A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume V: Probing the Authenticity of the Parables 9780300216479

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A Marginal Jew

Volume Five

The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library is a project of international and interfaith scope in which Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars from many countries contribute individual volumes. The project is not sponsored by any ecclesiastical orga­ nization and is not intended to reflect any particular theological doctrine. The series is committed to producing volumes in the tradition established half a century ago by the founders of the Anchor Bible, William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman. It aims to present the best contemporary scholarship in a way that is accessible not only to scholars but also to the educated non­ specialist. It is committed to work of sound philological and his­ torical scholarship, supplemented by insight from modern meth­ ods, such as sociological and literary criticism.

John J. Collins General Editor

The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library

A Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus

Y Volume Five

Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

John P. Meier

AY B R L

Yale university press New Haven and London

“Anchor Yale Bible” and the Anchor Yale logo are registered trademarks of Yale University. Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College. Copyright © 2016 by John P. Meier. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or sales@ yaleup.co.uk (U.K. office). Set in Sabon type by Newgen. Printed in the United States of America. Imprimatur—New York, NY, June 1, 2015—H.E. Timothy Cardinal Dolan Library of Congress Control Number: 2015935014 ISBN 978-0-300-21190-0 (cloth : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In Memoriam

F rancis T. G ignac D aniel J . H arrington D av id J ohnson J erome M urphy O ’ C onnor

‫המשכלים יזהרו כזהר הרקיע‬ Daniel 12:3

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Contents

Acknowledgments xi Introduction to Volume Five The Parables: How Do They Fit into the Quest for the Historical Jesus?

1

I. The Overall Strategy of A Marginal Jew II. The Special Problem of the Parables III. Methodology: A Refresher Course on the Rules of the Road Notes to the Introduction

1 4 8 21

Chapter 37 The Parables of Jesus: Seven Unfashionable Theses

30

I. Introductory Observations on the Seven Theses II. Seven Unfashionable Theses on the Parables A. The Number of Narrative Parables in the Synoptic Gospels B. OT Wisdom Not the Prime Analogue of the Narrative Parable C. The Latter Prophets and Narrative Parables D. Jesus the Teller of Parables in the Prophetic Tradition E. False Blanket Descriptions of Jesus’ Parables F. The Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas G. Few Authentic Parables Notes to Chapter 37

30 35 35

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36 38 40 41 44 48 57

viii CONTENTS Excursus on Chapter 37 The Problem of Allegory

82



87

Notes to the Excursus

Chapter 38 Parables and the Problem of the Coptic Gospel

of Thomas

89

I. The Place of This Chapter in the Overall Argument II. General Observations on the Gospel of Thomas in Relation to the Synoptics III. Thomas’ Relation to the Synoptics: Test Cases A. Parallels in Sayings That Are Not Parables B. Parallels Taken from the Parable Tradition IV. Conclusion Notes to Chapter 38

89 90 96 96 111 145 148

Chapter 39 Searching for Likely Candidates: A Survey of the Synoptic Parables

189

I. Introduction by Way of Recapitulation II. A Survey of the Synoptic Parables by Sources A. Marcan Narrative Parables B. Narrative Parables in Q C. Narrative Parables in M D. Narrative Parables in L III. A Test Case from Luke: The Good Samaritan A. General Observations on the Good Samaritan as an L Parable B. The Good Samaritan in Detail IV. A Sober Conclusion to Our Survey Notes to Chapter 39

189 191 192 193 194 196 199 200 202 209 210

Chapter 40 The Few, the Happy Few

230

I. The Mustard Seed (Mark 4:30–32 || Matt 13:31–32 || Luke 13:18–19)

231

CONTENTS ix

II. The Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–11 || Matt 21:33–43 || Luke 20:9–18) III. The Great Supper (Matt 22:2–14 || Luke 14:16–24) A. The Question of Sources and Redaction in the Versions of Matthew and Luke B. Is the Version of This Parable in the Gospel of Thomas Independent of the Synoptics? IV. The Talents/Pounds (Matt 25:14–30 || Luke 19:11–27) A. The Question of Sources and Redaction in the Versions of Matthew and Luke B. The Meaning of the Parable of the Talents/Minas in the Ministry of Jesus Notes to Chapter 40

240 253 253 273 278 278 306 310

Conclusion to Volume Five From Unfashionable Theses to Contrarian Conclusions: Farewell to a Firm Foundation

363



375

Notes to the Conclusion

Appendix: An Introductory Bibliography on the Parables of Jesus

377

Map of Palestine in the Time of Jesus Map of the Galilee of Jesus’ Ministry Chart of the Family of Herod the Great Chart of the Regnal Years of the Roman Principes (Emperors)

387 388 389 390

List of Abbreviations

391

Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index Author Index Subject Index

409 417 425

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Acknowledgments

As I have done in each of my previous volumes, I begin these acknowledg­ ments with sincere thanks to my surgeons, doctors, and other medical pro­ fessionals who have enabled me to continue working on this project despite various surgeries and other health problems. Their competence and compas­ sion are deeply appreciated. With equal esteem I acknowledge my colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, whose home departments range from the Department of History to the Department of Economics, with many depart­ ments in between. I never cease to be amazed by the number of experts in diverse secular fields who are deeply interested in my work. For their enthu­ siastic support I express heartfelt thanks. Above all, though, I must express my gratitude to my friends and col­ leagues in the Department of Theology, who have shown unfailing patience as I have called upon their expertise again and again. In particular, I am grateful to my colleagues in the program of Christianity and Judaism in An­ tiquity, notably Professors Gary Anderson, John C. Cavadini, Brian Daley, Mary Rose D’Angelo, John Fitzgerald, Blake Leyerle, Candida Moss, Mi­ chael (Tzvi) Novick, Eugene C. Ulrich, James C. VanderKam, and Abraham (Avi) Winitzer, as well as Gregory E. Sterling, now Dean of the Yale Divinity School. I owe special recognition to Professor Robert E. Sullivan, Associate Vice President at the University of Notre Dame, for his advice both academic and practical. My present and former graduate assistants, especially Michael Cover, Anthony Giambrone, Justin Buol, and Joshua Noble, have aided and counseled me in countless ways. Thanks are due as well to the hardworking staff of the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame, particularly to Alan Krieger, who carefully oversees acquisitions for the Theology De­ partment. My thanks likewise go to the staff of the library at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where I customarily “camp out” each summer. During my stays at Berkeley, I am generously hosted by the

xi

xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross at their Holy Cross Center. Over the years, the Center’s director, the Rev. Harry Cronin, C.S.C., has become a steadfast friend as well as an ever-dependable host. Grateful acknowledg­ ment must also be given to those who have supported my research in very practical, especially financial, ways. These include Mr. William K. Warren, Jr., along with the William K. Warren Family Foundation, whose chair in theology I hold at Notre Dame, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Robert McQuie. Mr. Warren’s support, in particular, has extended far beyond the financial realm. He has repeatedly gone out of his way to express his personal sup­ port and encouragement of my work. I also wish to extend my sincere thanks to the Anchor Yale Bible editorial board, especially Dr. John J. Collins, the General Editor, who is both a great scholar and a good friend. He made many valuable suggestions as the final form of this volume took shape. In particular, he was the one who persuaded me to make my treatment of the parables a separate volume, as opposed to my original hope of finishing the series with one large Volume Five. For effi­ ciency and speed in shepherding the manuscript through production at Yale University Press I am most grateful to Jennifer Banks and Heather Gold. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to those journals and books in which preliminary sketches of some positions laid out in this volume were first presented in other formats. These include “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants of the Vineyard: Is the Gospel of Thomas Independent of the Syn­ optics?,” Unity and Diversity in the Gospels and Paul (Frank Matera Fest­ schrift; ed. Christopher W. Skinner and Kelly R. Iverson; Early Christian­ ity and Its Literature 7; Atlanta: SBL, 2012) 129–45; “The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24–30): Is Thomas’s Version (Logion 57) Independent?,” JBL 131 (2012) 715–32; and “Is Luke’s Version of the Parable of the Rich Fool Reflected in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas?,” CBQ 74 (2012) 528–47. In the last stages of the composition of this volume, I was invited to present some of my ideas on the parables to a symposium in honor of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), held on October 24–26, 2013, at the Lateran University in Rome and in Vatican City under the aegis of the Joseph Ratzinger–Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. My lecture was subsequently printed in the collected papers of the symposium as “The Historical Figure of Jesus: The Historical Jesus and His Histori­ cal Parables,” The Gospels: History and Christology (Joseph Ratzinger– Benedict XVI Festschrift; 2 vols.; ed. Bernardo Estrada et al.; Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013) 1. 237–60. Thanks are due especially to the three editors of the two volumes, Bernardo Estrada, Ermenegildo Manicardi, and



Acknowledgments

xiii

Armand Puig i Tàrrech, as well as to my host and fellow guests at the Do­ mus Sanctae Martae in Vatican City, where I lived during the symposium. As I finish these acknowledgments, perhaps I should also acknowledge— and indeed explain to any reader new to this series—the special nature of this volume on the parables. There are endless books on the parables of Jesus, most of which offer, pericope by pericope, a detailed critical exegesis and/or a popular explanation of each Synoptic parable in turn. With count­ less volumes of that type, stretching from past greats like Adolf Jülicher, C. H. Dodd, and Joachim Jeremias down to contemporary scholars like Ar­ land Hultgren and Klyne Snodgrass, there is no need or call to simply repeat their labors with minor variations. The purpose of this volume is quite different. It pointedly does not offer an exegesis of every single parable attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Rather, as the title of this volume indicates, it seeks to probe the authentic­ ity of such parables. In other words, it asks the basic question that should be asked repeatedly by any quest for the historical Jesus. Put simply, the question is this: some ancient text tells us that Jesus of Nazareth said this or something like this somewhere in the 20s or 30s of the 1st century a.d. But did he? The first four volumes of A Marginal Jew subjected many different kinds of Gospel sayings to a critical evaluation to see whether a judgment of “historical” (or “authentic,” that is to say, coming from the historical Jesus) is more probable than not. The complaint, charge, and burden of Volume Five is that, all too often, the parables have been given a free pass. They have not been subjected to the same exacting scrutiny and criteria of historicity because “we all know that” most if not all of the Synoptic parables come from Jesus. It is that basic—and I would claim groundless—presumption that is weighed and found wanting in this book. Hence this volume seeks to identify those parables that do have a solid claim to authenticity. Those parables alone will be explained in detail, since the exegesis of parables judged inauthentic belongs to commentaries on the Gospels as they stand, but not to the quest for the historical Jesus.

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A Marginal Jew

Volume Five

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I n t r o d u c t i o n t o V o l u m e F iv e

The Parables: How Do They Fit into the Quest for the Historical Jesus? I. THE OVERALL STRATEGY OF A MARGINAL JEW No doubt those faithful readers who have journeyed with me down the long and dusty road of the quest for the historical Jesus have long since grasped the basic strategy that governs the ordering of topics in these volumes. Put simply, my strategy mimics the approach used in all sorts of contentious negotiations, from labor contracts to Middle East peace plans: deal with easier issues first, treat intractable problems later. Hence, A Marginal Jew grappled early on with those large swaths of material that enjoyed broad attestation along with a wide variety of literary forms and religious content. Such material yielded more readily to testing by means of various criteria of historicity. From there we moved on from volume to volume, gradually taking up more difficult, not to say recalcitrant, topics.1 Thus, Volume One laid out the basic principles guiding the quest as well as some initial observations about Jesus’ social, cultural, economic, and familial background that would provide a general historical context for the quest. Volume Two then took up three “big questions”: John the Baptist as the immediate religious context and mentor for Jesus, Jesus’ eschatological message of the present-yet-future kingdom of God (both reflecting but also transforming John’s eschatology), and the “enacting” of the kingdom’s presence within Jesus’ ministry by his “mighty deeds” or prophetic “signs” (what we call miracles). The abundance of varied sayings and narratives from multiple sources permitted the use of a range of criteria of historicity, producing a fairly reliable—though still rough—sketch of the Nazarene. The Jesus who emerged from Volume Two was basically an eschatological, miracle-working prophet who reflected the traditions and hopes surrounding the prophet Elijah. This was not meant to be a complete or even

1

2

Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

a­ dequate portrait of Jesus, but simply a secure starting point, foundation, and framework for further investigation. Volume Three proceeded to pull the camera of historical criticism back from this initial narrow focus on the core message and actions of Jesus. This was done in order to take in a “wide-angle” shot of the major Jewish groups with whom Jesus interacted or to whom he stood in sharp contrast. On the one side stood Jesus’ various companions or followers: the crowds, the disciples, the inner circle of the Twelve, and some individual members of the Twelve. The increasing difficulty of the material was signaled by the fact that only vague generalizations could be made about the faceless and unnumbered crowds, or even some individuals within the circle of the Twelve. (Contrast, for instance, our nescience about figures like Bartholomew with the fair amount of information we have about Simon Peter.) On the other side of the divide stood a range of competitors and contrast figures. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Samaritans are well-known names to any reader of the Gospels and Acts. Yet defining exactly who these groups were (to say nothing of the Essenes or the Herodians) proved a daunting task, given the paucity and biases of 1st-century sources. By the second half of Volume Three, firm conclusions were becoming scarcer and scarcer. Despite these obstacles, our initial portrait of Jesus was gradually being enlarged and deepened by fairly reliable insights into his interaction with both supporters and opponents. The detailed investigation of Jesus’ competitors, especially in matters of the interpretation and living out of the Mosaic Law, naturally led to the all-consuming topic of Volume Four, Jesus and the Law. It was at this point in our quest that words like “enigma” and “riddle” became recurring leitmotifs worthy of a Wagner opera. The emergence of “enigma” terminology was ominous in both the usual and the etymological meaning of that word: it was a disturbing indicator that our historical quest was journeying into much rougher terrain. The riddling sphinxes confronting us as we neared the end of our road were four in number: Jesus’ attitude toward the Law, his use of parables, the way he was described both by himself and by others (i.e., self-designations and “titles”), and finally his last days in Jerusalem culminating in his death. I purposely left these four enigmas to the final stages of the overall project of reconstructing the historical Jesus for a simple methodological reason: only after a reasonably secure framework of the words and deeds of Jesus had been assembled in the first three volumes could the final enigmas, my own Enigma Variations, be tackled. At the very least, this approach guaranteed that each enigma would not be interpreted in a vacuum or in a larger context that was suddenly pro-



Introduction to Volume Five

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duced like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat.2 Rather, the portrait of Jesus as (i) an eschatological, miracle-working prophet like Elijah, (ii) proclaiming and initiating the regathering of the twelve tribes of Israel in the end time (hence the outreach to the crowds, the call of disciples, and the formation of the Twelve), (iii) while at the same time debating or contrasting with other Jewish movements at the turn of the era, provided some context, direction, parameters, and limits to the innumerable hypotheses that might be formulated to explain the four final enigmas. The basic methodological problem that this approach sought to address was, bluntly stated, the following: as with God, so with historical exegesis, all things are possible; only a few things are probable; and only one thing is the most probable of all. The grid that was slowly constructed over the length of the first three volumes was meant to serve as a delimiting framework, enabling us to negotiate the move from possibilities through probabilities to the most probable position regarding each of our enigmas. Accordingly, Volume Four took up the first of these enigmas, Jesus and the Law. Far from being an easy way to enhance our understanding of Jesus, the “quest for the historical Law” (i.e., for its exact extent, content, and interpretation in early 1st-century Judaism) proved to be in some ways more problematic than the quest for the historical Jesus itself. We found ourselves involved in the tricky business of mutual illumination, with historical knowledge of Jesus and historical knowledge of the Law shedding light on each other—though more than a few shadows remained. For instance, large sections of Jesus’ pronouncements on purity (e.g., Mark 7:1–23) had to be judged creations of the early church, while other legal material was consigned to the limbo of non liquet (not clear either way). Still, some of Jesus’ distinctive legal pronouncements (ha˘la¯kôt) did win the prized accolade of “authentic”: e.g., his prohibition of divorce and remarriage, his prohibition of all oaths, and his yoking of Deuteronomy’s command to love God (Deut 6:4–5) with Leviticus’ command to love one’s neighbor (Lev 19:18b) as the first and second commandments of the Law. Beyond such individual insights, Volume Four offered a major gain: the picture of Jesus as eschatological, miracle-working prophet was expanded and enriched by the picture of Jesus assuming the role of authoritative teacher of the Law, even when this meant at times annulling individual provisions of the Law. Yet a certain tension arises out of this widening of the lens. Yes, the traditions about Jesus’ interpretation of the Law shed further light on the historical Jesus, but they also make his overall portrait more enigmatic by making it more complex. How exactly does the picture of Jesus as authoritative teacher of the Law cohere with the picture of Jesus as eschatological prophet and miracle

4

Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

worker? Indeed, do all the pieces of the mosaic portraying him fit together, or are we left with a jumble? We find here a pattern that will follow us in our investigation of the remaining enigmas: certain questions are answered, the portrait of Jesus is broadened, but not all puzzles are solved. This, then, is one result of our wrestling with the first of the four enigmas: a chastened sense of what is doable on the final legs of our journey. Increasingly we sense that we are dealing with fragments of a much larger body of material that has been lost to us. Viewed in isolation, the individual pieces that have survived could mean anything or nothing. Only when we place them within the larger framework already constructed is there any serious chance of understanding what they might have meant within the historical context of Jesus’ ministry.

II. THE SPECIAL PROBLEM OF THE PARABLES This humility-inducing grasp of the limitations of our quest is particularly relevant as we move from Jesus’ pronouncements on the Law to our second enigma, the riddle-speech of Jesus’ parables. At least with Jesus’ legal teachings, the range of possible meanings had natural, built-in boundaries stemming from the very content of the pronouncements. Whatever the precise wording and intent of Jesus’ prohibition of divorce, the divorce sayings cannot be made to say, on any sane historical reading of the texts, that Jesus urged people to divorce. The plain legal content of the sayings, read in the context of Jewish debates about divorce around the turn of the era, blocks any such flight of historical fancy. Likewise, short of some ludic sleight of hand by a postmodernist critic, Jesus’ total prohibition of oaths cannot be forced into meaning its opposite, namely, that Jesus recommended frequent use of oaths as a means of ensuring truthfulness in social interaction. Similarly, the various forms of the command to love cannot be contorted into advocating unlimited bloody revenge on our enemies. I make these self-evident observations to highlight the fact that there is no such straightforward, self-limiting content in many of Jesus’ parables. A quick perusal of major books on the parables from the last half-century demonstrates that, if one is determined to impose the mad mod mood of the moment on the parables of Jesus (be the mood existentialist, structuralist, socioeconomic, postmodern, Marxist, or Nietzschean), these parables can be made to mean almost anything (or nothing). When it comes to interpreting the parables as part of the quest for the historical Jesus, the need for an overarching interpretative framework of Jesus’ ministry, as reconstructed



Introduction to Volume Five

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in our previous four volumes, appears both obvious and pressing. Without such a framework, it is difficult if not impossible to guess what Jesus might or might not have meant by a particular parable—especially when, read in isolation, a given parable is open to an almost endless number of interpretations. What parable research from the last century has taught us—or should have taught us—is that, once a given parable is detached from both its redactional context in a Gospel and its historical context in the ministry of Jesus, a clever and imaginative interpreter can make it mean whatever he or she wants it to mean. Especially in the case of the parables, the old adage holds true: text without context is pretext. This, however, is not the only or even the greatest methodological problem we face in dealing with the parables of Jesus. In the case of the parables, there is a still more basic problem that is often not confronted, a problem that every other saying of Jesus examined in the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew has had to face: Does this unit of tradition, presented in the Gospels as coming from Jesus, actually go back to the historical Jesus? Or is it a creation of the early bearers of the tradition about Jesus in the first and second generations of the church as they expounded on and by that very process expanded the sayings and deeds of Jesus? Or, alternately, does this particular saying or deed of Jesus so reflect the style, vocabulary, and theological interests of a given evangelist that it may simply be his creation? In the earlier volumes of A Marginal Jew, I purposely focused on the sayings and deeds of Jesus that, at least upon initial inspection, gave strong indication that their authenticity could be supported by one or more of the criteria of historicity. Sometimes my initial hunches proved correct, sometimes not. But in areas such as John the Baptist, eschatology, miracles, discipleship, and certain legal pronouncements, a good fund of material remained after all the critical winnowing. One or another of the criteria often did apply. Here is where Volume Five marks a great divide. Throughout this volume, I will contend that such a positive outcome is often not to be had in the case of the parables. In most instances, no criterion of historicity can argue convincingly for the origin of a given parable in the mouth of the historical Jesus. Needless to say, this does not automatically prove that this or that parable does not come from Jesus. All that is being claimed is that there are no strong positive arguments in favor of historicity, and a default presumption that most parables are authentic is a methodological deus ex machina. Hence, in my opinion, many of the parables attributed to Jesus should be assigned to the frustrating no-man’s-land of non liquet. In a few cases, though, I will contend that there are positive arguments for claiming that some parables are actually creations of the early church or the evangelists.

6

Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

At the end of our inquiry, I will identify a number of parables that receive convincing support from one or another criterion of historicity. However, they will prove to be few and far between. I realize this bald statement will cause no little consternation among readers accustomed to the much more optimistic views about the parables’ authenticity that are common in book-long commentaries on the parables, to say nothing of individual essays.3 The heritage of great scholars like Adolf Jülicher, C. H. Dodd, and Joachim Jeremias understandably lives on among many scholars and still more among the educated laity. Any attempt to overthrow this widespread acceptance of most of the parables as authentic owes both the academy and the public at large a detailed defense of a position that may strike many readers as outlandish, if not incredible. Some might even suspect a ploy not unknown among academics today: a scholar will attempt to stand out in the crowd of endless books on Jesus or the parables by adopting some outré or sensationalistic position, one guaranteed to garner media attention and, not incidentally, sell books. With such negative or suspicious reactions almost a certainty, I feel obliged to offer my readers a thorough explanation of my position on parables, as well as a lengthy stepby-step argument for the truth of my position. The chapters that make up Volume Five seek to do just that. Since the train of thought weaving through this volume can become quite intricate and complicated, it may help to preview the contents of each chapter here. Chapter 37 (the chapters of A Marginal Jew are numbered consecutively throughout the entire series) guides the reader through seven basic propositions about Jesus’ parables that will lay the foundation for all my subsequent claims about parables’ authenticity or lack thereof. These are my “seven unfashionable theses,” beginning with the least controversial assertion and ending with the seventh and most contentious assertion.4 This seventh and final proposition trumpets the polemical program of the whole volume: the vast majority of Synoptic parables lack any positive argument for their authenticity because they cannot satisfy even one criterion of historicity, especially the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources. The knowledgeable reader will almost instantly raise a serious objection to this position, an objection dealt with at length in Chapter 38. A number of parables found in the Synoptics also appear in some form or other in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (hereafter CGT).5 Hence, some scholars claim, the criterion of multiple attestation is satisfied for these parables. Obviously, it is essential to my argument that I show it more likely than not that these parallels in CGT evince direct or indirect knowledge of one or more of the Synoptic Gospels and so cannot qualify as independent witnesses.6 Since



Introduction to Volume Five

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this is a highly contested position, especially in academic circles in North America, it is vital that I give a thorough and detailed defense of my thesis on CGT, first enunciated as Thesis Six in Chapter 37. Chapter 38 will thus serve as a full-bodied defense of Thesis Six by examining individual test cases taken from both the nonparabolic and the parabolic sayings of the Synoptic Jesus paralleled in CGT. Once CGT is put aside, we are faced with the task of an initial inspection of all the narrative parables in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Mark, Matthew, and Luke), looking for possible candidates for the coveted title of “authentic.” But how to organize such an inspection of the whole corpus of parables in the Synoptics? Many books on parables group these parables according to the different theological themes to which various parables supposedly give voice. Not surprisingly, this approach is open to the charge of being hopelessly subjective, and the vast variety of schemes used to categorize different groups of parables bears out the charge. Any preliminary “branding” of the parables and “herding” them into theological corrals can easily load the dice before detailed interpretation begins. Chapter 39 attempts a more even-handed approach, which involves grouping the parables according to their sources. Put simply, Chapter 39 asks a basic question. In which stratum or stream of the Synoptic tradition does this particular parable first appear: Mark, Q (the source of the material common to Matthew and Luke that is not found in Mark), special Matthean material (M), or special Lucan material (L)? Or are we dealing with the rare case of a parable attested in two independent Synoptic traditions (an “overlap”), such as Mark and Q or M and L? As we go about this process of sorting according to sources, certain intriguing and instructive patterns begin to emerge. One such pattern is especially striking: far from either Mark or Q containing the greatest number of parables that are witnessed for the first time in either of these two early sources, the number of full-blown narrative parables increases as we move from Mark and Q to Matthew and then on to Luke. The parables unique to Matthew are more numerous than those first found in either Mark or Q, and Luke’s special tradition contains the largest number of all. If nothing else, this pattern warns us against the uncritical assumption that any and every parable necessarily represents the earliest and historically most assured stratum of the Jesus-tradition. Instead, each parable must be inspected to see whether it offers any preliminary indication of being able to satisfy at least one of the criteria of historicity. By the end of Chapter 39, it becomes clear that most of the parables lack such an ability—the chief reason why this volume, focused on the historical Jesus, does not offer detailed

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Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

studies of each and every Synoptic parable. That would be a waste of time for any quest for the historical Jesus, since only a few contenders for the accolade of “going back to Jesus” survive the initial winnowing. Still, the preliminary promise of authenticity that these few remaining parables offer needs to be probed at greater length. It is to such a thorough testing that Chapter 40 is dedicated. After a detailed analysis, the parable of the Mustard Seed, the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, the Great Supper (alias the Marriage Feast), and the Talents (alias the Pounds) all yield positive reasons for judging that, in substance if not in precise wording, they derive from the historical Jesus. To repeat: this is not to say that all the other parables are creations of the early church or the evangelists, though some are. Rather, the large majority of parables simply do not supply sufficient evidence for making a firm judgment either way (hence, non liquet—somewhat similar to the Scottish verdict of “not proven”). In my view, neither the demands of a particular portrait of the historical Jesus nor the unacknowledged impulse of Christian piety nor the consensus of scholars can nudge these orphans of the storm of historical criticism over the bar and into the safe harbor of “authentic.” How we come to terms with this overthrow of a common and venerable view of the parables, what this means for our overall reconstruction of the historical Jesus, and how in particular this may affect our treatment of the two remaining enigmas will be taken up in the conclusion to Volume Five.

III. METHODOLOGY: A REFRESHER COURSE ON THE RULES OF THE ROAD The methodology governing A Marginal Jew was laid out at some length in Part One of Volume One (pp. 1–201). It was then briefly summarized at the beginning of Volume Two (pp. 4–6), Volume Three (pp. 9–12), and Volume Four (pp. 11–17). By this time, stalwart readers of the entire series may have the methodology memorized by heart. They should feel free to skip this section and proceed immediately to Chapter 37. However, over two decades of conversations and correspondence with readers of A Marginal Jew have brought me to a real-world insight that some academics may fail to appreciate. When it comes to multivolume works, not every reader imitates the work habits of authors, editors, and reviewers. That is to say, not every interested reader begins A Marginal Jew from the first page of the first volume and proceeds to march through the now-five-volumes in regimented order. Taking seriously that A Marginal Jew



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belongs to a “Reference Library” series, many readers dip in and out of various volumes as their interests prompt them. Recently, I was talking with a bright college student who mentioned that he had just finished reading Volume Four, Law and Love—although he had not read any of the other three volumes. Without a hint of irony, he then asked me which volume he should read next. He seemed somewhat bemused when I suggested that he follow the hermeneutics of Lewis Carroll: begin at the beginning, and when you come to the end, stop—in other words, that he go back and start with Volume One. (I wish I were making this anecdote up, but, alas, it is true.) I walked away from that encounter wondering how many other readers of A Marginal Jew have taken a similar approach. For such eclectic readers in particular, it is imperative that I offer a quick refresher course on the method and goals of the series. As a bonus, this quick résumé will allow me to reply briefly to some recent critiques of or alternative approaches to the criteria of historicity employed in this volume. To start with what is essential to the overall project: it is vital to distinguish between the quest for the historical Jesus on the one hand and theology (with its subdivision of christology) on the other. To help inquiring undergraduates grasp this idea, I invite them to think of the distinction in spatial terms. At a university, the quest for the historical Jesus (if we are serious about that adjective “historical”) is properly housed in the department of history. Accordingly, the quest is obliged to follow the methods and criteria (i.e., rules or guidelines for making intellectual judgments) appropriate to sober academic history. In contrast, christology (i.e., faith seeking understanding of Jesus Christ) is properly housed in the department of theology at the same university, since it uses the methods and criteria appropriate to the academic discipline of theology.7 To apply this distinction to our study of the parables: it is one thing to write a book-long commentary on all the parables attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, focusing on the message of faith that early Christians and especially the evangelists intended to communicate, as well as what these parables might say to Christians today. It is quite another thing to try to decide with fair probability which parables actually come from the historical Jesus. This volume of A Marginal Jew pursues the latter alternative. As the informed reader no doubt can guess, this means that this book will not be commenting on every Synoptic parable in great detail, intent on finding both its original meaning and its application to modern life. We already have a superabundance of volumes that perform that task. If instead I insist in this volume on erecting a high wall of separation between the historical quest and christology, there is good warrant for doing

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so, given the past history of parable research. In the study of Jesus’ parables, one sees an all-too-frequent confusion between the role parables play in Christian faith and theology on the one hand and the role that they play— or should play—in a serious quest for the historical Jesus on the other. In no way am I denying the vast importance of parables for Christian life and practice, stretching from technical exegesis and hermeneutics to preaching, catechetics, morality, and spirituality. The large number of tomes dedicated to explaining every Synoptic parable both on the academic and on the popular level testify to the parables’ role as a constant resource for Christian thought and action. My objection is not to this theological study and use of the parables. My objection is to the unnoticed slippage whereby theological appreciation of the parables’ importance for Christian faith and practice morphs into a historical claim about the origin of the parables in the ministry of the historical Jesus. The practical consequence of this slippage is that all too often, even in serious academic works, the parables get a free pass. While other sayings of Jesus may be subjected to rigorous scrutiny according to various criteria, the parables get a welcoming wave of the hand from the academic doorman ushering them into the exclusive club of authentic Jesus material. In sum, then, this book focuses on the historical parables of the historical Jesus. As I have stressed throughout this series, the “historical Jesus” is not coterminous with the “real Jesus.” The latter Jesus would, at least in principle, involve everything Jesus of Nazareth said, did, and experienced in the thirty-plus years of his life in the first half of the 1st century a.d. A good deal of that total reality of who Jesus was is lost to us and will never be recovered. In contrast, the historical Jesus is an abstract construct created by modern scholars by applying historical-critical methods to ancient sources. If scholars apply these methods to the appropriate sources with professional expertise, careful logic, and personal integrity, we have good reason to expect that their abstract construct will approach and partially coincide with the 1st-century Jew called Jesus of Nazareth. Granted the severe limitations of our sources, the match between a 21st-century historical construct and the full 1st-century historical reality will never be perfect. At best, it will be a more or less accurate approximation of some of the things Jesus said and did during the last few years of his life. As the reader can see from this statement of my goal, I have never accepted the total skepticism, radical subjectivism, or perspectivalism associated with certain approaches to history that are vaguely labeled “postmodern.”8 Not unlike the theoretical skepticism refuted by Aristotle, such approaches are ultimately self-contradictory and self-defeating, especially when academics try to apply them in the arena of



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serious historical research. To be sure, I fully acknowledge both the limitations of our sources and the constant danger of bias and self-projection on the part of the historian. But these limitations and dangers are precisely what make careful historical-critical exegesis plus the application of clearly enunciated criteria of historicity (as opposed, say, to personal intuition or a “relevant” social or political agenda) indispensable as a hedge against irresponsible or ideologically driven claims about the historical Jesus.9 If this historical Jesus is not the “real Jesus” (the total reality of everything Jesus ever said and did during his lifetime), neither is he the “theological Jesus,” the object of systematic reflection based on Christian faith—in other words, the object of christology. It was, in fact, to stress the necessity of prescinding from (not denying) what a person claims to know by faith that I concocted at the beginning of Volume One the fantasy of an “unpapal conclave,” that is, a group of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and agnostic historians engaged in writing a consensus document, based solely on historical sources and arguments.10 To give one concrete example of what the composition of such a document would involve: the unpapal conclave—or just about any quester for the historical Jesus—could agree that Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate and suffered death.” Although these words happen to be those of the so-called Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, drawn up around the time of the second ecumenical council (Constantinople I, in a.d. 381),11 they are nevertheless, when taken in isolation, a sober statement of historical fact. As was shown in Volume One, they are supported or intimated by Josephus and Tacitus as well as by a number of streams of NT traditions that are independent of one another. Thus, one does not have to be a believer to affirm this short narrative of events. What the unpapal conclave—or any historian operating simply as a ­historian—could not affirm is a slightly longer form of the quotation from the same creed: namely, that Jesus “for us human beings and for our salvation . . . was crucified under Pontius Pilate for our sake, [and] suffered [death].”12 The “for us human beings,” “for our salvation,” and “for our sake” are all expressions of Christian faith and christology, affirming the saving effect of Jesus’ life and death. Unlike the plain affirmation of Jesus’ crucifixion and death under Pontius Pilate, this longer statement is not open in principle to empirical investigation and verification by any and every honest observer, believer and nonbeliever alike. (Nor, for that matter, is the affirmation of the saving effect of Jesus’ death open to falsification by empirical means.) Hence this affirmation is not a statement that falls under the purview of questers for the historical Jesus in their capacity as historians—

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Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

though some questers, if they are Christians, may believe on other grounds that the statement is true.13 To move from definitions to sources: as Volume One showed, there are very few sources for knowledge of the historical Jesus beyond the four canonical Gospels. Paul and Josephus offer little more than tidbits. Claims that later apocryphal Gospels and the Nag Hammadi material supply independent and reliable historical information about Jesus are largely fantasy.14 One is hardly surprised, though, that especially in the United States, the Nag Hammadi material generated not only sensationalistic novels but also sensationalistic monographs claiming to be scholarship. Happily, in recent years one senses a more sober approach to many (though not all) of the Coptic texts as examples of Gnostic or gnosticizing compositions that shed light not on the historical Jesus but on the patristic period from the 2d to the 4th century. The downside of this more critical evaluation is that, when it comes to the quest for the historical Jesus, historians are remanded to the difficult task of sifting through the four Gospels for historical tradition. And the task is difficult indeed, primarily because these documents are all products of Christian churches in the second half of the 1st century a.d. Written some forty to seventy years after Jesus’ death, they are shot through with Christian faith in Jesus as the risen Lord of the church. Hence, only a careful examination of the Gospel material in the light of the criteria of historicity or authenticity (i.e., rules for judging what comes from the historical Jesus) can hope to yield reliable results.15 (A) The Five Primary Criteria. In the quest for the historical Jesus, five criteria have proven themselves especially useful and are therefore employed in this volume: (1) The criterion of embarrassment pinpoints Gospel material that would hardly have been invented by the early church, since such material created embarrassment or theological difficulties for the church even during the NT period—a prime example being the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist at the beginning of the public ministry.16 Or to take the stark example that stands fixed at the end of the story of Jesus: the criterion of embarrassment argues forcefully for the historicity of the public crucifixion of Jesus as a criminal by a Roman official. Crucifixion was the most shameful and degrading form of execution in the Roman world; it was largely reserved for slaves, bandits, rebels, or other persons lacking Roman citizenship and judged a threat to public order.17 Worse still, not only was Jesus crucified, he was crucified by the supreme Roman legal authority in Judea, the prefect Pontius Pilate, with the cooperation of the supreme religious authority, the Jewish high priest Joseph Caiaphas. There was nothing illegal or improper



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about his “trial” and execution, if one judges them simply by the rules and procedures (or lack thereof) in force at the time. (Indeed, for all we know, Pilate and Caiaphas acted in good faith, regarding their preemptive strike as a necessary discharge of their obligation to maintain public order.) Accordingly, one senses from the earliest traditions enshrined in the NT a constant struggle on the part of Christians to explain or explain away the scandalous, off-putting fact of Jesus’ death by legally sanctioned crucifixion. Besides being shocking and shameful, Jesus’ crucifixion was a political event that could not help but make Christians suspect in the eyes of Roman citizens and their rulers. The crucifixion likewise made the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah extremely difficult to accept even for those Jews who were awaiting a messiah or messiahs (and not all were). Intriguingly, within the NT, the Christian response to the problem of the cross exhibits no one normative way of interpreting Jesus’ death. Throughout the NT period, many different strategies were employed to cope with the embarrassment. Early traditions preserved in Peter’s sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (e.g., Acts 2:23–24; 3:13–15; 4:10; 5:30–31; cf. Paul’s sermon at Pisidian Antioch in 13:27–30) sharply distinguish between the crucifixion (an evil act of evil men that was foreseen and permitted by God) and the resurrection (the true saving act of God, reversing the evil act of the crucifixion). In these sermons, therefore, there is nothing good or saving in the crucifixion, taken by itself. Quite early on, though, this view was felt insufficient. The primitive pre-Pauline formulas of faith, reaching back probably to the 30s of the 1st century, already interpret the crucifixion as some sort of sacrifice for sins (e.g., 1 Cor 15:3–5; Rom 3:24–26; Rom 4:25; later on, this approach is developed at great length in the Epistle to the Hebrews). Paul himself stresses the paradox of God putting to shame a proud and powerful world of sinners by means of the shameful death of a weak Jesus on the cross (1 Cor 1:18–31). For Paul, it is only by accepting this shocking yet all-powerful instrument of salvation that a sinner, renouncing any claim to personal merit or power, can be justified by faith in Christ. In a less complicated mode, the Q document evokes the theme of the rejected and martyred prophets of the OT: Jesus, the eschatological prophet, is the last in the line of the martyred prophets as salvation history draws to its consummation. In the substratum of the Passion Narratives in the four Gospels, some scholars detect a primitive theology of the crucified Jesus as the suffering righteous man, a figure frequently depicted in the OT psalms of lamentation and extolled in Wis 2:10–3:9; 5:1–5. In some passages, the theme of the suffering righteous man is developed in a more specific direction, as the mysterious figure of the suffering servant of Yahweh in Isa 52:13–53:12 is evoked. In

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a culmination that is also a radical turnabout, the Gospel of John faces the shame of the cross head-on with a strategy of irony, paradox, and total reversal of meaning: to the eyes of faith, the cross is actually Jesus’ exaltation and glorification, his condemnation of and triumph over the world that foolishly thinks it is condemning and defeating him. In all these varied, not to say at times contradictory, strategies of apologetics, one can sense the early Christians scrambling to come up with explanations for the unexpected and shocking climax of the story of Jesus. Whatever one’s expectations of a Jewish messiah or a savior of the world, a Galilean Jew crucified by a Roman prefect in Jerusalem did not fit the job description.18 The struggle by Christian missionaries to construct an apologetic to convince or sustain converts, a struggle that permeates a good part of the NT, argues eloquently that the crucifixion of Jesus was the last thing the first Christians would have invented if left to themselves. To put the point in crass commercial terms that American capitalists might understand: these Christians were competing fiercely in the “free-market economy” of ancient Greco-Roman religions. Viewed purely on pragmatic grounds, trying to merchandise a tortured, disgraced, and crucified Jew as the savior of the world would not have struck the first Christian Jews or their prospective clients as a winning strategy or savvy business plan. A crucified messiah was not the product that Christians would have spontaneously manufactured, but it was the one they were stuck with and had to sell. Embarrassment indeed. (2) The criterion of discontinuity focuses on words or deeds of Jesus that cannot be derived either from the Judaism(s) of Jesus’ time or from the early church. One example treated in Volume Two is Jesus’ rejection of voluntary fasting.19 To take an example that we will have to examine in detail in the next volume of A Marginal Jew: one of the most puzzling phenomena in the NT is Jesus’ use of the phrase “the Son of Man.” It occurs in all four Gospels as a self-designation that both (i) serves as a substitute for the pronoun “I” and yet also (ii) intimates some special function or mission of Jesus. This usage finds no exact precedent in the Hebrew or Aramaic of the Jewish Scriptures or other Jewish literature prior to the time of Jesus. What is stranger still, Jesus’ characteristic use of “the Son of Man” is widespread in the four Gospels but practically disappears from the rest of the NT writings as well as from the rest of NT christology.20 By the time we reach the early Church Fathers of the 2d century, “the Son of Man” has already begun to drift away from its Semitic moorings in the Gospels and to move in the direction of a quasi-philosophical designation of the human nature of Christ, with the correlative title “the Son of God” supplying the complementary designation



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of his divine nature.21 While some scholars have claimed that the rabbinic use of “the Son of Man” in later Jewish literature parallels (and somehow, by a back-to-the-future time machine, supplies the “background” for) Jesus’ use of the phrase, closer inspection of the relevant texts reveals that the rabbinic usage is not really parallel to that of Jesus. Thus, even if we put aside the further question of what the historical Jesus meant by this strange selfdesignation, the discontinuity of his usage from Jewish ways of speaking before and after him as well as from christological titles and thought in the rest of the NT and the Church Fathers argues for the historicity of the use of “the Son of Man” by Jesus to designate himself in a striking and unparalleled way. This basic insight, of course, does not dispense us from the arduous task of trying to distinguish the Son of Man sayings that originate with the historical Jesus from those that, in imitation of his usage, were created by the bearers of the Gospel tradition or the evangelists. In fairness, I should note that some commentators object to the idea of “double discontinuity” or “double dissimilarity” (i.e., discontinuity from both Judaism before Jesus and Christianity after him).22 These critics hold that only discontinuity from early Christianity need be required; discontinuity from contemporary Judaism is asking too much of a truly Jewish Jesus. Some even suggest that the idea of double discontinuity betrays anti-Jewish bias or a silent attempt to smuggle Christian dogma into a historical quest. While I agree that we should be very suspicious of a historical Jesus who is strikingly discontinuous from the Judaism of his time and place, there are cases where the question of discontinuity from Jewish views of the time legitimately—indeed, even necessarily—arises as one sifts the Jesus tradition for a historical core. For example, when it comes to Jesus’ prohibition of divorce, it is the early Christian church that preserves the tradition of Jesus’ prohibition and tries to implement it, though with obvious difficulties that lead to adaptation and expansion of the core tradition. It is rather vis-à-vis most if not all of the Judaism of his time (depending on how one interprets the Qumran material) that Jesus seems discontinuous in his prohibition of divorce.23 Similar observations may be made about Jesus’ prohibition of voluntary fasting and his prohibition of all oaths.24 In both cases, the discontinuity with the Palestinian Judaism of his day is stark. A criterion of single discontinuity (i.e., a discontinuity only vis-à-vis early Christianity) that works so poorly in these important cases is simply unreliable. Indeed— if one should wish to push the theoretical point still further—one may ask how any saying or deed of Jesus can enjoy total discontinuity from early Christianity, since knowledge of that “discontinuous” saying or deed is communicated only via some Christian source. If “double discontinuity” (from

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both Judaism before Jesus and Christianity after him) is objectionable in theory, one might argue that it is more objectionable from the Christian than from the Jewish side. As a matter of fact, discontinuity from early Christianity can be affirmed only in the sense that some teaching of Jesus has been preserved in a Christian source even as it is hedged in, mitigated, explained away, or ignored in practice—as is the case with the prohibitions listed earlier.25 (3) The criterion of multiple attestation focuses on sayings or deeds of Jesus witnessed (i) in more than one independent literary source (e.g., Mark, Q, Paul, or John)26 and/or (ii) in more than one literary form or genre (e.g., sayings of Jesus about the cost of discipleship plus narratives about his peremptory call of various disciples). One clear example lies at the heart of Volume Five: that Jesus taught in parables is witnessed by every Synoptic source as well as by redactional affirmations of every Synoptic evangelist. In addition, a few parables enjoy multiple attestation of sources (e.g., the Mustard Seed, witnessed in both Mark and Q). Or, to take up a case already examined under the criterion of discontinuity, that Jesus used “the Son of Man” to refer to himself and his mission is likewise witnessed in every Synoptic source (Mark, Q, M, and L) as well as by intriguingly similaryet-different Son of Man sayings in the Fourth Gospel. Finally, that Jesus was put to death specifically on a cross (or, more poetically, on “a tree”) is affirmed by Paul, by Deutero-Pauline authors (Colossians and Ephesians), by 1 Peter, by all four evangelists (and in particular by the pre-Marcan and pre-Johannine Passion Narratives, plus some of the kerygmatic speeches in Acts), and by Josephus—and perhaps implicitly by Tacitus. This is yet another example of how the results gained by applying one criterion can be supported and reinforced by another criterion, in this case the criterion of embarrassment, as we saw earlier. (4) The criterion of coherence is brought into play only after a certain amount of historical material has been isolated by other criteria. The criterion of coherence holds that sayings and deeds of Jesus that fit in well with the preliminary “database” established by the other criteria have a good chance of being historical. To take an example to be studied in detail in a later volume: that Jesus spoke about his impending violent death, either directly or in veiled fashion, is supported first of all by multiple attestation of sources. But, in addition, such an expectation of a violent death coheres well both with Jesus’ view of himself as the eschatological prophet (hence standing at the culmination of the line of the rejected and martyred prophets of Israel) and with the fate of his mentor, John the Baptist, an apocalyptic prophet executed by Herod Antipas.



