What are the differences between Matthew's account of the temptation of Jesus and Luke's account?

Answer 1

Both accounts are based on Mark's brief acoount of the temptation of Jesus (Mark 1:12-13) and the more detailed 'Q' version (Q 4:1-13), and therefore have more in common than their differences.

The main difference between these two accounts is the order in which events occurred. Matthew says that the devil set Jesus on a pinnacle of the Temple and told him to jump, because if he was really the Son of God, the angels would catch him. Then the devil took Jesus up to a high mountain and said that Jesus coud rule everything he saw, if only he worshipped the devil. Jesus dismissed the devil and, when he had left, the angels came and ministered to Jesus. Luke says that the first place the devil took Jesus was the high mountain, then to the Temple, after which the devil left him. Although no copy of 'Q' now exists, scholars believe that Luke's version more closely follows the original than does Matthew's.

Answer 2

Matthew's Gospel and Luke's Gospel are similar in that both were substantially based on Mark's Gospel, with further sayings material attributed to Jesus taken from the hypothetical 'Q' document. Although Q provided many of the sayings and proverbs, it did not provide the context in which Jesus might have spoken them, so each evangelist had to create his own location and circumstances. Thus we find the beatitudes in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and four of them in Luke's Sermon on the Plain.

The nativity accounts in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are entirely different from each other, and John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus), says that neither of the nativity stories contains any historical truth.

As another example, the accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus differ between the two gospels because Mark originally ended at verse 16:8, with the young man telling the women that Jesus was risen and they fled in terror, telling no one. With no guidance from Mark, both evangelists wrote what they thought might have happened, and each wrote a very different story.