Note 20 — Chapter VI · THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.1

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 Schleiermacher22 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 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