Luke gives the charm of sentimental romance to every incident. The
Annunciation, as described by Matthew, is made to Joseph, and is simply
a warning to him not to divorce his wife for misconduct. In Luke's
gospel it is made to Mary herself, at much greater length, with a sense
of the ecstasy of the bride of the Holy Ghost. Jesus is refined and
softened almost out of recognition: the stern peremptory disciple of
John the Baptist, who never addresses a Pharisee or a Scribe without
an insulting epithet, becomes a considerate, gentle, sociable, almost
urbane person; and the Chauvinist Jew becomes a pro-Gentile who
is thrown out of the synagogue in his own town for reminding the
congregation that the prophets had sometimes preferred Gentiles to Jews.
In fact they try to throw him down from a sort of Tarpeian rock which
they use for executions; but he makes his way through them and escapes:
the only suggestion of a feat of arms on his part in the gospels.
There is not a word of the Syrophenician woman. At the end he is calmly
superior to his sufferings; delivers an address on his way to execution
with unruffled composure; does not despair on the cross; and dies with
perfect dignity, commending his spirit to God, after praying for the
forgiveness of his persecutors on the ground that "They know not what
they do." According to Matthew, it is part of the bitterness of his
death that even the thieves who are crucified with him revile him.
According to Luke, only one of them does this; and he is rebuked by the
other, who begs Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom.
To which Jesus replies, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,"
implying that he will spend the three days of his death there. In short,
every device is used to get rid of the ruthless horror of the Matthew
chronicle, and to relieve the strain of the Passion by touching
episodes, and by representing Christ as superior to human suffering. It
is Luke's Jesus who has won our hearts.