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(5) Instead of simply judging individual sayings or deeds of Jesus, the criterion of Jesus’ rejection and execution looks primarily at the larger pattern of Jesus’ ministry and asks what words and deeds fit in with and explain his trial and crucifixion. A Jesus whose words and deeds did not threaten or alienate people, especially powerful people, is not the historical Jesus. In a sense, then, the whole portrait of Jesus that emerges from these five volumes of A Marginal Jew—just like the portrait of Jesus that is sketched by any other quester—must be evaluated in the light of this criterion. More specifically, though, certain individual sayings and deeds take on weighty significance in light of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion in Jerusalem. Notable among them are the symbolic-prophetic action of Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, his prediction of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and his acting out of that prophecy in his “cleansing” of the temple. (B) Secondary (or Dubious) Criteria. In addition to these five primary criteria of historicity, some critics hold that various secondary criteria may also be invoked, but usually only as “backup” or confirmation for the primary criteria. These secondary (some would say dubious) criteria include traces of the Aramaic language in the sayings of Jesus and echoes of the early 1st-century Palestinian environment in which Jesus lived. Still weaker as criteria (some would say useless) are the vivid and concrete nature of a narrative and the supposed general tendencies of the Synoptic tradition as it develops. As we shall see in this volume, secondary criteria offer no significant help in detecting parables that come from Jesus. (C) Alternate Approaches. The debate over proper criteria and their relative usefulness has had a long history and gives no indication of coming to rest any time soon. With an air of exhaustion, certain critics find themselves increasingly skeptical about criteria in general. While some of these skeptics prefer to “muddle through” as best they can with their scholarly instinct,27 others appeal to modern studies of phenomena like communal memory, the oral transmission of traditions in particular ethnic groups, and the broad patterns preserved in such memories and oral traditions.28 This skepticism about criteria seems to stem at least in part from disappointment over not being able to achieve a certitude that in reality is not to be had. That the use of criteria has not resulted in worldwide scholarly agreement on the historical Jesus will surprise only those who are also surprised by the fact that more than a century of minute study of the Synoptic Gospels has not led all scholars to adopt a single solution to the Synoptic Problem (i.e., the question of the literary relationship, or lack thereof, among the Synoptics). Similarly, the fact that research into the various levels of tradition and redaction in John’s Gospel has not led to universal agreement about the various

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stages of tradition and redaction in the Fourth Gospel does not seem to have caused a cessation of study and debate in that area. Perhaps, in the end, disappointment over the criteria’s failure to resolve all doubts may arise from some scholars’ rather confused understanding of how criteria in general are defined or how a given criterion in particular is supposed to function. Still other critics call not for the total abandonment of criteria but rather for a wholesale reformulation of major criteria. One of the most prominent champions of a refashioned set of criteria is the distinguished quester Gerd Theissen, who, along with various colleagues, has championed in various publications his “criterion of plausibility.”29 Theissen’s new criterion displays the basic tendency found in many other attempts to reformulate the traditional criteria. In effect, a number of criteria are streamlined or consolidated into one or two criteria, while other criteria may quietly and surreptitiously function when they are useful in individual cases.30 In the case of Theissen, he readily admits that his criterion of plausibility is actually made up of “four subcriteria”: (1) contextual plausibility, which subdivides into contextual appropriateness and contextual distinctiveness; and (2) plausibility of effects, which subdivides into source coherence and resistance to tendencies of the tradition. Actually, as one works through his lengthy application of his criterion of plausibility to a book-length quest for the historical Jesus (The Historical Jesus. A Comprehensive Guide), one notices that almost every one of the traditional criteria resurfaces at some point or other, either tacitly or under an assumed name. Even the reviled criterion of discontinuity (alias dissimilarity) makes a cautious reappearance under the rubrics of contextual distinctiveness and resistance to tendencies of the tradition. Effectively, single discontinuity (from the tradition of the early church) is allowed in some cases. For Theissen, the one non-negotiable barrier to acceptance of double discontinuity is his insistence that “what Jesus intended and said must be compatible with the Judaism of the first half of the first century in Galilee.”31 This is a strange preemptive strike that does not jibe and cannot come to grips with the startlingly disjunctive teaching of the historical Jesus on voluntary fasting, divorce, and swearing oaths—all three of which Jesus forbade and all three of which have been solidly established as authentic material in previous volumes of A Marginal Jew. If Theissen’s a priori veto does not work when it comes to vital material like these three prohibitions, then his veto—and his objections to the criterion of double discontinuity— is null and void. In fact, even apart from the particular case of Jesus, such an a priori rejection of the very possibility of a Jew’s discontinuity with his or her immediate Jewish surroundings hardly squares with surprising



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or disconcerting aspects of the lives and/or teachings of significant Jewish figures like Philo, Maimonides, Shabbetai Tzvi, Baruch Spinoza, Martin Buber, or Rebbe Menachem Schneerson. (Some might want to include in this list Jewish atheists like Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud—both of rabbinical lineage—who arguably rethought certain Jewish traditions in a radically secular mode.) If history teaches us anything, it teaches us the folly of decreeing beforehand what a highly talented Jew may or may not teach, may or may not do. To be sure, such figures belong to their particular historical context and reflect it. But they are quite capable of negating that context or of launching intellectual breakthroughs not reducible to or derivable from contextual influence. As Jürgen Becker puts its, Jesus’ relationship to the Judaism of his day must be understood in terms of “the dialectic of continuity and innovation.”32 The ill-advised rejection of the criterion of discontinuity is only one of a number of problems that Theissen’s criterion of plausibility must face: (1) Actually, the problems begin with the label “plausibility.”33 Every good historical novel, not to mention every skilled liar, aims at plausibility. Most of the major reconstructions of the historical Jesus offered in the last halfcentury, however mutually contradictory, might claim to be at least plausible, but one would hesitate to award most of them the accolade of “highly probable.” (2) Then, too, the great emphasis Theissen puts on Jesus’ words and deeds fitting into the Jewish-Palestinian milieu of his day suffers from the same difficulty that plagues secondary criteria like traces of Aramaic or reflections of a 1st-century Palestinian environment. Most, if not all, of the bearers of the Jesus tradition in the first Christian generation were Jews, with many hailing from or acquainted with Palestine. Sayings and stories they created about Jesus would naturally reflect the same linguistic, cultural, social, political, and economic background that Jesus knew and embodied.34 (3) In the end, Theissen’s attempt to create a unified criterion of plausibility winds up conflating and confusing a number of criteria that are best distinguished in theory, though often applied together in practice. Having aimed at clarification, he has created a muddle. This brief review of some alternate approaches to criteria only leads me to a reaffirmation of the criteria listed in Volume One of A Marginal Jew—all the more since these criteria have proven themselves over the long distance of a project spanning four (and now five) volumes. These criteria are by no means perfect, and I would welcome suggestions that really improve them. As I stress in Volume One, one must not expect from the criteria more than they can deliver. Their application remains more art than science. At best, they supply various degrees of probability, and they are much stronger in

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concert than when employed in isolation. Then, too, there is always the question of which criteria are suited for which units of Gospel tradition. That question cannot be decided a priori by the exegete. He or she must first plow through the individual saying or story, analyzing it with all the tools of source, tradition, and redaction criticism. Only by engaging in such a process can the exegete begin to get a sense of which criteria would fit a particular type of material and so prove useful in evaluating its authenticity. That is why, throughout the first four volumes, I first undertook a traditional exegesis of the pericope in question before I moved to an application of the criteria. All too often critics seem to imagine that a favorite linguistic, sociological, or psychological model can leapfrog over the annoying business of detailed exegesis of a text and move immediately and magically to a discussion of historicity. Alas, neither the pet models of the moment nor indeed the criteria themselves can dispense us from getting our hands dirty with the soil and soot of the individual text. Only after the digging has been done can the criteria shine a spotlight on possible candidates for the coveted judgment of “authentic.” Despite this salutary emphasis on the limitations of the criteria, I remain convinced that criteria are important—yes, vital and indispensable—in the quest for the historical Jesus. They are important in particular because, when applied methodically to the data, they can force the quester to draw conclusions he or she has not foreseen and perhaps does not want. To take an example from Volume Five, the last thing I expected when I began writing A Marginal Jew many years ago was that I would one day decide that most of the Synoptic parables cannot be shown with fair probability to go back to the historical Jesus. Not only does such a conclusion run up against the almost unanimous view of questers from the past century, it also leaves the present quester bereft of an otherwise valuable source for Jesus’ teaching. Yet it was by weighing the parables on the balance of the criteria that I was finally forced to the unwelcome conclusion that most of the parables lacked solid arguments for authenticity. Without the stern obligation of following clear criteria, wherever they might lead, I would probably have wound up parroting the consensus position on the parables, a position pleasing to all and proven by none. To anyone who would completely reject the need for criteria of historicity when questing for the historical Jesus, I would propose a simple definition and then a simple question. The word “criteria” means “rules for making a judgment.” If you have no rules for making a judgment about material claiming to come from the historical Jesus, how do you reach any judgment about him that is not hopelessly arbitrary?35



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In sum, my own experience throughout the writing of these five volumes has convinced me that, while methodology and criteria may be tiresome topics, they are vital in keeping the critic from seeing in the data whatever he or she has already decided to see. The rules of the road are never exciting, but they keep us moving in the right direction. It is now time for us to move on to the first of our three final enigmas, the parables of Jesus.

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (AYBRL; 5 vols.; New Haven: Yale University, 1991, 1994, 2001, 2009, 2015). In the present introduction, references to secondary literature are kept to a minimum, since fuller references to relevant literature will be supplied in the notes of subsequent chapters and especially in the appendix at the end of this volume.

One problem with many books and articles on the parables of Jesus involves their attempts to discover the supposedly original meaning of a given parable within the ministry of the historical Jesus. The often unaddressed difficulty with this project is that such “discovering” presupposes a previously achieved, overall understanding of Jesus’ message and ministry that can serve as the interpretive framework for the parables—an understanding, however, that is never established by the authors of these books prior to the act of interpreting the parables. Rather, quite often some overall portrait of Jesus is quietly imported from the work of a noted quester (e.g., Joachim Jeremias, Günther Bornkamm, or Ernst Käsemann) in order to supply the parables with the larger context they need for discovering their “original” meaning. This is a recurring problem, for instance, in the learned and richly documented tome of Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent. A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2008). Snodgrass’s favored quester seems to be Jeremias (see, e.g., the Index of Authors on p. 817). 2

It is hopeless to attempt at this late date in biblical research anything like a complete bibliography on the parables. Along with single-author volumes that provide full-length commentaries on the parables (listed in the appendix), useful bibliographies can be found in Warren S. Kissinger, The Parables of Jesus. A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (ATLA Bibliography Series 4; Metuchen, NJ/ London: Scarecrow, 1979); Craig A. Evans, Life of Jesus Research. An Annotated Bibliography (NTTS 24; rev. ed.; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1996) 153–63; Ruben Zimmermann et al. (eds.), Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007); Ruben Zimmermann with Gabi Kern (eds.), Hermeneutik der Gleichnisse Jesu (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2008). An attempt at a sort of ­modern-day Summa (3,652 pages!) on the historical Jesus can be found in the Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 vols.; ed. Tom Holmén and 3

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S­ tanley E. Porter; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011); for the parables, see the essay by Arland J. Hultgren, “The Message of Jesus II: Parables,” 3. 2549–71. 4 The philosophically minded will no doubt notice the nod to Nietzsche’s work, Unfashionable Observations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, also translated as, e.g., Untimely Meditations or Thoughts out of Season). Whether my observations or ­Nietzsche’s are more disturbing is left to the reader, especially the dedicated Wagnerian, to decide.

I refer here simply to the “Coptic” Gospel of Thomas because unfortunately none of the narrative parables of the Synoptics occurs in the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas contained within the collection of Oxyrhynchus papyri. 5

As we shall see, in a few cases we may be faced with a stalemate, in the sense that there is not enough evidence to make a decision one way or the other about dependence on or independence from the Synoptics. In such a case, the decision must be the galling non liquet. However, this does not weaken my basic point: no parable in CGT with a Synoptic parallel can be shown positively to be independent of the Synoptics. 6

7 Provided that this distinction is acknowledged and observed in practice, I have no objection to theologians taking over the results of the quest for the historical Jesus and incorporating them into the development of a modern-day christology; see, e.g., Phillip J. Cunningham, A Believer’s Search for the Jesus of History (New York/ Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1999). But one must always bear in mind that such works are examples of a historically informed christology, not of the quest for the historical Jesus. A remarkable case of the incorporation of the results of the quest into a synthesis of christology and spirituality for the general reader is James Martin, Jesus. A Pilgrimage (New York: HarperOne, 2014).

It is not my intention here to reject any and every position labeled “postmodern,” but only the radical expression of the movement that calls into question the value of careful reasoning from reliable data that can lead to highly probable or even certain judgments about reality, past or present. Applied to historical research in particular, such an approach calls into question the historian’s ability to know past events and the persons involved in those events with any kind of certitude or high probability. Indeed, at times the Nietzschean mantra is intoned: there are no facts, only interpretations. It is this Weltanschauung that I reject. This does not mean that all approaches that are considered postmodern are inimical to serious historical research, including historical criticism as applied to the Bible. For instance, one should certainly take into account the ways in which ethnicity, class, and gender may influence both the ancient writer and the modern interpreter. For an example of the ongoing debate on the relationship between various forms of postmodernism and biblical studies, see the “JBL Forum” published in JBL 133 (2014) 421–58; the exchanges include Ronald Hendel, “Mind the Gap: Modern and Postmodern 8



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in Biblical Studies” (pp. 422–43); Stephen D. Moore, “Watch the Target: A PostPostmodernist Response to Ronald Hendel” (pp. 444–50); and Peter Miscall, George Aichele, and Richard Walsh, “Response to Ron Hendel” (pp. 451–58). One upshot of this exchange is the insight that there is nothing more fluid and relative than the term “postmodern” itself. Hendel wishes to distinguish between “strong postmodernism,” which he finds deeply flawed and untenable (not unlike the type of postmodernism I reject) and “weak postmodernism” (similar to a chastened or enlightened modernism), which he finds acceptable. One may ask, though, whether Hendel’s weak postmodernism really escapes the objections that he levels at strong postmodernism. In a witty response, Moore points out the incredibly wide range of meanings under which the term “postmodern” labors. He suggests that “theoryimmersed works in biblical studies . . . that explicitly bill themselves as ‘postmodern’ are a dying species . . . [because the authors of such works perceive] that the term has outlived its usefulness. In literary and cultural studies . . . postmodernism has been on its deathbed for quite some time.” Moore concludes his response to Hendel by opining that “unreconstructed historical criticism . . . seems nowhere near the point of its exhaustion.” Miscall, Aichele, and Walsh, in stark contrast to Hendel, offer a robust defense of a postmodernism that revels in paradox; in local, small narratives (as opposed to any metanarrative); and in “an endless play of intertextual signification.” Theirs is a postmodernism that proclaims that “no act of knowing, no truth, is ever fully free of a charge of injustice” and that the “I” that knows and the truth that is known are both fictions. It is this sort of postmodernism, which in my view is hopelessly involved in self-contradiction and intellectual suicide, that I reject. For a broader critique of postmodernism in the academy, see Camille Paglia, “Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf,” Sex, Art, and American Culture (New York: Vintage Books [Random House], 1992) 170–248. 9 Not unlike the configuration of hard disks in computers, which allows of various levels of formatting, the writing of history and biography, while always interpretive to some degree, allows of various levels of interpretation. The very gathering of data and the passing of judgment as to their historicity involve a certain “low level” of interpretation. Beyond that unavoidable low level, A Marginal Jew attempts as much as possible to let any overarching interpretation of Jesus and his work emerge gradually and naturally out of the convergence of the data judged historical. In particular, A Marginal Jew does not intend to impose on the data any predetermined interpretive grid, be it political, economic, or sociological. Such grids can be useful at a later stage of interpretation, but in the quest for the historical Jesus they neither generate data concerning Jesus nor solve the problem of the data’s historicity. To be sure, A Marginal Jew works with presuppositions, but they are the presuppositions that are commonplace in historiography.

A blind spot in the constitution of my mythical “unpapal conclave” at the beginning of Volume One (p. 1) was the omission of a Muslim scholar within the group of learned historians locked up in the basement of the Harvard Divinity School library and not allowed to emerge until they hammered out a consensus document on the 10

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historical Jesus. Like the other scholars, the Muslim would be obliged, for the sake of academic dialogue, to adhere strictly to the historical-critical method and prescind from what he or she affirmed by faith. The “Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed” does not appear to have been officially adopted by Constantinople I, but the creed’s general acceptance at a later date led to its being attributed post factum to this council. In popular usage, it is often referred to simply as the “Nicene Creed,” though the actual creed adopted by Nicea I (a.d. 325) is notably shorter. 11

The key phrases (including the words affirming the soteriological effect of Jesus’ death) are in Greek ton di’he¯mas tous anthro¯pous kai dia te¯n he¯meteran so¯te¯rian katelthonta ek to¯n ourano¯n . . . stauro¯thenta te hyper he¯mo¯n epi Pontiou Pilatou kai pathonta (“who for us human beings and for our salvation came down from heaven . . . and was crucified for our sake under Pontius Pilate and suffered”). A slightly expanded version of this creed is used at Sunday Mass in Roman Catholic churches. 12

13 For debates on the relation of the historical Jesus to Christian faith and christology, see Scot McKnight, “The Parable of the Goose and the Mirror: The Historical Jesus in the Theological Discipline,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2. 919–51; Sven-Olav Back, “Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of Faith: Approaches to the Question in Historical Jesus Research,” ibid., 2. 1021–54; Jean-Louis Souletie, “Vérité et méthodes. La question christologique du Jésus historique après J. P. Meier,” RSR 97 (2009) 375–96; Jean-Noël Aletti, “Quelles biographies de Jésus pour aujourd’hui? Difficultés et propositions,” ibid., 397–413; William P. Loewe, “From the Humanity of Christ to the Historical Jesus,” TS 61 (2000) 314–31.

The general arguments supporting this position are given in A Marginal Jew, 1. 112–66. Chapter 38 will argue the point at much greater length for the special case of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. On the dangers of retrojecting the theological views of later apocryphal Gospels back into the 1st century a.d., see John P. Meier, “On Retrojecting Later Questions from Later Texts: A Reply to Richard Bauckham,” CBQ 59 (1997) 511–27. 14

As is customary in discussions of the historical Jesus, words like “authentic” and “historical” are used in a technical sense to express the judgment that some saying or deed preserved in the Gospels does in fact go back to the historical Jesus. Gospel material that is judged not historical or not authentic in this technical sense may nevertheless be an important witness to the history and faith of the early church and may serve as an important source of “authentic” Christian teaching in a different, theological sense. This is especially important to remember when dealing, for instance, with the Synoptic parables and the various titles and roles that the NT applies to Jesus. 15



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25

See A Marginal Jew, 2. 100–105.

On this point, see Martin Hengel, Crucifixion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977). For a much more detailed treatment of crucifixion, see John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (WUNT 327; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2014); on the types of crimes that were punished by crucifixion during the Roman period, see, e.g., pp. 158–61, 216–17. 17

18 The off-again/on-again attempts to find a slain (or even a crucified) messiah at Qumran are documented and refuted by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The One Who Is to Come (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2007) 103–4, 109–15. 19

On the prohibition of fasting, see A Marginal Jew, 2. 439–50.

The single exception—the use of “the Son of Man” by Stephen in his speech while on trial (Acts 7:56)—is probably to be explained as part of Luke’s conscious pattern of paralleling key figures and events in his Gospel and Acts, thus binding together the two volumes as well as the various stages of salvation history. As Joseph A. Fitzmyer notes (The Acts of the Apostles [AYB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998] 392–93), Acts 7:56 is filled with typically Lucan vocabulary; it is Luke who puts the title Son of Man, almost always found on the lips of Jesus in the four Gospels, on the lips of Stephen in v 56. Indeed, throughout the depiction of Stephen’s trial and execution, Luke uses terms reminiscent of Jesus’ trial and death.—One may note as an aside that, in contrast to this single occurrence of “the Son of Man” referring to Jesus outside the four Gospels, the most apocalyptic work in the NT, the Book of Revelation, does not use the fixed title “the Son of Man” for Jesus; rather, the author of Revelation reaches back to Dan 7:13 for the looser description “one like a son of man” (i.e., a heavenly figure in human form); see, e.g., Rev 1:13. 20

21 This usage is already adumbrated in Ignatius of Antioch, Eph. 20.1–2; it is clearly expressed in, e.g., Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 3.17.1. 22 See, e.g., Dale C. Allison, Jr., “How to Marginalize the Traditional Criteria of Authenticity,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 1. 3–30, esp. 4–5, where the comments radiate more heat than light; cf. Tom Holmén, “Doubts about Double Dissimilarity. Restructuring the Main Criterion of Jesus-of-History Research,” Authenticating the Words of Jesus (NTTS 28,1; ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 47–80; idem, Jesus and Jewish Covenant Thinking (Biblical Interpretation Series 55; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 28–32. 23

On Jesus’ prohibition of divorce, see A Marginal Jew, 4. 74–181.

24

On Jesus’ prohibition of oaths, see A Marginal Jew, 4. 182–234.

25 I will return to this argument about double discontinuity when I take up alternate proposals for criteria at the end of this introduction.

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As indicated throughout the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew, I hold that John’s Gospel represents a tradition similar to but independent of the Synoptics. The treatments of the Passion tradition by C. H. Dodd (Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1963] 21–151) and at much greater length by Raymond E. Brown (The Death of the Messiah [AYBRL; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994]) offer, in my view, convincing arguments in favor of this position, especially in regard to the Passion tradition. The view that John is basically independent of the Synoptics has been reexamined historically and defended exegetically by D. Moody Smith in the revised and updated version of his John among the Gospels (2d ed.; Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2001); see esp. pp. 195– 241. More to the point, John’s independence of the Synoptics has been examined and vindicated numerous times in the various volumes of A Marginal Jew, both in the sayings material (e.g., the Baptist’s saying about baptism by water and by spirit [vol. 2, pp. 32–39]; Jesus’ saying about saving or losing one’s life [vol. 3, pp. 56–64]) and in the narratives (e.g., the healing of the royal official’s son/centurion’s servant, the walking on the water, and the feeding of the five thousand [vol. 2, pp. 718–26, pp. 905–24, and pp. 950–67 respectively]). Hence it is hardly arbitrary to presuppose John’s independence as we begin Volume Five. This is not to deny that there are respected authors who maintain John’s dependence on one or more of the Synoptics; it is simply to state that I am not convinced by their arguments. 26

An example of this approach can be found in the various studies of the historical Jesus penned by Geza Vermes. Indeed, Vermes openly proclaims his disdain for “methodology” and his preference for muddling through in The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 7. A similar approach is discernible in his earlier works on the same topic: Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973) and Jesus and the World of Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). The problem is, though, that any scholarly investigation that is not totally erratic operates by certain rules, whether or not they are acknowledged, labeled, and thought through. The danger of not thinking through one’s method and criteria becomes evident almost immediately in Vermes’s portrait of Jesus in The Religion of Jesus the Jew. (1) Vermes implicitly works with the criterion of multiple attestation of sources but does not use the criterion properly. For example, to show that Jesus was observant of the cultic law, Vermes (The Religion of Jesus the Jew, 18) states that “all three Synoptic Gospels report that after curing a leper, he [Jesus] enjoined him to appear before a priest for examination”; Mark 1:44 is cited as evidence. Yet, in the judgment of most commentators, the Matthean and Lucan versions of the story are simply their theological adaptations of the Marcan story. There is, then, only one independent source attesting to the event. The Matthean and Lucan parallels certainly attest to what Matthew and Luke thought about Jesus, but they supply no independent evidence as to the historicity of the event. (Even if one preferred the view that Mark depended on Matthew, there would still be only one independent source.) (2) Vermes also uses something like a combination of the criteria of embarrassment and discontinuity (ibid., 17). However, when using such a criterion, one must be very careful in appealing to rabbinic material. Unfortunately, Vermes is disconcertingly free and easy in using 27



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not only the Mishna (redacted ca. a.d. 200–220) but also the Tosepta, the various midrashim and targums, and even the Jerusalem Talmud (redacted in the first half of 5th century) and the Babylonian Talmud (redacted in the first half of the 6th century, achieving its final form in the 8th century). The problem of using rabbinic material to understand Judaism(s) in the early 1st century a.d., a problem highlighted by the works of Jacob Neusner in particular, is not taken seriously (pp. 7–10). (3) A larger, underlying problem in all of Vermes’s previously mentioned works is that using the NT, in particular the four Gospels, as the major source for constructing the historical Jesus presupposes a wide and deep knowledge of NT scholarship as a whole. Unfortunately, still later books by Vermes (The Changing Faces of Jesus [New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001]; Christian Beginnings from Nazareth to Nicaea [New Haven/London: Yale University, 2012, 2013]), reveal some surprising gaps in Vermes’s knowledge of the contents and theology of NT books outside the four Gospels. See, e.g., Dale C. Allison, Jr., Constructing Jesus. Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), who says of the criteria (p. 10): “. . . we have good reason to be cynical about them all.” (Cf. his objections to criteria in his essay “How to Marginalize the Traditional Criteria of Authenticity,” 3–30.) Allison seeks a different route through contemporary cognitive studies of memory, yet one cannot help but notice how criteria like multiple attestation and coherence sneak back into the project as the argument is developed in later chapters. Allison claims that while giving up on trying to show the authenticity of individual sayings or deeds of Jesus, a quester can still rely on repeating patterns that, taken together, produce more than a faint image; cf. his “How to Marginalize the Traditional Criteria of Authenticity,” 30. In effect, the criterion of multiple attestation of sources and forms becomes the pivotal criterion in this project. However, the multiple attestation is now focused not on individual sayings or deeds but rather on general themes or motifs. I find this whole approach problematic. If we remain skeptical about every individual saying and deed of Jesus (allowing therefore that any and indeed all of them might be inventions of the early church and/or the evangelists), it is difficult to see how a number of these highly dubious sayings and deeds, when taken together, create a pattern, overarching theme, or persistent image that is not also highly dubious. In reconstructing a historical Jesus, the whole is the sum of the parts selected for analysis. If each item that makes up the whole is viewed with skepticism, the whole must be viewed in the same way. Put bluntly: seeking broad outlines, recurring patterns, or overall pictures without making any decisions about the probable historicity of the individual sayings or deeds that form these patterns strikes me as a kind of exegetical sleight of hand or artful dodging that in the end goes nowhere. In the last analysis, if one remains deeply skeptical about any and all criteria as well as about the authenticity of any given individual saying or deed of Jesus, then logic demands that one should be equally skeptical about constructing any probable portrait of the historical Jesus. The whole project should simply be abandoned. For other various attempts to move beyond or dispense with traditional criteria, see Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne (eds.), Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (New York: Clark, 2012).—For doubts about analogies taken from ethnological studies of 28

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the oral transmission of traditions, as evidenced for instance in the Homeric epics, medieval epics, and Serbo-Croatian traditions, see Jürgen Becker, “The Search for Jesus’ Special Profile,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 1. 57–89, esp. 75–77. Becker points out important differences in the origin and early development of the Jesus tradition: (1) At the beginning of the tradition stands one individual whose message has precise content. (2) The tradition is formulated in relatively “taciturn” and brief expressions; it lacks an “epic breadth.” (3) The tradition is addressed to “a milieu of small social forms.” (4) Those handing down the tradition do not form a very large group and are in contact with one another. (5) The oral tradition is handed down for only two (or at most three) generations before a number of large and significant written forms of the tradition are composed. (6) Both the bearers of the tradition and the communities receiving it “regard the person at the origin of the tradition as an authority whose normative significance is certain”; hence the tradition stemming from him orients the life of the group. Becker concludes that these differences from Homeric, medieval, and Serbo-Croatian epics make analogies from such oral epic traditions unhelpful when dealing with the Synoptic traditions about Jesus. I will return to the question of these analogies when the topic of the relation of the Synoptic tradition to the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is treated. 29 See, e.g., Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus. The Question of Criteria (Louisville/London: Westminster/John Knox, 2002); the original German text is entitled Die Kriterienfrage in der Jesusforschung (Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 34; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997). The translator, M. Eugene Boring, notes (p. xix) that the English translation incorporates “the authors’ expansions and modifications to the original [German] text, making this English translation the definitive edition of this work.” A digest of the entire book can be found in Gerd Theissen, “Historical Scepticism and the Criteria of Jesus Research: My Attempt to Leap over Lessing’s Ugly Wide Ditch,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 1. 549–87. A brief summary of the criterion of plausibility is given in Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus. A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 115–21. For alternative examples of retooling (usually by reducing and consolidating) the traditional criteria, see, e.g., Ernst Baasland, “Fourth Quest? What Did Jesus Really Want?,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 1. 31–56. 30 I would invite the interested reader to work through the Theissen-Merz book (The Historical Jesus) as I have and note the number of times that the traditional criteria are presupposed but not explicitly cited as the authors reach a judgment that a particular saying or group of sayings is authentic. It is not without reason that Allison (“How to Marginalize the Traditional Criteria of Authenticity,” 7), who champions a “marginalization” of the traditional criteria in favor of new ways of thinking about the quest, complains that “in the end Theissen and Winter [in their book The Quest for the Plausible Jesus] seem to offer but a revised version of criteria already known.” On this point, at least, Allison is correct.



Introduction to Volume Five 31

Theissen-Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus, 211.

32

Becker, “The Search for Jesus’ Special Profile,” 85.

29

33 For Becker’s reasons for being reluctant to use the term “plausibility,” see “The Search for Jesus’ Special Profile,” 85–88.

See A Marginal Jew, 1. 178–79. In addition, Theissen’s talk about what is or is not in keeping with the tendencies of the tradition must come to grips with E. P. Sanders’s observations on how the tendencies of the developing Synoptic tradition are hardly consistent (cf. A Marginal Jew, 1. 182). 34

35 Cf. Becker’s dictum in “The Search for Jesus’ Special Profile,” 81: “One who dispenses with criteria is inevitably even harder pressed to justify the positions he takes.” The last part of Becker’s article (pp. 81–89) is a guarded acceptance and defense of a number of the traditional criteria.

Chapter 37

The Parables of Jesus: Seven Unfashionable Theses I. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS ON THE SEVEN THESES I have bundled the four final enigmas—Jesus and the Law, Jesus’ parables, the designations of Jesus, and Jesus’ death—at the end of my quest for good reason. Each of these Enigma Variations poses problems both numerous and enormous. It is no wonder that each topic has generated an almost limitless flood of learned monographs and popular works. The bibliographies in Volume Four, on Jesus and the Law, provide abundant evidence for this claim. The parables, however, probably enjoy the patriarchal status of first among equals when it comes to an unending stream of publications.1 No other part of Jesus’ teaching sticks in the Christian psyche quite as tenaciously as do his parables. Sunday school and catechism class, the reading of Gospel parables at worship accompanied by homilies on them—all serve to introduce the Christian mind and imagination to this special vehicle of Jesus’ teaching at an early and impressionable age. The regular reoccurrence of Jesus’ parables in the lectionary cycle of many churches, references in popular culture (“Good Samaritan,” “Prodigal Son”), and the grip that a great short story holds on a person’s memory all reinforce the importance of the parables for the remainder of a Christian’s life.2 In addition to the pervasive influence of church, home, and general culture (both Christian and non-Christian), academics are attracted to the parables for various reasons. Many of the scholars involved in the quest for the historical Jesus have been prominent as well in parable research, since they are convinced that the parables supply the most reliable traditions about and the easiest access to the message of Jesus. This belief that the parables represent some of the most trustworthy nuggets of material from the historical Jesus binds together scholars of such divergent theological

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views as Adolf Jülicher, C. H. Dodd, Joachim Jeremias, and Klyne Snodgrass on the one hand and Robert Funk, John Dominic Crossan, and Bernard Brandon Scott on the other. Yet even among academics devoted to the quest, the parables yield remarkably different portraits of Jesus. For example, a Dodd or a Jeremias may find in the parables a way to present a Jesus who is critically assessed and surprisingly fresh but still stands in basic continuity with traditional Christian doctrine. In contrast, for scholars like Funk, the parables give access to an iconoclastic Jesus who shatters traditional Christian faith and even traditional theism. It is in order to define my own approach in this contentious arena of parable research that I begin this volume by enunciating seven propositions or theses about the nature of Jesus’ parables—theses that become increasingly controversial as we move from the first to the seventh. As immediate preparation for these seven theses, let me briefly resume and develop a key point I touched upon in the introduction to this volume. It is no surprise that almost every area of Jesus research is plagued (or enlivened, depending on one’s point of view) by diametrically opposed judgments on the meaning of the individual words and deeds of the Nazarene, as well as of his ministry as a whole. So little evidence is available, but so much is at stake. Yet, even amid this diversity, the vast range of Jesus-portraits that arise from the study of the parables is especially striking. One reason for this wide spectrum of interpretations lies in the very nature of Jesus’ parable-speech, as distinct, for example, from his teaching on legal matters. As we saw in Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, Jesus’ prohibition of divorce or oath-taking is a clear, straightforward pronouncement expressed in unambiguous language and located within the context of Jewish legal debates of the time. Modern scholars may argue about whether a particular legal teaching goes back to the historical Jesus. If they judge that it does, these scholars may then opine on whether this teaching has any binding force on Christian moral theology or on one’s personal life today. But for historians who do not propound far-fetched interpretations simply to display their cleverness, the “wiggle room” for interpreting Jesus’ halakic pronouncements on divorce or oaths is relatively narrow. Legal directives, of their very nature, aim at being clear-cut and precise, since they seek to elicit assent and compliance from a whole group. The parables of Jesus constitute an essentially different type of speech. Parables create a story world that listeners are invited to enter, experience, and even struggle with as they are confronted with challenges about how they should see and react to God and the world. This story world, which

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“sucks one in,” is conjured up by imaginative and forceful metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech. Such allusive, “indirect” speech is meant, in the famous phrase of Dodd, to “tease” the mind “into active thought.”3 In other words, the parables often (though not always) have a riddle-like quality that calls upon the hearer to ponder a puzzle, confront a surprise twist, or formulate a resolution that the parable’s story requires but does not supply. Herein lies a basic difference between Jesus’ ha˘la¯kâ and his parables. The challenge posed to the person listening to Jesus’ halakic teaching is: Will you assent to and act upon these concrete commands or prohibitions? Will you, for example, obey Jesus by avoiding divorce or oath-taking in your life? The challenge posed to the person listening to Jesus’ parables is rather: Why is Jesus telling this parable and what does he intend by it? Does this parable speak of human life in general or specifically of Jesus and his disciples? What, if any, demand is Jesus making on me by telling me this parable? What different ways of thinking, acting, or seeing reality does this parable challenge me to adopt? Or is this parable a commentary on and a warning about Jesus’ opponents? In short, the suggestive, metaphorical world of parables functions differently and calls forth a different kind of response than does the clear, crisp world of halakic teaching. The parables’ openness to multiple meanings for multiple audiences is thus a reality to be dealt with first of all on the level of the historical Jesus, long before modern hermeneutics gets its slippery hands on the material. Such openness is simply endemic to this type of speech. But this range of interpretative possibilities expands exponentially once we decide to drop any concern about the historical Jesus or the original Sitz im Leben of his parables in favor of one or another modern hermeneutical approach. Once the parables are detached from the framework of an unusual 1st-century Jew named Jesus, they become capable of bearing almost any meaning that an ingenious interpreter manages to read into them. For those who exalt the text as the locus of meaning, the parables are treated as autonomous pieces of literary art, pulsating with the explosive power of the many meanings inherent in the text. For those who emphasize the reader as the creator of meaning, the parables may be employed as mirrors into which an interpreter can gaze à la Narcissus to ponder his or her existence in the world. Indeed, such mirrors can be custom-designed with a built-in existentialist, psychological, socioeconomic, or theological optic. Hence, no matter the precise approach that modern critics adopt, the parables become, in effect if not in theory, empty and moldable vessels into which interpreters can



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pour whatever meaning or negation of meaning they consider productive of new insights.4 Speaking personally, every time I open the latest parable book hot off the press, I sense how weighed down the new author feels by all the previous volumes that have already squeezed every conceivable message out of these short stories. One sympathizes with the latest entrant into the lists as he or she strains, against the dictum of Ecclesiastes, to say something new under the sun about these more-than-twice-told tales. Whatever the worth of such valiant attempts, they are not the goal of the present work. Within the strictly historical project of A Marginal Jew, the intricate web of structuralist analysis woven in an ahistorical vacuum or the clever word games of postmodernism are of no interest. Our quest concerns what the historical Jesus intended when he decided to use parables in general and to speak this or that parable in particular. This historical purpose is one reason why I have kept the consideration of parables until late in my overall project. Without a firm historical framework arising out of the mission of a peculiar 1st-century Jewish prophet, these parables are open to as many different interpretations as there are imaginative critics. In contrast, once we locate and anchor the parables within the portrait of the historical Jesus that has slowly emerged throughout our first four volumes, the possible range of a given parable’s meaning is considerably reduced—though a range still exists. Hence, granted the contours of the historical Jesus that have gradually taken shape over our quest, his parables obviously do not function like Zen koans or the endlessly mutating word games with which professors bemuse and amuse their otherwise bored students. Whatever else they are, the parables of the historical Jesus are comparative short stories used by this Elijah-like eschatological prophet as he seeks to regather a scattered Israel in preparation for the coming kingdom of God. Like the OT prophets from Nathan to Ezekiel, Jesus employs memorable stories to draw his fellow Israelites into his worldview, bring them up short, and force them to reconsider their lives and values in the face of some crisis. For all their puzzling nature, Jesus’ parables are therefore useful to him only insofar as they convey in a uniquely powerful way his prophetic proclamation to Israel. As such, they possess and communicate content and intentionality, aimed at a specific people at a pivotal moment in their history. In fact, as symbolic “word-events,” the parables cohere with Jesus’ symbolic healings and exorcisms as well as with his symbolic “street theater,” such as his “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem and his “cleansing” of the temple. All these words and deeds coalesce to confront Israel with the definitive challenge of a Jew who

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sees himself as the eschatological prophet sent to the chosen people in the last hour of their present history. For all their playful aspects, Jesus’ parables are not idle games but specialized tools for teaching. For all their comic or ironic undertones, they are deadly serious in their intent. In sum, Jesus’ overall mission and message provide his parables with their basic frame of reference. Contained and constrained by his core eschatological purpose, Jesus’ parables do not mean anything or everything or nothing. Jesus does not go to the trouble of formulating and telling parables to his disciples and to the crowds simply to dazzle them with his verbal dexterity and then let them make of the parables whatever they will. Rather, the parables are one way in which Jesus engagingly conveys and forcefully inculcates the message that he also proclaims in nonparabolic speech. This is not to say that Jesus’ parables are simply rhetorical decorations adorning a message that could just as easily be taught without them. The parables communicate Jesus’ message and challenge by involving the listener in a manner and with an impact that has no neat verbal substitute. While certainly communicating Jesus’ prophetic message, the parables have at the same time a teasing indeterminacy, an openness to more than one meaning or application that makes them especially suited to draw people (learned and unlearned alike) into dialogue, challenging their presuppositions and opening up new horizons that the audience must ponder without the comfort of pat answers supplied by the teacher. Thus, the fact that Jesus’ parables are not susceptible of any and every meaning imaginable does not signify that they may not conjure up a range of possible meanings instead of one fixed moral or a single point of comparison. Indeed, this flexibility may have been one reason why Jesus found parables especially useful in his itinerant ministry. The parables were easily repeatable in and adaptable to new situations and new audiences, who would be hearing the basic melodies of the parables in different keys and with different timbres and dynamics.5 In seeking to understand Jesus’ parables, one must hold on to both ends of a paradox: Jesus’ parables were indeed riddle-speech, but riddles within a larger framework of meaning, not riddles proclaiming the nihilism of no definite meaning. With these introductory observations behind us, let us now delve into the nature and problem of Jesus’ parables in greater detail. Since I differ markedly from the opinions found in many present-day parable books, I will lay out my basic positions on the parables in terms of seven unfashionable theses. That is to say, I will hammer out my own stand on Jesus’ parables in dialectical fashion, pointing out in each thesis where I differ from views commonly held by parable scholars.



