A Closer Look at Luke’s Four Beatitudes and Woes

I have spent a fair bit of time examining Luke’s beatitudes and woes, so it is highly possible that I will get carried away in this post and start mentioning the tiniest details. However, I will do my best to restrain myself.

A Closer Look at Matthew’s Nine Beatitudes

In the previous post, I translated Matthew’s beatitudes and Luke’s beatitudes and woes, pointing out some of their similarities and differences. In this post, I am going to focus on Matthew’s beatitudes, looking at how these nine beatitudes fit together. I will do the same for Luke’s beatitudes and woes in the next post.

The Beatitudes according to Matthew and Luke

Over the past three years, my research has focused on the beatitudes and woes in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 6:20-26). As a result, I am way more familiar with Luke’s beatitudes than the more famous series in Matthew 5. To try and rectify this, I am going to do a series of posts comparing these two series of beatitudes (and, in Luke’s case, woes).
Let’s begin with a translation of the two passages.

Expanded translation of Luke 6:20-26

I recently had my thesis defence, the final stage in what has seemed like a long process. One of the examiners for my PhD thesis asked in his report if I could provide an expanded translation of Luke 6:20-26. Unfortunately, this question never made it to the defence itself, but I have been fascinated by it, so I had to go ahead and do it anyway.

Mountains

A PhD is a very time-consuming exercise. I have just realised that it has been more than a year since I have posted anything. This unintentional oversight is because the process of writing is taking up most of my time, but also because I am working on the central ideas of my thesis and as a result come across less of the interesting side notes that I tend to write about here.

I am currently in my final year of the PhD, with only months left to get everything coherent, well edited and sent off for examination. It is a truly terrifying thought.