Matthew 22:34-40

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is similar: Love your neighbor as yourself."

This is one of the most familiar passages in the New Testament. The gospel of Matthew records that when Jesus is asked by a Pharisee to identify the greatest commandment in the Jewish law, he quotes two commandments: the first from Deuteronomy 6:5 and the second from Numbers 19:18. In the account of this same incident in the gospel of Luke it is a lawyer who puts the question to Jesus, and in the gospel of Luke Jesus asks the lawyer how he understands the law. Then the lawyer quotes the same two commandments.

Are these three gospel accounts different memories of the same event? It is more likely that the gospels of Matthew and Luke have adapted the account in Mark 12:28-34. The gospel of Matthew emphasizes the authority of Jesus as teacher and interpreter of the Jewish law, whereas the gospel of Luke is happy to allow the Jewish lawyer to interpret his own law because it is presenting the story of Jesus to a largely Gentile community.

When the church included both the gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament, it might have edited one or the other to make these stories consistent. But the church chose not to alter the gospel accounts that various Christian communities were reading. The New Testament cares more for witness than for history.

Grace and peace...Bob