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II. SEVEN UNFASHIONABLE THESES ON THE PARABLES A. The Number of Narrative Parables in the Synoptic Gospels Thesis One: The fact that scholars widely and wildly disagree on how many parables of Jesus there are in the Synoptic Gospels reveals a still more embarrassing fact: scholars in general do not agree on what constitutes a parable of Jesus. In other words, there seems to be no consensus on what the precise definition of a Synoptic parable is. Arland J. Hultgren notes that Adolf Jülicher discusses 53 parables, C. H. Dodd 32, Joachim Jeremias 41, Bernard Brandon Scott 29 (plus one found only in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas [hereafter CGT]), Jan Lambrecht 42, and R. Alan Culpepper 49.6 Klyne Snodgrass finds an even broader range, observing that the number proposed by various authors extends from 37 (John Dominic Crossan) to 65 (T. W. Manson).7 Snodgrass himself treats 33 parables (counting Matthew and Luke’s versions of the Talents/Pounds and the Great Supper separately). Actually, Snodgrass counts 38 in all, including both narrative parables and similitudes. The compendium volume edited by Ruben Zimmermann treats 104 Gleichnisse of Jesus, obviously taking the German term Gleichnis in a very broad sense, while at the same time extending the database to include John’s Gospel, CGT, and the Agrapha.8 Thus, the lines of demarcation between parable, similitude, simile, and metaphor are blurry at best. Granted, there will always be debates among form critics about proper definitions and categories, but the parables of Jesus tower above other form-critical disputes in the Gospels. Apart from arguments among modern rhetoricians and students of linguistic theory, one fundamental reason for the disagreements about counting the number of Synoptic parables lies at the root of the matter: the wide range of meaning of the Hebrew noun ma¯ša¯l in the OT and of the Greek noun parabole¯ in the NT, as well as in ancient Greek literature in general. Indeed, the difficulty of fixing a precise meaning for “parable” reaches all the way back to complexities concerning the roots of Hebrew verbs.9 OT Hebrew knows two quite different verbs, with different semantic domains, both of which have the qal form ma¯šal.10 One verb, which is not denominative in its origins, means “to rule” and goes back to the Proto-Semitic root mšl. Although more frequently used in the OT than the second verb to be examined, it has no relation to our discussion or to the word “parable.” The second verb with the qal form ma¯šal is a denominative verb, that is, a verb formed from a noun, in this case, ma¯ša¯l (“saying,” “proverb”). In qal and piel, the verb accordingly has meanings such as “to formulate a saying,” “to

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utter a proverb,” or “to recite derisive verses.” Complications arise from the fact that this verb in nifal also has the meaning of “to be like,” in hitpael the meaning “to become like,” and in hifil “to compare.” This meaning derives from a different Proto-Semitic root mtl with the sense of “to be like.” To muddle matters further, in piel the verb ma¯šal can mean “to pose a riddle.” It is from the fertile soil of these two ideas, “proverb” and “comparison” (expressed often in figurative speech or tropes), that the richness of the noun ma¯ša¯l springs.11 In OT wisdom literature, the noun regularly has the basic meaning of “proverb” or “wise saying.” It appears in parallel formulations with nouns like me˘lîsâ (“parable”), dibrê ha˘ka¯mîm (“words of the wise”), and hîdo¯ta¯m ˙ ˙   ˙   (“their riddles”) in Prov 1:6 (cf. v 2 ʾimrê bînâ [“words of intelligence”]). Indeed, the Hebrew title of the Book of Proverbs (mišlê šeˇlo¯mô [“the proverbs of Solomon”]), as well as the titles of major subdivisions of the book (1:1; 10:1; 25:1), already understands ma¯ša¯l as a literary category summing up various types of wisdom sayings contained in the volume. Several centuries later, Ben Sira can sum up his entire book with the collective form of the noun ma¯ša¯l, namely, mo¯šel (50:27).12 Beyond the basic meaning of “proverb” or “wise saying,” the OT also witnesses to such various meanings as “comparison,” “similitude,” “an object of mockery,” “a song of mockery” (i.e., a taunt song), and “a byword”— reminding us that a proverb can often be used as a taunt.13 By and large, all these meanings of ma¯ša¯l may be tucked under the capacious category of “wisdom.” Proverbs, axioms, maxims, aphorisms, riddles, bywords, and taunts—whatever the more precise categorization, in general they are most at home in the sapiential literature of the OT. Unfortunately, all too often, many NT commentators quickly jump from this wisdom matrix to the use and meaning of Jesus’ parables in the Synoptics. Therein lies a basic mistake that muddies the waters of NT parable research. It is to dispute this leap of logic that I pose Thesis Two. B. OT Wisdom Not the Prime Analogue of the Narrative Parable Thesis Two: The OT wisdom ma¯ša¯l is not the prime source or analogue of those “parables” that are most characteristic of and particular to the Synoptic Jesus within the NT corpus. To clarify what I mean here, I must ever so briefly make a point that will receive fuller exposition in subsequent chapters: the parables that are characteristic of and peculiar to the Synoptic Jesus within the NT are not simply one- or two-line proverbs or



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aphorisms, genres that are found in the Gospel of John, the Pauline epistles, and other NT books as well. The parables peculiar to the Synoptic Jesus are comparisons (be they similes or metaphors) that have been “stretched out” into short stories with at least an implicit beginning, middle, and end—in other words, a mini-narrative with at least an implicit plot line.14 By way of a brief justification of this initial definition of Synoptic parable as narrative parable, I would simply note two facts: (1) This narrative ma¯ša¯l is the genre that is most frequently designated as parabole¯ in the Synoptics; other meanings of parabole¯ (e.g., “proverb,” “enigmatic aphorism,” “the meaning of a parable”) are scattered and infrequent by comparison. (2) This narrative ma¯ša¯l is the type of parabole¯-speech that is most peculiar to the Synoptic Jesus within the NT writings. In other words, while these narrative parables are widespread in all three Synoptic Gospels, they are notably absent in the rest of the NT, including the Gospel of John—as, with two exceptions, is the word parabole¯.15 The analogue of Jesus’ “parables” in this distinctive narrative sense is found nowhere in the OT wisdom books. Rather, the analogue is found primarily among the OT prophets, both those portrayed in narrative (i.e., “historical”) books like Samuel–Kings and those whose voice is heard in the explicitly prophetic books of the OT. Or, if one uses the traditional divisions of the Jewish Scriptures (Tanak), the kind of parable characteristic of Jesus is found primarily in the mouths of prophets in the Former and Latter Prophets, that is to say, in the Ne˘bî’îm (the Prophets), not the Ke˘tûbîm (the Writings). I say “primarily” because, in the Former Prophets, a few parables are spoken by individuals who are not prophets: e.g., Jotham’s fable in Judg 9:8–15, the fictitious story told by the woman of Tekoa to King David in 2 Sam 14:5–8, and the mocking reply of King Jehoash to King Amaziah (another fable) in 2 Kgs 14:9–10.16 Significantly, in these and other parables in the Former Prophets, the general context is the developing, conflict-ridden history of Israel, and the immediate context is one of argument, rebuke, and even condemnation, usually of a king or some other authority figures. This, in itself, is significant for the background of Jesus’ narrative parables. In the Former Prophets, the most famous example of a “parable” used in a conflict situation is a parable spoken by a prophet, namely, Nathan (2 Sam 12:1–12). His story of the poor man whose ewe lamb is seized by the rich man is used to indict David in veiled manner for his adultery with Bathsheba and his indirect murder of her husband Uriah. With Nathan’s parable we move from the fables of Jotham and Amaziah, which deal with the plant and animal world, to realistic stories of human (inter)action.17 Intriguingly, in all these parables, the speaker supplies an interpretation or application of

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the story to the present circumstances (what Jewish scholars centuries later would call a nimša¯l).18 A prophet appears again as the teller of a juridical or judgment-parable to a king in 1 Kgs 20:39–42, where Ahab is rebuked by a prophet for sparing the life of the Syrian king Ben-Hadad.19 In sum, narrative parables, be they fables about plants and animals or realistic stories about humans, emerge in a context of conflict and judgment in the course of Israel’s premonarchical and monarchical history. They are usually spoken to kings or other authority figures, and some of the most notable parables are found in the mouths of prophets. Anyone examining these parables is struck, though, by a surprising point. These narrative parables in the Former Prophets, which any scholar who knows Jesus’ parables would readily label me˘s˘a¯lîm, never receive the designation ma¯ša¯l in their immediate literary contexts. As so often happens in history, a reality appears before a particular designation for it is applied. C. The Latter Prophets and Narrative Parables Thesis Three: It is in the “writing prophets” (alias the Latter Prophets) that we see both (1) a notable expansion of the genre of comparative short story used in argumentation about key events in Israel’s history and (2) the use of m-š-l vocabulary to designate this type of speech.20 A relatively early and clear example of the development of the genre of comparative narrative moving in the direction of detailed allegory is the Song of the Vineyard in Isa 5:1–7. Here we have a similitude stretched out into a short story of a man cultivating a vineyard. The story reaches a strange, unexpected conclusion: when the vineyard yields wild grapes, the owner totally destroys his vineyard. This conclusion is followed by an application of the story to Yahweh’s relations with and judgment on Jerusalem and Judah. However, the label Isaiah gives the story is not ma¯ša¯l but rather šîr, a “song” (or possibly even “a love song”). The expansion of metaphorical narrative into grand allegory takes place most spectacularly in Ezekiel.21 The story of the vine in Ezek 15:1–8 (dealing with Israel and judgment) is relatively short, though longer than the parables we find in the Former Prophets. But the whole of chap. 16 (sixtythree verses!) is taken up with the metaphorical story of Yahweh’s espousal to Jerusalem, her infidelity, and the promised restoration of the unfaithful spouse. It is a case of metaphor stretched out into one long allegorical narrative.22 In chap. 17 we have still another allegory of Israel’s recent history, with an explanation given in Ezekiel’s usual manner. What is especially striking here, though, is the wording of the introduction to the allegorical story



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in 17:2. Translated literally, the verse reads: “Son of Man, riddle a riddle and parable a parable to the house of Israel” (ben-ʾa¯da¯m hûd hîdâ ûmšo¯l ma¯ša¯l ˙   ˙   ʾel bêt yis´ra¯ʾe¯l). Intriguingly, the LXX translates hîdâ as die¯ge¯ma (“tale,” ˙   “story,” “narrative”) and ma¯ša¯l as parabole¯ (as is the LXX’s habit). Thus, the Hebrew of Ezekiel emphasizes that the prophet’s allegorical narrative of Israel’s history is a type of comparison (ma¯ša¯l) that has a puzzling message inviting attempts to unravel the meaning (hîdâ). The LXX both confirms the ˙   idea of comparison (parabole¯) and underlines the fact that the challenging puzzle is presented in the form of a narrative (die¯ge¯ma).23 Thus, in this one example, we have a prophet labeling as a ma¯ša¯l (parabole¯ in the Greek) a puzzling allegorical narrative of Israel’s conflicted history with Yahweh, a narrative that announces judgment, implicitly calls for repentance, and receives a detailed allegorical interpretation from the prophet. It is especially instructive that precisely where we see Ezekiel applying the label ma¯ša¯l to a narrative parable, this parable evinces clear allegorical traits. This is a clear indicator that, from early on, the category of narrative parable (a ma¯ša¯l in Ezekiel’s usage) was not necessarily opposed to allegory; rather, a parable can be a vehicle of allegorical thought and expression.24 Nor is this a onetime event in Ezekiel. The allegory of the pot in 24:1–14 receives basically the same introduction and labels as in chap. 17: ûmšo¯l ʾel bêt hammerî ma¯ša¯l (“and parable to the house of rebellion a parable,” 24:3). As usual, the LXX translates ma¯ša¯l as parabole¯. An additional point should not be missed: here in Ezekiel we see ma¯ša¯l, while remaining an allegorical narrative, also bearing the meaning of a prophetic oracle foretelling Israel’s future. Actually, the connection of the noun ma¯ša¯l with the idea of a prophetic oracle of the future is found as early (from the canonical point of view) as the Book of Numbers, where Balaam’s symbolic oracles likewise prophesy Israel’s future, though in a much happier vein (Num 23:7,18; 24:3,15,20–23). That Balaam’s ma¯ša¯l is equivalent to a prophetic oracle is made clear by its being yoked to the noun ne˘’ûm, the common word for “oracle.” Thus, alongside the Former and Latter Prophets, we have a striking example in the Pentateuch of ma¯ša¯l (each time translated as parabole¯ by the LXX), meaning a prophetic utterance employing figurative speech to prophesy Israel’s history.25 The element of prophetic oracle in ma¯ša¯l / parabole¯ undergoes further expansion and transformation in later apocalyptic literature. “Parable” becomes a label for eschatological instruction, often communicated within a symbolic vision or dream, which in turn requires interpretation, usually by an angel (see, e.g., 4 Ezra 4:13–21; 5:41–53; the “Parables” or “Similitudes” of Enoch in 1 Enoch 37–71; and in Christian literature the “Parables” or

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“Similitudes” [parabolai in the Greek, similitudines in the Latin] of the Shepherd of Hermas). In this apocalyptic development, however, the typically OT-prophetic meaning of parable as a short story that challenges the hearers to tease out its meaning is largely lost, though some of the comparisons used by the interpreting angel in 4 Ezra are reminiscent of the fableparables in the OT.26 This overview of ma¯ša¯l / parabole¯ in the OT establishes the basis for the next thesis. D. Jesus the Teller of Parables in the Prophetic Tradition Thesis Four: The Synoptic Jesus who tells narrative parables stands primarily not in the sapiential but in the prophetic tradition of the Jewish Scriptures.27 In other words, Jesus the spinner of narrative parables should be described not in terms of Jesus the sage but rather in terms of Jesus the prophet.28 As with his imitation of Elijah, the itinerant prophet/miracle worker of northern Israel (and possibly of Jeremiah, the celibate prophet predicting the destruction of the temple), Jesus seems in his parable-telling to have reached back quite consciously to the Former and Latter Prophets of the Jewish Scriptures instead of simply reflecting the more recent apocalyptic or sapiential literature of Israel. This assertion admittedly contradicts a large swath of parable research from the last century. From conservative exegetes like Ben Witherington to the far-left Jesus Seminar, as exemplified especially by John Dominic Crossan, the parables of Jesus have been treated as prime examples of Jesus as wisdom teacher or sage.29 I would suggest that this is a major blunder in assigning categories. As I have argued throughout the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew, the historical Jesus presented himself to his fellow 1st-century Palestinian Jews first and foremost as the miracle-working, Elijah-like prophet of the end time. To be sure, Jesus also engaged in halakic debates over the practice of the Mosaic Law and spoke many a sapiential bon mot. Law and wisdom were notable dimensions of his public ministry—which is hardly surprising, since the two were closely intertwined in the religious thought of Late Second Temple Judaism. But the category that looms the largest and integrates the most important aspects of his activity as well as its denouement is eschatological prophet. Jesus was not put to death by the Roman prefect because he debated other Jews about divorce or the sabbath. He was not executed because Pilate didn’t like some of his wisdom sayings. One more legal debater or popular sage could be tolerated. The eschatological Elijah-like prophet who attracted large en-



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thusiastic crowds and who was believed by some of his followers to be the prophesied Son of David could not be tolerated as he formally entered the ancient Davidic capital at Passover amid acclamations and provocative symbolic actions.30 It is into this overarching category of Jesus as eschatological prophet, surrounded by enthusiastic crowds eager for his teaching as well as his healings, that his use of narrative parables fits perfectly.31 Developing the narrative ma¯ša¯l out of the traditions seen in the Former and Latter Prophets, Jesus the prophet told striking short stories that employed figurative language meant to be puzzling enough to tease the mind into active thought and personal decision—all within the larger context of prophetic conflict with the ruling class at a critical moment in Israel’s history.32 Indeed, this description may supply us with a brief, impressionistic definition of what a narrative parable of Jesus is: a striking short story that employs figurative language (i.e., a metaphor or simile stretched out into a narrative) and is meant to be puzzling enough to tease the mind into active thought and personal decision. As a chosen rhetorical tool of such an eschatological prophet, we need not be surprised that many of Jesus’ parables carry an eschatological tone, though the parable genre was flexible enough to serve more than one aspect of Jesus’ mission and message. To be sure, Jesus speaks his parables within the larger context of his ministry to the people of Israel, which heralds and to some degree makes present the kingdom of God. However, to try to make all the Synoptic parables speak directly and primarily of the grand history of God’s dealings with Israel or of the kingdom of God is to force them onto a Procrustean bed.33 Many of the so-called “example stories” specific to Luke’s Gospel—notably the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Rich Fool—do not operate on such a grand scale. Indeed, in some of them, sapiential themes blend with the prophetic. The parables, as they stand in the Gospels, do not reflect a Jesus-One-Note. E. False Blanket Descriptions of Jesus’ Parables Thesis Five: I have purposely kept my definition of a Synoptic parable as simple (and perhaps even as vague) as possible—and that should be the rule for any definition of Jesus’ parables. Any attempt to define Jesus’ parables in greater detail, with a laundry list of supposedly essential characteristics, threatens to introduce qualifications that are true of some but not of all the parables of Jesus as found in the Synoptics. All too often this questionable procedure flows from the logical mistake of begging the question, that is, presupposing in one’s argument what remains to be proven. Some critics, at least implicitly, decide beforehand which parables come from the h ­ istorical

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Jesus and then use their hypothetical database of “genuine” parables to define the essential characteristics of any of Jesus’ parables. A partial list of such questionable characteristics includes the following: 1. Jesus’ parables draw upon events of everyday peasant life or the cycle of nature in Palestine.34 Not always. We also have parables about kings and their dealings with their court servants over huge sums of money (Matt 18:23–35; among the Synoptic evangelists, Matthew is notable for his love of large sums of money), or a king who is holding a wedding banquet for his son but who in the meantime kills all the invited citizens from a particular city that he proceeds to burn to the ground (Matt 22:2–10), or a merchant who entrusts massive amounts of money to his slaves while he is away on a long journey (Matt 25:14–30), or a nobleman who entrusts smaller amounts of money to his slaves while he journeys abroad to obtain royal power (Luke 19:11–27). Moreover, while it is conceivable that an affluent landowner might divide up his inheritance between his two sons simply because the younger son asks him to do so and that later on the landowner might restore the younger son to his former status after he had wasted his entire inheritance (Luke 15:11–32), such a drama would hardly qualify as an “everyday” event or an ordinary experience in the cycle of peasant life or nature. Even Mark’s parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–11), while certainly reflecting the socioeconomic conditions and conflict of the time, hardly portrays “everyday events” as it recounts multiple murders of slaves and a son, avenged in turn by the killing of all the tenants by the owner.35 Even in 1st-century Palestine, this did not happen every day—a fortiori in Antipas’ Galilee, where internal domestic affairs were relatively peaceful during his reign.36 2. Jesus’ parables are always fictitious narratives.37 Not always. It is hardly a fiction that, in 1st-century Palestine, sowers went out to sow seeds, that various amounts of the seed fell in less than optimum areas and so failed to yield fruit, while nevertheless—at least at times, in especially good years—a surprisingly abundant harvest would result (Mark 4:3–8 parr.). Granted, in this parable, as in many others, Jesus employs the common rhetorical technique of hyperbole, though whether the sower’s mode of sowing is unusual or the amount of the harvest incredibly huge continues to be disputed among scholars.38 But the basic story is hardly fictitious. If hyperbole automatically turned a whole narrative into fiction, then most yearly reports to the faculty by university presidents and deans would qualify as fiction. The same can be said for the parables of the Mustard Seed (Mark 4:30–32 parr.) and the Leaven (Matt 13:33 par.). Again, hyperbole is employed (at least in some versions: “smallest of all the seeds,” “it becomes larger than



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all plants and becomes a tree,” “three measures of flour”) to underscore a major theme—the contrast between small beginnings and large endings. But the basic story is exactly what happened and does happen quite often. This is all the more true of the Seed Growing by Itself (Mark 4:26–29). The streamlining of the story to emphasize that the seed grows by its own inherent dynamism (automate¯)—something the farmer can neither cause nor understand—explains the silence about the farmer’s activity in tilling and watering. Such obvious action by the farmer is not denied by the parable; it is simply ignored by the miniature story in order to underline what is at stake. That all the other stories in Jesus’ parables are fictitious may be granted for the sake of argument. Yet we should note that, in making such a claim, scholars are asserting something that they cannot strictly prove. Indeed, some commentators suggest that, in the similitude of the plundering of the strong man by the stronger man or in the parable of the Evil Tenants, Jesus is alluding to recent events known to his audience.39 This is mere speculation, to be sure. But it does counsel caution when making claims that all of Jesus’ narrative parables are fictitious—even apart from those that deal with the ordinary cycles of sowing and growth. Such claims are indeed quite probable, but not, strictly speaking, demonstrable in every case. 3. Jesus’ parables are always subversive of traditional religious beliefs, upending them with surprise endings or, alternately, posing puzzling stories that resist any specific interpretation.40 At times scholars seem to imagine Jesus in the guise of a postmodern or deconstructionist critic intent on bewildering his students in a class on theory,41 or a Zen master helping his disciples to understand that there is nothing to understand in a given statement via discursive reasoning. Not only is this a prime example of projecting present-day academic life or pop-cultural trends back into ancient times and texts; more to the point, it is demonstrably false. For example, the L parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16–21)—in which a prosperous farmer plans both future expansion and a life of ease, only to die that very night—is Jesus’ recycling of a traditional truth inculcated by OT sages and prophets, intertestamental literature, and Greco-Roman philosophy. One finds variations on the theme in Proverbs, Qoheleth, and Ben Sira. Indeed, Ben Sira makes a very similar point—though in the form of a wisdom saying rather than a parable—in 11:18–19 (cf. 29:11; 51:3).42 The only variation on the theme that Jesus introduces is the climax in which God directly addresses the rich man as a fool and announces his death “this very night,” thus providing an explicitly theological and eschatological note not present in the earliest sapiential forms of this OT tradition. Attempts to avoid the obvious conclusion that Jesus is simply recycling with variations a well-known

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Jewish sapiential and prophetic teaching involve either importing into the parable a reference to the kingdom of God (through the theme of the harvest, which is never explicitly mentioned) or substituting the version of the parable in CGT, which in my opinion is dependent on Luke’s version.43 Apart from these subterfuges, we have a clear case of a parable of the Synoptic Jesus that, far from peddling O. Henry surprise endings to subvert traditional religious expectations, actually affirms and enforces them. An “attack on [the traditional religious] world” this parable is not. Examples could be easily multiplied, but I would suggest that, if one excludes the clever manipulations of modern critics, the parables of the Sower, the Seed Growing by Itself, the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, Matthew’s parable of the Two Sons, and Luke’s parables of the Barren Fig Tree, the Tower Builder, and the Warring King all play with traditional themes in witty and engaging ways but do not employ surprise endings that would deeply upset the expectations of fervent Jews nourished on their Scriptures and the intertestamental traditions found in Palestine at the turn of the era. Even the parables stressing the reversal of fortune by God’s action before or after death (e.g., the Rich Man and Lazarus) would encourage rather than discomfort those Jews who shared either the future eschatology of the Pharisees or a fortiori the apocalyptic hopes of such groups as the Qumranites. That there are parables with surprise endings—for example, the Workers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1–16), the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son—is not in dispute. But they do not typify all of Jesus’ parables. Indeed, I would even question whether they represent the majority of cases, especially once one realizes that mere hyperbole in an otherwise realistic story is not the same thing as a surprising, paradoxical ending that reverses all expectations. F. The Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas Thesis Six: The claim that the parables in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas represent an independent and indeed earlier and more reliable tradition of the parables of the historical Jesus is highly questionable. The question of whether the sayings in CGT that have Synoptic parallels are actually dependent, directly or indirectly, on the Synoptic Gospels emerged soon after the discovery of Thomas at Nag Hammadi in 1945.44 As anyone acquainted with books on the parables of Jesus surely knows, the debate continues to this day.45 The independence of Thomas has come to be championed by a notable group of North American scholars, though authors differ on whether a few individual sayings in Thomas might reflect dependence on the Synoptics. In certain quarters, Thomas’ independence is now taken for granted



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to such an extent that opposite views are hardly discussed at length.46 Instead, contrary voices tend to be quickly dismissed with little if any detailed analysis of the arguments about a particular logion. Consequently, serious engagement with scholars who challenge Thomas’ independence by means of a thorough analysis of individual logia is at best sparse.47 There is no need to repeat here my general arguments for questioning the early date and independence of CGT that I laid out in Volume One of A Marginal Jew.48 I would simply note that every time I have tested a saying from CGT during my research for the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew, comparison with the Synoptics has argued in favor of Thomas being secondary—be the dependence a direct literary one or indirect dependence by way of some Gospel harmony, a collection of sayings extracted from the Synoptics, or simply secondary orality (or perhaps a mix or all of these).49 But as we come to a study of Jesus’ parables, a more detailed approach to the question of Thomas’ dependence or independence is desirable. The practical problem I face in such an approach is that neither space nor the focus of A Marginal Jew allows for a study of all 114 Coptic sayings in the manner of scholars like Wolfgang Schrage, Michael Fieger, Reinhard Nordsieck, April D. DeConick, or Uwe-Karsten Plisch. Given the limitations of this fifth volume, I think that the best way to tackle the problem is to take a cross-section of test cases involving sayings material found in both Thomas and the Synoptics. Lest someone object that the results of these test cases are skewed because only certain Synoptic sources or only certain literary genres are treated, I will select my probes from all the Synoptic sources and from a variety of literary genres, not simply from parables.50 More specifically, to ensure that my findings are not distorted by drawing examples from only one stream of the Synoptic tradition, I will examine sayings from every Synoptic source: (i) the Marcan tradition (as redacted, in most cases, by Matthew and especially by Luke); (ii) Q; (iii) sayings found independently in both Mark and Q (referred to as “Mark–Q overlaps”); (iv) the special Matthean material (M); and (v) the special Lucan material (L). In addition, to ensure coverage of various genres, I will begin the test cases with examples of literary genres that lie outside the category of parable and then proceed to examples from Thomas’ parables that have parallels in the Synoptics. At this point, one practical problem arises in regard to format and mode of presentation in this chapter. To include all the test cases within this list of seven unfashionable theses would create a gargantuan Chapter 37, with Thesis Six disproportionately longer and vastly more complicated than the other six theses combined. To avoid such an unwieldy format, I will

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­ resent the detailed analysis of these test cases of Thomas and the Synopp tics in the next chapter, Chapter 38. However, for the sake of the continuity of my main argument, as well as for the convenience of the reader, I will anticipate and summarize here the conclusions reached at the end of Chapter 38.51 In Chapter 38, I test fifteen Thomasine logia that have parallels in the Synoptics. The conclusion reached from testing each logion is that it is more likely than not that Thomas’ version displays signs of some sort of dependence on the Synoptic material. As already noted, the kind of dependence may well vary from saying to saying. The dependence may be direct or indirect, through literary dependence or secondary orality, through Gospel harmonies, catechetical summaries, or mere memorization, however faulty. One corollary from this conclusion is that Thomas is important not because it represents an early and independent source of Jesus’ sayings. Rather, Thomas is important because it furnishes a striking example of the reception history of the Synoptics in the 2d century. Thomas’ importance lies in the fact that (1) it displays abundantly the conflating tendencies seen in various patristic works of the 2d century (e.g., Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and the Didache), while at the same time (2) it points forward to the culmination of these conflating and harmonizing tendencies in Tatian’s Diatessaron. To be sure, this examination of fifteen logia from Thomas does not automatically resolve the problem of all the Thomasine sayings that have close Synoptic parallels (roughly half of the 114 logia in CGT). But the results of probing these fifteen sayings do shift the burden of proof in the debate. As a matter of principle, anyone approaching CGT for the first time would be obliged to remain completely open-minded about whether all of Thomas was directly or indirectly dependent on one or more of the Synoptics, or whether it was totally independent, or whether some logia were dependent while others were not. Thus, if one were starting from scratch, the burden of proof would be on anyone making any claim, one way or the other. But, after examining CGT 5, 31, 39, 14, 54, 16, 55, 47, and 99 outside the parable tradition, and sayings 20, 65, 66, 57, 72, and 63 inside the parable tradition, I reach the conclusion in Chapter 38 that each saying displays dependence on one or more of the Synoptics. Once this has been shown to be the case—in either the Greek fragments or the full Coptic text of Thomas—across a broad range of Synoptic sources and genres, the burden of proof necessarily shifts. For not only do the Thomasine logia that have been tested depend on the Synoptics. In addition, many of these Thomasine sayings evince a redactional hand with a clear tendency to conflate and/or abbreviate various forms of the Synoptics to produce the version in CGT.



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Moreover, the studies done by Christopher Tuckett, Charles Quarles, Jörg Frey, Simon Gathercole, Mark Goodacre and others have shown that this tendency extends far beyond the logia I have examined. Hence it becomes quite probable that whoever put the Gospel of Thomas together knew and used the Synoptic Gospels in his redactional work. This conclusion holds true even within the restricted compass of the Greek fragments of Thomas found in the Oxyrhynchus papyri. It remains theoretically possible that now and then the redactor received into his composition an independent logion that he left untouched. But such a claim, made for a specific logion, must be proved, not just asserted or taken for granted on the basis of a supposed scholarly consensus. In the presence of a good number of logia that can be demonstrated with fair probability to be dependent on the Synoptics, I would maintain that the burden of proof shifts to anyone claiming independence. The default assumption should be dependence unless the opposite can be proved in a particular case. To all this I would add a personal note from my experience of working for years on this material: I have yet to come across a single commentator on CGT who has proved convincingly that any one particular Thomasine logion with a Synoptic parallel is truly independent of the Synoptic tradition. Granted, a number of cases may well fall into the dreaded limbo of non liquet (not clear either way). But even here, I would claim that the results of the probes in Chapter 38 can rightly influence our judgment on these instances of non liquet. If—as is the case—we have a fair number of clear instances of Thomas’ dependence, witnessed in every Synoptic source and in many different literary genres, then a judgment of non liquet must remain just that. Such a judgment cannot be gently nudged by default or by a presumed academic consensus into the “independence” column. If anything, the multiple examples in Chapter 38 might incline us to presume that unclear cases are more probably products of dependence that have been heavily reworked by the Thomasine redactor. But if we are uncomfortable going that far, at the very least such cases must remain non liquet. The upshot of Thesis Six (including by way of anticipation what will be demonstrated at length in Chapter 38) can be stated quite simply: it is highly questionable to invoke any parable in Thomas (or any other logion, for that matter) as an independent witness of Jesus’ sayings.52 In other words, the Thomasine logia cannot be used to claim that a particular saying attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels is authentic on the purported grounds that Thomas supplies us with multiple attestation from an independent source. Not being an independent source, Thomas offers no such multiple attestation.

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It is now time to apply all that we have seen in this thesis to the larger question of the problem of the historical Jesus and his parables, which we will examine in Thesis Seven. G. Few Authentic Parables Thesis Seven: Relatively few of the Synoptic parables can be attributed to the historical Jesus with a good degree of probability. In other words, relatively few of the parables can meet the test of the criteria of authenticity that other sayings and deeds of Jesus are supposed to meet.53 I realize that this assertion flies in the face of a strong consensus among parable researchers. From Adolf Jülicher through Joachim Jeremias and C. H. Dodd to Norman Perrin, Robert Funk, and Klyne Snodgrass, scholars of various ideologies and faith commitments (or lack thereof) have been united in one unshakable article of faith: the parables provide the most secure way, the royal road, the easiest and most reliable access to the historical Jesus—or, at the very least, to the teaching of the historical Jesus.54 My simple and radical thesis is that this is not so, and endless repeating of the “royal road” mantra will not make it so. As we explore the implications of Thesis Seven, we must distinguish carefully between two similar yet quite different claims: (1) the historical Jesus taught in parables; (2) the historical Jesus taught this particular parable (take your choice: the Sower in the Fields, the Good Samaritan, the Wheat and the Weeds, or whichever). The first assertion—that Jesus taught in parables—is easily sustained, primarily by the criterion of multiple attestation of sources. Every Synoptic source—Mark, Q, M, and L—contains a number of narrative parables taught by Jesus. Indeed, every Synoptic source has one or more parables not present in any other Synoptic source. Moreover, every Synoptic Gospel claims, in one way or another, that Jesus regularly used parables to teach both his disciples and the crowds that followed him. That a popular Jewish prophet and teacher should use parables as part of his rhetorical repertoire coheres perfectly with what we know of the OT prophets before Jesus and the rabbinic teachers after him.55 Some critics also appeal to a type of argument from discontinuity: it is often claimed that Jesus’ parables have a distinct voice, tone, artistry, and literary genius that distinguish them from both OT and rabbinic parables. Whether this be true or not, such a claim rests more on individual literary (and theological) tastes and subjective aesthetic judgments than on the historically testable claims of multiple attestation and coherence. Personally, I prefer not to employ such an argument.



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Even if we invoked no criterion beyond multiple attestation, that would be a sufficient argument for the basic thesis that the historical Jesus used parables in his teaching and was well known for doing so. The one caveat we should append to this firm assertion is that parables were not the only type of teaching method or discourse Jesus used. There is a danger of reducing Jesus simply to a poetic teacher who always spoke in dazzling metaphors and puzzling riddles. As I have shown at length in Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, Jesus the Jew also engaged in halakic debates about Torah and its proper observance, debates that demanded that he take precise positions on specific legal questions: for example, by prohibiting divorce and remarriage as well as oaths; by championing a reasonable, commonsense approach to sabbath observance (e.g., the legality of rescuing animals as well as humans in danger); and by ranking love of God and love of neighbor as first and second in the hierarchy of legal values. Reducing Jesus to a poet with a purely metaphorical mind-set hardly does justice to the complexity of this Jew’s teaching. If we may trust the general impression created by all the Synoptics, parables were an important and major part of Jesus’ teaching. Whether they were the most common form of Jesus’ teaching and what exactly was the proportion of parable teaching to other forms of Jesus’ teaching (e.g., his pronouncements on the Law) is something that we cannot know today, given the highly selective nature of the material preserved by the evangelists. The problem is, once we descend from the general assertion that Jesus taught in parables to the particular judgment of whether this or that parable comes from Jesus, we are in serious trouble. One is reminded of the similar problem of dealing with Jesus’ miracles in Volume Two of A Marginal Jew. The general assertion that Jesus did startling things, things that he and his followers took to be miracles, was easily sustained by the criterion of multiple attestation, which included Josephus as well as all the Gospel sources. In contrast, determining that behind any one particular miracle story lay a startling event in the life of the historical Jesus—an event that he and/or his followers claimed to be miraculous—was quite a different and more difficult matter. All too often we were left with the honest but exasperating judgment of non liquet (not clear either way). I maintain that the same basic pattern holds when we come to examine parables. After all, by what criterion can we establish that this or that particular parable was spoken in some form or other by the historical Jesus? The criterion of multiple attestation works for very few parables. As we will see, the Mustard Seed is a Mark–Q overlap, but such cases are rare among the parables. If one judges that the parable of the Great Supper and the parable of the Talents (or Pounds) are not examples of Q parables

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heavily redacted by Matthew and Luke, but rather examples of two parables that were preserved in the M and L special traditions, we would have two more cases of multiple attestation. If one counted Jesus’ saying about the strong man overcome by the stronger man (Mark 3:27 || Matt 12:29 || Luke 11:21–22) as a parable, we would have another example of a parable that was a Mark–Q overlap. However, in Mark and Matthew this saying takes up only a single verse, a fact that moves me to categorize it as a similitude rather than as a narrative parable.56 That said, this short list more or less exhausts candidates for multiple attestation. Sometimes recent studies on memory, eyewitnesses, oral tradition, and oral performances in the ancient world are invoked to bolster an argument for the authenticity of the Synoptic parables.57 Such studies are welcome additions to NT research, but one may wonder what exactly they contribute to the question of the authenticity of a given parable. It is no doubt true that the parables in particular were told and retold and handed down for decades in the oral tradition, undergoing various permutations. Multiple oral performances would have been unavoidable, exercising both a creative and a conservative influence on the basic structure and content. Nevertheless, the hard truth is that we do not have 1st-century DVDs or smartphone downloads that preserve the living voice of such oral performances and transformations.58 All we have are the carefully composed literary documents called Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Mainstream source and redaction criticism point to Matthew and Luke’s dependence on Mark and on a hypothetical source labeled Q, along with individual units from special M and L traditions. To be sure, ongoing oral traditions remained available and may at times have influenced the authors of the written Gospels. But the influence of living oral tradition on the composition of the four canonical Gospels is something to be demonstrated in the individual instance, not simply asserted. Then, too, the influence of memory is not something to be restricted to oral composition and tradition. For instance, texts that were either heard or read repeatedly by a scribe would presumably remain in that scribe’s memory and might well exercise an influence if at a later date the scribe either authored or copied one of the Gospels. In my view, the proper understanding of the complexity of oral tradition and the influence of memory on both oral and written material enriches but does not invalidate the basic model created by form, source, tradition, and redaction criticism, including the two-source theory of Synoptic relationships. Such a model is sufficient, at least in most cases, for explaining the sources and relationships of the Synoptic parables. Hence if one wishes to claim, for instance, that a Matthean or Lucan form of a particular Marcan parable is dependent not simply on Mark but also



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on some stray oral variant, then it is up to the scholar making that claim to substantiate it in the particular case. Vague, general appeals to folk memory and oral performances in ancient or nonliterate cultures can hardly decide the issue in the individual case.59 For example, a parable created in the mid-30s of the 1st century a.d. by a person who had been a follower of Jesus in the late 20s would no doubt undergo many oral performances and be remembered in different ways before it was written down in the Synoptic Gospels. The multiple performances it had undergone between the mid30s and the mid-70s—multiple performances that we can only surmise, not test or verify—would prove nothing about whether it originated with the historical Jesus or with one of his disciples. To take two specific examples of parables probably created by early Christians: in the following chapter, we shall see that the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is most likely a creation either of Matthew himself or of the tradents of his M tradition.60 Relatively few critical scholars attempt to argue that this parable (and some would add the Matthean parable of the Ten Virgins) goes back to the historical Jesus. In Chapter 39, I will argue that the parable of the Good Samaritan is a pure creation of Luke the evangelist. In other words, when it comes to this preeminently Lucan parable, it is difficult to make a case for any form of the parable existing before the evangelist, to say nothing of tracing it back to Jesus. If this be true of two well-known and often-cited parables, what positive arguments can be brought forward to prove that some other parable lacking multiple attestation is not a creation either of the early tradents of the Jesus tradition or of one of the evangelists? Even such a staunch defender of the reliability of the Jesus tradition in the Gospels as Birger Gerhardsson maintains that “early Christianity felt itself entitled to formulate new narrative meshalim of the Kingdom, . . . meshalim created in the spirit of the master and according to the same lines as his own meshalim.”61 At this point, we can appreciate the pivotal importance of deciding that CGT does not represent an early and independent source of Jesus’ teachings in general and of the parables in particular. If Thomas were independent and early, we would have multiple attestation (or greater multiple attestation) for the parables of the Sower, the Mustard Seed, the Wheat and the Weeds, the Rich Fool, the Great Supper, the Evil Tenants, the Pearl of Great Price, the Leaven, the Lost Sheep, and the Treasure in the Field. But as I will argue at length in Chapter 38, this is most likely not the case. I am in principle open to the possibility that, in an individual instance, the version of a parable preserved in CGT represents an independent and early form—if someone should mount a convincing argument for that position. To be honest, though, having worked through all the Synoptic parables in detail with

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CGT at my side, I have yet to find any such convincing argument. One can understand, though, why scholars from Jeremias to Crossan, so different in their christologies or lack thereof, should rally around the independence of Thomas. With it, we gain multiple attestation and a good argument for authenticity for nine parables that otherwise would lack it (the Mustard Seed is safe as a Mark–Q overlap). Without Thomas, these nine are in the same source-critical boat as most other parables. Worse still, not only does the criterion of multiple attestation not apply; one must say the same thing about the criterion of embarrassment.62 If anything, the parables of Jesus have proven to be the most well-known and well-loved parts of the Gospels, even for nonbelievers. Various audiences in the Gospels are at times shocked or perturbed by what Jesus says, but almost never is a narrative parable the cause of such shock. The stock reaction to parables (when a reaction is noted) is puzzlement or a request for an explanation. Needless to say, an ingenious modern critic is free to use his or her skill to interpret a parable in an embarrassing or shocking way, but then the next critic is equally free to offer a different and nonshocking interpretation. Thus was it ever with parables. It makes no sense for modern interpreters to celebrate the indeterminacy, the ever-open range of possible meanings of parables, only to turn around and insist that this particular parable must have this particular offensive meaning. The history of interpretation shows that people who don’t like one interpretation of a parable will simply see another in it. But what of those relatively few cases where shock value seems indisputably present because some unsavory character is extolled in the parable? The problem with this type of argument is that the prime example of such clear shock value is the parable of the Good Samaritan—precisely the parable that, I will argue in Chapter 39, comes neither from Jesus nor from the early tradents but from Luke himself. Jesus was hardly the only religious figure capable of making shocking or disturbing statements in the 1st century a.d. From Paul’s epistles to the Revelation of John, we can find many disturbing or repellent statements in the NT canon that do not go back to the historical Jesus. What about the criterion of discontinuity? Some commentators, like Bernard Brandon Scott—perhaps realizing the difficulty of arguing for the authenticity of an individual parable taken in isolation—have argued preemptively for an a priori presumption of authenticity for the Synoptic parables in general, at least for their originating structure if not their exact wording. Scott is to be congratulated for recognizing the difficulty of demonstrating the authenticity of the Synoptic parables and for facing this problem squarely. However, the first part of Scott’s argument in favor of authenticity



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will surprise anyone who knows the parabolic tradition of the Jewish Scriptures. Scott claims that “the parable genre does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. . . .”63 He then bases this claim on a shaky foundation: the “short, narrative fictions” in the Jewish Scriptures “do not use the distinctive formula ‘it is like.’” But the same is true of many of Jesus’ parables: for example, the Sower, the Evil Tenants, Matthew’s parable of the Two Sons, Luke’s parable of the Two Debtors, the Good Samaritan, the Importunate Friend at Midnight, the Rich Fool, the Barren Fig Tree, the Tower Builder and the Warring King, the Lost Coin, the Prodigal Son, the Dishonest Steward, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Widow and the Unjust Judge, and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Indeed, this list reminds us that Luke in particular, more often than not, does not use any introductory formula employing the language of “is like.” Sometimes, in fact, a parable is not even labeled a parabole¯. Other times, one evangelist will use an “is like” formula while another does not; see, for instance, Matthew’s introduction to the Great Supper (Matt 22:2: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king . . .”), compared with Luke’s (Luke 14:16: “A man gave a great supper . . .”). If it were not for Matthew’s penchant for using “is like” formulas to introduce parables (see, e.g., most of the parables in his parable discourse of 13:3–52), we might not even think that such a formula was all that typical of Jesus’ parables. Matthew himself, though, does not use the introduction invariably, as can be seen from the very first parable in chap. 13, the Sower (vv 3–8). To be sure, one might argue that the “is like” formula is implicit in the very act of using a short narrative as a comparison, but the same can be said of the various parables in the OT. Reality and labels for reality must not be confused. Nathan’s parable of the poor man and his ewe lamb is no less a parable for lacking the label ma¯ša¯l or the formula “is like” in its immediate context. Are there any other ways to “finesse” the argument from discontinuity to establish a presumption that the bulk of the Synoptic parables go back to the historical Jesus? One might take refuge in the more subjective, esthetic, artistic, or romantic argument that Jesus’ parables display much greater literary genius and fresh insight than any Jewish parables before or after him. But at this point we are into the realm of de gustibus.64 Would the ancient rabbis have agreed with this esthetic assessment? Indeed, even today, would every Orthodox Jewish scholar who is an expert on rabbinic parables agree with this Christian esthetic judgment? I doubt it.65 Another approach to the argument from discontinuity is to point out that other writings in the NT and indeed in other Christian works of the 1st and 2d centuries do not contain parables similar to those of Jesus.66 The problem

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with this argument is that it tells us nothing about the creativity of the “key players” handing on the tradition of the Synoptic parables in the first decades after a.d. 30. Here we should pause for a moment and ask ourselves: “What are we implying when we claim that a particular parable in the Synoptic Gospels goes back, in some shape or other, to the historical Jesus?” We are implying that one or more “earwitnesses” of Jesus’ public ministry heard this parable, remembered it, and repeated it in the circle of disciples and in the early church as part of Jesus’ teaching. This parable continued to be repeated—with no doubt various permutations in “oral performances”— down to the time that it was written down in one of the Synoptics (if not already in some earlier written source like Q or a pre-Marcan collection).67 Thus, to claim the authenticity of any parable in the Synoptics is to claim that there was a chain or group of oral tradents who preserved, repeated, and handed down Jesus’ authentic parables for three or four decades. Are we to suppose that the original disciples who spent two or three years listening to, absorbing, and repeating Jesus’ parables never learned anything from him about how to construct a striking parable? Were all the original disciples as stupid and dense as Mark makes them out to be? Did the early Christian bearers of the tradition, who received the parables from the “earwitnesses” and repeated them in oral performances for decades, likewise learn nothing about composing parables in imitation of the Master? The problem with the whole argument from discontinuity, when applied to parables, is that we are dealing with a group of tradition-bearers that necessarily existed—if any of the parables is authentic—but about whom we know next to nothing. In particular, we know nothing about how creative they were and to what degree they composed parables in imitation of the ones they received from Jesus or Jesus’ “earwitnesses.” Here, then, is a basic problem with the argument from discontinuity, when applied to parables: it works quite well when we compare Jesus the Spinner of Parables to Paul or other non-Synoptic authors of the NT—none of whom, of course, wrote a Synoptic Gospel or a Jesus-like parable. But this argument from discontinuity does not work with the anonymous tradents of the Synoptic oral traditions, especially the parable traditions. Someone so adept at preserving and passing on the tradition of Jesus’ parables may also have been quite adept in imitating that tradition. We must keep this possibility constantly before us when we ask: “Does this particular parable go back to Jesus?” If, then, neither multiple attestation nor discontinuity applies to the bulk of Jesus’ parables, what criterion does? Not many commentators would argue that the criterion of Jesus’ death applies—though some of the more



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barbed parables may have annoyed his adversaries and aggravated the tension between Jesus and the Jerusalem authorities. Still, one can hardly imagine the legal accusation placed above Jesus’ head on the cross reading, “Jesus of Nazareth Spinner of Parables.” Pilate couldn’t have cared less. As for the criterion of coherence (or continuity), this criterion can highlight the fact that Jesus’ use of parables makes sense when placed within the grand Israelite tradition that stretches from Nathan the prophet to the rabbis of the Talmud and beyond. But this tells us nothing about the authenticity of any individual Synoptic parable. Thus, we are left with a surprising and disconcerting conclusion: apart from the relatively few parables that enjoy multiple attestation, the historical critic is hard pressed to demonstrate that a particular parable goes back to the historical Jesus. Actually, a careful reading of many of the large commentaries on NT parables will expose this embarrassing secret, papered over by vague, sweeping, and unsubstantiated claims. The attentive reader will note how often the question of authenticity is answered with the blanket observation that “various interpreters across the spectrum have concluded that . . . [a particular parable] is authentic at its core,”68 or, at the very least, that “a parable of this kind would certainly have been possible in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.”69 Alternately, we are told that “there is no really good reason to exclude the parable . . . from the tradition coming from the proclamation of Jesus.”70 Or we are assured that “in regard to the question of its [a particular parable’s] authenticity, there seem to be no challenges of note.”71 Indeed, at times this curious argument from silence is wedded to esthetic sensibility: “The authenticity of this parable is rarely questioned, especially because of its artistry and power. . . .”72 If I keep emphasizing the importance of the judicious use of criteria rather than grand generalizations when it comes to assessing the authenticity of individual Synoptic parables, I ask the reader to consider, in one concrete case, the results of waiving the consistent use of criteria. Klyne Snodgrass’s monumental tome, Stories with Intent, is a mine of information, both of ancient languages and texts and of modern commentators and debate. I have often profited from consulting it. Yet something is seriously wrong with a method that, in the end, has the historical Jesus, the early Christian tradition, and any given evangelist practically collapse into the same person. For the ultimate upshot of Snodgrass’s approach is that not a single parable in all three Synoptic Gospels is firmly rejected as inauthentic. How does Snodgrass arrive at this critical cul de sac? Amid the many problems of Snodgrass’s approach, two stand out: (1) obvious contributions of the evangelists are played down by minimalizing the redactional traits clearly

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present in a parable; and (2) the authenticity of any parable is presumed unless the opposite can be proven (thus reviving the old burden-of-proof ploy).73 I readily admit: the use of the criteria of authenticity can be dull and plodding, sometimes yielding uncertain results or the annoying conclusion of non liquet. But consider the alternative that is all too common: most books on the parables, not unlike Snodgrass’s, arrive at the conclusions that the authors have predetermined from the beginning of the project. And those conclusions usually include the key claim that most if not all of the Synoptic parables go back—at least in their “core” or “kernel”—to the historical Jesus. With parable research, as with Jesus research in general, the wish is often father of the thought—and of the book. In the end, I am under no illusion that my seven unfashionable theses will suddenly reverse the course of American parable research. With parables as with almost any other area of research in a university, a given field of expertise all too easily develops into an echo chamber that produces a selfreinforcing consensus. If nothing else, though, I hope that at least my unfashionable theses will encourage the reader to step outside the echo chamber of parable research and ask the basic question that has been the basso continuo of this chapter: How do we know that this or that parable comes from the historical Jesus? At the end of this chapter and of these seven theses, my reply is simple: In many cases, we don’t. Let me emphasize once again: this is not to claim that I can often prove the opposite, that is, that this or that parable definitely does not come from Jesus. Rather, as was often the case with the miracle stories in Volume Two, we are left with a galling but honest non liquet (not clear either way). All the consensus to the contrary proves nothing. But are there—as has been intimated in this chapter—at least a few parables that can claim one or more criteria of historicity and so authenticate themselves as Jesus’ own creations? There are a precious few, but they need to be identified by a careful examination of the full list of Synoptic narrative parables, in order to select the relatively small number of promising candidates. Hence, after examining at length the question of the dependence or independence of Thomas in Chapter 38, we will turn to that list of parables in Chapter 39 in order to ferret out the candidates “most likely to succeed” in the contest for the prize of authenticity. Understandably, we might want to move on immediately to examining that intriguing list of possibly authentic parables, but a major question stands in our way. As we shall see, the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources will prove to be the most important of the criteria when it comes to evaluating the historicity of any given parable. Hence, before we can move to that evaluation, we must



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be clear on one vital point: do the parables in CGT provide attestation from a source independent of the Synoptic parables? Or are they dependent on one or more of the Synoptic Gospels, and so useless for satisfying the criterion of multiple attestation? It is to that preliminary, difficult, but unavoidable question that we turn in Chapter 38.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 37 Even an introductory bibliography that offers merely a representative sampling of major books and articles on the parables of Jesus must go on at great length. To avoid taking up a huge amount of space at the beginning of the endnotes of this chapter, I have placed the introductory bibliography on the parables at the end of this volume as an appendix. The full bibliographical information about books and articles cited in this chapter can be found there. 1

Anyone writing a book on the parables of Jesus faces a problem of labeling at the very beginning of the project. How should one designate or title the individual parables? Some exegetes complain that the traditional titles (e.g., “the Prodigal Son,” “the Dishonest Steward”) do not always capture what is at stake in a given parable. Yet present-day attempts to substitute more accurate labels have not met with general acceptance. Naturally, the new labels reflect the (sometimes idiosyncratic) interpretation of the individual commentator, and in the end we are left with a bewildering pile of competing titles for a single parable. So as not to confuse my audience, many of whom are not professional academics, I will as a rule abide by the traditional titles of the parables. The style adopted in this volume will use the word “parable” in lowercase, followed by the specific title capitalized: so, e.g., the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, the parable of the Good Samaritan. 2

3 C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet, 1935 [original edition]; London: Collins [Fontana], 1961 [revised edition]) 16.

