FullReads

This discourse is said to have been delivered in a “plain” or “level place” (Luke vi. 17), and by way of distinction we may call it the “Sermon on the Plain.”

I see no reason to doubt that the two Evangelists are dealing, to a considerable extent, with the same traditional material; and a comparison of the two “Sermons” suggests very strongly that “Luke’s” version is the earlier. The correspondences between the two forbid the notion that they are independent. They both begin with a series of blessings, some of which are almost verbally identical. In the middle of each (Luke vi. 27-38, Matt. v. 43-48) there is a striking exposition of the ethical spirit of the command given in Leviticus xix. 18. And each ends with a passage containing the declaration that a tree is to be known by its fruit, and the parable of the house built on the sand. But while there are only 29 verses in the “Sermon on the Plain” there are 107 in the “Sermon on the Mount;” the excess in length of the latter being chiefly due to the long interpolations, one of 30 verses before and one of 34 verses after, the middlemost parallelism with Luke. Under these circumstances it is quite impossible to admit that there is more probability that “Matthew’s” version of the Sermon is historically accurate, than there is that Luke’s version is so; and they cannot both be accurate.

“Luke” either knew the collection of loosely-connected and aphoristic utterances which appear under the name of the “Sermon on the Mount” in “Matthew”; or he did not. If he did not, he must have been ignorant of the existence of such a document as our canonical “Matthew,” a fact which does not make for the genuineness, or the authority, of that book. If he did, he has shown that he does not care for its authority on a matter of fact of no small importance; and that does not permit us to conceive that he believed the first gospel to be the work of an authority to whom he ought to defer, let alone that of an apostolic eye-witness.

The tradition of the Church about the second gospel, which I believe to be quite worthless, but which is all the evidence there is for “Mark’s” authorship, would have us believe that “Mark” was little more than the mouthpiece of the apostle Peter. Consequently, we are to suppose that Peter either did not know, or did not care very much for, that account of the “essential belief and cardinal teaching” of Jesus which is contained in the Sermon on the Mount; and, certainly, he could not have shared Dr. Wace’s view of its importance.[69]

I thought that all fairly attentive and intelligent students of the gospels, to say nothing of theologians of reputation, knew these things. But how can any one who does know them have the conscience to ask whether there is “any reasonable doubt” that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Jesus of Nazareth? If conjecture is permissible, where nothing else is possible, the most probable conjecture seems to be that “Matthew,” having a cento of sayings attributed–rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say–to Jesus among his materials, thought they were, or might be, records of a continuous discourse, and put them in at the place he thought likeliest. Ancient historians of the highest character saw no harm in composing long speeches which never were spoken, and putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors; and I presume that whoever is represented by “Matthew” would have been grievously astonished to find that any one objected to his following the example of the best models accessible to him.

So with the “Lord’s Prayer.” Absent in our representative of the oldest tradition, it appears in both “Matthew” and “Luke.” There is reason to believe that every pious Jew, at the commencement of our era, prayed three times a day, according to a formula which is embodied in the present “Schmone-Esre”[70] of the Jewish prayer-book. Jesus, who was assuredly, in all respects, a pious Jew, whatever else he may have been, doubtless did the same. Whether he modified the current formula, or whether the so-called “Lord’s Prayer” is the prayer substituted for the “Schmone-Esre” in the congregations of the Gentiles, is a question which can hardly be answered.