Why do Matthew and Luke give different numbers of beatitudes?

Neither Gospel says how many beatitudes Jesus spoke, so the two accounts would conflict only if each claimed to be complete, and neither does. Matthew gives eight blessings in a balanced series (Matthew 5:3–10) and a ninth addressed directly to the disciples (5:11–12), which some count as part of the eighth. Luke gives four blessings, each set against a woe: the poor and the rich, the hungry and the full, those who weep and those who laugh, the hated and those of whom all speak well (Luke 6:20–26).

On the usual view these are two reports of one sermon, each writer choosing from what Jesus said. Both open with blessings, and both close with the parable of the two builders (Matthew 7:24–27; Luke 6:47–49), but Matthew’s account (Matthew 5–7) is nearly four times as long as Luke’s (Luke 6:20–49). Luke kept four blessings in the second person, “Blessed be ye poor”, set against four woes. Matthew kept a fuller set, in which “the poor in spirit” and those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” bring out the inward side of Luke’s poor and hungry. Gill reads Luke this way: Jesus said what Luke records ‘with many other things recorded by Matthew’. A shorter report of a sermon is still a true report.

Two sermons

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and others think Matthew and Luke record two different sermons. Luke’s is little more than a quarter of the length of Matthew’s, has woes of its own, and follows the choosing of the Twelve. Jesus, like any travelling preacher, would have given the same teaching more than once, in different forms. On this view there is nothing to reconcile.

Christians differ over whether Matthew and Luke report one sermon or two. On either view the different numbers of blessings are no contradiction.