For some of the philosophical problems involved in reader-response and/or socioeconomic approaches to the parables, see Simon Beck, “Can Parables Work?,” Philosophy & Theology 23 (2011) 149–65. 4

5 This point should be kept in mind especially by those commentators pursuing “reader response” or “audience response” criticism. In the case of the parables, even a small audience gathered to hear a parable of Jesus for the first time could react with different personal responses. Imagine, for instance, a Christian family in a small house church at the end of the 1st century, hearing the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke’s Gospel for the first time. The kind but firm father might hear one message, his elder obedient son might hear another, and his younger restless son might hear still a third. Perhaps the mother of the two sons might wonder why there was

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no mother in the parable. One can easily imagine a similar diversity of reactions to the parable when (and if) Jesus actually spoke this parable for the first time to a Palestinian crowd during his public ministry. Nevertheless, this diversity of reactions does not mean that the parable was open to any and every interpretation that a modern exegete might formulate. In the case of the historical Jesus, a crowd of 1st-century Palestinian Jews would have gathered to listen to an Elijah-like prophet who claimed to work miracles and to be the final prophet sent to Israel to herald the coming of God’s kingdom. All this would create a firm framework and boundaries for the crowd’s diverse reactions. 6 Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus. A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000) 3 n. 6. One problem with any such comparison of the number of Synoptic parables suggested by various commentators is that some authors will count a parable only once, presuming, for example, that we are dealing with Matthean and Lucan redactions of the same Q parable, while other authors will see two different versions of the same parable from two different sources (e.g., M and L), while still other authors will see two different parables sharing certain common themes. Prime examples of this type of contested parable are the parable of the Talents/Pounds and the parable of the Great Supper. But such special cases are not numerous enough to account for the wide range of numbers found in parable commentators. Rather, a major factor in the variant counts is that what some authors label a metaphorical statement or a similitude other authors label a parable. Hence the root problem is not only one of source criticism but also and more importantly one of form criticism. Then, too, some commentators include all Synoptic parallels in their counts.—Commendable is the detailed attempt of Birger Gerhardsson (“The Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels. A Comparison with the Narrative Meshalim in the Old Testament,” NTS 34 [1988] 343–44) to list all the narrative parables contained in each Gospel (Gerhardsson operates with a distinction between “aphoristic meshalim” and “narrative meshalim”) and then to sort out the parables according to which parables are shared by all three Gospels, which are shared by two Gospels, and which are unique to one Gospel. He counts a total of five parables in Mark, twenty-one in Matthew, and twenty-nine in Luke, adding up to fifty-five parables in all. Three parables appear in all three Synoptics: the Sower, the Mustard Seed, and the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard. Matthew and Luke have another seven (or eight) parables in common, while Mark and Luke have one (Mark 13:32–37 par., the Watchful Servant, which I consider not a parable but a similitude surrounded by direct exhortations to the disciples listening to the eschatological discourse). Peculiar to Mark is one parable (the Seed Growing by Itself), to Matthew 10 or 11, to Luke 17 or 18. As we shall see in Chapter 39, my count of parables that are unique to each source will differ slightly, since Gerhardsson counts as narrative parables some texts that I consider similitudes (e.g., the Children Playing in the Marketplace). Also, there are some curious judgments in Gerhardsson’s categorization of the parables: e.g., he places the Defendant on His Way to the Judge in his Lucan list of parables (Luke 12:58–59), but omits the parallel (Matt 5:25–26) from his Matthean list because he claims that the latter is “not a narrative mashal” (p. 344 n. 2). All this re-



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minds us that a certain element of subjectivity is inevitable in any list of the Synoptic parables that attempts to be both comprehensive and discriminating as to sources. 7

Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 22.

Zimmermann et al. (eds.), Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu, 28. Even the compendium’s understanding of the German term Parabel is capacious, since it lists eighteen “parables” in the narrow sense in John’s Gospel. Moreover, it tabulates forty-one parables in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas and fifteen in the Agrapha. (For a brief overview of the disagreement among scholars on the number of parables in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, see David W. Kim, “Where Does It Fit? The Unknown Parables in the Gospel of Thomas,” Bib 94 [2013] 585–95.) The authors of the various essays in this compendium tend to see parables where I would see similitudes or simply statements that employ metaphors, similes, and other tropes or figurative language. 8

For basic philological information, see Karl-Martin Beyse, “ma¯šal I; ma¯ša¯l,” TDOT 9 (1998) 64–67; Heinrich Gross, “ma¯šal II, etc.,” 68–71; Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Study Edition; 2 vols.; London/Boston/Cologne: Brill, 2001) 1. 647; Friedrich Hauck, “parabole¯,” TDNT 5 (1967) 744–61; idem, “paroimia,” ibid., 854–56. For a list of occurrences of the verb ma¯šal and the noun ma¯ša¯l in the MT and parabole¯ in the LXX, see Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 570–74. 9

So complicated is the matter that not all philologists would recognize two different verbs sharing the consonants mšl, but the presentation in my main text represents the common view. For a brief history of the scholarly debate, see Katrine Brix, “Erste Annäherung einer Hermeneutik des ma¯ša¯l in alttestamentlichen Schriften mit Überlegungen zur Rezeption dieses Begriffes in den neutestamentlichen Evangelien,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 13 (2009) 128–29. 10

Some authors try to reduce the two ideas of “proverb” and “comparison” to one, claiming that every proverb, at least implicitly, involves a comparison. But one need only read a few chapters of the Book of Proverbs to see that this is not so. 11

Sir 50:27–29 forms the subscription of the author as he concludes his work, summing up the book’s content and purpose. A transcription of the Hebrew text of 50:27–28 (MS B recto) can be found in Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew (VTSup 68; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1997) 90. The key phrase at the beginning of v 27 is mwsr s´ kl wmwšl, which the LXX translates as paideian syneseo¯s kai episte¯me¯s. 12

Hence, in the case of meanings like “an object of mockery” or “a byword,” ma¯ša¯l can mean a man, phenomenon, action, or occurrence, and not a particular rhetorical expression; see Gerhardsson, “The Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” 340 n. 5. 13

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I owe this way of approaching Jesus’ parables to Harvey K. McArthur, who argued for this mode of defining the parables of Jesus in a seminar presentation at the Columbia University New Testament Seminar back in the 1970s. He (along with his coauthor Robert M. Johnston) also employs this criterion of narrativity in his treatment of rabbinic parables; see McArthur and Johnston, They Also Taught in Parables. Rabbinic Parables from the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990) 98–99; cf. Charles W. Hedrick, “The Parables and the Synoptic Problem,” New Studies in the Synoptic Problem (Christopher M. Tuckett Festschrift; BETL 239; ed. Paul Foster et al.; Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2011) 322. Admittedly, the distinction between a simple metaphor (or simile), a similitude, and a narrative parable is clear in some situations and quite unclear in others. No one would call the parable of the Prodigal Son a mere simile or metaphor, and no one would call Matt 6:24 (“No one can serve two masters; for he will either hate the one and love the other, or he will be attached to the one and look down on the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon”) a complete narrative parable. In between these two extremes, commentators will often disagree in applying labels. For instance, Joachim Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus [London: SCM, 1963 (English translation of 6th German edition, 1962; 1st English edition, 1954)] 247) lists the Budding Fig Tree (Mark 13:28–29) as a parable (he explicitly states that he is excluding metaphors and similes from his list); similarly, John Dominic Crossan, In Parables. The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1973) 138. In contrast, Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 576) lists the Budding Fig Tree as a similitude, distinguished from a parable; accordingly, he does not give it separate consideration in his encyclopedic work. Likewise, Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus) mentions Mark 13:28–29 only in passing (e.g., p. 425, where he calls it a “parabolic saying”) and gives it no separate commentary as a parable. (One might observe in passing that, while Mark 13:28 uses the word parabole¯, the sense here seems to be “the lesson taught by this comparison using the fig tree.”) Obviously, I cannot presume to issue a decree determining terminology for all future commentators on the parables, especially since there has been an explosion of studies on and debates over the proper meaning of metaphor (see, e.g., the discussion of the proper definition of metaphor in David E. Aune, The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric [Louisville/London: Westminster/John Knox, 2003] 301; cf. the discussion of various theories of metaphor in Susan E. Hylen, “Metaphor Matters: Violence and Ethics in Revelation,” CBQ 73 [2011] 777–96, esp. 780–84). I simply note here my own method of classification. In my usage, a metaphor involves a direct equation or identification of two realities (expressed by words, phrases, or sentences) that are not literally the same but that are being identified for rhetorical purposes, without comparative words such as “like” or “as”: “my love is a red, red rose.” A simile makes the element of comparison explicit by using the word “like,” “as,” or similar vocabulary (e.g., the verbs “to liken,” “to compare”): “my love is like a red, red rose” (with a bow to Scots songs and Robert Burns). Applying this to the Gospels, if we take the statement of Matt 5:14a by itself (“you are the light of the world”), we have a brief metaphorical statement. If, however, we “draw out” that simple metaphor by further elucidation or concrete images (as in Matt 14



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5:15, “nor do they light a lamp and place it under a measuring vessel but rather on a lamp stand, and it shines on all in the house”), the simple metaphor has become a similitude (a “stretched-out” metaphor or simile). The similitude can then be stretched out even further by an explicit application (as in Matt 5:16, “so let your light shine before human beings, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven”)—what later Jewish scholars would call a nimša¯l. However, in my view, Matt 5:14a,15–16 does not rank as a (narrative) parable because (1) the metaphor has not been stretched out so far as to create a story with at least an implicit beginning, middle, and end; and because (2) the audience is directly addressed not only in the nimša¯l (v 16) but also in the very core of the metaphor itself (“you are the light of the world”). In a narrative parable, the audience is rather drawn into a story world where characters other than they themselves act or are acted upon in the framework of a (at least implicit) plot. Hence a metaphor/simile or similitude in which the audience that Jesus is addressing is explicitly present (and possibly acting) does not qualify as a parable, because such speech does not create a narrative universe into which the audience is drawn to watch or experience a story involving others. All these observations make clear what I require for a true parable of Jesus: a parable is a metaphor or simile stretched out into a whole narrative into which the audience can be drawn, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end (at least in miniature). Even if this definition is granted, opinions may differ on individual passages. For example, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Unforgiving Servant, and the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard all clearly tell a story with a plot line; they are all narrative parables. I would argue that a story in miniature can be found in the parables of the Leaven and the Mustard Seed; something happens and change takes place between the beginning and end of the miniature narrative. Hence I classify these mini-stories as parables, although other scholars (e.g., Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 576) list them as similitudes instead. On the other hand, I think that the oneverse comparison of Jesus’ exorcisms to the binding of a strong man (Mark 3:27 || Matt 12:29) is a metaphor stretched out into a similitude. I do not consider it a story with a beginning, middle, and end and hence a parable. Note how Mark 3:27d simply repeats 3:27b, leaving us with the brief statement that “no one entering the house of the strong man can plunder his goods unless he first bind the strong man.” In my opinion, this is not enough for a narrative parable. (One might argue that the alternate and expanded two-verse version in Luke 11:21–22 just barely crosses the threshold into the category of parable, though I doubt it.) Moreover, a similitude, however concrete and lively, cannot qualify as a parable if it simply displays a static situation that does not develop and so does not create an implicit plot line. For this reason, I would categorize the two-verse or one-verse depiction of the Children Playing in the Marketplace (Matt 11:16–17 || Luke 7:32) as a similitude rather than a parable. Needless to say, in these borderline cases, scholars may and do honestly disagree. I simply wish to make clear to the reader that, in what follows, I use the word “parable” in the sense of a narrative parable, as distinct from a metaphor/ simile or a similitude. Readers of the works of Dodd will recognize that my usage is close to the one that he maps out in The Parables of the Kingdom, 16–17. I readily admit, though, that in previous volumes of A Marginal Jew, I often adopted the

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nomenclature of the scholars with whom I was interacting at the time.—Those who read theological German will notice that my category of a metaphor or simile is roughly equivalent to the German Bild or Bildwort, my category of similitude to the German Gleichnis, and my category of parable to the German Parabel. However, German usage varies from author to author, and one may wonder whether every author is completely consistent in his or her usage. In particular, while Gleichnis may serve to designate the specific category of similitude, it is often used as well as an umbrella term for both similitudes and (narrative) parables. In this whole question of parable terminology, one of the most influential German NT exegetes of the 20th century was Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (FRLANT 29; 8th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970 [originally 1921]; with Ergänzungsheft edited by Gerd Theissen and Philipp Vielhauer, 4th ed., 1971) 179– 222. (By comparison, Martin Dibelius has had only minor impact on parable research and terminology, perhaps because he gives only brief consideration to the similitudes and parables in his famous form-critical work, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums [6th ed.; ed. Günther Bornkamm, with addendum by Gerhard Iber; Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1971] 249–58). Reflecting and building on the heritage of Adolf Jülicher, Bultmann distinguishes Bildwort (metaphorical statement), Gleichnis (similitude), and Parabel (narrative parable). Within his treatment of Bildwort, he also distinguishes between Metapher (metaphor) and Vergleich (simile). Also echoing Jülicher, Bultmann distinguishes between the category of parable and the category of Beispielerzählung (example story), though he admits that the latter is closely related to the former. For Bultmann, an example story differs from a parable because the element of metaphor is missing in the former. As is the case with many other exegetes, Bultmann finds all the Synoptic example stories within the special Lucan material: the Good Samaritan, the Rich Fool, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. In my own treatment, I will not employ the separate category of example story for a number of reasons: (1) Some commentators dispute the existence of this category; see, e.g., Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 13–14, with the literature cited there. (2) Various other parables might be classified as example stories as well: e.g., Matthew’s parable of the Unforgiving Servant. As some commentators observe, the difference between a regular parable and an example story seems to be one of degree rather than of essence. (3) As noted earlier, all four of the stories commonly designated as example stories come from the special Lucan material and stand out because of their strong Lucan style and/or theology (some would detect the influence of Pauline theology as well). This raises serious suspicions among some exegetes as to the origin of the Lucan example stories. As will become clear in my treatment, I doubt that any of these four example stories can be shown to go back to the historical Jesus.—On the question of the prehistory of the category of example story (prior to Jülicher) and of Jülicher’s own shift in his understanding of this category, see Jeffrey T. Tucker, Example Stories. Perspectives on Four Parables in the Gospel of Luke (JSNTSup 162; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1998) 45–70. 15 The noun parabole¯ (“parable”) occurs 17x in Matthew, 13x in Mark, and 18x in Luke, for a total of 48x. In most cases, the noun refers to a narrative parable (or



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in some debatable instances to a similitude), though other scattered meanings occur (e.g., “aphorism,” “proverb,” “riddle,” “instruction using an analogy”). In my view, this preponderant use of parabole¯ in the Synoptics to refer to narrative parables justifies using the English word “parable” as shorthand for “narrative parable” unless a specific context indicates otherwise. Here I differ in my usage from that of Birger Gerhardsson, “The Narrative Meshalim in the Old Testament Books and in the Synoptic Gospels,” To Touch the Text (Joseph A. Fitzmyer Festschrift; ed. Maurya P. Horgan and Paul J. Kobelski; New York: Crossroad, 1989) 294. Cases where parabole¯ clearly means something other than a narrative parable are in the definite minority in the Synoptics; they include Mark 3:23 (an analogy within a riddle or rhetorical question); Mark 7:17 || Matt 15:15 (an aphorism functioning as a halakic ruling); Mark 13:28 || Matt 24:32 || Luke 21:29 (similitude of the fig tree); Luke 4:23 (proverb); 5:36 (analogy); 6:39 (analogy in rhetorical question); 14:7 (analogy as part of practical advice, though parabole¯ in 14:7 may be pointing forward to the parable that actually begins in v 16). These scattered cases can hardly be tucked under the single rubric of “aphorism.” The only other occurrences of parabole¯ in the NT are the two found in Heb 9:9 and 11:19, where the sense is “sign,” “symbol,” or “type,” in keeping with the author’s allegorical interpretation of the OT. For a list of the occurrences of parabole¯ in the NT, see Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 567–69. The noun paroimia occurs in the sense of “proverb” in 2 Pet 2:22 and in the sense of an obscure figure of speech in John 10:6; 16:25 (bis),29. On the examples in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, see Jeremy Schipper, Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Cambridge University, 2009) 23– 110. In dealing with the OT material, I follow Schipper’s usage in classifying fables (“short stories that employ animals and plants as central characters”) as a type of parable; see p. 14. Inevitably, scholars will disagree on how many narrative parables there are in the Jewish Scriptures. Gerhardsson (“The Narrative Meshalim in the Old Testament Books and in the Synoptic Gospels,” 290–91), for example, counts five clear cases: Judg 9:7–15; 2 Sam 12:1–4; 2 Kgs 14:9; Isa 5:1–6; and Ezek 17:3–10 (all of which I accept). Gerhardsson (p. 291 n. 7) also grants that there are a number of “borderline cases,” in which he includes 2 Sam 14:5–7; Prov 9:1–6,13– 18; Isa 28:23–29; Ezek 15:1–8; 16:1–43; 19:2–9,10–14; 23:1–19; 24:3–14. Some of these cases are debatable because the metaphors and the reality to which the metaphors point are mixed together in the narrative (see, e.g., the cases in Ezekiel 19, 23, and 24). 16

To be precise, the stories of Nathan and the woman of Tekoa, while actually fictional (like many parables), are initially presented to David as real cases (though Schipper [Parables and Conflict, 42–46, 63–66] thinks otherwise). For the lengthy debate over how and to what extent the details of Nathan’s narrative about the poor man’s ewe map onto David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his indirect murder of Uriah, see the review of research and the intriguing suggestion offered by Joshua Berman, “Double Meaning in the Parable of the Poor Man’s Ewe (2 Sam 12:1–4),” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13 (2013) Article 14, 17 pages (online). 17

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The Hebrew word nimša¯l is not used as a noun in this technical sense in the rabbinic literature of Mishna and Talmud; the noun first appears in medieval Hebrew. This is noted by Daniel Boyarin (p. 127 n. 4) in a review essay (“Midrash in Parables”) published in the Association for Jewish Studies Review 20 (1995) 123– 38; the book under review is David Stern’s Parables in Midrash (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1991); see p. 13. However, nimša¯l as a verb form introducing an interpretation or explanation of a parable (“it is compared to . . . ,” “it is like . . .”) is regularly found in the rabbis.—The question of nimša¯l highlights a related point. In the narrative parables of classical prophecy, for all their riddling quality, the speaker wishes his immediate audience to understand the thrust of what he is saying, not to remain in the dark—a result that would only frustrate a parable’s judicial dimension. The notion that parables are not understood by the audience and indeed are not meant to be understood does not belong to the type of parable spoken by Nathan or Isaiah. The enigmatic element within the story exists precisely to “tease the mind into active thought” so that the meaning of the parable is at last grasped. The prophet’s goal is not obfuscation and permanent frustration. 18

It is odd that Gerhardsson (“The Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” 343) omits this instance from his list of OT narrative me˘s˘a¯lîm; on the prophet’s parable in 1 Kgs 20:39–42, see Schipper, Parables and Conflict, 74–92. 19

As indicated by my use of the traditional divisions of Tanak, I am basically following the books of the Jewish Scriptures as they now lie in the Jewish canon. It would take us too far afield in this thesis to raise further hypothetical questions: e.g., what the original form and length of Nathan’s parable were in the oral tradition and whether the redactor of the Deuteronomistic History might have abbreviated an originally longer parable.—In what follows in the main text, I will be pursuing the special meaning of ma¯ša¯l as narrative parable (often with allegorical elements) that is found in the literary prophets. This focus is by no means intended to deny the presence of the more sapiential meanings (e.g., proverb, taunt), which the prophets also use; see Brix, “Erste Annäherung,” 130–33. This is a healthy reminder that there is no high and impenetrable wall of separation between sapiential and prophetic traditions. 20

21 On the importance of Ezekiel in this development and on the similarity of his narrative parables to those of the Synoptic Jesus, see Brix, “Erste Annäherung,” 135–36; cf. Otto Eissfeldt, Der Maschal im Alten Testament (BZAW 24; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1913) 14–17.

Note that this example from Ezekiel gives the lie to the claim that it is of the very nature of allegory to obfuscate and mystify (so the followers of Jülicher). The initial verses (16:2–3) make clear that the allegory refers to the sinful history of Jerusalem (representing the whole people). From the start, the entire allegory is presented as Yahweh’s direct address to Jerusalem, with the various stages of Israel’s history quite clear to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures or the tradi22



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tions standing behind them. Nor is the allegorical mode of Ezekiel’s fiery rhetoric dispensable and disposable once the message has been understood. No bare-bones recitation of the brute facts of Israel’s history would or could carry the rhetorical power and convicting force of Ezekiel’s allegory. Allegory may indeed at times possess a mystifying or riddle-like quality (so Ezek 17:1–10, prior to the allegorical explanation in 17:11–21), but such mystification is not of the essence of allegory. On the dual locution in Ezek 17:2, see Andreas Schüle, “Mashal (ma¯ša¯l) and the Prophetic ‘Parables,’” Hermeneutik der Gleichnisse Jesu (WUNT 231; ed. Ruben Zimmermann with Gabi Kern; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2008) 205–16, esp. 210–11. Possibly die¯ge¯ma was chosen by the translator because it allowed the Greek to imitate the play on words of the Hebrew in Ezek 17:2 by combining a Greek verb and its cognate noun (die¯ge¯sai die¯ge¯ma). In theory, alle¯goreo¯ and alle¯goria might also have been employed for such a play on words. In fact, though, alle¯goreo¯ and alle¯goria never occur in the LXX, and we have firm attestation of their use only from the 1st century b.c. onward. On the larger question of the Greek text of Ezekiel, especially its homogeneity, see Leslie John McGregor, The Greek Text of Ezekiel. An Examination of Its Homogeneity (SBLSCS 18; Atlanta: Scholars, 1985). 23

24 Ezekiel’s use of allegory would be an opportune place to make some observations about the complex phenomenon called allegory (from the Greek words allos, “other,” and agoreuo¯, “to speak in public”). However, the phenomenon is indeed so complicated that it needs to be treated at some length. Hence, rather than disrupt the flow of the argument at this point, I will discuss the question of allegory in a separate Excursus at the end of this chapter. 25 Even the Book of Psalms is not without an analogous usage. In Psalm 49, the psalmist struggles with the riddle of the prosperity of the wicked. He describes the problem he ponders as a ma¯ša¯l and a hîdâ (v 5). To be sure, the psalmist speaks primarily in terms of wisdom and insight˙ (v 4), but he also seems to claim an ability to solve the riddle in virtue of a revelation from God, a revelation that suggests that the righteous one will in the end be taken up to God. 26 The only time in Hermas that parabole¯ approaches the older scriptural type of metaphorical narrative is in Man. 11:18 (= 43:18), but there it is a matter of simple similitudes or figurative comparisons. For the occurrences of parabole¯ in the Apostolic Fathers, see Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 575. Curiously, while N. T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God [Christian Origins and the Question of God 2; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996] 174–82, esp. 177) correctly sees that Jesus’ use of parables reflects the prophetic tradition of Israel, he unfortunately elides the classical prophetic tradition with the Jewish apocalyptic tradition around the turn of the era. The fact of the matter is that Jesus’ parables connect form-critically with Nathan, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, not with the allegorical visions-plus-interpretive-angel found in 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, or 2 Baruch.

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In the phrase “the prophetic tradition of the Jewish Scriptures,” I am referring to the full range of prophecy in Tanak, including the proto-apocalyptic of the authors behind certain parts of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Isaiah 24–27. I would also include in this prophetic tradition the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, even though the later definitive ordering of the Jewish canon places it among the Writings rather than among the Latter Prophets. (On this, see Konrad Schmid, “The Canon and the Cult: The Emergence of Book Religion in Ancient Israel and the Gradual Sublimation of the Temple Cult,” JBL 131 [2012] 289–305, esp. 297–98.) Jesus the eschatological prophet represents in particular the eschatological and/or apocalyptic stream of Jewish prophetic tradition. As I have indicated in Volume Two of A Marginal Jew, I think that it is best to classify Jesus’ eschatological utterances as eschatology tinged with apocalyptic motifs and imagery, as distinct, e.g., from the full-blown apocalypses of 4 Ezra or 2 Baruch. 27

It is difficult to understand Bernard Brandon Scott’s claim that Jesus’ parables are unique because we find no such narrative parables in the OT; see his Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 13, 63. This claim seems to fixate on the fact that the narrative parables in the Former Prophets are not labeled me˘s˘a¯lîm and to ignore the fact that such narrative parables are present—whatever their label or lack thereof—and provide a real analogue to Jesus’ narrative parables. P. Kyle McCarter (II Samuel [AYB 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984] 304) holds that we might call Nathan’s story a “juridical parable,” though he admits that some would object to the word “parable” from a formal point of view. McCarter himself goes on to speak of the story as “Nathan’s juridical parable” (p. 305). As for Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isa 5:1–7), Joseph Blenkinsopp (Isaiah 1–39 [AYB 19; New York: Doubleday, 2000] 206) states emphatically that Isaiah’s poem expresses itself “in a manner analogous to the parable of Nathan (2 Sam 12:1–14) and some of the gospel parables. . . .” In light of these opinions, I think that to conclude to the absence of a reality simply from the absence of a particular label for that reality is a strange form of nominalism. As Schipper (Parables and Conflict, 6) emphasizes, we should not restrict the designation “parable” to those relatively few cases in the Jewish Scriptures where the noun ma¯ša¯l is explicitly used to designate a short story that functions as a comparison: “. . . a short story does not need to carry a specific label to qualify as a parable.” Consequently, the presence of narrative parables in the OT renders invalid the argument that we can presuppose that the narrative parables in the Gospels do come from the historical Jesus because neither the OT nor the rest of the NT contains narrative parables comparable to those of Jesus (criterion of discontinuity). I will come back to this point in Thesis Seven.—In a separate article (“From Petition to Parable: The Prophet’s Use of Genre in 1 Kings 20:38–42,” CBQ 71 [2009] 264–74), Jeremy Schipper makes the intriguing observation (p. 264 n. 1) that, within the Jewish Scriptures, “parable,” understood as a short narrative with a comparative function, can be found in songs, fables, dreams, and taunts; hence Schipper prefers not to call narrative parables a distinct genre. While one can appreciate this problem of categorization within the vast sweep of the Jewish Scripture, the problem does not arise, as a practical matter, within the relatively narrow compass of the Synoptic 28



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Gospels. There “parable,” understood as a short narrative spoken by Jesus with a comparative function, does stand out as a distinct literary genre amid the various genres found in the Synoptics (e.g., miracle story, dispute story, similitude, prayer, beatitude, infancy narrative, and passion narrative). See, e.g., Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Sage. The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); and Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar (eds.), The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan, 1993), where, after a discussion of his parables, Jesus is laconically described (p. 32) as “the laconic sage.” To be fair, Witherington (Jesus the Sage, 158–59) acknowledges that in the OT “narrative meshalim were not characteristic of the sages. . . . Rather, they seem to have been a prophetic phenomenon, perhaps one may say a prophetic modification of a Wisdom form of utterance. . . .” In the end, though, Witherington prefers to subsume Jesus’ parables into an overall understanding of Jesus as “a Jewish prophetic sage,” insisting that “sage” is “the most appropriate and comprehensive term for describing Jesus.” Accordingly, when Witherington offers a book-length treatment of Jesus as prophet (Jesus the Seer [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999]), parables play only a passing role in the portrait, mostly in debate with N. T. Wright’s understanding of Jesus’ use of metaphorical language (see, e.g., pp. 271–75). When one considers that narrative parables never occur in OT wisdom books, but rather in the historical and especially the prophetic books of the OT, and when one adds to this the consideration that Jesus’ parables usually (though not always) serve as a medium for the eschatological message of the final prophet sent to Israel, it seems artificial to try to tuck Jesus’ parables under the ill-fitting cloak of the wisdom tradition. Yet that is precisely what John Dominic Crossan does in his The Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), notably in chap. 12, “Kingdom and Wisdom” (pp. 265–302). Doing away with all future-prophetic eschatology in Jesus’ message, Crossan necessarily places Jesus and his parables in the sapiential tradition. 29

All this presupposes a much longer treatment of the reasons for Jesus’ execution, which will be treated in the final volume of A Marginal Jew. But to state my position ever so briefly: Jesus was put to death because as an eschatological prophet he heralded the advent (and at the same time the mysterious presence) of the kingdom of God, formed an inner group around himself to be a prophetic core of this coming kingdom, attracted large crowds of followers by his miracles and his teaching, and finally enacted in symbolic-prophetic actions the dissolution of the old order and the coming of God’s kingdom in the street theater of the triumphal entry and the cleansing of the temple, right under the noses of Pilate and Caiaphas during a major pilgrimage feast while Jerusalem was flooded with fervent Jews. It was such prophetic-symbolic actions of an eschatological prophet who was also hailed by followers as the Son of David, all enacted in David’s ancient capital at Passover, that precipitated the final crisis. 30

31 For a recognition of the prophetic tradition in Jesus’ parables that also wishes to affirm the sapiential dimension, see Schüle, “Mashal (ma¯ša¯l) and the Prophetic

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‘Parables,’” 205–16. Let me be clear: my fourth thesis does not mean to deny that there are sapiential motifs within Jesus’ parables; such motifs can be found in the parables of OT prophets as well. But the primary model for understanding Jesus as speaker of parables is prophet, not wisdom teacher. The attentive reader will no doubt see in this description of Jesus’ parables the influence of the classic definition of Dodd (The Parables of the Kingdom, 16): a parable of Jesus “is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” However, certain considerations, which I will be treating in the main text under Thesis Five, keep me from simply adopting Dodd’s definition as my own: (1) As a matter of fact, not every Synoptic parable deals with nature or common life (think of the parables narrating extraordinary actions of kings). (2) Not every parable is notably vivid or strange (think of the generic, schematic parables of the Sower or the Seed Growing by Itself). (3) I prefer to restrict the term “parable” to what Dodd (p. 17) calls a “parable proper,” i.e., a narrative parable, a metaphor or simile elaborated into a story, rather than just a metaphor elaborated into a picture by the addition of some details, i.e., a similitude.—It is unfortunate that we have such a limited amount of sayings of John the Baptist that may be judged to be authentic (for evaluation of the Baptist material in the Gospels, see A Marginal Jew, 2. 27–56). John is presented in the Q material (Matt 3:7–10 || Luke 3:7–9) as freely using metaphorical speech (“brood of vipers,” “bring forth fruit,” “raise up children unto Abraham from these rocks”). He also stretches out metaphors into similitudes (so Matt 3:10 par., the ax laid to the root of the tree). Indeed, one might argue that in Matt 3:12 par. the similitude is stretched out into a mini-parable: “His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will clean his threshing floor, and will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with inextinguishable fire.” One might like to indulge in speculation about whether the prophet Jesus learned something about parable-spinning from the prophet John, but we lack enough material even for speculation. 32

Birger Gerhardsson (“Illuminating the Kingdom: Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition [ed. Henry Wansbrough; JSNTSup 64; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1991] 266–309) is perhaps the most notable of those parable commentators who try to make all of the narrative parables speak of the kingdom of God (see pp. 283–91). The problem with this approach is that the “wide umbrella-term [p. 283] ‘The Rule/Kingdom of God/Heaven’” has to be stretched extremely far (indeed, to the bursting point) to include all of the Synoptic parables. The unintended result of Gerhardsson’s claim is that the rubric “kingdom of God” loses all specific meaning. Only when “kingdom of God” is generalized to the point of a vague religious platitude can it include equally, along with the Marcan and Matthean parables, all the special Lucan parables, especially the so-called example stories. It is perhaps telling that, when Gerhardsson claims in his essay, “The Narrative Meshalim in the Old Testament Books and in the Synoptic Gospels,” that all the narrative parables have the one homogeneous theme of the kingdom of God, 33



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he allows that the Good Samaritan may be an exception (p. 299). Other critics may find other exceptions. 34 This element of a definition of “parable” is at least implied by the part of Dodd’s classic definition that reads “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life . . .” (The Parables of the Kingdom, 16, emphasis mine).

It may be significant, though, that the parables that contain kings, nobles, rich merchants, and affluent landowners, who are often portrayed as involved in extraordinary actions or events, tend to cluster in the special M and L parables, while common events in everyday village life are found more in Marcan and Q parables. Is this possibly an index of the stages of the parable tradition, or even an index of which parables come from Jesus himself? 35

36

See A Marginal Jew, 1. 282–83.

The element of fiction in the definition of “parable” is emphasized by Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 8, 35–42. I readily grant that no parable presents or claims to present a report of a unique historical incident. That is not the point at issue in the main text. 37

On the various opinions among scholars, see Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 166–67, with the literature cited there. In the debate over whether sowing would normally precede plowing in the agricultural practice of early 1st-century Palestine (and hence how realistic the parable of the Sower is), see in particular Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 11–12; idem, “Palästinakundliches zum Gleichnis vom Sämann (Mark IV.3–8 par),” NTS 13 (1966–67) 48–53; K. D. White, “The Parable of the Sower,” JTS 15 (1964) 300–307; Philip B. Payne, “The Order of Sowing and Ploughing in the Parable of the Sower,” NTS 25 (1978–79) 123–29.—On the larger question of hyperbole in the Synoptic parables, see David Seccombe, “Incongruity in the Gospel Parables,” TynBul 62 (2011), 161–72. 38

Moreover, there is the special case of Luke’s version of the Talents/Pounds (Luke 19:12–27), where many commentators see an allusion to the story of Archelaus (one of the sons of Herod the Great) attempting in 4 b.c. to obtain the title of king from Caesar Augustus in the face of opposition from a delegation of Jews and Samaritans. On this hypothesis, see Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 285; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 537. This parable, along with the question of the reference to Archelaus, will be taken up in Chapter 40. 39

An example of this approach can be found in Funk et al. (eds.), The Five Gospels, 30–32; oddly, Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God, 179) tends to agree with his adversaries in the Jesus Seminar on this one point. What is remarkable about the Seminar’s whole enterprise is that characteristics of Jesus’ teaching and activity that need to be established by detailed analysis of the sources and application of 40

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criteria of historicity are instead proclaimed a priori as criteria for judging authentic material—a parade example of begging the question. 41 For an exposition of deconstructionism as applied to parables, see Patrick J. Hartin, “Angst in the Household: A Deconstructive Reading of the Parable of the Supervising Servant,” Neot 22 (1988) 373–90; idem, “Disseminating the Word: A Deconstructive Reading of Mark 4:1–9 and Mark 4:13–20,” Text and Interpretation. New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament (ed. P. J. Hartin and J. H. Petzer; NTTS 15; Leiden: Brill, 1991) 187–200; a similar approach can be seen in John Dominic Crossan’s Cliffs of Fall. Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus (New York: Seabury, 1980). 42 Other broader parallels, pointing out the fleeting nature of life and its enjoyment, the danger of trusting in riches, the limited satisfaction they bring, and/or the judgment God passes on the arrogance of the rich, can be found in such disparate texts as Qoh 2:1–26; 4:8; 5:10–19 (ET: 5:10–20); 6:2; Job 31:24–32; Psalms 37; 39; 49; 73; Prov 3:9–10; Isa 22:13; Jer 9:22 (ET: 9:23); Hos 12:8–11; Sir 5:1–10; Wisd 15:7–12; 1 Enoch 97:8–10; cf. 94:7–11; Seneca, Epistulae morales 101.2–5; De consolatione ad Helviam 10.6–10. Clearly, Jesus is using in the Rich Fool a well-known theme in the prophetic and sapiential literature of Israel as well as other nations. Hence, the parable of the Rich Fool, along with the other parables I group with it in the main text, does not fit Wright’s profile of Jesus’ parables as apocalyptic allegory conveying secret messages to his followers while being cryptic to outsiders (Jesus and the Victory of God, 179–80). Wright formulates this profile as part of his strategy to create a presumption ab initio that the Synoptic parables are all authentic Jesus material, since the only intelligible Sitz im Leben they could have is the public ministry of Jesus. Wright reasons that since Jesus’ parables were apocalyptic allegories conveying secret messages unintelligible to outsiders, there was no reason why the early church should create such parables, since “the secret was [now, in the time of the church] an open one” (p. 180). Like many other arguments for presuming from the start that Gospel traditions are historically reliable (see, among others, Martin Hengel and Richard Bauckham), this one cannot stand the test of a detailed examination of particular cases. As I will argue in Chapters 38 and 39, parables like the Good Samaritan and the Wheat and the Weeds are most likely the creations of the evangelists or of tradents of the L and M traditions respectively. Once this position is established, a universal presumption for the authenticity of any and every parable falls. The question of the authenticity of each parable must be judged on its own merits.

For the argument in favor of this position, see the detailed treatment of the parable of the Rich Fool in Chapter 38. 43

44 Here I follow the date that is supported by James M. Robinson, “From the Cliff to Cairo,” Colloque international sur les textes de Nag Hammadi (Québec, 22–25 août 1978) (Bibliothèque Copte de Nag Hammadi, Section Etudes 1; ed. Ber-



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nard Barc; Quebec: Les presses de l’université Laval; Louvain: Peeters, 1981) 21–58, esp. 29. However, while this date still seems to be generally accepted, the precise circumstances of the discovery remain murky. Robinson’s own telling of the story has varied over time, and various scholars have put forward different hypotheses concerning the historical origins of the codices and the actual manner of their discovery. For one possible scenario (along with a strong critique of some of Robinson’s claims), see Nicola Denzey Lewis and Justine Ariel Blount, “Rethinking the Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices,” JBL 133 (2014) 399–419; similar criticisms are voiced by Mark Goodacre, “How Reliable Is the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery?,” JSNT 35 (2013) 303–22.—As we begin our discussion of the Gospel of Thomas, a note about terminology is in order here. I employ the phrases Gospel of Thomas or simply Thomas as “umbrella” terms to refer to a Christian literary work of the 2d century a.d. that has been preserved for us in two major forms: (1) the Greek fragments preserved in the Oxyrhynchus papyri, specifically P.Oxy. 1, P.Oxy. 654, and P.Oxy. 655 (which are not all parts of the same Greek manuscript); and (2) the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, of which only one copy is preserved, namely, in Tractate 2 of Codex II of the Nag Hammadi codices discovered in 1945. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas contains (according to the count of the modern editors) 114 sayings, though with some lacunae. The abbreviation that I use in Volume Five of A Marginal Jew for the phrase “the Coptic Gospel of Thomas” is CGT, often with the number of a saying (= logion) following. Most likely, CGT is a translation of a Greek text (the original language of composition), though the fragments preserved in the Oxyrhynchus papyri evince some differences in wording and order from CGT. For a detailed description of the three Oxyrhynchus papyri containing sayings of Thomas, see Larry Hurtado, “The Greek Fragments of the Gospel of Thomas as Artefacts,” Das Thomasevangelium. Entstehung–Rezeption–Theologie (BZNW 157; ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008) 19–32; cf. Simon Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary (Texts and Editions for NT Study 11; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014) 4–8 (for Gathercole’s treatment of the Coptic manuscript and a comparison between the Greek and Coptic texts, see pp. 9–24). For a brief introduction to the papyri, see A Marginal Jew, 1. 124–25, and the literature cited there. For the minority view that the original form of Thomas was written in Syriac, see Nicholas Perrin, Thomas and Tatian. The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron (Academia Biblica 5; Leiden/Boston/Cologne: Brill; Atlanta: SBL, 2002) passim; a strong defense of original composition in Greek is given by Gathercole, ibid., 91–102. One conclusion that results from a comparison of the Greek fragments with CGT is that one should perhaps allow for stages of tradition and redaction, as well as for variations in different manuscripts of the work. However, barring further manuscript discoveries, theories about such stages or the range of variants must remain mere speculation; on this point, see Gathercole, ibid., 24–34. Citations of or passing references to the Gospel of Thomas in later Christian writers of the patristic period can be found in “The Greek Fragments,” an appendix by Harold W. Attridge in Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7 (NHS 20 and 21; 2 vols.; ed. Bentley Layton; Leiden: Brill, 1989) 1. 103–9; cf. Gathercole, ibid., 35–90. I use the adjective “Thomasine” (i.e., “referring to the

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Gospel of Thomas”) to refer to the text, content, theology, or author(s) of either of the two forms of the text. One final point: when I speak of the Gospel of Thomas in Volume Five without further qualification, I am always referring to the work described here. In other words, I never use the phrase “the Gospel of Thomas” or “Thomas” without further qualification to refer to other ancient works that bear the name of Thomas, such as the apocryphal gospel called the Greek Infancy Gospel of Thomas (on which see A Marginal Jew, 1. 115 and 145 n. 17). For a review of literature and contending positions on the Gospel of Thomas, see Nicholas Perrin, “Recent Trends in Gospel of Thomas Research (1991–2006): Part I, The Historical Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels,” Currents in Biblical Research 5 (2007) 183–206 (note the lengthy bibliography on pp. 199–206). For a collection of essays presenting different approaches to the problem of Thomas and the NT, see Das Thomasevangelium. Entstehung—Rezeption—Theologie (BZNW 157; ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008). The essay by Jörg Frey (“Die Lilien und das Gewand: EvThom 36 und 37 als Paradigma für das Verhältnis des Thomasevangeliums zur synoptischen Überlieferung,” pp. 122–80) offers in its first part (pp. 122–47) a helpful review of research, especially because it considers not just selected authors’ positions but also their presuppositions and implicit hermeneutical projects. For other surveys that also raise methodological questions, see Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1993), 1–16; Reinhard Nordsieck, Das ThomasEvangelium (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2004) 7–30; April D. DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation (London: Clark, 2007) 2–24; Nicholas Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel (Louisville/London: Westminster/John Knox, 2007) 1–69; Uwe-Karsten Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2008) 9–36; Michael Labahn, “The Non-Synoptic Jesus: An Introduction to John, Paul, Thomas, and Other Outsiders of the Jesus Quest,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 vols.; ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011) 3. 1933–96, esp. 1976–84; Edwin K. Broadhead, “The Thomas-Jesus Connection,” ibid., 3. 2059–80; Christopher W. Skinner, What Are They Saying about the Gospel of Thomas? (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012). 45

46 Frey (“Die Lilien und das Gewand,” 122–80) observes (p. 136) that the influence of such scholars as Helmut Koester and James M. Robinson in championing the independence of Thomas has led in some circles to a new “standard critical orthodoxy” (borrowing a phrase from Christopher Tuckett) that is hardly less dogmatic than the traditional view of the priority of the canonical traditions. Perrin (“Recent Trends,” 196) detects a certain “gridlock” on questions of dating and sources.

