Quoted out of context – as they often are – these verses seem more appropriate to the Qur'an than to the Gospels; they sound like a cry of Muhammad proclaiming a Jihad or holy war, rather than a genuine utterance of the Prince of Peace.

Their context in the Gospels, however, is important if we are to seek to understand their original meaning. They are found in the ‘double tradition’, the source Q – which seems to have weathered continuous criticism – and appear in a variant form in Luke: ‘do you suppose I came to establish peace on earth? No, indeed, I have come to bring division’ (NEB) (διαμεϱιoμóν for μάχαιϱαν ‘sword’). In both Matthew and Luke this saying is followed by an adaptation of Mic. 7: 6,2 so that, for the common source of both evangelists, the conflict of division, which Christ here declares he had come to bring, was not one within nations, or even within a single nation, but within families – a situation all too familiar in Christian missionary history. Although omitted by Matthew, Luke 12: 49 contains a similar kind of saying (‘I came to cast fire upon the earth …’) which, there is good reason to think, comes from the same source (Q) and which certainly occurs in the same logia-group (Luke 12:49–53), so that any interpretation of Matt. 10: 34 par. would then require to take some account of its twin-saying at Luke 12:49.