48). This section, in the order and completeness in which we find it in Matthew, is wanting in Luke’s Sermon on the Mount; a decisive proof that the latter has deficiencies. For not only does this chapter contain the fundamental thought of the discourse as given by Matthew, but the desultory sayings which Luke gives, concerning the love of enemies, mercifulness and beneficence, only acquire a definite purpose and point of union in the contrast between the spiritual interpretation of the law given by Jesus, and the carnal one given by the doctors of the time. The words, too, with which Luke makes Jesus proceed after the last woe: But I say unto you, and those at [v. 39], And he spake a parable unto them, have been correctly pointed out as indicative of chasms.[20] As regards the isolated parallel passages, the admonition to a quick reconciliation with an adversary ([v. 25 f.]), is, to say the least, not so easily brought into connexion with the foregoing matter in Luke ([xii. 58]) as in Matthew.[21] It is still worse with the passage in Luke which is parallel with [Matt. v. 32]; this text (relative to divorce), which in Matthew is linked in the general chain of ideas, is in Luke ([xvi. 18]) thrust into one of the apertures we have noticed, between the assurance of the perpetuity of the law and the parable of the rich man. Olshausen tries to find a thread of connexion between the passage and the one preceding it, by interpreting adultery, μοιχεύειν, allegorically, as faithlessness to the divine law; and Schleiermacher[22] attaches it to the succeeding parable by referring it to the adulterous Herod: but such interpretations are altogether visionary.[23] Probably tradition had apprized the Evangelist that Jesus, after the foregoing declaration as to the perpetuity of the Mosaic law, had enunciated his severe principle on the subject of divorce, and hence he gave it this position, not knowing more of its original connexion. In [Matt. xix. 9], we find a reiteration of this principle on an occasion very likely to call it forth. The exhortations to patience and submissiveness, form, in Matthew, the spiritual interpretation of the old rule, an eye for an eye, etc., and are therefore a following out of the previous train of thought. In Luke ([vi. 29]), they are introduced with much less precision by the command concerning love to enemies: which command is also decidedly better given in Matthew as the rectification of the precept, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy ([43 ff.]). Again: the observation that to love friends is nothing more than bad men can do, is, in Matthew, made, in order to controvert the traditional perversion of the Mosaic injunction to love one’s neighbour, into a [[340]]permission to hate enemies: in Luke, the observation follows the rule, Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, etc., which in Matthew occurs farther on ([vii. 12]) without any connexion. On the whole, if the passage in [Luke from vi. 2–36], be compared with the corresponding one in Matthew, there will be found in the latter an orderly course of thought; in the former, considerable confusion.[24]
The warnings against Pharisaic hypocrisy ([vi. 1–6]) are without a parallel in Luke; but he has one of the model prayer, which recent criticism has turned not a little to the disadvantage of Matthew. The ancient harmonists, it is true, had no hesitation in supposing that Jesus delivered this prayer twice,—in the connexion in which it is given by Matthew, as well as under the circumstances narrated by Luke ([xi. ff.]).[25] But if Jesus had already in the Sermon on the Mount given a model prayer, his disciples would scarcely have requested one afterwards, as if nothing of the kind had occurred; and it is still more improbable that Jesus would repeat the same formulary, without any recollection that he had delivered it to these disciples long before. Hence our most recent critics have decided that Luke alone has preserved the natural and true occasion on which this prayer was communicated, and that like many other fragments, it was interpolated in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount by the writer.[26] But the vaunted naturalness of Luke’s representation, I, for one, cannot discover. Apart from the improbability, admitted even by the above critics, that the disciples of Jesus should have remained without any direction to pray until the last journey, in which Luke places the scene; it is anything but natural that Jesus should abstain from giving his disciples the exemplar which was in his mind until they sought for it, and that then he should forthwith fall into prayer. He had, doubtless, often prayed in their circle from the commencement of their intercourse; and if so, their request was superfluous, and must, as in [John xiv. 9], have produced only an admonition to recollect what they had long seen and heard in his society. The account of Luke seems to have been framed on mere conjecture; it was known that the above prayer proceeded from Jesus, and the further question as to the motive for its communication, received the gratuitous answer: without doubt his disciples had asked him for such an exemplar. Without, therefore, maintaining that Matthew has preserved to us the connexion in which this prayer was originally uttered by Jesus, we are not the less in doubt whether it has a more accurate position in Luke.[27] With regard to the elements of the prayer, it is impossible to deny what Wetstein says: tota hæc oratio ex formulis Hebræorum concinnata est;[28] but Fritzsche’s observation is also just, that desires of so general a nature might be uttered in the prayers of various persons, even in similar phraseology, without any other cause than the broad uniformity of human feeling.[29] We may add that the selection and allocation of the petitions in the prayer are entirely original, and bear the impress of that religious consciousness which Jesus possessed and sought to impart to his followers.[30] Matthew inserts after the conclusion of the prayer two propositions, which are properly the corollary of the third petition, but which seem inaptly placed, not only because they are severed by the concluding petition from the passage to which they have reference, but because they have no point of coincidence [[341]]with the succeeding censures and admonitions which turn on the hypocrisy of the Pharisaic fasts. Mark, however, has still more infelicitously appended these propositions to the discourse of Jesus on the efficacy of believing prayer ([xi. 25]).[31]