Luke 11:15

But some of them said, By Beelzebub the prince of the demons casteth he out demons.

This portion of the chapter appears to be descriptive of some of the same incidents and teachings recorded in Matthew 12; but this may not be affirmed dogmatically. How natural it was that the Pharisees would have renewed a charge ascribing Jesus' power to Satan, and how logical that Jesus would have replied to it with strikingly similar words and illustrations. If the two passages are indeed accounts of a single occasion, the entire event may be known by melding the two, and not by an arbitrary preference for either as "the original." We may be very sure that every word recorded in the Gospels was truly spoken by Jesus, and that every event related is truly grounded in a historical occurrence. All three synoptics are similar at this point. See Mark 3:20-30.

In Matthew's record, the slander that Jesus' power was derived from Beelzebub followed the suggestions of the multitude that Jesus indeed was the Messiah; but here it would seem that the campaign of the Pharisees had succeeded in dimming this perception of the crowds that thronged around Jesus, and that here the slander was preventive, in their view, and designed to foreclose any such exclamations by the crowd. This teaching is in an entirely different context in Mark.

Beelzebub ... This name is the same as Baalzebul, being derived through a mocking Hebrew corruption of the name of the old Canaanite god, Baalzebul, meaning "lord of the high place"; the Hebrew alteration of it, Baalzebub, meant "lord of flies" or of "the dunghill." Baal was actually not one god, but many, more accurately referred to as the Baalim. When the Israelites entered Canaan, they found that "every piece of land had its own deity; thus there were many Baals."[21] This was "the name of innumerable local gods controlling fertility of the soil and domestic animals."[22] The name Beelzebub, as used by Luke, however, means "Satan." The Hebrews had developed this insulting name of the old Canaanite god into a common synonym for the devil; and their application of this shameful word in connection with the holy Christ was as vulgar and evil as anything the Pharisees ever did.

[21] The New Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962), p. 115.

[22] Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, Inc., 1972), Vol. 3, p. 71.