Luke 10:13-15	Matt 11:20-24
	20 Then he began to insult the towns
	where he had performed
	most of his miracles,
	because they had not changed
	their ways:
13 "Damn you, Chorazin!	21 "Damn you, Chorazin!
Damn you, Bethsaida!	Damn you, Bethsaida!
If the miracles done in you	If the miracles done in you
had been done in Tyre and Sidon,	had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would have sat	they would have sat
in sackcloth and ashes	in sackcloth and ashes
and changed their ways long ago.	and changed their ways long ago.
14 But	22 So, I'm telling you,
Tyre and Sidon will be better off	Tyre and Sidon will be better off
at the judgment	on judgment day
than you.	than you.
15 And you, Capernaum,	23 And you, Capernaum,
you don't think	you don't think
you'll be exalted to heaven,	you'll be exalted to heaven,
do you?	do you?
No, you'll go to hell."	No, you'll go to hell.
	Because, if the miracles
	done within your boundaries
	had been done in Sodom,
	Sodom would still be around.
	24 So, I'm telling you,
	the land of Sodom will be better off
	on judgment day
	than you."

Context

Luke's mission speech leads directly to formal condemnations of Galilean towns which have rejected the actions of Jesus (or his followers). Matthew links these warnings to the cluster of sayings about John the Baptist instead (see Matt 11:2-19//Luke 7:18-35 above).

Luke's sequence is probably from Q. For these prophecies of doom follow the instructions about non-receptive towns (Luke 10:12//Matt 11:14) better than criticism of Jesus for dining with sinners (Luke 7:34//Matt 11:19). Even though Matthew gives these condemnations a different setting, he preserves a link to the end of the mission speech by repeating the reference to the destruction of Sodom (Matt 11:23-24).

Matthew may have inserted the Q cluster on Jesus and John between the mission speech and these condemnations because the latter mention miracles; and Jesus' reported response to John (Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22) is the only Q passage that catalogs Jesus' miracles. In any case, the sequence of sayings has been created by writers because of catchwords rather than historical origin.

Form

Three towns are threatened with doom, but there are only two separable sayings. The first is an oracle against a pair of places (Bethsaida and Chorazin), balanced by comparison with another pair (Tyre and Sidon). The second counterbalances a question and threat addressed to a single site (Capernaum). Both were classic prophetic forms of speech in Jewish scripture (e.g., Amos 6:1-2, Ezek 28:9-10).

Sites

All of the places common to Matthew and Luke's oracles are in or near northern Israel. Only Matthew mentions Sodom, the doomed city which tradition located at the southern end of the Dead Sea.  But this reference is probably an editorial echo of the last saying in the mission speech. So, it cannot be traced to Q.

Capernaum is the setting of several stories about Jesus' activity in the canonical gospels, including one from Q (Luke 7:1-10//Matt 8:5-13). Passages associating Jesus with Bethsaida are more vague and sparse (see Mark 6:45, 8:22; Luke 9:10; John 1:44). Both towns were Jewish settlements on the north shore of the sea of Galilee. Chorazin's location is uncertain, since this is the only reference to it in ancient literature. It has been identified with a tell just up the slope from Capernaum. All three sites lie within a five mile radius. All were in fact destroyed, though not till long after Jesus' death.

Tyre and Sidon were major Canaanite seaports on the Mediterranean coast northwest of Galilee, in what is now southern Lebanon. Their proximity and economic power made them a force in the development of Israel's ancient monarchies, though not all for the good. Many Hebrew prophets threatened them with doom; but Tyre fell only to the armies of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

Attribution

These sayings are only in Q and reflect the viewpoint of its collator that gentiles would be more receptive to Jesus than Israelites were (see Luke 7:9//Matt 8:10 above). On the other hand, they focus on the fate of towns that were of little importance to Christians after Jesus, which shows that they are probably very old.

Still, the seminar was almost unanimous in viewing these oracles as products of a later Christian prophet in Galilee rather than Jesus. Both their style and content support this conclusion. There were no red votes.

Cities condemned	%	Red	Pink	Grey	Black	WA	Print
Luke 10:13-15 Matt 11:21-24		0 0	3 3	35 31	62 66	14 13	black black

These condemnations are more typical of traditional oracles of Hebrew prophets than of sayings that can be reliably credited to Jesus. Would the Jesus who counseled others to love their enemies and turn the other cheek tell those who did not accept him to go to Hell?

Besides, these sayings do not explicitly identify the miracles in Bethsaida and Chorazin as deeds of Jesus himself. If Jesus performed such public feats they were not remembered. Mark (8:22-26) tells of curing a blind person in private outside Bethsaida. But this report was not repeated by either Matthew or Luke, much less both. So it was probably unknown to the author of Q. Though Matthew introduces these oracles as addressed to places where Jesus had performed "most of his miracles" (Matt 11:20) he fails to mention a single visit by Jesus to either Chorazin or Bethsaida, much less report anything he did in those towns. And there is no other evidence that Jesus himself did anything in either place.

Several gospel miracle stories are set in Capernaum. But Q's second oracle (Luke 10:15//Matt 11:23a) probably did not mention any miracles at Capernaum, even though Matthew's editorial ending (11:23b) does. Thus, these sayings are not well-situated in records of Jesus' career. Instead they probably reflect the frustration of early Christian prophets after the failure of mission tours by his disciples, like those planned in Q's preceding mission speech.