For examples of authors who question Thomas’ supposed independence of the Synoptics, see the articles by Charles L. Quarles, “The Use of the Gospel of Thomas in the Research on the Historical Jesus of John Dominic Crossan,” CBQ 69 (2007) 517–36; Simon Gathercole, “Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” NTS 57 (2011) 47



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114–44. More recently, whole books have taken up the argument against Thomas’ independence of the Synoptics; see in particular Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas (SNTSMS 151; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2012) 127– 224; idem, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 176–84; Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels. The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2012). The various publications of Gathercole and Goodacre seem to have put the “independence party” on the defensive. The lively debate among major protagonists on both sides is mirrored in a special issue of JSNT 36 (2014) 199–293 (the March fascicle). Questions about the general approach and detailed arguments of Gathercole and Goodacre are raised by John S. Kloppenborg, “A New Synoptic Problem: Mark Goodacre and Simon Gathercole on Thomas” (pp. 199–239); Nicola Denzey Lewis, “A New Gnosticism: Why Simon Gathercole and Mark Goodacre on the Gospel of Thomas Change the Field” (pp. 240–50); Stephen J. Patterson, “Twice More—Thomas and the Synoptics: A Reply to Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, and Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels” (pp. 251–61). Replies to the questions and objections raised in these essays are given by Simon Gathercole, “Thomas Revisited: A Rejoinder to Denzey Lewis, Kloppenborg and Patterson” (pp. 262–81); and Mark Goodacre, “Did Thomas Know the Synoptic Gospels? A Response to Denzey Lewis, Kloppenborg and Patterson” (pp. 282–93). Amid the many different views expressed by the first three authors in this fascicle, one senses an ebbing of the automatic presumption in favor of the independence of the Thomasine logia with Synoptic parallels, a presumption that was once the opinio communis among North American scholars. A much earlier attempt to argue at length for the dependence of Thomas on the Synoptics was made by the monograph of Michael Fieger, Das Thomasevangelium (NTAbh 22; Münster: Aschendorff, 1991). Unfortunately, Fieger’s book suffers from a very heavy dependence on the still earlier monograph of Wolfgang Schrage, Das Verhältnis des Thomas-Evangeliums zur synoptischen Tradition und zu den koptischen Evangelienübersetzungen (BZNW 29; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1964). Nevertheless, to accuse Fieger of plagiarism, as Plisch does (The Gospel of Thomas, 16 n. 19), seems unduly harsh. 48

A Marginal Jew, 1. 124–39.

49 Christopher Tuckett (“Thomas and the Synoptics,” NovT 30 [1988] 132–57) entertains the possibility of Thomas knowing not all three Synoptic Gospels but rather a single harmonized text (p. 157). He makes the further intriguing suggestion that a “post-Synoptic” source might explain the order of sayings as also “postSynoptic.”—One must remember, amid all the many methodological problems involved in the arguments for or against Thomas’ dependence on the Synoptics, that an a priori problem with the theory of Thomas’ independence is that “it can only ever be provisional” (Gathercole, “Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 116). The reason for this is that it is in principle extremely difficult, if not nigh impossible, to prove non-use of a text in the ancient world, to say nothing of proving that an ancient author did not know an earlier text. In contrast, an author’s use of a prior text (and

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hence his or her knowledge of that prior text) is in principle verifiable, however difficult it may be in a given case. To be sure, the nature of Thomas as a collection of freefloating logia, lacking a larger narrative context, does make verification much more difficult than, for example, the verification of the dependence of certain Matthean pericopes on their Marcan parallels. Certain monographs focus on a particular subset of Thomasine logia. For examples, a study that restricts itself to the sayings of Thomas containing parables, aphorisms, and metaphors that deal with the kingdom of God and that are parallel to material in Synoptic sayings can be found in Jacobus Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus. Parable, Aphorism, and Metaphor in the Sayings Material Common to the Synoptic Tradition and the Gospel of Thomas (BZNW 102; Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 2001). 50

Granted this solution to the problem of orderly presentation, I ask the reader to excuse a certain amount of repetition of material in both Thesis Six (here in Chapter 37) and Chapter 38. The repetition is necessary to ensure that each unit will be coherent and intelligible when read separately. Thus, Thesis Six in Chapter 37 summarizes the results reached at the end of Chapter 38, while the beginning of Chapter 38 will repeat some introductory material from Thesis Six. 51

At the end of his powerful and convincing treatment of “Thomas, the New Testament and the Historical Jesus” (Chapter 11 in his The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 176–84), Gathercole states: “As scholarship currently stands . . . , the Gospel of Thomas can hardly be regarded as useful in the reconstruction of a historical picture of Jesus.” Anyone wishing a brief summation of arguments demonstrating that Thomas is neither earlier than nor independent of the Synoptic Gospels could hardly find a better digest of decades of scholarship and debate than this chapter. Gathercole’s own work has especially highlighted the influence of both Matthew and Luke on a significant number of Thomas’ logia; see, e.g., ibid., 178–80, where Gathercole concludes with typical restraint (p. 180): “As a result, a view of the independence of Thomas from the Synoptics is difficult to entertain.” 52

For an overview of the criteria proposed in historical Jesus research, see A Marginal Jew, 1. 167–95. 53

54 Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 565) speaks for many: “Everyone admits that the parables are the surest source we have of Jesus’ teaching.” Present-day examples of such confidence can easily be multiplied, especially among exegetes of a conservative tendency; see, e.g., Greg W. Forbes, “The Parables,” The Content and Setting of the Gospel Tradition (ed. Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs; Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2010) 366–68. But even more critical scholars, while exploring one or another aspect of the ministry of the historical Jesus, will almost automatically presume the authenticity of the parables that they employ to demonstrate their positions; see, e.g., Michael Wolter, “Jesus as a Teller of Parables: On



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Jesus’ Self-Interpretation in His Parables,” Jesus Research: An International Perspective. The First Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Prague 2005 (ed. James H. Charlesworth with Petr Pokorný; Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2009) 123–39; similarly, but perhaps with a greater sense of the problem involved, Rudolf Hoppe, “How Did Jesus Understand His Death? The Parables in Eschatological Prospect,” ibid., 154–69, esp. 158–59. A good deal of this confidence can be traced back to Adolf Jülicher (Die Gleichnisreden Jesu [2 vols.; Freiburg: Mohr, 1888, 1889 (reprint published by Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1910; reprinted as one volume by Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963)]), who, while acknowledging the permutations introduced by the Christian tradition and the evangelists, nevertheless held that (p. 11) “we find no basis for denying the genuineness of the Gospel parables in general; on the contrary, we are compelled to attribute to them a relative authenticity; almost without exception they have a genuine kernel that goes back to Jesus himself. This principle hardly seems to need a defense . . .” (the translation of the German text is my own). Indeed, Dodd begins his classic The Parables of the Kingdom with the ringing affirmation (p. 13), “The parables are perhaps the most characteristic element in the teaching of Jesus Christ. . . . They have upon them, taken as a whole, the stamp of a highly individual mind. . . . Certainly there is no part of the Gospel record which has for the reader a clearer ring of authenticity.” Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus, 11–12) concurs: “The student of the parables of Jesus . . . may be confident that he stands upon a particularly firm historical foundation. The parables are a fragment of the original rock of tradition . . . in reading the parables we are dealing with a particularly trustworthy tradition, and are brought into immediate relation with Jesus.” Although more recent authors seek to nuance these claims with references to multiple oral performances, the authentic voice of Jesus, or the originating structure of a parable, the parables remain the most trusted source for knowing the teaching of the historical Jesus. For example, while admitting the lengthy process of oral and written transmission and reinterpretation that lies between Jesus and our written Gospels, Norman Perrin (Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976] 3) maintains that “the parables of Jesus were so distinctive that in broad structural outline they survived the subsequent process of transmission very well . . . [so that] the original form and thrust of the parables have not proven difficult to reconstruct.” While John R. Donahue seeks rather the meaning of the parables within their respective Gospel contexts, he begins his quest with this comment about past parable research (The Gospel in Parable [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988] ix): “For the past century the parables have served as the royal road to the life, teaching, and self-understanding of Jesus.” Perhaps reflecting the many different perspectives of a large working group, the Jesus Seminar, under the leadership of Robert W. Funk, expressed more diffidence. Yet, in the end, this highly skeptical seminar (witness the final results of their deliberations in The Five Gospels) proved more positive about the parables than about most Gospel material. In its separate and initial report on the parables, The Parables of Jesus. Red Letter Edition (ed. Robert W. Funk, Bernard Brandon Scott, and James R. Butts; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1988), the Jesus Seminar put five parables (six versions) in the “undoubtably Jesus said something like this” category, eighteen parables

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(twenty-eight versions) in the “Jesus probably said something like this” category, ten parables (fourteen versions) in the “ideas contained [in these parables] are close to his own” category, and eleven parables (twelve versions—but only four of the eleven parables are found in the Synoptics; the rest come from the NT Apocrypha or patristic writings) in the “Jesus did not say this” category. For a comparison between the parables of Jesus and those of the later rabbis, see Catherine Hezser, “Rabbinische Gleichnisse und ihre Vergleichbarkeit mit neu­ testamentlichen Gleichnissen,” Hermeneutik der Gleichnisse Jesu (WUNT 231; ed. Ruben Zimmermann with Gabi Kern; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2008) 217–37. Other works that engage this topic include Clemens Thoma and Simon Lauer, Die Gleichnisse der Rabbinen (Judaica et Christiana 10, 16, 18; Bern: Lang, 1986); Peter Dschulnigg, Rabbinische Gleichnisse und das Neue Testament (Judaica et Christiana 12; Bern: Lang, 1988); Brad H. Young, Jesus and His Jewish Parables (New York: Paulist Press, 1989); McArthur and Johnston, They Also Taught in Parables; Alan Appelbaum, The Rabbis’ King-Parables. Midrash from the Third-Century Roman Empire (Judaism in Context 7; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010), esp. his appendix, “Jesus’ King-Parables,” 271–96. I mean no slight to the great rabbinic tradition of parables when I do not engage in a detailed discussion of their relation to Jesus’ parables. If one were concerned with a synchronic comparison of literary forms, traits, and motifs in various parables across the wide sweep of Israel’s history and literary tradition, it would be necessary to bring together OT parables, those of Jesus, and those of the Tannaitic and Amoraic rabbis (indeed, one could continue tracing the Jewish tradition of teaching via parables far beyond the period of the Talmuds). However, here we are concerned with the historical question of the background and contemporary context of Jesus’ use of parables. Hence parables that are attested in documentary evidence only centuries later cannot qualify as “background.” To the oft-repeated mantra of some scholars that the contents of the later literature reflect much earlier oral traditions, one must reply with a question that is not repeated often enough: How much earlier? In most cases, we cannot say. Then, too, there is the basically different Sitz im Leben of the rabbinic parables (as compared with those of Jesus) that naturally produces a different type of parable: formulated within the setting and needs of academies, the rabbinic parables directly address problems of scriptural interpretation and ha˘ la¯kâ in a way that Jesus’ parables generally do not. However, this observation about the real differences in Sitz im Leben, immediate audience, and intentionality (to say nothing of the problem of dating) should not be taken as a sort of crypto-apologetics employed to exalt Jesus’ parables over those of the rabbis. “Different” or “earlier” does not necessarily mean “better.” 55

I realize that one is drawing a fine distinction in deciding that Jesus’ saying about the Leaven (which takes up a single verse in Matt 13:33, but two verses in Luke 13:20–21) qualifies as a parable while the saying about the strong man does not. I would argue that, in the parable of the Leaven, there is a mini-plot or mininarrative with a sequence of actions leading to a denouement. Such a narrative structure and development are lacking in the similitude of the strong man (note that “and 56



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then he pillages his house” at the end of Mark 3:27 simply repeats by way of inclusio the idea of pillaging his house stated at the beginning of the verse). But I readily admit that lines of division become fuzzy at this point and that therefore those critics who categorize the saying about the strong man as a parable may be correct. This saying is especially difficult to classify because Luke’s version (probably the Q form; see A Marginal Jew, 2. 417) takes up two verses and expands the similitude into what one might argue does constitute a parable. For varied approaches to the questions surrounding memory, oral tradition, and written sources, see, e.g., James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making 1; Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2003), esp. 173–254; Terence C. Mournet, Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency. Variability and Stability in the Synoptic Tradition and Q (WUNT 2/195; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2005); Armin D. Baum, Der mündliche Faktor und seine Bedeutung für die synoptische Frage (Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 49; Tübingen: Francke, 2008); Robert K. McIver, Memory, Jesus, and the Synoptic Gospels (SBL Resources for Biblical Study 59; Atlanta: SBL, 2011). To take one prominent example of this approach that emphasizes the importance of the memory and oral testimony of eyewitnesses: in many different publications, Richard Bauckham has sought to create a presumption in favor of the reliability of the Gospel traditions in general on the grounds that they enshrine eyewitness testimony. See, e.g., his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2006). While this is not the place for a full discussion of his views, I would briefly note the following: (1) Bauckham’s overall project is one of theological apologetics, not a quest for the historical Jesus. The driving engine of his whole approach is a particular theological agenda, which makes his methodology unacceptable in a strictly historical quest for the historical Jesus. I have no objection to christology in particular and theology in general using arguments from both historical research and the social sciences; indeed, I think such an approach is laudable. But a theological project employing historical research must not be confused with a strictly historical project, and the quest for the historical Jesus must be the latter. (2) Bauckham’s use of patristic and other early Christian sources in general and of Papias in particular is open to serious question. I dare say that the fragmentary statements of Papias about the Gospels and the early disciples (cited by Eusebius) have yielded more diverse and clashing interpretations than many cruces interpretum in the NT. To place so much weight on Papias for an overall argument for the reliability of the Gospels and the eyewitness testimony supposedly contained in them is to build on sand. On the problem of the mythical and legendary elements that predominate in the oral traditions preserved by Papias, see David E. Aune, “Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World,” Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (JSNTSup 64; ed. Henry Wansbrough; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1991) 59–106, esp. 80–83, 98. Noteworthy is Aune’s observation (p. 97) that, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, oral traditions were considered more valuable than written texts in some circles, while other circles regarded written texts as more valuable than oral tradition. Papias’ high estimation of oral traditions was not universally shared. (3) For a brief and convenient example of 57

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Bauckham’s questionable handling of patristic material, one need only peruse his solution to the question of the precise relationship of “the brothers and sisters” of Jesus to the historical Jesus (“The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus: An Epiphanian Response to John P. Meier,” CBQ 56 [1994] 686–700). In his defense of the Epiphanian view (i.e., that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were the offspring of Joseph by a previous marriage), Bauckham employs as key witnesses the Protevangelium Jacobi, the Greek Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Peter (actually a dubious statement about the Gospel of Peter in Origen). For a critique of his argument and his odd use of these patristic sources, see my “On Retrojecting Later Questions from Later Texts,” 511–27. (4) Bauckham appeals to various social-scientific studies to bolster his claim about eyewitnesses and memory. The problem is that other social-scientific studies may be and have been invoked to question the reliability of eyewitness testimony; see, e.g., Judith C. S. Redman, “How Accurate Are Eyewitnesses? Bauckham and the Eyewitnesses in the Light of Psychological Research,” JBL 129 (2010) 177–97. One is reminded of dueling lawyers at a criminal trial, each one calling to the stand a psychiatrist to give expert witness that diametrically opposes the witness of the other expert. (5) All too often, appeals by biblical scholars to studies of memory presume that memory plays an important role only in the passing on of traditions in their oral stage. As I noted earlier in this chapter, especially in the ancient world, memory of texts previously heard or read would also influence scribes in the production or copying of texts. For some corrective comments on the use of memory studies in debates about the oral and written sources of the Gospels, see Alan Kirk, “Orality, Writing, and Phantom Sources: Appeals to Ancient Media in Some Recent Challenges to the Two Document Hypothesis,” NTS 58 (2012) 1–22; this article should be read in tandem with his essay, “Memory Theory and Jesus Research,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 vols.; ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011) 1. 809–51. 58 On the whole question of the relation of “oral performance” to the formation and reading of NT texts, see Larry W. Hurtado, “Oral Fixation and New Testament Studies? ‘Orality,’ ‘Performance’ and Reading Texts in Early Christianity,” NTS 60 (2014) 321–40. While affirming the importance of the spoken word and oral tradition in early Christianity, Hurtado stresses that this does not justify assigning written texts a minor role. He rightly questions claims that in early Christian groups texts were not read aloud from written documents but rather delivered from memory in a theatrical performance and that at times Christian texts were composed in and by such oral performances. At the same time, we must remember that our own focus in Volume Five is the passing down of individual parables by tradents of the Synoptic tradition within the first and second generations of Christianity. Whether or not individual parables were gathered together in a small written collection of parables before Mark and the other evangelists composed their Gospels is something we do not and cannot know. 59 While comparisons made to the oral traditions behind the Iliad, the Odyssey, and other ancient epic poems as well as to folk traditions and poems handed down



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orally in certain modern cultures (e.g., the Balkans) are enlightening, one must at the same time bear in mind the relatively unusual nature of the Synoptic tradition. (1) The traditions coming from Jesus were in the beginning purely oral; yet these oral traditions were being passed down in a culture that was also scribal and had been scribal for many centuries. (2) Between the time of Jesus’ public ministry (ca. a.d. 28–30) and the composition of the first Synoptic Gospel stand at most forty years (if we accept the common dating of Mark ca. a.d. 70). If one were to accept the date sometimes suggested for the composition of the Q document (ca. a.d. 50), the time of a purely oral tradition without any written expression shrinks to twenty years. A similar conclusion would have to be drawn if we accepted the theories of some Marcan scholars about pre-Marcan written sources containing collections of dispute stories, parables, miracle stories, or a primitive Passion Narrative. (3) Once Q and Mark are written down and begin to circulate in other churches (both are known independently by Matthew and Luke, writing in different churches ca. a.d. 80–90), we must reckon with the ongoing oral tradition being affected by secondary orality springing from these written sources. (4) That certain written sources, soon after they appeared, were considered especially important and even authoritative (though certainly not yet canonical) can be seen from the fact that between 80 and 90 percent of Mark was taken over and reworked by Matthew, despite Matthew’s obvious distaste for Mark’s style and theology. On this question, see David C. Sim, “Matthew’s Use of Mark: Did Matthew Intend to Supplement or to Replace His Primary Source?,” NTS 57 (2011) 176–92. Moreover, despite the fact that Luke most likely did not know Matthew, he likewise adopted the ungainly Mark as the narrative backbone of his vastly expanded and more sophisticated literary work. (5) In the whole process of the oral transmission of Jesus’ words and deeds and their eventual incorporation into written Gospels, one must remember that we are not dealing with epic stories about heroes from the distant past or recent reports about intriguing events within one’s social group. After the pivotal events surrounding Jesus’ death and the reports of his resurrection, his followers (including eyewitnesses of the public ministry) passed on traditions about him as “good news,” sacred traditions that were so important for the salvation of the bearers and their audiences that they were willing to suffer persecution and even death for the truth of what they proclaimed. This is not the same as a bard’s dedication to passing on and developing Homeric poetry. 60 We will be running into the technical term “tradent” a good deal in subsequent chapters. According to the Internet resource “Oxford Biblical Studies Online,” in academic usage “tradent” means “one who is responsible for preserving and handing on the oral tradition, such as a teacher or preacher or missionary”; examples of such oral traditions would be dispute stories, miracle stories, and parables.

Gerhardsson, “The Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” 362. Taking Matt 13:51–52 as an indication of such creative freedom, Gerhardsson (p. 363) concludes that “the question of the authenticity of the individual mashal must be discussed, in the last resort, from case to case.” 61

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One might object that the criterion of embarrassment can be used for those parables that seem to extol or hold up as a model a person of questionable moral probity. A prime example would be the parable traditionally given the title of the Dishonest Steward (Luke 16:1–9). The problem with this line of argument, however, is that one is presuming that one correctly understands the parable and that therefore one correctly detects immoral activity on the part of the steward (note the preemptive strike of the traditional title, “the Dishonest Steward,” with the presumption that this title encapsulates the main point of the parable). If instead one takes the view that the steward in the parable, while irresponsible in squandering his master’s goods (16:2–3) and therefore “dishonest” in that sense, does not do anything dishonest in reducing the amounts owed by the debtors (16:5–7) but rather voluntarily renounces the part of the debt payment that would accrue to him as his commission on the transactions (see, e.g., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke [AYB 28 and 28A; 2 vols.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981, 1985] 2. 1094–1102), the steward, at least at the end of the story, is being cagey and prudent rather than dishonest. Faced with a crisis, he has chosen short-term loss for the sake of longterm gain. Be that as it may, the larger point here is that before one can appeal to the argument from embarrassment in the case of a parable, one must first establish one’s particular interpretation of the parable (namely, that the parable is extolling a disreputable person precisely because he is disreputable) as the correct one. Then, too, what counts as a disreputable person in 21st-century America (e.g., a hard, demanding, punitive master) did not necessarily count as such in the ancient Near East. 62

Hear Then the Parable, 63–64. Scott is quite honest about the reason for framing his method in the way he does. He accepts the (questionable) methodological principle espoused by Norman Perrin: “. . . the burden of proof falls on the one who would claim the authenticity of a saying. . . .” Scott immediately counters that the case is different when it comes to Jesus’ parables; here the burden of proof falls on the person claiming that the “originating structure” of a parable is not from Jesus. Apart from the fact that I do not think that Scott’s reasons for shifting the burden of proof hold, a further problem with his whole approach is presuming the binary dilemma in which one is dealing with only two interlocutors: the defender and the denier of the authenticity of a parable. This binary approach implicitly allows only two possible judgments at the end of a scholarly inquiry: either the parable comes from the historical Jesus, or it does not. But as we have seen countless times in the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew, the sober judgment at the end of an investigation may instead be non liquet. Granted this third option, the principle of the burden of proof is better formulated as follows: the burden of proof falls on anyone who tries to prove anything; on this, see A Marginal Jew, 1. 194 n. 65. 63

On the problem connected with an esthetic argument for the authenticity of the Synoptic parables, see Gerhard Sellin, “Lukas als Gleichniserzähler: die Erzählung vom barmherzigen Samariter (Lk 10:25–37),” ZNW 65 (1974) 166–89 (Part I); ZNW 66 (1975) 19–60 (Part II), esp. 167–68. 64



The Parables of Jesus 65

See the remark of Appelbaum in his The Rabbis’ King-Parables, 271.

66

See Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 64.

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67 One must allow for the fact that variations in oral performance of a parable may go back to Jesus himself, who quite possibly spoke the same basic parable on different occasions to different audiences and therefore modified the parable accordingly. 68

Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 361.

69

Ibid., 308.

70

Ibid., 257.

71

Ibid., 233; cf. 139, 143–44.

72

Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 118; cf. 103.

73 A number of other problems might be mentioned, including (1) the refusal to adopt and stick to any one solution of the Synoptic Problem and (2) the absence of a detailed verse-by-verse exegesis of each parable. Instead, appeals to multiple oral performances, the nonexistence of any original version of a parable, and similar mantras popular today mask the absence of methodological rigor. When it comes to the question of the authenticity of the parables, Snodgrass’s whole project remains on a lofty level of generalization, intuition, and artistic impressionism.

Excursus on Chapter 37

The Problem of Allegory The nature of allegory continues to be a source of debate among parable scholars today (as it was among ancient Greek and Latin authors), in part because allegory in itself, even apart from its relation to the category of parable, is a vast topic resistant to neat definitions.1 The understanding of the nature and value of allegory has changed over the centuries, and one would be hard pressed to find a definition or description of allegory that would satisfy every critic today.2 Here I will simply sketch in broad strokes the understanding that governs my treatment of allegory, while avoiding the detailed technical debates in which academics engage over allegory’s precise definition and function. In a wide sense, allegory is a particular way of thinking, speaking, writing, and creating art, a way that involves extensive and (when it is well done) coherent use of symbols and/or metaphors to communicate a message via analogy. One reason why I start with this general description of allegory is that allegory is not limited to literature; paintings, sculpture, musical compositions (e.g., Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde), and other works of art can also be allegorical.3 When the term is applied to literature, allegory is not to be reduced to one particular literary genre; hence it is not to be set alongside or opposed to the literary genre of parable. Rather, allegory is a rhetorical mode or technique of speaking and writing that can be found in many different literary genres (e.g., narrative poetry, lyric poetry, parables, artful and polemical retellings of history, and whole novels). Popularly, allegory is often thought of as a symbolic story in which every significant actor, action, name, object, or place in one sphere of reality corresponds to another actor, action, name, object, or place in another sphere of reality. Understood in this limited sense, allegory is not just one extended metaphor but a whole string of metaphors. The individual metaphors may be skillfully tied together to form a coherent whole, or they may be loosely and artificially strung together, with the meaning that the author wishes to inculcate dictating the awkward or somewhat unnatural relations and interactions among the metaphors. While highly artificial and

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heavy-handed allegories can frequently be found in literature (e.g., John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress), such specimens hardly reflect the full range of allegory, which has a remarkably elastic and flexible nature.4 One way of thinking of a well-executed allegory is to imagine a narrative that is not simply a string of related metaphors but more importantly one grand metaphor extending throughout and suffusing the entire narrative. In such a case, the extent to which individual elements in the narrative realm refer point by point to elements in the corresponding realm of reality can vary greatly from one allegorical narrative to another.5 To illustrate this understanding of allegory, while avoiding too narrow a conception of allegory that might result from fixating solely on the material in the Synoptic Gospels or even on religion in general, let us first examine a modern secular example of an allegorical narrative. Quite different from The Pilgrim’s Progress is George Orwell’s Animal Farm (written in 1943–44 and published in 1945), which can be viewed as one grand allegory from start to finish, a satirical novel symbolizing and illuminating the betrayal of the ideals behind the Russian Revolution by Stalin’s institution of a totalitarian system in the Soviet Union. Animal Farm is especially instructive in that, technically speaking, its literary genre is that of an animal fable.6 This underscores the point that allegory is something other than a single literary genre or a rhetorical technique confined to a single genre. Within Orwell’s overarching allegory there are indeed many individual correspondences: the pig Old Major is Marx and/or Lenin; Napoleon, the pig who seizes tyrannical power over the farm, is Stalin; Snowball, the more vivacious and eloquent pig leader, is Trotsky; the Raven is the Russian Orthodox Church, and so forth. But the allegory that is the whole novel is much more than a series of clever equations between discrete metaphors and discrete realities. The master allegory is more than the sum of its parts. All this results in a complex hermeneutical piece of literary art, and one appreciates how the allegory can work on different levels for different readers of different time periods. Animal Farm is rightly considered an allegory because of (a) the express intention of the original author, (b) an intention that is skillfully embodied in the literary structure and content of the text, and (c) an intention that is clearly communicated to the original audience that the author had in mind.7 As is often the case in allegory, obfuscation and mystification were not the author’s goal. In fact, the all-too-clear message of Orwell’s allegory made it difficult for him to find a publisher in England just as World War II was ending.8 Clearly, then, to recognize and interpret Animal Farm as an allegory satirizing Stalin’s Soviet Union is not to engage in some kind of artificial

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or contrived allegorical exegesis; the allegorical interpretation intended by the original author and immediately understood by the original audience is the correct and natural (indeed, one might even say the literal) meaning. However, like every good allegory and every great work of art, the value of Animal Farm is not limited to the intention of the original author, the originating situation, and the originally targeted audience. Because of its internal dynamism and the elasticity of its metaphorical world, well-executed allegory can transcend its original matrix and speak to new audiences in quite different circumstances. For example, Animal Farm is still read today by 21st-century Americans who fear that certain developments in their own country could lead to either fascist or socialist totalitarianism (notice how partisans of both right and left can read the master allegory for their own purposes). The grand allegory still works, whether or not present-day readers understand all the individual “equations” intended by Orwell. (How may young American readers know or care that the pig Squealer represents Molotov?) Animal Farm will continue to be read and valued as long as there are political movements or systems whose ideals can be betrayed by mendacious, brutal, and self-serving leaders at the top as well as by willfully ignorant, feckless, and fearful followers down below. Such latter-day readers of the novel are hardly doing violence to the allegory at the heart of Animal Farm, even though the allegorical correspondences they would see would not necessarily be the original ones intended by the author or understood by the original audience. Such new allegorical interpretations evoked by problems in the 21st century cannot be judged as artificial or contrived; they stand in living, organic continuity with the original allegorical thrust of the text. In contrast, for both liberal and evangelical Protestants in 21st-century America to use Animal Farm as an allegorical polemic against the alleged theological errors of their ecclesiastical adversaries might produce some clever displays of manipulative and imaginative interpretation of the text; but anyone standing outside the theological boxing ring would readily recognize such interpretation as contrived eisegesis, a case of allegorizing interpretation at its maladroit worst. One could almost hear the atheist Orwell groaning—though, if we may judge from various comments he made elsewhere, he probably would not object to applying the allegory to the Pope, the Jesuits, and the Catholic Church. In brief, allegory properly performed and grasped is a work of art far removed from the Procrustean bed of tit-for-tat corresponding metaphors, the popular understanding of allegory. Applying these insights to the much narrower question of the Synoptic parables and the place of allegory in them, we can in one respect give Adolf



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Jülicher his due. He was correct in rejecting the extremely elaborate and artificial allegorizing exegesis employed by many (though not all) patristic and medieval theologians—a type of exegesis still found in popular works and excruciating homilies. The famous exemplar of such ingenious if contrived interpretation is St. Augustine’s reading of Luke 10:30–37, the parable of the Good Samaritan (Quaestiones evangeliorum, 2.19).9 Augustine finds in the parable a summary of the whole of salvation history from the fall of Adam to salvation by Christ and eternal life, with, for example, Jericho symbolizing the changeable moon and therefore signifying our human mortality. Such allegorizing, however entertaining or amusing, is utterly foreign to the intention of the original author addressing his original audience (be that Jesus teaching his disciples or Luke teaching his church). The problem is that, in an extreme modern reaction to extreme patristic distortions, Jülicher declared that the historical Jesus never used allegory in his parables; indeed, allegory was essentially opposed to the simple parables of Jesus with their one point of comparison (the tertium comparationis). Alas, Jülicher’s neat dichotomy runs up against both the dynamic, elastic nature of allegory that we have examined and the complex inventory of Jesus’ variegated parables. The fact of the matter is that the parables ascribed to Jesus, as they stand in the Synoptics, evince a complicated and variable relation to allegory. Let us take a couple of different examples to examine this fluctuating relation between parable and allegory in Jesus’ parables. (1) A large majority of exegetes judge the allegorical interpretation of the parable of the Sower (Mark 4:14–20 vis-à-vis 4:3–8) to be a secondary addition of the early Christian tradition, a creation either of Mark or of some pre-Marcan author.10 Both the vocabulary of the allegorical interpretation and some of the problems addressed therein seem to reflect the situation of early Christian preaching rather than that of the historical Jesus. Yet, while secondary in the chronological and ideological sense, Mark’s allegorical interpretation is not as foreign and artificially connected to the parable of the Sower as is Augustine’s salvation-historical interpretation to the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the case of Mark, it is true that his allegorical interpretation of the fourfold fate of the seed goes beyond the original thrust of the parable by focusing on the subjective dispositions of the various hearers of the word as they respond to diverse external pressures. Yet the very presence in the original parable of the four different soils that determine the four different fates of the seed, in addition to the traditional meaning of symbols like rocks, weeds, thorns, and abundant harvests in stories involving agriculture, creates a certain metaphorical dynamism in the basic structure and thrust of the parable that in turn could easily call forth the type of

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allegorical interpretation supplied by Mark. Admittedly, Mark’s allegorical interpretation is a later development, neither intrinsic nor necessary to the original text; but it is not without some organic connection to the text that helped generate it. (2) The case of Matthew’s parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matt 13:24–30, to be treated at length in Chapter 38) is more complicated. Even apart from Matthew’s allegorical interpretation (13:37–43), in the parable proper the series of stock figures (the master of the estate, his slaves, sowing and harvesting, good and bad plants, destruction by fire as a final event as opposed to the ingathering of the harvest) constitutes a string of metaphors that were well known in Jewish prophecy and apocalyptic. Thus, the basic allegorical thrust of the parable proper is already intimated, even though a precise catalogue identifying the meaning of each metaphor has not yet been supplied to the audience. Indeed, one is prompted to ask: is Matthew’s allegorical interpretation of the parable really secondary, a later allegorization tacked on to a text that suggested and invited but did not specify any given allegorical interpretation? Many exegetes would answer yes. But it is also possible that both parable and allegorical interpretation are the work of Matthew, fashioning the two at the same time. That the allegorical interpretation shifts the emphasis of the parable somewhat would not in itself be an argument against such a possibility, since such shifts are seen in some OT and rabbinic allegories. If it be the case that Matthew created both parable and allegorical interpretation at the same time as part of one coherent composition, then not only would the parable be a full-fledged allegory but also the allegorical interpretation would be in no sense artificial, secondary, or distorting. In fact, we would be close to Orwell’s Animal Farm: the fullfledged allegory would be embedded in the narrative itself and would be the original intent of the author. The difference, of course, is that Orwell neither supplied nor desired a separate catalogue of equivalences. (3) Still more intriguing is Mark’s parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–11, likewise treated in Chapter 38). Here, unlike our two previous examples, there is no separate allegorical explanation or catalogue of equivalences (in this sense, we are brought even closer to Orwell’s Animal Farm). If there is any allegory present in Mark 12:1–11, it must be embodied in and communicated by the parable itself. As a matter of fact, anyone knowledgeable of the Jewish Scriptures in general and of Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isa 5:1–7) in particular—and this would include knowledgeable Jews listening to Jesus telling the parable ca. a.d. 30—would easily recognize the vineyard as Israel, the owner of the vineyard as God, the servants sent by the owner as the prophets, and those who reject and kill the servants



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as the evil leaders of Israel (or, more specifically, of Jerusalem). In addition, early Christian hearers of the Marcan form of the parable would immediately recognize the only son as Jesus, his violent death as his crucifixion, the punishment of the tenants as the destruction of Jerusalem, and the citation of LXX Psalm 117:22–23 as the announcement of Jesus’ vindication by way of his resurrection. One would have to be totally ignorant of both Jewish and early Jewish-Christian traditions not to grasp most if not all of the allegory inherent in and throughout the parable. Far from some adventitious contrivance, this allegory lies at the very core of the parable and is inextricably bound up with it. In the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, so much is the parable allegory and the allegory parable that a separate allegorical interpretation à la Mark 4:14–20 would be both superfluous and tiresome. And yet this inextricable union does not mean that the allegory loses its dynamism and flexibility. Precisely because of those qualities, the allegory remains open to further interpretation and adaptation, as is witnessed in the versions of Matthew, Luke, and Thomas. In sum, an important conclusion to be drawn from this brief examination of allegory and parable is that one must come to each Synoptic parable with an open mind rather than a rigid grid. The various possible relationships between parable and allegory must be worked out and evaluated in the exegesis of the individual case.11 NOTES TO THE EXCURSUS 1 The reader will remember that in Chapter 37, the question of allegory arose in the context of treating Ezekiel’s use of allegorical parables. So as not to disturb the flow of the main argument, the treatment of the problem of allegory was postponed to this Excursus. 2 On this, see the historically ordered essays in Jon Whitman (ed.), Interpretation and Allegory. Antiquity to the Modern Period (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 101; Leiden/Boston/Cologne: Brill, 2000); Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University, 2010).

On this point, see the various essays in Marlies Kronegger and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (eds.), Allegory Old and New in Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre, and Its Continuity in Culture (Analecta Husserliana 42; Dordrecht/Boston/ London: Kluwer Academic, 1994). 3

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Norton Critical Edition; ed. Cynthia Wall; New York/London: Norton, 2009; originally published in 1678). For considerations of Bunyan’s use of allegory, see the selected observations by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 4

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(pp. 379–80) and J. Paul Hunter (pp. 407–11) in the Norton Critical Edition; see also James F. Forrest, “Allegory as Sacred Sport: Manipulation of the Reader in Spenser and Bunyan,” Bunyan in Our Time (ed. Robert G. Collmer; Kent, OH/London, UK: Kent State University, 1989) 93–112; Barbara A. Johnson, “Falling into Allegory: The ‘Apology’ to The Pilgrim’s Progress and Bunyan’s Scriptural Methodology,” ibid., 113–37; Roger Pooley, “The Pilgrim’s Progress and the Line of Allegory,” The Cambridge Companion to Bunyan (ed. Anne Dunan-Page; Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University, 2010) 80–94. For further discussion on these insights, see Madeleine Boucher, The Mysterious Parable (CBQMS 6; Washington, DC: CBA, 1977) 20–22. 5

6 See Laraine Fergenson, “George Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Twentieth-Century Beast Fable,” George Orwell’s Animal Farm (Modern Critical Interpretations; ed. Harold Bloom; Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999) 109–18.

This intention is made clear in his prefaces to the novel; see Animal Farm. A Fairy Story (The Complete Works of George Orwell 8; ed. Peter Davison; London: Secker & Warburg, 1987) 97–114. 7

8 On this, see Bernard Crick, “The Making of Animal Farm,” George Orwell’s Animal Farm, 29–43.

For the Latin text, see Sancti Aurelii Augustini. Quaestiones evangeliorum (CC Series Latina 44B; Turnhout [Belgium]: Brepols, 1980) 62–63. 9

10 See, e.g., Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 77–79; Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 14–15; Crossan, In Parables, 41–42; Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 189–90; Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 343–62. Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 164–66) represents the relatively few scholars arguing for origin from Jesus.

For further reading on the question of allegory, see Hans-Josef Klauck, Allegorie und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten (NTAbh 13; Münster: Aschendorff, 1978; 2d ed. with appendix, 1986) 4–147; Hans Weder, Die Gleichnisse Jesu als Metaphern (FRLANT 120; Göttingen-Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978; 4th ed. 1990) 69–75; Charles E. Carlston, “Parable and Allegory Revisited: An Interpretive Review,” CBQ 43 (1981) 228–42; Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 12–14; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 15–17; David E. Aune, “Allegory,” The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Louisville/ London: Westminster/John Knox, 2003) 30–32; Simon Brittan, Poetry, Symbol, and Allegory. Interpreting Metaphorical Language from Plato to the Present (Char­ lottesville, VA/London, UK: University of Virginia, 2003); the various essays in Part II (“Allegory”) in G. R. Boys-Stones (ed.), Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition (Oxford/New York: Oxford University, 2003) 151–256; Jeremy Tambling, Allegory (The New Critical Idiom; London/New York: Routledge, 2010). 11

Chapter 38

Parables and the Problem of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas I. THE PLACE OF THIS CHAPTER IN THE OVERALL ARGUMENT Taken as a whole, Chapter 37 shouted a loud “no” to the common view that the Synoptic parables are among the most reliable Gospel sayings attributed to Jesus, part of the bedrock tradition that gives us access to the historical Jesus. The contrarian view I espoused in Chapter 37 is simple: if we go through a list of the Synoptic parables with the criteria of historicity in mind, we will surface few credible candidates for the coveted accolade of authentic Jesus material. If we grant the truth of this academic “rebel yell” with which Chapter 37 ended, our natural impulse will be to proceed in haste to a preliminary inspection of all the Synoptic parables in order to sort out likely prospects. However, a major roadblock stands in the way of our moving immediately to our initial inventory of the parables with the measuring rod of the criteria in hand. As was intimated already in Chapter 37, and as will be demonstrated at length in Chapters 39 and 40, we face a basic methodological problem: the nature of the evidence causes the criterion of multiple attestation by more than one independent literary source to play an outsized role in evaluating the authenticity of the parables.1 In other words, whether a parable occurs in more than one independent source will often determine whether it is placed among the sheep or the goats at the judgment seat of historical criticism. Hence, granted the pivotal role that the criterion of multiple attestation plays in this process, it will not do to circumvent or postpone a key question: Does the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (= CGT) supply independent attestation for some of the parables that are also found in the Synoptics? If it does, then a number of parables otherwise assigned to the pen of the inauthentic goats can be transferred to the fold of the authentic sheep. If it does not, few parables will find their way into the

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sheepfold on the day of critical judgment. Therefore it is vital that, before we proceed to our initial probe of the list of parables (Chapter 39), we first face squarely the problem posed by those parables in CGT which parallel Synoptic material. Hence what this present chapter seeks to do is to provide a detailed demonstration of the position enunciated in Thesis Six of Chapter 37: the claim that parables in CGT present an independent and indeed earlier and more reliable tradition of the parables is highly questionable. Within Chapter 37, consideration of space allowed for only a brief and general argument in favor of this thesis. Here in Chapter 38, I will offer an extensive demonstration that it is more likely than not that the parables in CGT (and, indeed, the sayings tradition in general) evince knowledge of or influence from the Synoptics.2 Once this position is established, the precise range of material in which the criterion of multiple attestation can properly operate becomes clear: the criterion applies only in the case of multiple Synoptic sources that are literarily independent of each other. The parables in CGT offer no help because it is unlikely that they represent an independent tradition. To lay out my argument in an orderly fashion, I will first recapitulate some general observations about Thomas that I made in Volume One of A Marginal Jew.3 Then I will proceed to the detailed probes of individual sayings and parables that are witnessed by both Thomas and the Synoptics.

II. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS IN RELATION TO THE SYNOPTICS Individual probes of sayings in CGT (and when applicable the Greek fragments) are not all that convincing if they are seen in complete isolation from (a) the larger picture of the situation of the Gospel of Thomas within the context of 2d-century Christian literature and (b) the overall relationship of Thomas to the Synoptics. It is to sketch this broader context that the following seven observations are offered in concise summaries. The full exposition of these observations can be found in the relevant sections of Volume One.4 (1) The composition of the Gospel of Thomas must be placed within a wider framework: namely, the rich and varied production of many Christian writings in the 2d century a.d., some gnosticizing, some not. The second half of the 20th century, especially in North American scholarship, witnessed a feverish combing of scraps from almost every Christian work of the 2d century in the fervent hope of discovering another supposedly early and reliable source for the historical Jesus. No theory was considered too outré. To take



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but one example: Christian fantasies like the Protevangelium Jacobi (i.e., the Infancy Gospel of James) and the hilarious Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with CGT) were served up as serious sources for historical data about Jesus’ family.5 Despite this irrational exuberance in the academic equivalent of the stock market, sober surveys indicate that most of the texts brought forward, including Christian compositions from Nag Hammadi, betray some kind of influence, direct or indirect, from the Synoptic Gospels as well as from other NT works.6 The Gospel of Thomas, both in its Greek fragments and in its fuller Coptic form, should be viewed within this larger framework instead of being read in a historical vacuum or, worse still, in a conjectured but unsubstantiated 1st-century matrix. (2) Within this broader context of the use of the Synoptics in 2d-century Christian compositions, the use of the Synoptics by those writers dubbed “the Apostolic Fathers” and “the Apologists” (e.g., the Didache, Polycarp, Justin Martyr) evinces an intriguing and instructive tendency. Instead of simply citing or alluding to one version of a Synoptic saying, 2d-century Christian writers often mesh and conflate the different forms of a saying found in more than one Synoptic.7 The same penchant for conflating the Synoptics is found in Thomas. Here it is vital to remember that the Synoptic Gospels are not only the product of multiple oral traditions but also the producers of further oral traditions in a stream of secondary orality. Sayings of Jesus heard when the Gospels were read at Christian meetings (liturgical or catechetical) and then preached upon in homilies were remembered and recycled, with varying degrees of freedom and theological reformulation, by authors throughout the 2d and 3d centuries. Besides relying on their memory, Christian writers—notably, Justin Martyr—may well have employed harmonies and catechetical summaries of Gospel material in lieu of the laborious task of looking up a saying in a Gospel scroll or codex. (3) The claim that the sayings tradition in Thomas is independent of the Synoptics is often supported by pointing to the curious order or lack thereof in CGT, as compared to the ordered discourses found in the Synoptic Gospels. This claim overlooks the fact that Thomas contains sayings and blocks of sayings ordered according to catchwords and associations of allied themes. One need not appeal to a hypothetical Syriac original text to see such links between sayings in CGT.8 In at least once instance, we have an indication that the composer of the Coptic version of Thomas purposely reordered the sayings (as preserved in the Greek Oxyrhynchus papyri) in order to create a verbal connection between logia.9 One also finds in CGT purposely formed clusters of particular literary forms (e.g., parables in logia 63, 64, and 65), put together to underscore a favorite

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theological message (e.g., ties to the material world and especially to wealth lead to death).10 There is a larger problem in the argument basing Thomas’ supposed independence of the Synoptics on the confusing order or lack of order of the sayings in CGT. Discerning an author’s rationale for ordering sayings material is often a difficult endeavor, as can be seen from Luke’s ordering of the Q and L sayings in his Great Journey narrative (Luke 9–19). Faced with Luke’s meandering sequence of sayings, commentators on the Third Gospel sometimes resort to contorted explanations (e.g., Luke is creating a grand chiasm or following the order of Deuteronomy) and sometimes throw up their hands in despair. Put bluntly: at times there is either no discernible connection in Luke’s stream-of-consciousness presentation or at best only a tenuous thematic link. Moving outside the Synoptics, we can find similar cases of puzzling order or disorder of presentation in NT books like the First Epistle of John and the Epistle of James. Commentators strain to discover the hermetic or cabalistic key to the order of each book, but I remain unconvinced of any of the grand schemas offered. In both ancient and modern compositions, some authors are good thinkers and bad writers—or at least bad orderers of their material. Moreover, we cannot be sure that the author of Thomas culled and reordered his sayings directly from texts of the Synoptics. If he instead drew upon Gospel harmonies and catechetical digests, he was not reordering the Synoptics themselves. He was reordering material that had already been reordered and possibly scrambled. (4) When wrestling with the order of sayings as well as other puzzles in Thomas, one should remember the esoteric program that Thomas announces at the very beginning of the work. Thomas purports to record the “hidden sayings of the living Jesus” (Prologue). The first saying in the Gospel proceeds to promise that the seeker who finds the (true) interpretation of these sayings will never taste death. Logion 2 then exhorts the seeker to keep on seeking, for finding the true meaning of Jesus’ sayings will make the seeker disturbed, astonished, and finally the king over the All. As logion 3 warns, in this search one must reject the teaching of “your leaders” (presumably the bishops and presbyters of “mainstream” Christianity in the 2d century). To find the meaning of Jesus’ hidden sayings, one must pursue not external guidance from church authorities but rather true knowledge of one’s inner self, detached from the material world and understood to be a son of the living Father. Given this vision of salvation (which sounds remarkably like American New Age spirituality), the last thing the author of Thomas desires is a neat collection of transparently clear sayings that would be immediately intelligible to any and every outsider who happens upon his Gospel. Both



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the reordering and the rewording of the Synoptic material serve the author’s intention to address a spiritual elite who alone, by trial and error, learn to make their way through the verbal and intellectual maze of Thomas and so reach eternal life. Given this program, pellucid explanations or illustrations that would render the sense of parables clear would naturally be omitted by the author of Thomas if he found them in his source. (5) Weighing all these considerations, one should not be surprised that Thomas regularly presents us with shorter, streamlined forms of parables paralleled in the Synoptics. A further consideration reinforces our insight that Thomas’ shorter version of Jesus’ parables is hardly proof that Thomas possesses early and independent traditions. After all, Matthew regularly abbreviates the miracle stories of Mark that he takes over from that Gospel; Luke at times likewise radically condenses Marcan material. As we shall see in our probes of individual parables, a notable example of Luke’s abbreviation of Mark is found in the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, where Thomas simply carries forward Luke’s program of severely pruning Mark. A still more striking case can be found in Matthew’s abbreviation of the Marcan form of Jesus’ prohibition of divorce in Matt 19:9 || Mark 10:11– 12. As we saw in Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, the historical Jesus’ prohibition of divorce covered only the case of a Jewish husband divorcing his wife and marrying another, since among ordinary Jews in the Palestine of Jesus’ day only the husband had the power to divorce. Mark (like Paul in 1 Corinthians 7) adapts this prohibition to a Roman legal context by extending the prohibition to the wife as well. Reflecting the background of a Jewish-Christian church, Matthew proceeds to abbreviate Mark’s double prohibition, restricting the prohibition to the husband—and by sheer coincidence echoing the original form uttered by Jesus. Notice what has happened here. Matthew abbreviates the Marcan formulation of the prohibition not because Matthew has a videotaped replay of what Jesus said ca. a.d. 30. Rather, Matthew shortens the saying he takes over from Mark because of Matthew’s own theological Sitz im Leben and program. In the historical process, Matthew’s version is actually twice removed from the original teaching of Jesus. His coinciding with Jesus’ original teaching (apart from the exception Matthew inserts into the prohibition) is pure coincidence, not proof of direct access to an earlier tradition independent of Mark. Thus, we have in Matt 19:9 (rewriting Mark 10:11–12) a prime example of how a shorter form of a saying of Jesus is not necessarily evidence for an early and independent source. At the same time, both Matthew and Luke on the one hand and Thomas on the other are quite capable of adding material to a source when it suits

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their redactional purposes. A prime example is Matthew’s addition of Peter walking on the water to the story of Jesus walking on the water in Matt 14:22–33, as contrasted with Mark 6:45–52. Likewise, even as Matthew omits parts of Mark’s material in the parable of the Evil Tenants, he adds some phrases of his own. Similarly, Luke abbreviates certain sections of Mark’s narrative of the crucifixion and death even as he adds sayings of Jesus that fit the theology of the Third Evangelist. In sum, shorter or longer forms of a saying, viewed in isolation, are no sure indicators of the age or independence of a tradition. (6) Whether we classify the redactional theology of CGT as gnostic, gnosticizing, encratite, or middle-Platonic, Thomas shows no interest in major concerns that permeate the four canonical Gospels. These concerns include the Jewish Scriptures, the history of Israel enshrined therein, and the idea of a multistage history of salvation reaching from prophecy to fulfillment in the climactic events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This fulfillment of Scripture in Christ, which constitutes the center of salvation-history, also extends into the life of the church, whose mission in this world lasts until the parousia. In stark contrast, Thomas’ negative view (not to say negation) of this material world of time and space leaves no room for the physical body, human history, the chosen people of Israel, and an organized church as the loci and instruments of salvation. The parables, as well as other sayings of Jesus, are methodically purged of such elements. (7) A final consideration that tells against Thomas as an early and independent source of Jesus’ sayings is the broad spread of Synoptic sources reflected in Thomas’ parallel material.11 The champions of Thomas’ independence often compare CGT in general and its parables in particular with the hypothetical Q document. The Q document, reconstructed from the material found in both Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark, is a favorite analogue for proponents of Thomas’ independence, since Q (like Thomas, it is claimed) is a very early source that preexists all three Synoptics and may, according to some Q experts, go back to ca. a.d. 50. Thomas, it is urged, is a similar sort of document. But this narrow focus on Q hardly does justice to the full range of material represented in CGT. CGT (and even to a great degree the Greek papyri fragments) contains not only Q sayings but also special Matthean (M) and special Lucan (L) material, as well as a Mark– Q overlap and possibly even traces of Mark’s Gospel. Such a gathering of every known Synoptic source, crowded into roughly half of the 114 sayings of CGT, raises serious questions about Thomas’ supposed early and independent status.



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This is true not only of the Synoptic-like sayings in general but also of the Synoptic-like parables in particular. Marcan material, a Mark–Q overlap, special M material, and special L material all find parallels in Thomas’ parables. If, as seems likely, the parables of the Great Supper and the Talents/ Pounds are examples not of Q parables but rather of parables preserved in both M and L,12 the number of narrative parables in Thomas that are also found exclusively in Q comes down to two: the Leaven and the Lost Sheep (the Mustard Seed is a Mark–Q overlap).13 Marcan material paralleled in Thomas’ parables is likewise represented by two parables, the Sower and the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (plus, of course, the Mustard Seed). Remarkably, it is the special M parables that have the greatest number of parallels in CGT: the Wheat and the Weeds, the Treasure Hidden in the Field, and the Pearl (some would add the Fish Net, alias the Wise Fisherman in CGT, as a fourth parallel). Luke is the lonely outlier, with only one special L parable paralleled in Thomas, the Rich Fool. The fact that the wide spread of Synoptic parallels found in Thomasine sayings in general is paralleled by the wide spread of Synoptic parables in particular should give pause to anyone maintaining Thomas’ early and independent status. But that is not all. When one adds to this broad spectrum of Synoptic sources some likely signs of Matthean and/or Lucan redactional traits (to be treated in the test cases that follow), the claim that Thomas is an early collection of Jesus’ sayings independent of Synoptic influence (direct or indirect) is exposed to serious doubt. As I have already emphasized, the nature of the dependence might well vary from saying to saying; besides direct literary dependence, the influence of the Synoptics on Thomas could have been exercised by way of a Gospel harmony, a collection of sayings extracted from the Synoptics, secondary orality, or perhaps a mix of these factors. One need not know the exact nature and mode of the dependence in order to discern the basic fact of dependence. While the considerations listed here were sufficient for the brief treatment of Thomas in Volume One of A Marginal Jew, a more detailed approach to the question of Thomas’ dependence or independence is called for as we now focus in detail on the question of Jesus’ parables. As I noted in Thesis Six in Chapter 37, the practical problem we face in this more detailed treatment is that neither space nor the scope of A Marginal Jew allows for a study of all 114 Coptic sayings (or even the roughly half that have clear Synoptic parallels), in the manner of experts like Wolfgang Schrage, Michael Fieger, Reinhard Nordsieck, April D. DeConick, or Uwe-Karsten Plisch.14 Instead, as I outlined in Thesis Six, I will examine sayings selected from every

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Synoptic source: (i) the Marcan tradition; (ii) Q; (iii) the special Matthean tradition (M); (iv) the special Lucan tradition (L); and (v) the peculiar category of sayings found independently in both Mark and Q (referred to as “Mark–Q overlaps”). At the same time, to ensure coverage of various forms of tradition, I will begin the test cases with (A) examples of literary genres that lie outside the category of parable and then proceed to (B) examples from Thomas’ parables that have parallels in the Synoptics. For the sake of brevity, when reviewing texts that were examined in earlier volumes of A Marginal Jew, I will simply summarize the arguments already offered. Cases that I have not previously treated will be dealt with at greater length.15

III. THOMAS’ RELATION TO THE SYNOPTICS: TEST CASES A. Parallels in Sayings That Are Not Parables 1. Methodologically, it is best to start with some of the sayings that are preserved in the Greek papyri fragments of Thomas, fragments that sometimes do and sometimes do not agree completely with the later Coptic translation.16 To begin with a fairly strong case: a good argument for dependence can be made for a saying contained within CGT 5, since the saying is also partially preserved in Greek in a 3d-century Oxyrhynchus papyrus (P.Oxy. 654.27–31) that contains some sayings from an earlier form of The Gospel of Thomas.17 The corresponding saying in Mark 4:22a reads somewhat awkwardly: ou gar estin ti krypton ean me¯ hina phanero¯the˛ˉ (in a woodenly literal translation: “for there is not anything hidden unless in order that it may be revealed”). Luke 8:17 tidies this up by changing the unwieldy ean me¯ hina (“unless in order that”) into a neat relative clause, while also substituting phaneron gene¯setai (“shall become revealed”) for Mark’s phanero¯the˛ˉ , a verb Luke never uses in Luke–Acts, while he uses the adjective phaneros in both volumes. The resulting Lucan rewrite reads: ou gar estin krypton ho ou phaneron gene¯setai (literally, “for there is not [anything] hidden which shall not become revealed”).18 While P.Oxy. 654 is fragmentary, almost all critics, from Joseph A. Fitzmyer to Marvin Meyer, Uwe-Karsten Plisch, and April D. DeConick, accept the restoration [ou gar est]in krypton ho ou phane[ron gene¯setai]—in other words, the formulation resulting from Luke’s redaction of Mark.19 Hence, in this case, one cannot appeal to the exegetical escape hatch of some Christian Coptic scribe supposedly assimilating the Coptic text of Thomas to the standard Sahidic text of Luke that he knew, since the Greek fragments are notably earlier than and independent of the manuscript of CGT in our possession (to say nothing of the later standard Sahidic ver-



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sion of the Gospels). Moreover, in this case it is precisely the Coptic text of Thomas that veers slightly away from Luke’s reformulation of Mark because the grammar of Coptic forbids the use of a relative clause with an indefinite antecedent.20 Appealing to an otherwise unknown early alternate oral form of Mark 4:22 that supposedly Luke and Thomas both knew is to create an embarrassing deus ex machina, one that ignores Luke’s typical redactional changes in Mark.21 Luke’s redactional change of Mark’s wording (from phanero¯the˛ˉ to phaneron gene¯setai) also refutes any explanation that appeals to the alternate Q version of the saying (Matt 10:26 || Luke 12:2).22 To be sure, if this were the only time that the Greek fragments of Thomas showed knowledge of Luke’s Gospel, we might dismiss logion 5 as a fluke. But logion 5 is not an isolated specimen; a number of scholars have pointed out Lucan influence elsewhere in the Greek fragments. For example, as Jörg Frey has argued in a lengthy and detailed analysis, the influence of Luke 12:22–31 can been seen in the abbreviated version of the “do not be anxious” exhortation that is preserved in P.Oxy. 655, cols. i. 1–17.23 Simon Gathercole has pressed the case for Lucan influence even further by offering ten examples of Luke’s influence on Thomas, some found in the Greek fragments and others visible even in the Coptic version of Thomas. Needless to say, special significance attaches to those examples that are supported by the Greek fragments since, within the relatively brief compass of these fragments, the influence of Luke’s Gospel (the latest Synoptic Gospel to be written) on the formulation of the sayings in Thomas is not only clearly present but also multiply attested. We need not be surprised, then, that when we turn to the Coptic text of Thomas not paralleled in the Oxyrhynchus papyri, we find Luke’s influence to be frequent and sometimes dominant.24 2. A second example of Lucan influence on the Greek fragments of Thomas can be found in the first half of a saying in P.Oxy. 1.30–35, which appears in CGT as logion 31. We are fortunate that this famous saying (“a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown”) is preserved, in variant forms, in Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Thomas. Let us look first at the four canonical Gospels:25 Matt 13:57 Mark 6:4 Luke 4:24 John 4:44 There is not There is not No prophet A prophet a prophet a prophet is acceptable in his homeland without honor without honor does not have honor except except in [his] hometown in his hometown in his hometown

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Certain points strike one immediately. Matthew repeats Mark almost word for word and in the exact same order. The only difference is that the original Greek text of Matthew most likely did not have the possessive “his” with “hometown,” though obviously “his” is understood from the very meaning of patris (“hometown,” “home country,” “homeland,” “place of origin of one’s family”). Probably to harmonize Matthew and Mark perfectly, some later Christian scribes supplied “his” (autou) to Matthew’s text. The word that stands out as unusual in Mark 6:4 is the adjective atimos (literally, “honorless”); it never occurs again in the four Gospels except for Matthew’s repetition of it in Matt 13:57. Indeed, the only other occurrences of atimos in the whole of the NT are two appearances in 1 Corinthians (4:10; 12:23).26 In short, Matthew’s word-for-word repetition of Mark, including the rare (for the NT) atimos, argues strongly for Matthew’s dependence on Mark. Luke is not as faithful to Mark in this saying as Matthew is. For example, in order to avoid the double negative construction (“there is not . . . except”), Luke substitutes a simple declaration in which the negative adjective “no” (oudeis) directly modifies the noun “prophet”: “No prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” More significantly, Luke does not take over Mark’s adjective atimos, an adjective he never uses in Luke–Acts. Luke employs instead a different adjective, “acceptable” (dektos). Like atimos, the adjective dektos is relatively rare in the NT, occurring only five times: three times in Luke– Acts (Luke 4:19 + 24; Acts 10:35) and twice in Paul (2 Cor 6:2; Phil 4:18). In other words, dektos never occurs anywhere else in the four Gospels. Since Luke 4:16–30 is most likely Luke’s redactional rewriting and expansion of Mark’s brief story about Jesus’ rejection in his hometown, both occurrences of dektos in Luke 4 can, in that sense, be considered redactional.27 Luke 4:19 is a reworked citation from LXX Isa 61:2, a text that Luke alone places in the mouth of Jesus. And, as we have just seen, among the variants of the Gospel saying depicting Jesus as the rejected prophet, dektos appears only in Luke’s version of the saying. As for the lone occurrence of dektos in Acts, Acts 10:35 is part of Peter’s kerygmatic sermon to the centurion Cornelius (10:34–43). Whatever the sermon’s ultimate source(s), obviously in its present Greek form it is a Lucan composition.28 In contrast to these clear indications of Luke’s redactional hand in Luke 4:24, the final words of the Lucan saying, “in his hometown” (en te˛ˉ patridi autou), copy Mark’s wording exactly. Turning to John’s version: as we have observed throughout the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew, the Fourth Gospel is most likely independent of the Synoptics in respect to literary sources. The similarities between the



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Synoptics and John reflect the fact that both Synoptic and Johannine sources flow from the common pool of oral tradition in the early church. This similarity without literary dependence is reflected in John 4:44. Like Luke, John has the subject “prophet” come before the verb, and like Luke John writes a simple declarative sentence with a single negative word (oudeis in Luke, ouk in John). Like Mark and Matthew, John’s negative (“not”) modifies the verb, not the subject. However, unlike all the Synoptics, John’s sentence does not have the copulative “is” (estin) as its verb. Rather, John uses the transitive verb “has” (echei) and alone uses the noun time¯n (“honor”) as the direct object. Also unique among the four Gospels, John places the prepositional phrase “in his home country” not at the end of the sentence but immediately after the first word in the saying, “prophet.” Hence only John’s sentence has the grammatical structure of subject noun + prepositional phrase + direct object + negated verb. John also varies in a fine point of meaning. All four Gospels use the same noun patris to signify Jesus’ place of origin. But, unlike the Synoptics, John’s use of patris probably has the wider meaning of “home country” or “homeland,” rather than “hometown.” While the Synoptics are depicting Jesus’ return to his hometown of Nazareth, John places the saying in a context where Jesus has just returned to Galilee from Jerusalem and Judea, having passed through Samaria.29 The upshot of these comparisons among the four canonical Gospels is that Luke’s version of the saying is most likely a case of his copying Mark’s text, with the notable exception that Luke substitutes dektos (“acceptable”) for Mark’s atimos (“without honor”).30 The impact of this conclusion becomes clear when we turn to Thomas’ version of the saying in the first half of P.Oxy. 1.30–35: “A prophet is not acceptable [dektos] in his hometown.” In wording and word order, the Greek of Thomas’ saying basically follows that of Mark. Both begin with “there is not” (ouk estin), with the noun “prophet” following and the phrase “in his hometown” concluding the saying. The major difference is that (1) Thomas shares with Luke the form of a simple declarative sentence with a single negative particle; and, more important, (2) Thomas and Luke alone, among all the versions, use the adjective “acceptable” (dektos)—which, as we have seen, is most probably due to Luke’s redactional hand. Thus, in a simple sentence forming half of logion 31, we have both Thomas’ tendency to mesh Synoptic versions of a saying and his tendency to imitate some striking elements of Luke’s redaction of his sources.31 As a matter of fact, the influence of Luke’s version, as well as Thomas’ tendency to mesh the Synoptics, may be seen as well in the second half of logion 31 in the Greek fragment: “. . . a physician [iatros] does not do h ­ ealings

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[poiei therapeias] for those who know him.” Just prior to Luke 4:24, in v 23, Jesus ironically says to the contentious audience in the Nazareth synagogue: “You will surely quote me this proverb, ‘Physician [iatre], heal [therapeuson] yourself.” That the Greek version of Thomas places the saying about a physician not being able to heal right after the saying about the rejected prophet (instead of right before, as in Luke) may reflect Thomas’ tendency to mesh. For it is Mark (followed by Matthew) that states right after the saying on the dishonored prophet (Mark 6:4) that Jesus could not perform any miracle there except for the fact that he healed (etherapeusen) a few sick people (Mark 6:5).32 3. That the Greek version of Thomas “leans” at times in the direction of Luke does not mean that it does not know and at times use specifically Matthean material. While we will see later on a major example of special Matthean material (the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds) in the Coptic version of Thomas, we will examine here a clear case of M material in the Greek fragments of Thomas. The Greek text of Thomas is found in P.Oxy. 655 (col. ii. 11–23), which parallels the second half of Matt 10:16, as well as the last sentence in CGT 39: Matt 10:16b P.Oxy. 655 CGT 39 Become clever Become clever Become clever as the snakes as snakes as the snakes and innocent and innocent and innocent as the doves as doves as the doves

In all three documents, we are obviously dealing with the same saying, which each text attributes to Jesus. P.Oxy. 655 matches the Greek text of Matt 10:16b almost word for word. The same is true of CGT 39, which in its Coptic text even preserves the Greek words for the adjectives “clever” (phronimos) and “innocent” (akeraios), the same Greek words that occur in Matt 10:16b and P.Oxy. 655.33 The question of the source of the saying is intriguing. Matt 10:16b is part of the second of Matthew’s five great discourses of Jesus during the public ministry, namely, the missionary discourse (10:5–42). Matthew creates his five large discourses by meshing traditions from Mark, Q, and M, along with his own redactional creations. Such is the case in the missionary discourse, where Matthew even transfers some sayings from the Marcan eschatological discourse (Mark 13:9–13) into his mix in chap. 10. The first part of the missionary discourse is for the most part a conflation of the Marcan and Q traditions of a missionary discourse (an example of a



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Mark–Q overlap).34 Indeed, Matt 10:16a (“Behold, I am sending you like sheep into the midst of wolves”) is a Q saying also found, with slightly different wording, in Luke 10:3 (from Luke’s second missionary discourse): “Go. Behold, I am sending you like lambs into the midst of wolves.” The following verses in Matthew (10:17–18) are Matthew’s reworking of Mark 13:9. Thus, sandwiched between a Q saying in Matt 10:16a and Marcan sayings in Matt 10:17–18 is a uniquely Matthean saying in 10:16b, which leads smoothly into vv 17–18. Matt 10:16b therefore qualifies as M material. Within the discourse, it functions as a pivot between the material specific to the mission of the Twelve and more general, future-oriented instruction on discipleship in the face of persecution.35 But is this “M material” M tradition (a tradition circulating in Matthew’s church that Matthew has taken into his Gospel) or a redactional creation of Matthew himself? Granted Matthew’s tendency to rewrite Mark and Q traditions in his own style, it is often difficult to distinguish M tradition from Matthean redaction.36 The brevity of 10:16b makes any judgment in the matter even more problematic. However, one may at least note that the adjective phronimos (“clever,” “shrewd,” “prudent”) occurs more times in Matthew than in any other single book of the NT. Matthew has seven out of the fourteen occurrences in the NT, and all but one of Matthew’s seven instances are either M tradition or Matthean redaction.37 As for the noun ophis (“snake”), Matthew has just a slight edge within the four Gospels (Matthew 3x, Mark 1x, Luke 2x, John 1x). The adjective akeraios (“innocent,” “simple”) occurs only in Matt 10:16b within the four Gospels, with only two other occurrences in the whole of the NT (Rom 16:19; Phil 2:15). While none of this proves that the saying is a Matthean redactional creation rather than M tradition, the vocabulary of 10:16b, taken as a whole, is certainly compatible with that possibility. What makes it more probable than not that 10:16b is a Matthean creation is that, while the metaphors of snakes and doves (with a wide range of meanings) as well as the basic idea expressed in the saying are well attested in the Greco-Roman world as well as in Jewish writings, the exact wording of the proverb-like saying in Matt 10:16b occurs in no document that can be safely dated before Matthew’s Gospel.38 Hence to claim that 10:16b simply represents a widespread proverb or common Jewish ma¯ša¯l that just happens to appear in both Matthew and Thomas is not supported by the evidence.39 Granted the viable alternatives, it seems more probable that either Matt 10:16b as a whole or at least its precise Greek wording stems from Matthew’s redactional hand.40 If that is the case, then logion 39 as represented in P.Oxy. 655 (and, naturally, in CGT) shows dependence on Matthew’s Gospel.

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One might pause here to reflect on a wider phenomenon that is beginning to appear. Just in the very limited fund of Greek fragments of Thomas, we have already found solid indications of the use of both Luke and Matthew. The following investigation of the Coptic text of Thomas will both supply further examples of dependence on Luke and Matthew and offer examples of dependence on Q and even possibly Mark. Such a spread of sources behind Thomas makes any claim that Thomas represents an early independent source of Jesus’ sayings difficult to believe. Indeed, even apart from the question of dependence, the mere fact that Thomas contains sayings that find parallels not simply in Q but also in the special tradition of Matthew and the special tradition of Luke makes the claim of an early date for the composition of Thomas highly dubious. How is it that at an early date in the first Christian generation (a claim often made for Thomas), a single document encompassed parallels to Q, special M, and special L? But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. It is time to turn from the very fragmentary Greek version of Thomas to its full (though later) Coptic form. 4. As we turn to the Coptic text of Thomas, let us begin with a fairly simple example already analyzed in Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, namely, Mark 7:15 || Matt 15:11.41 Within a wider discussion of Jewish purity rules, the Marcan Jesus states in 7:15: “There is nothing outside a man that, by entering into him, can defile him; but those things that come out of a man are the things that defile him.” In Volume Four, we saw how Matthew redacts Mark 7:15 in keeping with a theological viewpoint and literary style that is characteristically Matthean. Matt 15:11 reads: “Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man, but that which comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” Note the typically Matthean traits: (1) Matthew softens Mark’s absolute tone (“there is nothing outside of a man which, going into him, can defile him”) by dropping the forceful ouden . . . dynatai (“nothing . . . can”). A blatant revocation of the whole Mosaic system of legal purity in matters of food is thus avoided or at least softened. (2) At the same time, this omission by Matthew helps create the sort of perfect balance of the two lines that Matthew favors. (3) Matthew also creates balance by changing the indefinite plural ta . . . ekporeuomena (“those things that come out”) in Mark 7:15 to the singular to ekporeuomenon (“that which comes out”) in Matt 15:11b. (4) Other Matthean touches include the introduction of the typically Matthean word “mouth” (stoma) into both halves of the saying. (5) Finally, Matthew uses a resumptive touto (“this”) in his final clause (“this defiles a man”). It is telling that all five Matthean redactional changes are replicated in CGT 14. (1) CGT 14 contains a plain indicative statement without Mark’s



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emphatic cannot. (2) The neat parallelism of the two lines created by Matthew is present. (3) There are singular subjects in both lines (petnabo¯k . . . petenne¯y). (4) The noun “mouth” (tapro) occurs in both lines. (5) A resumptive 3d person singular pronoun (entof) is used just as in Matthew’s version.42 The identity with Matthew’s redactional activity is simply too strong to be wished away by appeals to alternate oral traditions, multiple oral performances, or scribal assimilation to the later standard Sahidic NT.43 As G. K. Chesterton once remarked, the phenomenon of one elephant having a trunk looks odd; the phenomenon of all elephants having trunks looks like a plot.44 5. Let us now move on to more complicated examples, those involving conflation. In a good number of Thomas’ parallels to the Synoptics, we find CGT following not just one Synoptic Gospel—be that Luke or Matthew redacting Mark—but rather meshing two or more of the Synoptics. A short but clear example of Thomas’ tendency to conflate the Synoptics is the first beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount/Sermon on the Plain (Matt 5:3 || Luke 6:20b, hence a Q logion, found also in CGT 54). As is well known, while Matthew’s beatitude is formulated in the 3d person (“fortunate are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”), Luke has a simpler form of the beatitude, formulated (at least in its second half) in the 2d person plural of direct address (“fortunate are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”).45 Many critics think that Luke’s 2d person formulation is closer to the original Q form; but as I argued in Volume Two of A Marginal Jew, that is far from certain.46 In any event, almost all agree that Matthew redacts Q by adding “in spirit” and by changing “kingdom of God” (the phrase witnessed throughout the NT and the early Fathers) to the formulation unique to Matthew in the NT, “kingdom of heaven” (literally: “of the heavens,” reflecting the Aramaic noun for “the heavens,” šeˇmayya¯ʾ, which occurs only in the plural).47 Not surprisingly, CGT 54 offers a conflated form: “Fortunate are the poor for yours is the kingdom of the heavens.”48 The 2d person plural of address and the absence of “in spirit” follows Luke, while “kingdom of the heavens” follows Matthew.49 Thus, in just eight Coptic words, we have an example of Thomas’ knowledge of both Matthew and Luke as well as his tendency to conflate them.50 As already noted, this tendency to conflate various Synoptic forms of Jesus’ sayings is found in 2d-century Christian literature as diverse as the Didache, Polycarp of Smyrna’s Letter to the Philippians (including the first beatitude in 2:3!), and the sayings of Jesus in Justin Martyr.51 Thomas’ tendency to conflate, then, far from being something unusual, places CGT firmly within the harmonizing stream of mid-2d century Christian writings.

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6. One can find this same tendency to mesh Matthew and Luke in longer Q passages as well. Note, for instance, the agreements and differences in Matthew and Luke’s versions of Jesus’ saying on the divisions he provokes in a family (precise agreements are printed in bold): Matt 10:34–36 Luke 12:51–53 Do not think [nomise¯te] that Do you imagine [dokeite] that I have come [e¯lthon] I have appeared [paregenome¯n] to cast peace upon the earth. to give peace on the earth? I have not come to cast peace but No, I say, but rather division.   a sword For from now on there shall be five in one house divided; three against two and two against three shall they be divided: For I have come to divide man against his father against son and son against  father,   father, mother against the daughter and daughter against her mother and daughter against the mother mother-in-law against her daughter  in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother- and daughter-in-law against the   in-law,  mother-in-law. And [the] enemies of the man [are] the   members of his household.

When we come to the version in CGT 16, we notice elements proper to both Matthew and Luke in Jesus’ saying.52 In my translation of CGT 16, I put in italics wording that is unique to Matthew, while I underline wording that is unique to Luke: “Jesus said: ‘Perhaps men think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. And they do not understand that I have come to cast divisions upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there shall be five in a house: three shall be against two and two against three; the father against the son and the son against the father; and they shall stand as solitary people [literally: they shall stand being solitary].’” While scholars argue about the hypothetical reconstruction of an earlier Q form, the usual suggestions offered do not contain either all the words in italics or all the words underlined in my translation of CGT 16.53 In other words, some of the wording of Matthew’s redaction of the Q saying and



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some of the wording of Luke’s redaction of the same saying wind up in Thomas’ version.54 Most notably, the text of Mic 7:6 (“For son dishonors father, daughter rises up against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; the enemies of a man [are] the men of his house”) is represented almost exactly in Matt 10:36.55 In contrast, Luke 12:53 expands the clauses that describe opposition so that both sides in each clause are equally the attackers and the attacked; at the same time, Luke omits the last clause of Mic 7:6 (“and the enemies . . .”). This expansion-plus-omission is widely judged to be Luke’s redactional alteration, and it is represented practically word-for-word in CGT 16. Nevertheless, individual words that are unique to Matthew’s version (“cast,” “upon,” “sword”) appear in Thomas’ version as well, while the Lucan word “division” (diamerismos) is also represented.56 Unless we appeal to some other source besides Q or to multiple oral performances and social memory (appeals that are always convenient to make because they are untestable and unverifiable),57 the simplest explanation of CGT 16 is Thomas’ tendency to mesh Matthew and Luke into one saying. This conflating of Matthew and Luke—sometimes with traces of Mark, and sometimes without a rationale that is clear to us—appears too often in the Synoptic parallels in Thomas to be purely accidental. It is undoubtably one of the redactional tendencies of the author/compiler of Thomas. This is not to deny entirely the influence of multiple oral performances or social memory. It is to underline a consistent redactional tendency that argues for conscious scribal activity—scribal activity that has not simply assimilated CGT 16 to the Sahidic form of either Matthew or Luke.58 7. Another Q passage that is represented in a conflated text in Thomas (logion 55) is found in Matt 10:37–38 || Luke 14:26–27, which in Matthew’s Gospel follows immediately upon the previous example. In the Synoptic Gospels, there are many different sayings that deal with the cost of following Jesus (or of becoming his disciple), the need to leave or to “hate” one’s family, and the necessity of carrying one’s cross (e.g., Mark 8:34–35; 10:29–30; Matt 16:24–25; Luke 9:23–24; 18:29–30). The Q passage reflected in Matt 10:37–38 || Luke 14:26–27 stands out in that it brings together in short compass (i) a saying on rejecting the claims of one’s family for the sake of Jesus and (ii) a saying on carrying one’s cross. The wording of Matthew and Luke diverges notably at certain points, most likely due to the redaction of Matthew and perhaps the expansion of Luke. Matt 10:37–38 Luke 14:26–27 If anyone comes to me and The one who loves father or mother does not hate his father and mother

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Matt 10:37–38 Luke 14:26–27 more than me is not worthy of me, and wife and children and the one who loves son or daughter and brothers and sisters more than me and even his own life, is not worthy of me. he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not take his cross Whoever does not carry his cross and follow after me, and come after me is not worthy of me. cannot be my disciple.

The parallel saying in CGT 55 reads: “The one who will not hate his father and his mother will not be able to be a disciple to me, and [the one who will not] hate his brothers and his sisters and will not bear his cross like me shall not become worthy of me.”59 Many commentators see the use of “worthy” (axios) in Matthew’s version of this passage as the product of Matthew’s redaction.60 Only in Matthew’s version does the threefold use of “worthy” connect these two sayings on family and the cross. Occurring as they do toward the end of the missionary discourse in chap. 10, these “worthy” sayings also connect the end of the discourse with sayings that also use “worthy” (10:10,11,13 [bis]) and that occur toward the beginning of the discourse—thus creating something of an inclusio. Moreover, Matt 10:37–38 is the only passage in the whole of the NT that uses the phrase “is worthy of me.”61 As a matter of fact, Matt 10:37–38 is the only passage in all four Gospels where axios is used with the genitive of the person—the only other case in the NT being Heb 11:38. In contrast, Luke’s equivalent refrain of being a disciple of Jesus is common and widespread in the four Gospels and may well represent the wording of Q. In any event, the underlying Q saying used either the leitmotif of “not worthy of me” (Matthew) or the leitmotif of “cannot be my disciple” (Luke) to tie together the two sayings represented in Matt 10:37–38 || Luke 14:26–27—certainly not both, since that would not have served as a verbal link. At the same time, the more radical (and probably primitive) vocabulary of “hating” (as opposed to Matthew’s softened “love more than”) is found in Luke 14:26.62 Likewise present in Luke’s version alone is the mention of “brothers and sisters.” When we turn to CGT 55, we see that it contains both the phrase “cannot become my disciple” (as in Luke) and the phrase “will not be worthy of me” (as in Matthew)—thus, a clear case of conflation. The presence of the Greek adjective axios (“worthy”) in CGT 55 cannot be explained by assimilation to the Sahidic text of Matthew, since the latter does not use the Greek adjective axios but rather the Coptic verb for “to be worthy” (empša). The use of axios in CGT 55 therefore betrays dependence on the Greek text



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of Matthew. At the same time, the presence of the vocabulary of “hating” and “brothers and sisters” shows Thomas leaning notably in the direction of Luke, another common phenomenon in these conflations. 8. The same basic phenomenon of meshing can be found in those sayings that come not from Q but from the “triple tradition,” where (presupposing the two-source theory of Synoptic relations), Mark is the literary source of sayings that are then redacted in various ways by Matthew and Luke. A telling example is offered by the double metaphor of putting a patch on an old garment and pouring new wine into old wineskins. The basic form of the two metaphorical sayings—very much in the wisdom tradition, but used by Jesus to make a point about the radically new, eschatological situation created by his ministry—is found in Mark 2:21–22: v 21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise, the added piece [literally, “the fullness”] pulls away   from it, [i.e.,] the new from the old, and a worse tear results [literally,  “becomes”]. v 22 And no one pours [literally, “throws”] new wine into old  wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost [as   well as] the skins. But new wine [must be poured] into new wineskins.63 Not surprisingly, the not entirely clear and elegant text of Mark called forth various emendations by Matthew and Luke: Matt 9:16–17 Luke 5:36–39 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth No one, tearing a piece from a new on an old garment; cloak, puts it on an old garment; for its added piece pulls away otherwise, he will tear the new   from the garment,   [garment], and a worse tear results. and the patch from the new [garment] will not match the old. Nor do they pour new wine into old And no one pours new wine into old  wineskins;  wineskins; otherwise, the wineskins burst otherwise, the new wine will burst the and the wine is poured out skins and it will be poured out and the wine skins are lost. And the wineskins will be lost.

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Matt 9:16–17 Luke 5:36–39 But they pour new wine into new But new wine must be poured into  wineskins,  new wineskins. And both will be preserved. And no one, drinking old [wine], desires new [wine]; for he says, “The old [wine] is better.”

The second half of CGT 47 contains the same two metaphors, but in reverse order, that is, moving from the metaphor of wine to the metaphor of the patch. The wording is as follows: No one drinks old wine and immediately desires to drink new wine; and they do not pour [literally, “throw”] new wine into old wineskins, lest   they burst. And they do not pour old wine into a new wineskin lest it destroy it. They do not sew an old patch on a new garment, since there will be   a tear. Two points strike one immediately: (1) Luke’s statement about not desiring new wine after drinking the older, preferable wine is most likely his own redactional addition.64 It does not fit the rest of the metaphor about new wine and old wineskins, but it does fit the whole problematic about the relation of the old and the new in salvation history that Luke first sounds in his Gospel and then works out in the early history of the church in the Acts of the Apostles. Not surprisingly, the new material is simply tacked on to the end of the pericope, the common place for adding new and somewhat extraneous material to a traditional unit. Since everything else in these verses is material of the triple tradition (i.e., coming from Mark), any attempt to invent a special L tradition simply for this last sentence looks forced, if not desperate. What would be its theological meaning as an isolated logion in the L tradition? And by what strange coincidence do both Luke and Thomas locate the isolated logion in the same unit: the combined metaphors of wine and patch? Once one grants that the final sentence in Luke 5:36–39 is a Lucan creation, its presence in Thomas inevitably leads to the conclusion that Thomas knew at least the Lucan form of the pericope.65 As we have seen already and shall see again later, this is not the only time in the CGT that the author/compiler shows a preference for Luke within the triple tradition. (2) Once we conclude that Thomas is working with the Lucan form of the double metaphors, we see that his procedure of taking up the metaphors in



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reverse order is thoroughgoing and complete: first the saying about preferring the old wine, next the saying about not pouring new wine into old wineskins, and finally the saying about the patch. 9. A similar case from the triple tradition can be found in the story of Jesus’ family trying to see him. It will be helpful first to compare Mark and Matthew, who are fairly close. Then we can see the changes Luke makes, and finally we will compare the three Synoptics with CGT 99. Mark 3:31–35 Matt 12:46–50 And while he was speaking to the  crowds, And his mother and his brothers come, behold his mother and his brothers and standing outside, stood outside, they sent to him, calling him. seeking to speak to him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they say to him, But someone said to him, “Behold your mother and your “Behold, your mother and your  brothers66   brothers are seeking you outside.” are standing outside seeking to speak   to you.”67 And answering them he says, But answering he said to the one   speaking to him, “Who is my mother and [my] brothers?” “Who is my mother and who are my  brothers?” And looking around at those And extending his hand to his  disciples sitting in a circle around him, he says, he said, “Behold my mother and my brothers. “Behold my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, For whoever does the will of my  Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.” he is my brother and sister and mother.”

