ὄχλος AD. πολὺς is added in אBL.

17. καὶ καταβὰς μετ' αὐτῶν ἔστη ἐπὶ τόπου πεδινοῦ. ‘And descending with them, He stopped on a level place.’ τόπος πεδινός also occurs in Isaiah 13:2, LXX[135] If the phrase be thus rendered there is no discrepancy between St Luke and St Matthew, who says that “He went up into the mountain, and when He sat down His disciples approached Him” (Matthew 5:1). I believe that St Luke here meant to give such portions of the Sermon on the Mount as suited his design. Combining the two narratives with what we know of the scene, we see that what occurred was as follows. The previous evening Jesus went to one of the peaks of Kurn Hattin (withdrawing Himself from His disciples, who doubtless bivouacked at no great distance), and spent the night in prayer. In the morning He called His disciples and chose Twelve Apostles. Then going with them to some level spot, either the flat space (called in Greek πλάξ) between the two peaks of the hill, or some other spot near at hand, He preached His sermon primarily to His disciples, who sat immediately around Him, but also to the multitudes. There is no need to assume two discourses—one esoteric and one exoteric, &c. At the same time there is of course no difficulty in supposing that our Lord may have uttered the same discourse, or parts of the same discourse, more than once, varying it as occasion required. We need only notice for its curiosity the puerile fancy of Baur, that St Luke wished to degrade the Sermon on the Mount to a lower standpoint! Christ did not descend to the plain nor even, as the Genevan renders, to “the champaign country,” but, as Wyclif renders it with admirable fidelity both to the Greek and to the actual site, to a “fieldy place” (Vulg[136] in loco campestri).

[135] LXX. Septuagint.
[136] Vulg. Vulgate.

ἀπὸ πάσης τῆς Ἰουδαίας. St Matthew adds Galilee (which was to a great extent Greek), Decapolis, and Peraea; St Mark also mentions Idumaea. Thus there were Jews, Greeks, Phoenicians, and Arabs among our Lord’s hearers.

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Old Testament