
Matthew 4.5-10, Luke 4.5-12.
In Matthew, the order of
- Stones to bread.
Mt 4.3-4 - Jumping from the temple.
Mt 4.5-7 - Bowing before Satan.
Mt 4.8-10
And in Luke, it’s
- Stones to bread.
Lk 4.3-4 - Bowing before Satan.
Mt 4.5-8 - Jumping from the temple.
Lk 4.9-12
The gospels are agreed that
Does it matter? Not really. But if you’re
And if you’re a biblical inerrantist, you’re gonna downplay this fact as much as you possibly can. Because there’s no reasonable explanation for how one of the gospels isn’t wrong about the order of the temptations.
So instead… you’re gonna do the very same thing non-inerrantists like me do. You’re gonna say the order isn’t important. That the authors of the gospels likely put the temptations in the order they did, intentionally—because they were writing to different audiences, and wanted to emphasize different things. The author of Matthew wanted to move from near venues to far—from right there in the wilderness, where Jesus chose to fast; to Jerusalem, the capital of Judea; to the Roman Empire and the world. And Luke chose to end his version of the temptations story in Jerusalem, the epicenter of the Judean religion, to emphasize Jesus’s special relationship with his Father—“if thou be the Son of God,”
And okay, this explanation might work for you. But back when I was a little kid, and my pastors and Sunday school teachers kept insisting the bible is inerrant, this explanation absolutely didn’t work for me. Kids are
Nope, doesn’t work. That is, till you’re older, throw up your hands in frustration, and decide what the heck; we’re gonna accept that either Matthew or Luke changed the order around… yet still call ourselves literalists and inerrantists, because the Fundamentalists in our churches seem to be really insistent that we remain literalists and inerrantists. If we’re not, they might call us
Oh, and please don’t bring up