While judgment on some minor points is complicated by text-critical problems, the most likely view of the two texts is that Mark and Matthew agree on stating that Jesus’ mother and brothers are standing outside and that some person or persons report this fact to Jesus. Both also agree in having Jesus’ final pronouncement diverge from the narrative by speaking of his brother, sister, and mother (creating a sort of chiastic inclusio whereby the mother is the first significant person mentioned at the beginning of the story and the last person mentioned at the end of the story). Significant ­differences

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between Mark and Matthew include (1) Mark’s Jesus looking around at those sitting in a circle around him, while Matthew has Jesus extend his hand to his disciples; (2) Mark’s Jesus speaking of doing “the will of God” in the climactic statement, while Matthew’s Jesus typically speaks of doing “the will of my Father in heaven.” Luke 8:19–21 severely abbreviates the Marcan pronouncement story, while at the same time adding the explanation that the mother and brothers could not reach Jesus “because of the crowd” (v 19). After the announcement of this fact to Jesus (v 20), Luke omits Jesus’ gesture and rhetorical question and jumps immediately to Jesus’ climactic response (v 21): “My mother and my brothers, these are the ones who hear the word of God and do [it].” This identification of Jesus’ mother and brothers with the ones who hear the word of God stands in sharp contrast to the Marcan form of the story, where Jesus, upon being told that his family is seeking him, first asks rhetorically, “Who is my mother and my brother?,” and then looks at those sitting in a circle around him, affirming, “Whoever does the will of God, this is my brother and sister and mother.” The Marcan structure thus sets up an opposition between the physical and the spiritual family of Jesus. The theological purpose of Luke’s rewriting of the climactic pronouncement in Mark seems to be his desire to spare the mother of Jesus any apparent slight or rebuke, thus preserving the positive picture of her presented in the Infancy Narrative (e.g., her hearing and believing the message of Gabriel, as opposed to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist; cf. 2:19,51). In keeping with Luke’s laconic rendering of the core of Mark’s story, the final saying speaks only of “my mother and my brothers,” with no mention of sisters. The introductory verse that sets up the story and the concluding verse commenting on the “setup” are thereby perfectly aligned: mother and brothers, no sisters. As happens elsewhere in Thomas, we find CGT 99 pushing Luke’s abbreviating tendency even further: “The disciples said to him: ‘Your brothers and your mother are standing outside.’ He said to them: ‘Those here who do the will of my Father, these are my brothers and my mother. They are the ones who shall go into the kingdom of my Father.’” We shall see this same proclivity to imitate and even radicalize Luke’s abbreviating style when we come to the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard. In fact, another Thomasine tendency observable in CGT 99 likewise mirrors what we will see in the Evil Tenants: even as CGT 99 abbreviates the Synoptic anecdote of Jesus’ mother and brothers in the Lucan manner, it also conflates Matthew and Luke, with perhaps even a touch of Mark. (1) Mark has “the crowd” tell (the verb is plural) Jesus about the problem: “They say to him . . .” (3:32); Jesus’ disciples are not present anywhere in the story. With his typi-



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cal redactional focus on the disciples and their relation to Jesus, Matthew alone among the Synoptics introduces into this story the disciples (12:49), who function simply as a point of reference (“and extending his hand to his disciples . . .”). Thomas conflates Mark and Matthew by having a plural group tell Jesus about the situation; but now this group is not the crowd as in Mark, but rather Matthew’s disciples. (2) Thomas’ wording of the report is that “your brothers and your mother are standing outside.” The inclusion of the verb “to stand” in the report agrees with Matthew and Luke over against Mark, while the placing of the “brothers” before the “mother” reflects Thomas’ approach to male and female elsewhere in his Gospel. (3) In Thomas, Jesus’ reply, “Those here who do the will of my Father, these are my brothers and my mother,” echoes Matthew’s “he who does the will of my Father” (12:50). (4) However, Thomas agrees with Luke in mentioning only the mother and brothers (or vice versa) in the final pronouncement, while in both Mark and Matthew the pronouncement includes brother, sister, and mother. (5) Mark and Matthew also agree in using the singular form for all three persons listed in the final pronouncement; both evangelists begin with the singular form of the relative pronoun (“who[ever] does . . .”). Once again, Thomas’ form of the pronouncement agrees with Luke’s in speaking in the plural of “those who . . . do.” The pattern of conflating Matthew and Luke, seen in other units, is thus confirmed.68 As the reader no doubt has noticed, my argument up till now has been a cumulative one, pointing out recurring patterns across a wide spectrum of data. Looking back we can affirm that the telltale redactional tendency of Thomas to conflate the Synoptics can be detected in various logia of different genres apart from the parable tradition: for example, beatitudes, proverbs, “I have come” sayings, prophetic-eschatological warnings, sapiential metaphors used for eschatological teaching, and pronouncement stories. As we now turn to some examples from the parables, both short and long, we shall find not a sudden change in phenomena but rather a continuation of the same phenomena already discovered. Once again we will detect not only redactional traces of the Synoptics but also Thomas’ own redactional tendency to mesh various Synoptic versions in a number of CGT’s parables, sometimes with a notable preference for Luke. At times, though, the hand of Matthew will also be quite clear. B. Parallels Taken from the Parable Tradition 1. The parable of the Mustard Seed (Mark 4:30–32 || Matt 13:31–32 || Luke 13:18–19 || CGT 20) stands out as a notable example of Thomas’ tendency to mesh, since the parable most likely involves a Mark–Q “overlap.”69 In

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other words, Mark provides one written form of the earlier oral tradition of the parable, and Q offers an alternate, independent form. As often happens, Luke remains closer to the Q form, while Matthew (the inspiration of Thomas in this case?) meshes Mark and Q. (We find the same meshing phenomenon in the Matthean versions of the missionary discourse and the parable discourse.)70 To get a sense of the two early variant forms of the Mustard Seed, let us first examine the Marcan and Lucan (= Q) versions of the parable step by step. We will then compare the results with the versions in Matthew and then Thomas. Step 1: Introduction. Mark introduces the parable with a double rhetorical question posed by Jesus: “How shall we compare [homoio¯so¯men] the kingdom of God or what parable shall we propose for it?” Luke likewise begins with a double question, though he apparently rewrites Mark (perhaps with vocabulary from Q) to achieve parallel wording in the two halves of the question: “To what is the kingdom of God comparable [homoia], and to what shall I compare [homoio¯so¯] it?” Step 2: The Sowing of the Seed. Mark begins the answer to the rhetorical question with a simple “like a mustard seed . . . ,” while Luke uses a full sentence: “It is like a mustard seed. . . .” Mark continues by speaking simply of the seed being sown upon the earth, which seed is the “smallest of all the seeds upon the earth.” Luke instead speaks of a man (anthro¯pos) taking the seed and tossing it into his garden. He does not state that the seed is the smallest. Step 3: Growth. In Mark, when the seed is sown, it grows up (literally, “goes up” in the present tense), becomes greater than all the shrubs (literally, “vegetables”), and produces (literally, “makes”) large branches. Luke states more laconically that it grew (aorist) and became a tree. Step 4: Result. In Mark, the result (ho¯ste) is that the birds of heaven can dwell under its (i.e., the tree’s) shade. In Luke, instead, without any result clause, the birds of heaven dwelt (aorist) in its branches (mentioned for the first time in Luke). Turning now to Matthew, we see his penchant for bringing together elements of both the Marcan and Q versions: Step 1. There is no introductory question. Rather, Jesus begins with the single statement, “The kingdom of the heaven(s) is like a mustard seed” (homoia estin, as in Luke but not in Mark). Step 2. Likewise as in Luke, a man acts by taking the seed. However, as in Mark, the verb used for putting the seed into the ground is “sow,” not “toss” as in Luke. Matthew uses the aorist indicative (espeiren), while Mark uses the subjunctive aorist passive in a temporal hotan clause. Instead of Mark’s



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“upon the earth” and Luke’s “into his garden,” Matthew has the man sow the seed “in his field.” A separate sentence affirms that the mustard seed “is the smallest of all the seeds”—an affirmation present in Mark but absent in Luke. Step 3. In Matthew, “when it grew” uses the same verb as Luke (e¯uxe¯sen), but Matthew has the verb in the aorist subjunctive (auxe¯the˛ˉ ) in a temporal hotan clause, paralleling the grammatical construction, though not the verb, of Mark’s hotan spare˛ˉ . Matthew also follows Mark by putting the statement that the seed “is [Mark: becomes] greater than all shrubs” in the present indicative. But then, in a parade example of his tendency to mesh, Matthew suddenly switches to Luke in claiming that the plant “becomes [Luke: became] a tree.” Step 4. Matthew concludes by basically following the grammatical construction of Mark’s result clause (ho¯ste), while (meshing once again) taking over the content found in Luke (= Q): “The birds of heaven come [a Matthean addition] and dwell in its branches.” Like Luke and unlike Mark, the branches have not been mentioned until the final words of the parable. Thus, the Matthean tendency to mesh the Marcan and Q traditions is clear from one end of the parable to the other. CGT’s version in logion 20 continues the meshing or harmonizing process, though with a number of traits typical of Thomas’ redactional style. Step 1. The parable is introduced with a single sentence (so Matthew) that speaks of “the kingdom of the heavens,” employing the redactional Matthean locution that is unique to Matthew within the compass of the NT and the Apostolic Fathers and that appears a number of times in CGT. The single sentence, however, is in the form of a question posed by the disciples: “To what is the kingdom of the heavens comparable?” Thus, while the introduction is in the form of a single sentence (like Matthew), it is also in the form of a question (Mark || Luke). Indeed, it corresponds precisely to the first half of Luke’s double question (Luke 13:18a), though with the Matthean “heavens” substituted for “God” and with the Matthean mention of the disciples (“to them” in both Matt 13:31 and CGT 20). In addition to this meshing, we also see a redactional technique typical of Thomas. Especially in the first half of CGT, the redactor introduces a pericope by placing on the lips of the disciples a question (less frequently an affirmation) that prompts a reply from Jesus.72 Step 2. In CGT, Jesus replies with a complete sentence (“it is like a mustard seed”) that echoes the question asked, thus reflecting Luke—and, in the use of a complete sentence, Matthew. CGT follows immediately with a separate main clause (if we accept the usual emendation of the Coptic

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text), stating that “it is the smallest of all of the seeds.” In this it agrees with Matthew and Mark in regard to content, and with Matthew grammatically for using a main clause, though in CGT the smallness of the seed is mentioned before the action begins.73 CGT’s “when it falls upon the earth” uses the Greek conjunction hotan, found in both Matthew and Mark, but more precisely hotan de, present only in Matt 13:32. The phrase “upon the earth” (ejem pkah) is an exact translation of epi te¯s ge¯s, found only in Mark. Indeed, some commentators hold that the phrase is a Marcan addition to the pre-Marcan parable.74 At first glance, CGT is unique in adding to “earth” the qualification “which is tilled” (literally: “on which they work”). However, this specification may well reflect Matthew’s substitution of “in his field [agro˛ˉ ]” for Mark’s “upon the earth,” since “his field” is presumably earth that has been tilled or cultivated.75 Step 3. CGT’s seed then “produces [or: creates] a large branch,” which echoes Mark’s “produces [poiei, literally: “makes”] large branches.” The Coptic verb used by Thomas, teyo or ta(o)yo (= “send forth,” “produce”), reflects Mark’s poieo¯; there is no equivalent verb in Matthew or Luke. Thomas’ use of the singular “branch” may reflect his emphasis on the “one,” “sole,” “solitary” recipient of knowledge (a Gnostic?) that is seen in a number of his sayings.76 The whole phrase “a large branch” (ounocˇ entar) reflects Mark’s kladous megalous; “branches” in Matthew and Luke lacks the qualifying adjective megalous (“large,” “great”). Thomas then uses the verb “becomes” (expressed in the Coptic by the conjunctive, which, following upon a habitual form of the verb, carries the sense of a habitual present tense); the verb may thus reflect Matthew’s ginetai, though Thomas uses the verb in his description of the result. Step 4. Finally, in Thomas’ denouement, the large branch becomes a “shelter [Greek: skepe¯] of the birds of heaven.” In using the noun “shelter,” CGT may be trying to conflate the meanings of both the verb “to dwell” (common to the three Synoptics) and Mark’s noun “shade,” “shadow” (skia). This is not so unlikely when one considers that one Coptic equivalent of the Greek skepe¯ is the noun ha(e)ibes, which means “shade” or “shadow” and which in certain texts has as its Greek equivalent some form of skia, skepe¯, or ske¯noun (“to dwell”).77 On the whole, then, allowing for Thomas’ own stylistic and theological preferences (e.g., the introductory question by the disciples, the one large branch), we are justified in concluding that CGT 20 is a clear example of the meshing or harmonizing of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.78 As I noted in Chapter 37, this kind of harmonizing of the Gospels can likewise be seen in



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some 2d-century patristic writings (e.g., Polycarp, Justin Martyr), which are on the way toward the climax of this tendency in the Diatessaron.79 2. Another, more complicated case of Thomas’ conflation of all three Synoptics can be found in the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–11 || Matt 21:33–43 || Luke 20:9–18 || CGT 65–66).80 It is a fitting commentary on the dissension among academics that one sizable monograph on the parable argues for Thomas’ dependence on the Synoptics, while another claims to prove just the opposite.81 As often happens, part of the problem lies in the presuppositions that scholars bring to a text. As Charles Quarles has pointed out,82 certain supporters of Thomas’ independence (e.g., John Dominic Crossan) champion supposedly reliable and tested postulates that do not in fact hold up to close scrutiny: (1) Postulate One: the story in the parable is obviously more plausible in Thomas than in the Synoptics. However, in the case of the Evil Tenants, Luke has already modified Mark’s presentation in the direction of greater plausibility. Moreover, Thomas’ version is not entirely free from implausible elements. (2) Postulate Two: Thomas’ version of the parable is more primitive because it lacks the opening allusion to Isa 5:1–2. However, Luke “prunes” away most of the Isaiah text, a tendency that Thomas simply follows further. That Thomas is taking his cue from Luke seems all the more probable when we notice that some of Luke’s redactional rewording of Mark is reflected in Thomas. (3) Postulate Three: Thomas’ version is more primitive because OT allusions and allegorical features found in the Synoptics are lacking in Thomas. However, this is hardly surprising, granted (a) CGT’s negative attitude to Judaism and its Scriptures; and (b) Thomas’ express intention to present esoteric sayings of Jesus with hidden meanings that the initiate must search out and find (see CGT Prologue, followed by logia 1 and 2). A clarifying nimša¯l from the OT or the evangelist is the last thing Thomas would want. At times, though, Thomas supplies his own allegorical applications, which are more amenable to his encratite, antimaterialistic (and gnosticizing?) tendencies. Indeed, if one chooses to see Thomas as a gnostic work, one can read his version of the parable of the Evil Tenants as a “subversive” allegory of free men with knowledge (the tenants) rightfully revolting against the evil Creator God and his slave/servants (the archons?). Alternately—and quite in keeping with a polemic one finds elsewhere in Thomas—one could understand the parable as an allegory warning against the murderous results of greed and desire for material possessions.83 (4) Postulate Four: Thomas’ priority is clear from the fact that in the Synoptic versions Jesus claims in veiled fashion to be the son who is slain. The Synoptic versions thus reveal themselves

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to be post-Easter creations of the church. However, this presupposes that one has already solved, on other grounds, the vexed question of what the historical Jesus explicitly or implicitly claimed about himself. This fourth postulate is a prime example of presupposing what remains to be proved. (5) Postulate Five: Be it a question of the parables, teachings, or narratives of the Gospels, the shorter, more “svelte” form of the unit must be the more original. Actually, any comparison of Matthew and Luke against Mark will show that often the opposite is the case. Matthew’s habit of severely abbreviating the narrative in Mark’s miracle stories is a well-known example.84 I do not bother to belabor the problem with these presuppositions since I have already made similar observations in Volume One of A Marginal Jew.85 Granting the dubious nature of these general presuppositions, let us turn to more specific reasons for thinking that CGT 65–66 show dependence on the Synoptics. Space does not allow a full exegesis of each form of the parable. I simply take Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Thomas in turn, dividing each one’s story into five stages and noting each time the data relevant to the question of redactional activity and dependence.86 A. Mark 12:1–11 may be divided as follows: 1. Setup. The planting of the vineyard follows the LXX form of Isa 5:2, though not always word for word. The new element vis-à-vis Isaiah is the letting out of the vineyard to the (tenant-) farmers and the departure of the man who goes on a journey (anthro¯pos, the owner, who is not said to go abroad).87 2. Sending Slaves to Collect the Fruit. A slave is sent, beaten, and sent back empty-handed. A second slave is sent, and he is wounded in the head and dishonored. A third is sent and killed, “and many others,” some of whom are beaten, while others are killed. 3. Sending the Son. It is important to note the order of the Greek text here: The owner “still had one person, [namely,] a beloved son. He [the owner, now obviously the father] sent him [as the] last one to them, saying [= thinking], ‘They will respect my son.’” 4. The Killing of the Son. The tenants, knowing that the son is the heir, decide to kill him in order to obtain the inheritance. They kill him and then throw him out of the vineyard, thus denying him even decent burial. 5. Double Conclusion. (i-a) Jesus asks rhetorically: What will “the lord [the owner/father] of the vineyard do?” (i-b) Jesus answers his own question: “He will come and destroy the farmers and give the vineyard to others.”



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(ii-a) Jesus asks rhetorically: “Or have you not read this Scripture [text]?” (ii-b) Jesus quotes the Scripture text he has in mind, that is, LXX Ps 117:22–23 (“The stone that the builders rejected, this became the cornerstone . . .”).88 B. Matt 21:33–43 (44?) abbreviates the basic story, as Matthew often does with Mark’s narratives, notably his miracle stories. Indeed, as we have seen, Matthew even manages to abbreviate Mark’s version of the parable of the Mustard Seed, despite the fact the he is combining the Marcan and Q forms. Matthew similarly abbreviates Mark’s basic story of the Evil Tenants, even though he lengthens certain individual phrases (notably the sayings material).89 1. Setup. Matthew specifies that the man planting the vineyard is the head of a household (oikodespote¯s, a favorite Matthean noun in parables and similitudes).90 2. Sending Slaves to Collect the Fruit. From the start, the man sends slaves (in the plural): one is beaten, another is killed, and another is stoned. The second sending involves more slaves than the first mission, with similar results. 3. Sending the Son. Omitting Mark’s awkward third sending of a third servant plus “many others,” Matthew says that “last [of all], he sent to them his son,” omitting the adjective “beloved.” At first glance, it seems strange that Matthew would omit “beloved,” but the omission fits his general program of abbreviation.91 In fact, it is not just the one word that is omitted; rather, the whole corresponding clause in Mark is slimmed down. Mark 12:6 reads: “He still had one person, [namely,] a beloved son. He sent him [as the] last one to them, saying. . . .” Matthew collapses these two clauses into one: “Last [of all], he sent to them his son, saying. . . .”92 4. The Killing of the Son. Intensifying the allegory, Matthew reverses the order of the crime in Mark: first the tenants cast the son out of the vineyard (now suddenly representing Jerusalem) and then they killed him—mirroring more closely the succession of events in Jesus’ passion and death. 5. Double Conclusion. Here Matthew lengthens the wording of Mark’s double question and answer: (i-a) Jesus asks rhetorically: “When then the lord of the vineyard comes [borrowing the “coming” from Mark’s first answer], what will he do to those farmers?” (i-b) The Jewish leaders answer (pronouncing judgment on themselves): “He will bring those evil men to an evil end, and will let out the vineyard to other farmers, who will render to him the fruits at their proper time.”93

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(ii-a) Jesus’ second rhetorical question (“Have you never read in the Scriptures . . . ?”) leads into (ii-b) not only the citation of LXX Ps 117:22–23 (v 42)94 but also Jesus’ clear application of the whole parable to the Jewish leaders (v 43): “The kingdom of God [= the vineyard] will be taken from you [the leaders] and will be given to a people [ethnos = the church made up of Jews and Gentiles] bearing its fruit.”95 C. Luke 20:9–18 abbreviates the basic narrative of Mark’s parable even more than Matthew does, both in the number of incidents and in the total word count. The basic narrative of the parable of Mark (from v 1b to the end of v 8, prior to Jesus’ double question) includes 114 Greek words. The same narrative in Luke 20:9b-15a includes 100 Greek words, despite some additions by Luke.96 Both abbreviations and redactional changes can be seen in most of the five stages of the parable: 1. Setup. The setup is abbreviated in the extreme, so that only “a man planted a vineyard” is left, without the clear allusion to Isa 5:2 seen in Mark 12:1.97 At the same time, Luke adds to the end of the setup by noting that the man went away on a journey “for a long time,” perhaps in an attempt to make the subsequent events more plausible.98 2. Sending Slaves to Collect the Fruit. There are three sendings of a single slave. The first time, the slave is beaten and sent back empty-handed. The second sending ends the same way, with the addition of the slave being treated shamefully. The third sending results in the slave being wounded and “thrown out.” 3. Sending the Son. Engaging in a typical Lucan interior monologue introduced by a deliberative question (“What shall I do?” cf. Luke 12:17; 16:3), the “lord of the vineyard” decides: “I will send my son, the beloved. Perhaps [iso¯s] they will respect him.” 4. The Killing of the Son. Like Matthew, Luke reverses Mark’s order of killing and casting out the son to mirror better the order of Jesus’ passion and death.99 5. The Double Conclusion. Like Matthew, here Luke expands Jesus’ remarks: (i-a) Jesus’ first rhetorical question and (i-b) Jesus’ first answer, both repeating Mark almost word for word. (ii-a) Jesus’ second rhetorical question (“What then is this that is written?”) (ii-b) Jesus’ second rhetorical answer, made up of (1) only v 22 of LXX Psalm 117, to which is appended



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(2) a loose allusion to LXX Dan 2:34–35,44–45 and possibly Isa 8:14–15 (“Everyone who falls on that stone shall be broken. . . .”) In sum, we see an intriguing pattern as we move from Mark to Matthew and then to Luke. We find a progressive abbreviation of the basic narrative of the parable (up to the killing of the son), balanced by redactional additions here and there by both Matthew and Luke. The additions are especially notable in the expansion of Jesus’ second answer at the end of the parable, though even here Luke abbreviates the citation of LXX Psalm 117, citing only v 22: “The stone that the builders rejected, this became the cornerstone.” There is also the tendency, barely visible in Matthew but clearer in Luke, to make the story more plausible. For example, in Luke no slave is killed before the sending of the son, and “perhaps” (iso¯s) is added to the owner’s inner deliberation about sending his son. What is telling in all this is that, as we shall soon see, the same general tendencies are found in Thomas’ version of the parable. In CGT, the word count of the basic narrative is reduced to sixty-six words—though the actual reduction is not as severe as mere numbers might indicate, since Coptic is a highly “agglutinative” language, employing a single compound word for two or more Greek words. Despite the overall reduction of the narrative, a few clauses are added, most of which are in line with Thomas’ redactional tendencies, including his tendency to make the story more plausible. In other words, Thomas pushes to their logical conclusions the redactional tendencies already present in Matthew and especially Luke’s reworking of Mark. Let us turn now to CGT 65–66 to see how these tendencies find literary expression. D. Coptic Gospel of Thomas 65–66 displays the tendencies to abbreviate, to make more plausible, and to add redactional perspectives to the story in all five stages of the narrative: 1. Setup. The setting of the stage is brief: “A usurious [or: good?]100 man had a vineyard and he gave it to some farmers so that they might work it and that he might receive his fruit from them.” In many ways, this introduction reflects Luke, who, like Thomas, omits the clear allusion to Isa 5:2. Also in keeping with his tendency to abbreviate, Thomas moves the reference to “receiving fruit from them” into the setup, perhaps because he omits the reference to the owner going on a journey. Interestingly, Thomas’ wording of “in order that he might receive his fruit from them” conflates phrases from all three Synoptics: the hina (Coptic šina) purpose clause and reference to taking the fruit from the farmers in Mark 12:2 (repeated by Luke), the

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singular “fruit” (karpos) in Luke 20:10 (contrast Mark and Matthew), and the curious possessive “his fruit,” found only in Matt 21:34.101 2. Sending the Slaves to Collect the Fruit. Here Thomas conflates Matthew and Luke in line with his tendency to slim down the narrative and perhaps to make the story more plausible as well. Thomas follows Luke (1) in having only one slave sent each time and (2) in having each slave only beaten, not killed—thus increasing the plausibility of the owner sending his son. On the other hand, following Matthew, Thomas reduces the sending of the slaves to two instances, thus shortening the narrative. The precise wording of Thomas’ first sending again reflects his tendency to conflate. Only one slave is sent (as in Mark and Luke), but the slave is qualified by the possessive pronoun (“his slave”), echoing Matthew’s “his slaves” (21:34) in the first sending. While Thomas has moved up one type of purpose clause into the setup (“that [šina] he might receive his fruit from them,” conflating all three Synoptics), he retains another type of purpose clause in the first sending: “that [jekaas] the farmers might give him the fruit of the vineyard.” This repeats almost word for word Luke’s rewriting of Mark’s purpose clause in Luke 20:10: “so that they [the farmers] might give him [some] of the fruit of the vineyard.” Instead of Mark’s “that he might receive [some] of the fruits of the vineyard from the farmers” (represented in part in Thomas’ first purpose clause [šina] in the setup), Luke writes “that they [the farmers] might give him [some] of the fruit of the vineyard”—Luke alone writing “fruit” (karpos) in the singular, while Mark and Matthew use the plural “fruits” (karpoi). This is a clear sign of Thomas’ knowing and copying Luke’s redactional change to Mark; Thomas even takes over the Greek word karpos, using the singular definite article to make clear that the noun is to be understood in the singular. That Luke’s apo tou karpou . . . do¯sousin (“that they might give [some] of the fruit”) is indeed a unique redactional touch of Luke’s can be seen from the fact that nowhere else in the NT does karpos (here in the partitive construction apo tou karpou, with “some” understood) occur as the object of the simple verb dido¯mi (“to give”) when human beings are the subject.102 The only time this construction occurs is here, in Luke’s redactional alteration of Mark in Luke 20:10, which is closely followed by Thomas: Luke 20:10 hina apo tou karpou tou ampelo¯nos do¯sousin auto o˛ˉ e e e Thomas 65 jekaas enoyoeie nati naf mpekarpos mpma neloole This is not the result of stray memories or alternate oral performances.103 Along with the other traces of Luke’s redaction (see below), it furnishes a strong argument that Thomas knew Luke’s version of the parable.



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To proceed with the sending of the slaves: the farmers “seize” the slave (similarly Mark and Matthew). To be precise, the express mention of the slave(s) as the object of the act of seizing follows Matthew, as does the possessive “his.” The farmers proceed to “beat” him, as they do in all three Synoptics. Following Mark and Luke, Thomas has no killing in the first sending of the slave. Actually, this is necessitated by the logic of having only a single servant sent. If he were killed, there would be no one to report to the owner the farmers’ refusal to render their due. Having a number of servants sent on a single mission allows Matthew to have one beaten, another killed, and still another stoned. The killing in Matthew’s version is conflated with the mere beating in Mark and Luke by Thomas’ additional comment that “a little more and they would have killed him.” The return of the beaten slave poses a problem for Thomas, who seems at pains to create a more plausible story. Luke had already coped with the problem of plausibility by having an inner monologue in which the owner weighs possibilities after the second sending (Luke 20:13: “Perhaps . . .”). As part of the attempt to increase plausibility, Thomas not only takes over this inner monologue of deliberation but anticipates it here—he will still use it again after the second sending—to justify the sending of a second slave after the first has been beaten. However, the owner’s deliberation at this point in Thomas is anything but clear. From the first modern publication of CGT to the present day, commentators have found the owner’s deliberation as he prepares to send the second slave unintelligible. In the Coptic text as it stands, the owner thinks, “Perhaps he did not know [= recognize] them”— the “he” referring to the first slave and the “them” referring to the farmers. Does the owner think that the servant mistakenly went to the wrong farmers, who vented their annoyance at what seemed an unjust demand for a share of their crops? This seems so contrived that other commentators suggest emending what they judge a corrupted text by writing, “Perhaps they [the farmers] did not recognize him [as my duly sent slave].” Alternately, one might hypothesize that Thomas is introducing in a clumsy way the gnostic theme of the ignorance of the Creator God and/or his minions (but then shouldn’t the ignorance of the owner be stressed?).104 In the end, one must admit that none of these solutions is completely satisfying. In any event, what is clear is that Thomas takes Luke’s deliberating soliloquy (“perhaps”) and moves it forward, apparently in an attempt to make the owner’s action more plausible. Placed after the first sending, the deliberation makes the second sending slightly more intelligible—if no less fruitless. The two separate deliberations introduced by “perhaps” also provide an added structural element to this schematic story.105

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3. Sending the Son. Again we find conflation. Thomas follows Matthew (1) in making the independent statement “he sent his son” the first main clause in this section (the Greek apesteilen . . . ton huion autou corresponding exactly to the Coptic jooy empefše¯re), and (2) in omitting the adjective “beloved” (agape¯tos), present in Mark and Luke. Like Luke (contrary to Mark and Matthew), Thomas makes the master’s deliberative soliloquy a main clause. Into the “lord of the vineyard’s” deliberation Luke pointedly inserts an adverb encountered nowhere else in the NT: “Perhaps [iso¯s] they will respect him [i.e., my son].” Thomas parallels this with his own adverb mešak (“Perhaps they will respect him, my son”). Interestingly, mešak occurs nowhere in CGT except in logion 65, in the two Lucan-like deliberations of the owner. In addition, besides reflecting Coptic grammar,106 the dual object (“him”/“my son”) in the Coptic text manages to conflate Luke’s “him” and Matthew and Mark’s “my son.” 4. The Killing of the Son. The climax is cut to the bare bones for maximum shock value and mystery: “Those farmers, since they knew that he was the heir of the vineyard, seized him [and] killed him.” The Coptic for “those farmers” (noyoeie etemmay) repeats Mark’s ekeinoi de hoi geo¯rgoi. Only Mark and Thomas use both the “far-demonstrative” (“those”) plus the definite article with “farmers,” and neither (unlike Matthew and Luke) notes that the farmers see the son. Pointedly, only Thomas uses the verb “know” of the farmers, purposely contrasting the “knowing” (gnostic?) farmers with the “not-knowing” slave who was sent first. Thus it may be that Thomas has intentionally redacted the Synoptic parable to turn it into an allegory of the ignorant slaves of the owner (= the Demiurge, the blind and tyrannical Creator God?) versus the rebellious free agents who have knowledge. None of the three Synoptics has the theme of not-knowing/knowing at the two points where Thomas enunciates the theme. The terse “they seized him [and] killed him” of Thomas reflects the equally terse “seizing they killed him” of Mark, at which point Thomas abruptly ends the parable. The sudden ending with no further elaboration, commentary, or scriptural reference fits in perfectly with the hidden meaning of Jesus’ words that CGT has inculcated from the Prologue and first two logia of the work. The explanatory comments of Jesus or the evangelists found in the Synoptics, as well as any citation of the OT, to which CGT shows itself hostile, are systematically removed throughout CGT. So here. In keeping with this (gnostic?) program, the Synoptic elaborations and commentary are replaced with Thomas’ frequent refrain, calling on the possessor of true knowledge (a Gnostic?) to seek and find (cf. logion 2) the hidden message (cf. Prologue): “Let him who has ears hear.”107



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5. The Double Conclusion. From what has just been said, it is obvious that Thomas would omit the double conclusion. After all, the first conclusion has Jesus’ prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, implicitly fitting the whole parable into the larger story of Jesus’ ministry to his own people (seen as the culmination of the multiple sending of rejected prophets to Israel), his rejection by their leaders, and their subsequent punishment via the destruction of their ancient capital and temple. The sweep of a collective, people-oriented salvation history, understood as a pattern of prophecy and fulfillment and climaxing in the ministry and death of the earthly Jesus, is not a congenial theme to Thomas, a work dedicated to secret, saving, and timeless truths revealed only to the solitary initiate. The second conclusion would be even more unpalatable: an explicit citation of the OT as prophecy, proclaiming clearly the ultimate denouement of the story: the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the end, though, one might claim that Thomas’ suppression of the double ending does not entirely succeed. On the one hand, the very core of this parable already carries within itself echoes of the OT and the theme of prophecy. A Jewish-Palestinian audience of Jesus’ time, listening to a wellknown prophet and teacher as he addressed the religious leaders in the Jerusalem temple, could hardly miss the scriptural allusions inherent in symbols like the vineyard, the owner of the vineyard sending his servants to make claims on those working in his vineyard, and the rejection of those servants by the workers. One would have to be ignorant not only of individual scriptural texts but also of the master narrative governing the Jewish Scriptures to miss the references. For all his abbreviations, even Thomas does not succeed in suppressing the OT allusions entirely. On the other hand, the “ghost” of the double conclusion haunts Thomas’ reductive redaction. In a sense, we still find two endings, however much disguised. The first conclusion, the riddling “Let him who has ears hear,” replaces the clarifying conclusion that prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem. The second conclusion remains hidden in clear sight, despite its transformation into a separate saying of Jesus, a transformation that obliterates the opening rhetorical question with its citation formula (“Or have you not read this Scripture?”).108 As is his tendency here as elsewhere, Thomas follows Luke, who takes over from Mark only v 22 from LXX Ps 117:22–23. Of course, for Thomas there can be no question of the fulfillment of OT prophecy, let alone Jesus citing OT prophecy to show that it is fulfilled in his own life and fate. Such a prophecy-fulfillment pattern is explicitly rejected by the Thomasine Jesus in logion 52.109

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Instead, Thomas creates a separate logion, introduced by the formulaic peje is (“Jesus said”).110 The prophecy becomes a riddling challenge of Jesus: “Show me the stone that the builders rejected; it is the cornerstone.” All sense that Jesus is citing an OT text is lost, intentionally so.111 In sum, then, far from being an independent and primitive form of the parable of the Evil Tenants, Thomas represents the logical conclusion of tendencies already seen in Matthew and Luke’s redaction of Mark. On the large scale, the parable’s core narrative is increasingly abbreviated (from Matthew to Luke to Thomas), and yet each abbreviator adds a few redactional touches of his own along the way. On the level of verse-by-verse redaction, Thomas shows a consistent tendency to conflate the three Synoptic versions as he severely abbreviates the basic story. While traces of both Matthew and Mark can be detected, it is Luke’s redactional changes that are most clearly mirrored in Thomas. They include (1) Luke 20:9: the abrupt beginning of the story without the clear allusion to Isa 5:2; (2) Luke 20:10: the phrase “in order that they might give to him [some of] the fruit of the vineyard”; (3) the omission of the killing of any slave (in keeping with the sending of only one slave each time); (4) the inclusion of “perhaps” (Luke’s iso¯s, Thomas’ mešak) in the owner’s soliloquy, expressing hope that the farmers will respect his son. This point is especially telling since iso¯s never appears anywhere else in the NT, just as Thomas never uses mešak outside of logion 65. Luke pointedly inserts the adverb to make the owner’s decision slightly more plausible. Thomas follows Luke in both wording and intention. To try to escape the obvious conclusion of Thomas’ dependence on Luke by conjuring up a separate primitive version of the parable used by both Luke and Thomas is to create a deus ex machina while at the same time cutting oneself on Ockham’s razor.112 Thomas’ overall redactional intent is seen (1) in his abbreviations and complete omissions, thus rendering the parable’s meaning completely “hidden” (cf. CGT’s Prologue), and (2) in his insertion of the (gnostic?) theme of not-knowing/knowing—all to the end of inviting the (gnostic?) reader to divine the meaning behind the story, now rendered allegorical in an esoteric (gnostic?) rather than a Synoptic sense. 3. Up to now, in the general sayings material as well as in the parables, we have examined examples taken from the triple tradition (based solely on Mark, but redacted by Matthew and/or Luke), from Mark–Q overlaps, and from Q. It is now time to supplement the catalogue of test cases with a parable that is found only in Matthew (hence, M material),113 namely, the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (13:24–30). Following the pattern set by Mark’s agricultural parable of the Sower, Matthew supplies his parable with a lengthy allegorical interpretation (Matt 13:36–43). Indeed, many



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commentators hold that the interpretation of the Wheat and the Weeds is Matthew’s own creation. A much shorter version of the parable, without a separate interpretation, is found in CGT 57. Matt 13:24–30114 CGT 57 The kingdom of heaven is like The kingdom of the Father is like a man sowing good seed a man who had good seed.   in his field. While the men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds His enemy came at night and sowed  weeds in the midst of the wheat and left. upon the good seed. When the plants began to sprout and   produce grain, then the weeds also appeared. Approaching, the slaves of the householder said to him, “Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy did this.” The slaves say to him, “Do you wish us then The man did not allow them to go out and gather them?” to pull up the weeds. He says, “No, lest in gathering the weeds He said to them, “Lest you go in   order that you uproot the wheat with them. we pull up the weeds and you pull   up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest For on the day of the harvest, I will say to the harvesters, ‘Gather first the weeds and tie them into the weeds will appear.   bundles in order to burn them, They pull them up and burn them.” but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

A number of possibilities present themselves: CGT 57 may be an abbreviation of the text in Matthew’s Gospel, an abbreviation of the M tradition that Matthew also used, or a completely independent tradition that need not be seen as an abbreviation and hence may be the earliest form of the parable. The following analysis will argue that, far from being the earliest and purest form of this parable, CGT 57 shows clear signs of being a radical abbreviation of a longer, more original text, be that text Matt 13:24–30 or

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the presumed M parable that was its source.115 Of these two possibilities, the more likely one is that CGT 57 reflects knowledge of the present text of Matthew,116 since there seem to be some echoes of Matthew’s allegorical interpretation in Thomas’ highly abbreviated version. (One is reminded of Thomas’ radical abbreviation of the Marcan form of the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard.) Let us begin by following the story line of the parable. In the narrative setup of the parable, the brevity of CGT 57 strikes one immediately. In Thomas, the actual sowing of the good seed is never mentioned but simply assumed. In Matt 13:25, “his enemy” (likewise “his enemy” in Thomas) comes while the men (i.e., the servants of the owner of the farm) are sleeping, sows the weeds, and departs. Instead of referring to men sleeping, Thomas simply uses the time designation “at night”; he also lacks any mention of the enemy’s departure.117 More strikingly, Thomas lacks the narrative core of the parable, that is, the whole succession of events that make the denouement intelligible: the growth of the plants bearing grain, the simultaneous appearance of the weeds, the servants approaching the householder with a question about the  origin of the weeds in a field sown with good seed, the householder’s declaration that this is the work of an enemy, and the servants’ suggestion that they gather up the weeds (Matt 13:26–28). Thomas’ story rejoins Matthew’s at 13:29: the man does not allow them to pull up the weeds, lest they pull up the wheat with them. However, this statement by the man in Thomas’ version really does not make sense without all the Matthean material that Thomas lacks. Indeed, one might theorize that the attempt to consolidate the Matthean material into the man’s statement has resulted in a series of incoherent clauses in Thomas: “The man did not allow them [no referent has been introduced previously in Thomas’ narrative] to pull up the weeds. He said to them, ‘Lest you go in order that we pull up the weeds and you pull up the wheat with them.’” The sudden appearance of “them,” with no indication that they are the servants of the householder, is only made more confusing by the strange movement back and forth between “you” and “we” within a single sentence in direct speech.118 It may be no accident that, in the very detailed allegorical interpretation in Matt 13:37–43, the only person or persons missing from the allegory are the servants, who play a key role in original story of 13:24–30.119 Here we begin to see hints that the Thomasine author may have had Matthew’s allegorical interpretation (which omits the servants) in the back of his mind when he undertook his radical abbreviation of the parable’s story. Intriguingly, given Thomas’ general avoidance of the kind of “communal” fiery apocalyptic eschatology seen in the Synoptics, the denouement in



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CGT 57 surprises in presupposing some sort of future eschatology, complete with fire: “For on the day of the harvest, the weeds will appear. They pull them up and burn them.” Not only is the reference to a future harvest that involves burning the weeds alien to Thomas;120 the very mention of a harvest is without preparation in the context of CGT 57, since Thomas lacks the householder’s immediately preceding command (Matt 13:30): “Let both grow together until the harvest.” Still more curious is the mention of the burning of the weeds without any corresponding reference to the fate of the wheat. This absence becomes intelligible when one notices that Matthew’s allegorical interpretation shifts the parable’s center of gravity from patience in the present moment to the fiery punishment of the wicked at the consummation of the age.121 Strikingly, in Matt 13:37–43, the initial catalogue of equivalences, which equates each key term or event in the parable with its eschatological equivalent (vv 37b–40), omits any reference whatever to the wheat or to a barn (cf. 13:30).122 The apocalyptic narrative that follows in vv 41–43a dwells almost entirely on the punishment of the wicked, with only v 43a referring to the reward of the just. Even in 43a, there is no resumption of the imagery of wheat, harvest, or barn. Rather, the apocalyptic image of shining like the sun or other heavenly bodies is suddenly introduced (cf. Matt 17:2; Dan 12:3; Wisd 3:7), with no connection to any imagery that has preceded.123 It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, out of all the positive elements present in the parable proper (13:24–30), Matt 13:41–43 takes up and interprets only the middle part of v 30. Thomas’ conclusion thus focuses intensely on what is emphasized in Matthew’s allegorical interpretation of the parable (13:36–43) rather than on what is emphasized in the parable itself.124 Then, too, the vocabulary of “appearing” (naoyo¯nh ebol) toward the end of CGT 57 creates a problem when compared to Matthew’s parable. In Matthew, there is a clear progression in the steps of the narrative. At first, the weeds, which closely resemble the wheat in the early stages of growth, do not appear different to the naked eye of the farmers. But by the time that the wheat has grown sufficiently to start producing wheat grain in the ears, then (Matthew’s typical tote) the weeds also (kai) “appeared” (ephane¯ in 13:26)—since obviously at this point the difference between the two types of plants and their respective grain would be visible.125 It follows naturally that at this point in the story the slaves, seeing the difference, ask the householder for an explanation of the weeds’ presence and then suggest that they gather up the weeds. The householder points out why their solution is not workable: though the weeds are now visible, and therefore distinguishable from the wheat, their roots may have become entangled (cf. v 25: the weeds

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were sown in the midst of the wheat). Uprooting the weeds would possibly involve uprooting the immature wheat as well. At the harvest, the weeds and the (now mature) wheat can be separated, since both will be cut down. In contrast, in Thomas the extreme contraction of the narrative leads to an illogical development of events. After the sowing of the weeds is narrated, we are immediately told that the man forbade “them” (whoever they are) to pull up the weeds lest they pull up the wheat with them. Nothing has been said about a period of growth after which the weeds would first become visible. Logically, though, the reader has to suppose that the weeds have in fact appeared; otherwise, the man’s prohibition of pulling them up would make no sense. Yet in Thomas either Jesus or the man in the parable goes on to say that the weeds will become visible on the day of the harvest, when they can be pulled up and burned. Hence the apparent contradiction in the story: if the weeds do not become visible before the harvest, how can the problem have been detected, moving the man to issue his prohibition?126 It would seem, then, that in his radical abbreviation of Matthew’s parable, the Thomasine redactor has moved Matthew’s mention of the appearance of the weeds from early on in the story, where it makes sense, to the end of the story, where it destroys whatever logic might have remained in Thomas’ confusingly slimmed-down version. But this is not the end of the muddle. All the more puzzling is the conclusion of Thomas’ parable, which is put in the present tense, just after the reader has been told that the weeds “will appear.” The final sentence, with the plural subject in the (first) present tense followed by the conjunctive (“they pull them up and burn them”), reflects the plural command that the Matthean householder says that he will issue to the harvesters (unmentioned in Thomas) at the harvest. The plural form of the verbs thus makes sense in Matthew’s version, while in Thomas the best a translator can do is to understand the plural as the Coptic way of expressing the passive voice (which does not exist as a separate verb form in Coptic). But is this the most likely solution when an unspecified “them” has already been introduced into an earlier stage of the story in Thomas’ version? All in all, the most natural explanation of the origin of this obscure narrative in CGT 57 is a maladroit attempt to abbreviate the Matthean parable.127 In addition to this step-by-step analysis of Thomas’ parable, which suggests that CGT 57 is a severely abbreviated and somewhat garbled version of what we find in Matthew, individual words and phrases in CGT 57 also appear to reflect Matthew’s text of the parable, Matthew’s interpretation of the parable, or Matthew’s redactional style in general.128 Thomas begins his version with “the kingdom of the Father is like. . . .” Interestingly, Matthew’s



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interpretation of the parable ends with the words (to use an excruciatingly literal translation) “the kingdom of the Father of them [i.e., the just]”—or in ordinary English, “the kingdom of their Father.” It is telling that the earliest Synoptic sources, Mark and Q, use the phrase “the kingdom of God,” but never employ the absolute phrase “the kingdom” or “the kingdom” connected with a genitive construction involving the noun “Father.” The absolute use of “the kingdom” and the connection of “kingdom” with the genitive “Father” are later developments seen in Matthew and Luke–Acts.129 Indeed, the absolute use of “the kingdom,” when referring to the kingdom of God/heaven without possessive pronoun or dependent genitive construction, is almost unique to Matthew in the four Gospels (Matthew 6x, Mark 0x, Luke 1x, John 0x).130 Yet the absolute “the kingdom” and “the kingdom of the Father” are the two most common forms of “kingdom talk” in Thomas. While there are a few occurrences in Thomas of Matthew’s redactional phrase “the kingdom of heaven” (CGT 20, 54, and 114), the phrase that is most likely original with the historical Jesus and that is the common form in Mark and Q—“the kingdom of God”—is completely absent from the Coptic form of Thomas.131 This phenomenon hardly supports some critics’ overall strategy of explaining the present text of CGT by appealing to regular assimilation of the text to the standard Coptic NT by later Christian scribes. That is certainly not the case at the beginning of CGT 57, where Thomas’ “the kingdom of the Father” does not reflect the beginning of Matthew’s parable in either the Greek or the Sahidic Coptic (both forms have Matthew’s typical “the kingdom of heaven” in v 24). Rather, “the kingdom of the Father” at the beginning of CGT 57 may echo the concluding phrase at the end of Matthew’s allegorical interpretation (v 43). To proceed with other individual points in the parable: if we possessed only Matthew’s parable without his allegorical interpretation or his larger story of Jesus, the initial description of the sower of the weeds in 13:25 as “his [i.e., the householder’s] enemy” might seem puzzling or at least unexplained. But Matthew’s interpretation—which he no doubt already has in mind as he puts this parable into its final form—makes clear that the sower of the good seed is the Son of Man (= Jesus). Correspondingly, the enemy is the devil, who has appeared in Matthew as Jesus’ enemy from the temptation narrative onward (4:1–11), where the noun “devil” is repeated four times in the story and the noun “satan” (= Hebrew s´a¯ta¯n, “adversary,” “op˙ ponent,” “enemy”) appears at the climax. Hence, given the wider Matthean context, in Matt 13:25 “his enemy” makes perfect sense within the parable, which Matthew is redacting (if not simply creating) with a view to his allegorical interpretation. The same cannot be said for the presence of the exact

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same phrase (“his enemy,” pefjaje) in the Coptic version, which of course lacks the interpretation that makes the “his” intelligible. While scholars may argue over how realistic the basic plot of the parable’s story is, the designation of the sower of the weeds as his enemy without any further explanation only makes the incoherent version in Thomas still more incoherent.132 “His enemy” is explicable only from the vantage point of Matthew’s allegorical interpretation.133 The action of sowing by “his enemy” creates a further slight, though intriguing, connection between Matthew and Thomas. While all other references to sowing in both Matthew’s parable and his interpretation employ the simple verb speiro¯ (“to sow”), the enemy’s sowing is described in Matt 13:25 with the relatively rare compound verb epispeiro¯. This verb never occurs in the LXX, in other Greek versions of the OT, anywhere else in the NT, or in the Apostolic Fathers. While the meaning of the verb, at least in this type of agricultural context, can be construed as “sow afterward,” the literal meaning of the compound is “sow upon” or “on top of” (epi may take a number of cases with various meanings, but the common meaning possible in each case is “upon”).134 It may not be totally by accident that at the parallel point in CGT 57 “his enemy” is said to sow the weeds “upon” (Coptic ejen) the good seed, even though a different type of preposition might have made better sense.135 The use of ejen cannot be attributed to assimilation to the standard NT Coptic text of Matthew, since that text uses entme¯te en (“in the midst of”), which reflects Matthew’s Greek at 13:25 and makes perfect sense in the context. Thus, in Thomas’ use of ejen we may have another slight echo of the Matthean text, specifically, the rare epispeiro¯. The enemy is said to sow zizanion, a type of weed that can be translated into English as “tares,” “darnel,” or “cheat.” This noun does not occur in the LXX, in other Greek versions of the OT, in secular Greek before the Christian era, or in the Apostolic Fathers.136 In the NT, it occurs only in this parable of Matthew and its interpretation. Once again, its presence in Thomas’ version cannot be explained by Christian scribes assimilating the text to the later standard Sahidic text of Matthew, since that text uses not zizanion but rather the general Coptic word for “plant,” “herb,” or “weed” (ente¯cˇ). Nor can it be explained as some Greek loan word especially at home in the Nag Hammadi material, since CGT 57 is the only place that it occurs in all of the Nag Hammadi texts.137 Thomas’ “on the day of the harvest” echoes Matthew’s “at the time of the harvest” (13:30). This phrase—along with the imagery of burning the weeds—is perfectly at home in Matthew’s future scenario of fiery apocalyptic eschatology, but (as we have already seen) is totally out of place in Thomas’ theology. Indeed, Jack Dean Kingsbury, who thinks that there is



