Dear Explorer,
I have tried to keep everything chronological to the best of my understanding and based on other scholar's work. However, when it comes to Jesus' teachings, we find that Jesus taught the same things over and over. Jesus wanted to make sure that His disciples would remember what He taught, so, He repeated Himself at different locations and different times. While one writer may record a sermon early in Jesus' ministry, other writers may record it as happening much later. I don't have a problem with that. We know that Jesus taught the same thing at different times, sometimes with slight variations.
For ease of studying, I have combined all of Jesus' teachings on a particular subject so that we will only study His teachings once even though they may be recorded multiple times and preached at various places. That will mess up the chronology but ease the study.
Read Matthew 5:1-2
And
Read Luke 6:17-19
The first Sermon that we will look at is a good example. Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount near the beginning of Jesus' ministry and states that Jesus sat on the side of a mountain to teach it. Luke, however, records a very similar sermon, but places it at a later time period and doesn't mention a mountain. We will compare and contrast the two sermons, but you will find that the points are very similar.
In today's study, we'll only look at the introduction to this Sermon. It is often called the Beatitudes.
There are striking differences between the two accounts. If they were preached at two different times, we could assume that Jesus included some parts and took out others depending on the crowd's needs.
But there's a second possibility for the differences. Remember that when there are two witnesses who see or hear something, their report will be different based on their current thinking and their current emotions or thoughts. I believe it is possible that Matthew and Luke listened to the same sermon preached at different times but heard different things.
Read Matthew 5:3-12
and
Read Luke 6:20-23
What differences did you notice in the introduction recorded by these two writers?
Matthew seems to focus on the spiritual character, while Luke seems to focus on the physical aspects. Matthew lists more “blessed's” than Luke. Luke leaves some of them out.
We'll continue to discuss the Beatitudes tomorrow.
In His service, dale
Next study