Note 3 — Chapter VI · THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.1

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