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some pre-Matthean material behind Matthew’s parable, emphasizes that in 13:30 the language is “typically Matthean and rich in eschatological imagery.”138 Thomas’ strong parallel to Matthew at this point suggests that it may be a mistake to translate the final words in CGT 57 (literally, “they pull them up and burn them”) in the passive voice: “. . . they shall be pulled up and burned.” The 3d person verbs may instead be a relic of the servants/ harvesters in the Matthean version of the parable (shadowy figures at best in Thomas), who are interpreted as angels in Matthew’s allegorical explanation (13:39). In the end, I freely grant that no one of these observations about individual words and phrases in CGT 57 would be all that probative if taken separately, but I think that cumulatively they do lend secondary support to the major arguments I have laid out above. In sum, we have seen that (1) the overall narrative in Thomas makes sense only as a severely compressed version of Matthew’s parable or its M source, (2) certain locutions in Thomas echo phrases that are most likely products of Matthew’s redactional hand, and (3) Thomas’ radical abbreviation seems influenced by Matthew’s allegorical interpretation of the parable. The most likely conclusion from all this is not only (1) that CGT 57 is not early and independent but also (2) that CGT 57 depends on the text found in Matthew’s Gospel rather than on some hypothetical source. That the author of Thomas knew Matthew’s Gospel seems all the more likely when we notice that, elsewhere in Thomas, the author shows that he is aware of a specific disciple of Jesus named Matthew. Unlike other NT personages to whom composition of a Gospel was in due time attributed—namely, Mark, Luke, and John—Matthew is actually mentioned by Thomas in an unusually long logion (CGT 13) with an untypical narrative framework. The narrative in CGT 13 seems to reflect (in a polemical “rewrite” that reverses the point) Matthew’s version of Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:13–20).139 Thus, Klyne Snodgrass may not be exaggerating when he judges that the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds “is one of the easiest passages to argue” for the dependence of Thomas on the Synoptic tradition.140 4. I have purposely left for last a parable that is unique to Luke (L material) among the Synoptics. My reason for doing this is not deference to the traditional canonical order of the Synoptic Gospels but rather the special problems that are involved in comparing an L parable to its parallel in CGT. (a) To start with, we are faced with a paradox in Thomas’ use of Synoptic sources. Frequently in the examples already examined, we have noted a certain bias in favor of Luke’s form of a saying or pericope, be the ultimate material Marcan or Q. Yet, curiously, when we scan the list of parables contained in both the Synoptic tradition and Thomas, we confront a surprising phenomenon. For all the Lucan influence traceable in Thomas, there

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is only one clear case of a parable found only in Luke (i.e., an L parable) that has a parallel in Thomas.141 This is the parable of the Rich Fool, including its introduction (Luke 12:13–15 + 16–21 || CGT 72 + 63). Hence, as we come to treat this L parable, we are dealing with a one-of-a-kind specimen in our Synoptics–Thomas comparisons. (b) My insistence that we treat this L parable together with its introduction points to a further peculiarity and difficulty. We have in the Rich Fool the only case among the Synoptic parables where not only the parable proper (Luke 12:16–21 = CGT 63) but also the introductory anecdote or “setup” to this Synoptic parable has a parallel in Thomas (Luke 12:13–15 = CGT 72). Granted the regular pattern whereby material found together in the Synoptics is found scattered in Thomas (and occasionally vice versa), we need not be surprised that the brief pericope that serves as an introduction in Luke occurs in Thomas nine sayings after the parable proper. It would seem that for Thomas, the material in CGT 72 has or has been given independent value and meaning. (c) Compounding these problems is the uncertain origin of the Lucan material. Are we dealing with primitive tradition (possibly from Jesus) that has been taken over by Luke without significant redaction? Or do we have here a tradition that Luke has heavily redacted in his own style? Or is either the introduction or the parable (or both) wholly a creation of Luke? (d) These questions are made all the more difficult by a further consideration. The parable proper weaves together warnings about (i) blind trust in one’s possessions and (ii) the uncertain and uncontrollable time of one’s death. With many permutations and varying emphases, these themes permeate the wisdom traditions of the OT, intertestamental literature, other parts of the NT, and later rabbinic literature, not to mention similar admonitions in Greek and Roman philosophy.142 Within the almost interminable list of ancient parallels to these basic themes, a stark observation in Ben Sira (11:18–19) is so close in thought (though not in wording) to this Lucan parable that it could almost be considered the source of the parable in Luke and/or Thomas. The Hebrew text (partially restored) of Sir 11:18–19, as found in Manuscript A from the Cairo Geniza, may be translated as follows: There is a man who grows rich by leading a pinched existence . . . [and] this is his allotted reward: when he says, “I have found rest, and now I shall eat from my bounty,” he does not know what the limited span [of his life] will be. And he will leave it to others and die.143 Granted the all-pervasive and constantly recycled nature of wisdom traditions in ancient Mediterranean literature, one must weigh the possibility



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that the parables in Luke 12:16–21 and CGT 63 are not connected with each other either by Christian literary sources or by common oral tradition going back to the historical Jesus.144 Rather, if we wish to entertain all possible hypotheses, it is conceivable that Luke and Thomas represent in their parables two different receptions and reformulations of the material found in Sir 11:18–19—without that material ever passing through the lips of Jesus. After all, in a short wisdom saying, Ben Sira encapsulates many of the themes found in both Luke and Thomas: a rich man speaking an inner monologue and making plans to enjoy his prosperity, while death lurks around the corner, ready at an unknown hour to make all the rich man’s efforts and plans futile. Hence, independent recycling of Ben Sira’s observation by Luke and Thomas, with no connection with each other or Jesus, is an intriguing possiblity, especially given present-day concerns about multiple performances of fluid oral traditions.145 Nevertheless, other considerations make this option less likely, especially in Luke’s form of the parable. Absent from Sir 11:18–19 are key elements present in the Lucan parable: e.g., the tearing down of barns with the intention of building larger ones, the immediate death of the rich man “this very night,” and the unusual direct appearance and speech of God (wisdom commonly makes observations on human life without special epiphanies of God, the climax of the Book of Job notwithstanding). On the other hand, present in Ben Sira but absent in Luke is the idea that the man has (apparently slowly) become rich through penny (or shekel)-pinching. Thomas, for his part, presents the rich man’s agricultural activity as part of his plans, rather than an already realized fact that creates storage problems, as in Luke. Then, too, in Thomas the sudden death “that very night” happens without any intervention or speech by God. I have laid out all these complications at the beginning of our treatment to indicate why we will have to deal with Luke 12:16–21 in a somewhat different manner and order than has been used in our previous examples. In this case, the argument cannot help but be circuitous and multifaceted. So let us now move with patience to a detailed comparison of Luke and Thomas’ texts, putting the anecdote that functions as the introduction in Luke first, followed by the parable proper. A. Introduction Luke 12:13–15 CGT 72 Someone from the crowd said to him [Jesus]: A man said to him [Jesus]: “Teacher, tell my brother “Tell my brothers to divide the inheritance to divide the possessions of my  father

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Luke 12:13–15 CGT 72 with me.” with me.” He [Jesus] said to him: He [Jesus] said to him: “Man, who appointed me a judge or divider “O man, who made me a divider?” over you [plural]?” He said to them: He turned to his disciples and said   to them: “Watch out and guard yourselves “I am not a divider, am I?” against all greed, for a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” B. Parable Luke 12:16–21 CGT 63 He [Jesus] told them a parable, saying: Jesus said: “A rich man had a field “There was a rich man that produced abundantly. who had many possessions. He thought to himself, saying, He said, ‘What shall I do, ‘I shall use my possessions for I do not have [a place] so that I may sow and reap, where I may gather my fruits?’ plant and fill And he said: ‘This [is what] I shall do: I will tear down my barns and build larger my barns with fruit.’ ones, and there I shall gather all my grain   and my goods. And I shall say to my soul, These were his thoughts “Soul, you have many good things on these matters in his heart. laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, make merry.” ’ But God said to him: ‘Fool, this very night And that very night your soul is being demanded of you. he died. The things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ So [it is with] the person He who has ears, let him hear.” who heaps up treasure for himself, and is not rich [in the things that] concern God.”

A glance through these two traditions in their Lucan and Thomasine forms only verifies the series of difficulties I listed earlier. A number of dif-



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ferent scenarios are possible, and it is hard to know how to choose among them. Clearly, Luke 12:13–15 || CGT 72 recount the same basic exchange, while Luke 12:16–21 || CGT 63 relate the same basic parable. But is one version of the exchange and/or the parable dependent directly or indirectly on the other? Or do both texts present independent versions of a teaching that ultimately goes back to Jesus? Or, at least in the case of the parable, have Luke and Thomas both received and reworked a common topos of the wisdom tradition, as exemplified in Sir 11:18–19? Granted all that we have already seen in our previous examples, I am inclined to think that once again we are dealing in CGT 63 with a radical abbreviation of Synoptic material. Thomas has taken a parable with a rather conventional story from the wisdom tradition and condensed it into a laconic and cryptic narrative whose meaning the reader must “seek and find” (cf. Thomas’ Prologue along with sayings 1 and 2). It is in keeping with this overall redactional purpose that Thomas also takes the introductory Lucan anecdote and, in CGT 72, gives it a twist in the direction of a gnosticizing christology. This is true especially in the anecdote’s conclusion: Luke’s moralizing observation about avoiding greed, a truth that holds for every human being, is transmogrified into Jesus’ mysterious, unanswered question about his own identity (“I am not a divider, am I?”). But it is one thing for me to suggest such an explanation, based on my previous examples. It is quite another to move from an explanation that is merely possible to one that is probable. What signals in the two formulations of this tradition suggest that Thomas, directly or indirectly, knew and was influenced by Luke’s composition of 12:13–15 + 16–21? In a nutshell, both the introduction and the parable proper have a number of traits found only in Luke within the Synoptic Gospels—and specifically within the Synoptic parable tradition. These traits argue for either Lucan creation or strong Lucan redaction in 12:13–15 + 16–21. Let us proceed step by step in laying out the argument. 1. General Considerations about Luke’s Technique of Connecting Introductory Anecdotes with Parables (a) Within the NT, only Luke uses a short introductory anecdote, involving Jesus and an interlocutor outside the circle of his disciples, as a preface to a narrative parable. This technique stands out because, in the Synoptics, most individual parables do not have their separate “setups,” with each setup geared to introducing the message of the parable that follows. For example, in the parable discourse (Mark 4:1–34 || Matt 13:1–52 || Luke 8:4–18), we have a general framing of the scene, but the individual parables do not ad-

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dress problems raised by individual interlocutors.146 The same is true of the other Marcan parables: the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–11 parr.) and the Watchful Doorkeeper (Mark 13:34–37 parr.).147 Likewise, the parables peculiar to Matthew (M material) all lack an immediately preceding introduction made up of an interchange between Jesus and an “outsider,” that is, someone outside the circle of disciples. The closest we come to such a composition is the single case in Matthew where not an outsider but the leader of the Twelve (Peter) asks Jesus a question about forgiveness (18:21–22), a question that directly introduces the parable of the Unforgiving Servant (18:23–35). The overarching context of the Matthean discourse on church life and order (chap. 18) suggests that Peter represents church leaders being instructed on tempering church discipline (18:15–20) with a readiness to forgive. Interestingly, when we look at introductions to parables in the Q tradition, we notice a difference between Matthew and Luke’s redaction. Matthew never supplies a special introduction to any of his Q parables. In contrast, in Luke 12:41, Peter (once again symbolizing church leaders) asks a question that immediately triggers the parable of the Servant Placed over the Household (Luke 12:42–48). In Luke 14:15, “one of those reclining at table” with Jesus remarks in general on the blessedness of anyone eating bread in the kingdom of God. This serves as a setup for Luke’s version of the parable of the Great Supper (14:16–24). In 15:2, the criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes moves Jesus to tell the parable of the Lost Sheep (15:3–7). Just before Jesus tells the parable of the Ten Minas or “Pounds” (19:12–27), Luke informs us that Jesus is aiming this parable at those who think that the kingdom of God is about to appear because Jesus is drawing near to Jerusalem (19:11). Hence we notice in Luke’s redaction of Q parables, as distinct from Matthew’s, a tendency to provide parables with some sort of introduction suited to the particular parable. In general, though, there is no give-and-take interaction between Jesus and an “outsider” in these brief introductions. Granted Luke’s tendency to supply some Q parables with a preface, we need not be surprised to learn that the parables unique to Luke stand out because such a large number of them have an introduction that raises the topic dealt with in the parable. More strikingly, in certain cases, Luke gives his L parables introductions that involve interaction between Jesus and an outsider. The Lucan examples include the following: (i) The parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:41–43) is part of a larger discussion between Jesus and Simon the Pharisee.



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(ii) As we saw in Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30–37), Luke reworks Mark’s pericope concerning the double commandment of love (Mark 12:28–34) to create an introduction to the Good Samaritan.148 In this Lucan introduction, a lawyer and Jesus engage in a discussion on inheriting eternal life that culminates in a focus on love of neighbor, thus transitioning almost seamlessly into the parable. (iii) The parable of the Rich Fool (12:16–21), our present concern, is introduced by a dialogue about dividing an inheritance. (iv) The parable of the Barren Fig Tree (13:6–9) forms the climax of Jesus’ response to “some people” who inform him about certain Galileans killed by Pontius Pilate. The parable concludes Jesus’ riposte that one should be concerned not about the fate of others but about one’s own fate; hence one must repent while there is still time. (v) The parable of the Lost Coin (15:8–10) is joined by Luke to the Q parable of the Lost Sheep as a response to criticism by the Pharisees and scribes over Jesus’ welcoming of sinners (15:2). The same can be said of the third of Luke’s trio of parables about “lostness,” the parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11–32).149 (vi) The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19–31) may perhaps be included in our list, though technically the hostile interchange between the Pharisees, who are said to love money, and Jesus, who announces God’s reversal of socioeconomic values, occurs in vv 14–15 instead of immediately before the parable, which takes up this theme. (vii) The parable of the Widow and the Judge (18:1–8) does not have a full interchange, although Luke gives the parable a special introduction by stating that Jesus told it “to them” (the disciples? the crowd?) to encourage persistent prayer in the face of discouragement. (viii) Likewise, the immediately following parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:9–14) is not introduced by a formal dialogue. But once again, Luke introduces the parable by stating the specific audience and intention of Jesus. The parable is a rebuke and warning “to some who trusted in themselves, thinking that they were righteous, while despising the rest of humanity.” Our brief survey leads to an obvious conclusion. Compared to the parables of Mark and Matthew, and compared even to the Marcan material taken over in the Third Gospel, Luke tends in his L parables (and even in some of his Q parables) to provide an introduction specific to the particular parable that follows. The introduction aims at describing the audience, purpose, and/or theme of the given parable. In a number of cases involving

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L parables, these introductions are expanded by Luke into short dialogues between Jesus and an outsider, thus creating a mini-pronouncement story (alias apophthegm or chreia) as the parable’s introduction. We see this technique applied in different ways in the parables of the Two Debtors, the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Fool—and more loosely in the parables of the Barren Fig Tree, the Lost Coin, the Prodigal Son, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. Interestingly, the Rich Fool ranks alongside the Good Samaritan as the clearest and neatest example of this Lucan redactional tendency. To repeat then: within the compass of the Synoptic parables, only Luke—and only in the L parables proper to him—prefaces a parable with an introductory exchange between Jesus and an outsider. Our rapid review of the whole tradition of NT parables argues strongly for this introductory mechanism being Luke’s own invention within the Synoptic tradition. The corollary of this conclusion is clear. If the introduction (12:13–15) to the L parable of the Rich Fool (12:16–21) is most likely an apt apophthegm created by Luke himself, then the appearance of this same apophthegm in CGT 72, nine sayings after Thomas’ version of the Rich Fool (CGT 63), leads us to a further conclusion: Luke’s introductory anecdote, not some vague shared wisdom tradition, was known directly or indirectly by Thomas and has been taken over, with some notable redactional changes, in CGT 72. If this be so, then a further question arises. If Thomas has taken over CGT 72 from Luke’s Gospel, and if that apophthegm existed in Luke’s Gospel as an anecdote created to introduce the parable of the Rich Fool, is it at all probable that Thomas did not know Luke’s version of the Rich Fool? No doubt some critics would resist this line of reasoning. They would argue that it remains theoretically possible that Luke 12:13–15 and CGT 72 represent two independent forms of a common wisdom tradition. To be sure, we do not have the same word-for-word identity seen, for example, in Matt 10:16b and CGT 39 (the “clever as snakes” saying). Yet there are notable similarities in the flow of the anecdote and even in the wording. 2. Comparison of Luke 12:13–15 and CGT 72 To begin with the obvious, both the Lucan and the Thomasine forms have the same basic structure and content: (a) An unidentified man requests “out of the blue” (neither text supplies further background) that Jesus tell his brother(s) to divide an inheritance. Since in Luke the dispute over the inheritance is between two brothers, the reader would naturally suppose that the goods are inherited from their father. This is made explicit in CGT 72: “the possessions of my father.” This specification allows Thomas to “slip in” a phrase (“my father”) that, for the



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reader initiated into the saving knowledge of the work, resonates with the idea of the supreme, transcendent God revealed by Jesus.150 (b) Jesus replies with a rhetorical question that begins with the vocative address “man”151 and proceeds to ask who has appointed (Thomas: “made”) Jesus a judge or divider (Thomas has only the noun “divider”) in this familial dispute. Jesus’ rhetorical question is obviously a refusal to accede to the man’s request. (c) Instead of clarifying his refusal or its rationale in a direct statement to the man, Jesus rather addresses the larger group around him (Luke: “he said to them”; Thomas: “he turned to his disciples and said to them”). Jesus thus reinforces the refusal implied in his rhetorical question by no longer speaking to the individual petitioner. In Luke and Thomas, the difference in the audience now addressed is not as great as might seem. The last audience Luke specified in chap. 12 was precisely Jesus’ disciples (12:1 + 4), and so that is the group intended by “he said to them” (12:15). Thomas, having no larger narrative context, necessarily has to supply “his disciples” if that is the audience he intends. (d) As is often the case in the Synoptics, when one writer takes over the story of another, the two authors tend to diverge especially at the story’s conclusion (see, e.g., Mark 5:43 || Matt 9:26; Mark 8:21 || Matt 16:12; Mark 8:31–33 || Luke 9:22). So here: Luke has a clear moralizing conclusion in which Jesus exhorts his audience to avoid greed, while Thomas displays his characteristic preference for a cryptic rather than a clear conclusion by repeating Jesus’ rhetorical question. Within this common literary structure, a certain number of similar words or phrases suggest Luke’s hand. To take a few examples: Of the 114 sayings in Thomas, the vast majority of the sayings are introduced by “Jesus said” or “he [Jesus] said.” In a few cases, Jesus is simply understood to be still speaking from the previous saying (so logion 27 after 26). Far fewer sayings are introduced with “his [or: the] disciples.” Mary (Magdalene) introduces saying 21. In saying 60, “he [presumably Jesus] saw” precedes the usual “he [Jesus] said.” In logion 74, an unidentified “he” is the subject of “said”; the immediately following address (“O Lord”) implies that the speaker is a disciple. Intriguingly, logion 79 has the saying introduced by “a woman in the crowd” (as in Luke 11:27), who proceeds to proclaim the beatitude contained only in Luke 11:27, with the Thomasine Jesus replying as he does in Luke 11:28. The second half of saying 79 then switches to Jesus’ ironic/ tragic beatitude, spoken to the women on the way of the cross, in Luke 23:29.152 (Thomas does love conflation of all sorts.) Sayings 91, 100, and 104 begin with an anonymous “they” (possibly adversaries). Last but not

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least, in saying 114, which concludes the whole work, Simon Peter opens the logion by addressing “them” (apparently Jesus and the disciples). The point of this survey of speakers who open individual sayings in Thomas is that the introduction “a man said” (peje ouro¯me, that is, finite verb with past meaning + singular indefinite article + noun “man”) is found in CGT only in saying 72. This is not the same thing as the few other cases of a vague “they said” or “he said” noted earlier, where the subject pronoun is simply part of the verb form. In other words,“a man said” as the opening formula of a saying is not only untypical of Thomas but is actually restricted to a single logion, CGT 72. The relevance of this observation about Thomas’ style can be seen when we turn to Luke and observe an element of his redactional style. There are a number of cases in Luke where the Greek indefinite pronoun tis (“some” or “someone,” but in Hellenistic Greek also used as the functional equivalent of an indefinite article)153 introduces an interlocutor who begins a dialogue with Jesus or provokes a comment from him. The singular form of tis (“a certain person,” “a man”) serves this function in 9:57 (“a man said to him [Jesus]”); 13:23 (“and someone said to him”); 14:15 (“one of those reclining at table”). The plural tines (“some people”) is found performing the same service in, for example, 11:15; 13:1; 21:5. When one comes to appreciate (i) that the Coptic opening of logion 72, peje ouro¯me naf (“a man said to him [Jesus]”) is the functional equivalent of Luke’s opening (12:13), eipen de tis . . . auto˛ˉ (“someone said . . . to him”),154 and (ii) that this opening of a pericope to designate an interlocutor and “outsider” who begins a conversation with Jesus is a characteristic of Luke’s redaction but is foreign to Thomas apart from CGT 72, probability lies on the side of the Lucan form of the anecdote influencing the Thomasine version. The presence of a typically Lucan redactional trait in a solitary instance in Thomas’ text is reinforced by a verbal correspondence mentioned earlier, namely, Jesus’ direct address to his interlocutor as “man.” Indeed, in Thomas, this is the only time that Jesus uses this vocative, “O man” (o¯ pro¯me). As we have seen, this parallels exactly the opening vocative address of the Lucan Jesus in 12:14 (anthro¯pe). The key point here is that while Thomas never has Jesus using this vocative “man” elsewhere in his work, Luke does. And the other Lucan instance where Jesus is the speaker is clearly redactional. In Mark 2:5, Mark (followed by Matthew) has Jesus address the paralytic lowered through the roof with the vocative teknon (“[my] child”). Luke changes that address to his characteristic anthro¯pe (“man”) in 5:20. That Luke tends to use anthro¯pe as a vocative address when his source has some other word is clear from the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus during the Jewish



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trial. Neither in his second nor in his third denial of Jesus does the Marcan Peter use the vocative “man” (Mark 14:69–71), though his third denial runs, “I do not know this man [anthro¯pon] of whom you speak.” Unlike Matthew, who stays fairly close to Mark, Luke pointedly inserts the vocative address anthro¯pe (“man”) into both the second and third denials (Luke 22:58–60). It is thus fair to say that the insertion of the vocative “man” into the beginning of direct address is a redactional trait of Luke, and he employs it twice in his Gospel as Jesus begins to address a man asking for his help (the paralytic and the man disputing an inheritance). In contrast, nowhere in Thomas does Jesus address someone with “man,” except in CGT 72, which, as we have already seen, parallels the unique Lucan pericope 12:13–15 and reflects Lucan redactional traits witnessed elsewhere in the Third Gospel.155 Another striking parallel between Luke and Thomas can be found in Jesus’ negative response to the man’s request by way of a rhetorical question (Luke 12:14): “Man, who has appointed [Thomas: ‘made’] me judge or divider over you [Thomas has only the noun ‘divider,’ and no ‘over you’]?” Luke’s Greek word for “divider” (meriste¯s) is a relatively rare though not undocumented word in Greek literature prior to Luke.156 The few attested usages in the pre-Christian period refer to some sort of public official connected with finances or the distribution of public funds. In the 1st century a.d., the word also seems employed in the more general sense of “divider,” in either a physical or metaphorical sense (e.g., in reference to horoscopes). The only occurrences of the equivalent Coptic noun (refpo¯še) in Thomas are in our logion, CGT 72 (bis). Thomas’ typical tendency to abbreviate and compress the Synoptics is evidenced here in his omission of Luke’s “judge,” which allows Thomas to focus on the idea of “divider” (hence the repetition of the word in Thomas’ version), a function Jesus obviously rejects with his double rhetorical question.157 Jesus’ rejection of the role of divider makes perfect sense in Thomas’ gnosticizing theology. As Jesus indicates in sayings like 50, 61, 77, and 106, he comes from the All, the world of light, the kingdom of the Father, which is by definition the “undivided.” The person who lacks the light of knowledge that Jesus brings remains divided and so is filled with darkness.158 This exaltation of the concept of not being divided coheres with Thomas’ frequent praise of “the one” and “the solitary” (using the Greek noun monachos) as the ideal Christian. Before we turn directly to Luke’s parable of the Rich Fool, one final point may be made about the exact wording of Luke 12:13–15 compared with CGT 72, since some commentators might use a difference in wording to argue against dependence on Luke. As often in Luke, someone addresses Jesus in 12:13 as “teacher” (didaskale), while there is no such introductory

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address in CGT 72.159 Actually, far from arguing for Thomas’ independence of Luke at this point, the omission of “teacher” in an address to Jesus is exactly what we should expect in Thomas. Indeed, it is precisely the disciple Thomas who is depicted in CGT 13 as addressing Jesus with the title “teacher” (in Coptic, psah). Jesus brusquely corrects Thomas, telling him flatly, “I am not your teacher.” With this Thomasine christological stance made clear early on in his work, the surprising thing would have been if the author of Thomas had allowed anyone to address Jesus as teacher after that. Quite consistent with Thomas’ rejection of the title toward the beginning of the work is the total absence of the noun anywhere else in CGT. Hence Thomas’ omission of the title at the beginning of the man’s request to Jesus is what we should expect. If we bring together all these observations comparing Luke 12:13–15 with CGT 72, I would claim that there are sufficient Lucan redactional traits, both large and small, that argue in favor of the Thomasine logion being dependent in some way on Luke’s redactional construction.160 If this be the case, and if Luke has either created or carefully redacted 12:13–15 to directly introduce the parable of the Rich Fool, it is difficult to think that Thomas did not know the parable in its Lucan form as well. This is an important general observation to bear in mind, since I readily admit that the parable proper (Luke 12:16–21) is not as verbally close to its parallel in CGT 63 as is its introduction (12:13–15) to CGT 72. Nevertheless, even in the parable proper we find Lucan traits that are reflected in Thomas’ form of the parable. 3. Comparison of Luke 12:16–21 and CGT 63 Let us begin at the very beginning of the parable. At first glance, it might seem that Thomas’ opening of the parable is so bland that no one would look at it twice: “There was a man [neyen ouro¯me]. . . .” However, this apparently nondescript beginning of a parable bears a traceable fingerprint. Within the Synoptics, only Luke displays a notable tendency to begin narrative parables abruptly with “a man” or “a certain man” (either anthro¯pos tis or simply tis) in the first few words of the parable, without any introductory “the kingdom of heaven is like” or “what do you think?” Among the parables either unique to Luke or heavily redacted by Luke, parables introduced by some form of anthro¯pos tis include the Good Samaritan (10:30, anthro¯pos tis), the Barren Fig Tree (13:6, tis), the Great Supper (Q or more likely L, 14:16, anthro¯pos tis), the Prodigal Son (anthro¯pos tis, 15:11), the Dishonest Steward (16:1, anthro¯pos tis), the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19, anthro¯pos tis), the Talents or Pounds (Q or more likely L, 19:12, anthro¯pos



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tis). No such general tendency is seen in Mark or Matthew, though textual variants make a few individual cases debatable.161 More to the point, in the Synoptic Gospels, the phrase “a [certain] rich man” (anthro¯pos tis plousios) is never used to introduce a narrative parable—except in Luke. Indeed, a quick survey of the distribution of the adjective “rich” (plousios) in the NT is revealing in itself. In the four Gospels, Matthew employs plousios 3x, Mark 2x, Luke 11x, and John 0. No other book in the NT comes close to Luke in the number of occurrences. We are not too surprised, then, to learn that in the whole of the NT, Luke alone uses the phrase “a [certain] rich man.” Moreover, all his usages occur at the beginning of parables unique to Luke: the Rich Fool (12:16), the Dishonest Steward (16:1), and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19).162 We are obviously dealing with an indication of Luke’s redactional hand.163 It is telling, then, that the parable of the Rich Fool in CGT 63 begins with the exact Coptic equivalent of Luke’s anthro¯pou tinos plousiou. Indeed, not only does Thomas’ version begin with ouro¯me emplousios (“a rich man”); even more strikingly, this introduction uses not the Coptic adjective for “rich” but rather the Greek adjective that is a favorite of Luke: plousios.164 As a matter of fact, this is the only time plousios appears in CGT. Elsewhere in CGT, the standard Coptic word for “rich” or “rich man” (remmao) is employed, occurring in sayings 81 and 110. In addition, the Coptic compound noun mentremmao (“riches”) is attested in sayings 29 and 85. In brief, the simplest explanation of why the Greek adjective plousios and indeed the whole Lucan phrase “a rich man” should stand at the beginning of a Thomasine parable—and, in particular, at the beginning of Thomas’ version of the Rich Fool—is dependence, direct or indirect, on Luke’s version of the same. One cannot appeal in this case to the theory that CGT 63 has been assimilated to the standard Sahidic text of Luke, since that text uses the native Coptic, not the Greek, adjective for “rich.”165 Beyond this clear verbal dependence, we also find in the Thomasine version of the Rich Fool a characteristic trait of Luke’s composition, a trait absent in general from the narrative of the Synoptic Gospels but exemplified in a number of Luke’s parables: an extended inner monologue of a main character in the story.166 In fact, in 12:16–21, this monologue takes up a good part of the parable proper. In contrast, there is only one case of a parable in Mark that uses the inner monologue as a literary device, and this monologue is much briefer than the Lucan examples. In the parable of the Evil Tenants, Mark has the owner of the vineyard deliberate quite improbably (Mark 12:6c): “They will respect my son.” There is also a single example of a Q parable containing an inner monologue, again, quite

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brief. In the parable of the Good and Bad Servants (Matt 24:45–51 || Luke 12:41–46), the bad servant calculates: “My master delays [Luke: in coming].” These two monologues, the only ones in the Synoptic parables outside of the L parables, contrast sharply with the longer monologues found only in Luke’s parables.167 Besides the deliberations of the rich man in Luke 12:16–21, these typically Lucan monologues include those of the prodigal son (15:17–19), the dishonest steward (16:3–4), and the unjust judge (18:4–5). We also find such a monologue in the parable of the Servant’s Duty, but this time in the application or nimša¯l (17:10). If we are willing to stretch a point, we might also include in our count the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The whole problem with the Pharisee’s prayer (18:11–12) is that, while it is ostensibly addressed to God in thanksgiving, it is actually a self-congratulatory message addressed to the Pharisee himself (notice, as in the other monologues, the emphasis on “I”). That a relatively long monologue is typical of a Lucan parable can be seen even in the one case where a soliloquy occurs in a Marcan parable, the Evil Tenants. In Mark 12:6c, as we just noted, the father’s deliberation is quite brief: “They will respect my son.” Characteristically, Luke (but not Matthew) expands this into a longer monologue: “What shall I do [a rhetorical question found in a number of Lucan monologues]? I shall send my beloved son. Perhaps they will respect him.”168 When we turn to Thomas, we note that inner monologues of the longer, Lucan kind, are not found in the parables of CGT. Apart from the parable of the Rich Fool, the only example of an inner monologue is in the parable of the Evil Tenants, where the brief monologue is already present in Mark.169 Luke expands this one monologue, while Thomas creates a second short monologue as a balancing, structural device. The upshot of all these comparisons is clear: the only time that Thomas exhibits a parable with a longer monologue is precisely our present case, the only case where Thomas has a parallel with an L parable, and a case where Luke has one of his characteristic long monologues. The story proper concludes both in Luke and in Thomas with a brief and abrupt announcement of the rich man’s death. Both versions of the parable specify emphatically that the death occurs “on this [Thomas: that] very night.” The difference between Luke and Thomas on this point is significant. In Luke, God suddenly speaks (in a dream? in a vision?) directly to the rich man and announces his death. Such a conclusion would be unthinkable in Thomas. The supreme, invisible God (alias the Father) does not appear or act directly in this material world, certainly not in order to speak to a spiritually blind person doomed to die. As a matter of fact, CGT almost



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completely avoids the Coptic word for “god” (noyte), which appears only in two sayings where “god” does not refer to the supreme God, the Father of Jesus.170 Finally, as one would expect, the moralizing application of Luke, making the point of the parable clear, does not fit the esoteric “seek-andfind” program of Thomas and is therefore omitted. Instead Thomas appends his call to “hear,” a favorite tag line of his that we have seen before. Looking back on these various probes into the complex of Luke 12:13– 15 + 16–21 || CGT 72 + 63, I readily grant that no one observation, taken by itself, would establish the dependence of CGT 72 on Luke 12:13–15 or CGT 63 on 12:16–21. However, I think that the detailed comparisons we have run through, when viewed together, do provide converging lines of probability that argue in favor of some sort of dependence. And in such a complicated case as the parable of the Rich Fool, the more probable position among the options available is the best we can hope for. Of the two units, I think the Lucan apophthegm that introduces the parable provides the stronger case for Thomas’ dependence (in CGT 72) than does the parable itself. Yet, if Thomas shows knowledge of the introductory apophthegm, which (i) occurs only in Luke, (ii) has the clear function of introducing the parable, and (iii) may indeed be a Lucan creation, then I think it also more probable than not that Thomas also knew the Lucan parable. This general suspicion is supported by the individual Lucan redactional traits that are reflected in Thomas’ radically abbreviated version of the parable as well.

IV. CONCLUSION We have completed our survey of the relation of Synoptic units and their Thomasine parallels both apart from and within the parable tradition. Outside the parable tradition, we have inspected triple traditions that come from Mark (sometimes with a view to Luke’s redaction of Mark), Marcan material paralleled only by Matthew, special M material, and Q material. The literary genres and content have ranged from proverb-like sayings with an eschatological thrust, wisdom sayings, admonitions about guarding oneself while on mission, a paradoxical beatitude announcing eschatological reversal of values, a christological statement about the division that Jesus’ mission brings, a saying about the cost of discipleship, and an apophthegm about the true mother and brothers of Jesus. Our treatment of the Synoptic parables with Thomasine parallels likewise took care to have every source represented: a Marcan parable of the triple tradition speaking in veiled language of Jesus’ ultimate rejection, a Mark–Q overlap pointing to

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the stark contrast between the kingdom’s small beginnings and its spectacular growth, an M parable dealing with the mysterious presence of evil in the midst of good in this present world, and an L parable warning of the folly of blind trust in and focus upon one’s wealth. In every single case, both inside and outside the parable tradition, no matter what the literary genre or content, we have found it more likely than not that Thomas displays signs of some sort of dependence on the Synoptic material, be that dependence direct or indirect, be it through literary dependence or secondary orality, be it mediated through copies of the Gospel texts, Gospel harmonies, catechetical summaries, or mere memorization, however faulty. It may be that the nature of the dependence on the Synoptic tradition varies from one saying to the next. My ultimate conclusion that the sayings in CGT that are parallel to the Synoptics are actually dependent (directly or indirectly) on the Synoptics is not meant as a claim that CGT is an unimportant text. It is quite important, but not as a primitive and independent source of the sayings of Jesus. Rather, as I have emphasized a number of times, CGT is of great importance within the arc of the reception history of the Synoptic Gospels in the 2d century. It is important because it both (1) displays at great length the conflating tendencies also seen in various patristic works of the 2d century (e.g., the Didache, Polycarp, and Justin Martyr) and (2) points forward to the culmination of the conflating and harmonizing tendencies in Tatian’s Diatessaron. As we come to the end of Chapter 38, what general conclusion can we draw from our investigation of these key texts in Thomas? One important two-part conclusion stands out. On the one hand, as a matter of principle, a critic who is studying Thomas for the first time would be obliged to remain completely open-minded about whether this Gospel knew and used one or more of the Synoptics, or whether Thomas was from start to finish independent of the Synoptics, or whether Thomas displayed dependence on the Synoptics in some of the Synoptic-like logia but not in others. Hence, if one were beginning such an investigation of Thomas for the very first time, the burden of proof would be on anyone making any claim about dependence or independence, one way or the other. On the other hand, at this point in our examination of the evidence, we are no longer starting from scratch. After examining logia 5, 31, 39, 14, 54, 16, 55, 4, and 99 outside the parable tradition, and sayings 20, 65, 66, 57, 72, and 63 inside the parable tradition, we have decided that each case we have probed shows dependence on one or more of the Synoptics. We may rightly conclude, then, that the burden of proof has necessarily shifted. Not only do some of the logia depend on the Synoptics. In those sayings with clear Synoptic parallels, the redaction



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of CGT displays a fairly consistent tendency to conflate and/or abbreviate various forms of the Synoptics to produce the Thomasine version. Indeed, as the work of Michael Fieger and others has shown, this consistent tendency extends far beyond the logia we have examined to most, if not all, of the logia in CGT that have close Synoptic parallels.171 Hence, whoever put the Gospel of Thomas together must have known and used the Synoptic Gospels in his redactional work. We have seen that this holds true even within the restricted compass of the Greek fragments preserved in the Oxyrhynchus papyri. It can be tested and verified to a much greater extent in the full Coptic version of the Gospel that we now have.172 Of course, it remains theoretically possible that the redactor received into his composition an independent logion that he left untouched. But such a claim, made for a specific logion, must be proved, not just asserted or taken for granted on the basis of a supposed consensus. Granted the number of logia that can be shown with high probability to be dependent on the Synoptics, I would maintain that the default assumption should be dependence unless the opposite can be demonstrated in a particular case.173 Having waded through a good number of books and articles arguing for or against the independence of Thomas, I have yet to come across a single commentator who has proved convincingly that any one particular Thomasine logion with a Synoptic parallel is truly independent of the Synoptic tradition. I admit that a number of cases fall into the limbo of non liquet (not clear either way). It is in these instances that what we have seen in our probes and comparisons comes to bear on our judgment. If we have a fair number of clear cases of Thomas’ dependence, witnessed in every Synoptic source and in many different literary genres, then a judgment of non liquet should remain just that. It will not do to nudge a dubious saying over the line into the category of “independent” simply in order to validate a larger hermeneutical program. If anything, the multiple examples we have seen might incline us to presume that unclear cases are most probably products of dependence on the Synoptics. Yet we must remember that this is only a working assumption, not a thesis we have proved in every case. At the very least, though, granted all we have seen, and granted the presumption our investigation creates, it would be highly questionable to invoke any parable in Thomas (or any other logion for that matter) as an independent witness of Jesus’ sayings, with the intention of formulating an argument for the authenticity of a saying or parable on the grounds of multiple attestation of sources. Now that the preliminary question that stood in our way at the end of Chapter 37—can CGT supply multiple attestation?—has been taken out of

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the way, we may move on to our initial inspection and winnowing of the full list of narrative parables in the three Synoptic Gospels. Which ones, if any, offer promise of meeting the challenge of the criteria of historicity? NOTES TO CHAPTER 38 The full formulation of this criterion speaks of multiple attestation “in more than one independent literary source . . . and/or in more than one literary form or genre (e.g., parable, dispute story, miracle story, prophecy, aphorism)” (A Marginal Jew, 1. 147). However, since we are concerned here with only one literary form, i.e., parables, attestation by multiple forms does not come into play. To be sure, we will run across multiple attestation of a given motif or image in various parables, but that does not give us multiple attestation of an individual parable. 1

The language of “it is more likely than not” is chosen to underline the fact that, granted the limited and sometimes fuzzy nature of the evidence, the best we can hope for is a judgment about which position is more probable. 2

3 A Marginal Jew, 1. 124–39. The patient reader who has traversed all five volumes of this work will realize that these pages in Volume One (like much of the material in Volume One) merely outlined a position that would have to be probed at greater length in subsequent volumes. Some critics seem to have imagined that Volume One exhausted all I had to say on the subject of CGT.—A reminder about nomenclature may be useful at this point: the Gospel of Thomas and Thomas serve as the umbrella terms for a 2d-century Christian work preserved in both Greek fragments (the Oxyrhynchus papyri 1, 654, and 655) and a full Coptic translation with some lacunae, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (= CGT). The adjective referring to any form of this work is “Thomasine.” At times I will interchange the terms Gospel of Thomas, Thomas, and CGT simply for stylistic reasons, to avoid a wearisome repetition of the same term. This interchange is possible in the present discussion because the Greek fragments do not contain an example of a full narrative parable that is also found in the Synoptics. 4 A zealous reader of all the volumes of A Marginal Jew who remembers well the treatment of CGT in Volume One should feel free to skip section II of this chapter and proceed immediately to the individual probes in section III. But for all those who either have not read Volume One or retain only a vague recollection of pp. 124–39, the present section will serve to situate the individual probes within a larger context.

See my comments on this tendency in Meier, “On Retrojecting Later Questions from Later Texts,” 511–27. 5

6 See A Marginal Jew, 1. 112–66. Especially useful are Edouard Massaux, Influence de l’évangile de saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant saint Irénée



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(Universitas catholica Lovanensis 2/42; Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1950; reprint with supplements, Louvain: University Press, 1986); Wolf-Dietrich Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irenäus (WUNT 2/24; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987). For the possible influence of Paul’s epistles or even the Epistle to the Hebrews on Thomas, see Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas. Original Language and Influences (SNTSMS 151; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2012), 227–62. More in favor of seeing ongoing oral tradition rather than the literary influence of the Gospels in early 2d-century literature is Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels. Their History and Development (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity, 1990). 7 See examples cited in A Marginal Jew, 4. 227–30 nn. 77–80; 232–33 n. 89; 598 nn. 80–81; 615–16 n. 176; 631–32 n. 263.

The hypothesis of a Syriac original of Thomas is championed by Nicholas Perrin in his Thomas and Tatian; see his continued defense of Syriac as the original language of Thomas in his “The Aramaic Origins of the Gospel of Thomas—Revisited,” Das Thomasevangelium. Entstehung—Rezeption—Theologie (BZNW 157; ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008) 50–59. In favor of composition in Greek (the common view) is Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 19–125. However, Gathercole (p. 125) makes a careful and salutary distinction on this point. On the one hand, “a Greek Vorlage to the Coptic version of Thomas is a virtual certainty. . . .” On the other hand, while admitting that certitude on the question of the original language of the work is difficult to attain, he thinks it more likely than not that Thomas was originally composed in Greek rather than in Aramaic. In any case, instances of verbal or conceptual links between the sayings in Thomas are by no means limited to a hypothetical original composed in Syriac. Many such links are pointed out in CGT by Nordsieck, Das Thomas-Evangelium; see, e.g., pp. 34, 178, 248, 253, 374, 384. 8

The phrase “split the wood” in P.Oxy. 1 at the end of a saying in lines 23–30 (the first part of this Greek saying corresponds to CGT 30) appears in CGT as part of the second half of saying 77. The reason for this transposition seems to be that the Coptic word po¯h, which can be either the verb “to reach” or the verb “to split,” occurs in both saying 77a and saying 77b. Moreover, while the saying at the end of lines 23–30 in P.Oxy. 1 has the word order of “Lift the stone and you will find me; split the wood and I am there,” this order is reversed in CGT 77, probably to position the two occurrences of po¯h almost next to each other, with only one Coptic word intervening. 9

On these juxtapositions as indicators of dependence on the Synoptics, see JeanMarie Sevrin, “Un groupement de trois paraboles contre les richesses dans l’Evangile selon Thomas. EvTh 63, 64, 65,” Les paraboles évangéliques. Perspectives nouvelles (ed. Jean Delorme; Paris: Cerf, 1989) 425–39; cf. Boudewijn Dehandschutter, “L’Evangile de Thomas comme collection de paroles de Jésus,” Logia—Les Paroles de Jésus—The Sayings of Jesus (BETL 59; ed. Joël Delobel; Leuven: Peeters/Leuven 10

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University, 1982) 507–15, esp. 511–13; idem, “Les paraboles de l’Evangile selon Thomas. La parabole du trésor caché (log. 109),” ETL 47 (1971) 199–219; idem, “La parabole de la perle (Mt 13, 45–46) et l’Evangile selon Thomas,” ETL 55 (1979) 243–65. A point emphasized by Goodacre (Thomas and the Gospels, 20–25). He also rightly observes that this general observation is not sufficient in itself, but must be followed up by detailed analysis of individual parallels, a project he undertakes in the core of his book. 11

12

I will argue this position at length in Chapter 40.

13

The argument for this view will be laid out in Chapter 39.

Schrage, Das Verhältnis; Fieger, Das Thomasevangelium; Nordsieck, Das Thomas-Evangelium; DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation; Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas. 14

15 I will not weigh down these endnotes with a regularly recurring litany of scholars on one or the other side of the debate; just a few representative names and works will be cited. For a full list of differing opinions held by various scholars in the case of each logion, see, e.g., Nordsieck, Das Thomas-Evangelium; DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation.

On this methodological point, see Frey, “Die Lilien und das Gewand,” 122–80, esp. 146–47. However, I would not be as pessimistic as Frey when it comes to sayings where we have only the later Coptic version. In a number of cases where we do have the ability to check, the Coptic version of a saying faithfully reproduces the form we have in the Greek papyri fragments. We should not presume a priori that this is not the case when we have only the Coptic text. As Frey himself emphasizes, each case must be tested and evaluated on its own merits. 16

On this saying, see Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” 145–46; Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 187–88; idem, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 222. 17

18 By introducing phaneron in the first half of v 17, Luke creates a neat balance, since the second half of the verse ends with eis phaneron elthe˛ˉ (taken over, with a slight change of word order, from the second half of Mark 4:22).

As Gathercole (“Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 114–44, esp. 125 n. 49) points out, one could conceivably supply some other restoration. All the more significant, then, is the agreement on the restoration of phaneron gene¯setai among many different scholars, some of whom maintain Thomas’ independence of the Synoptics, while others argue for his dependence. 19



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Instead of a relative clause, the circumstantial form of the verb is employed. For all practical purposes, though, Luke’s reformulation is witnessed by CGT 5, since the circumstantial form of the verb is the common substitute for relative clauses when the antecedent is indefinite.—In my argument I stress the agreement between the Greek of P.Oxy. 654.27–31 and Luke 8:17, since that is the clearest and most telling parallel. One might press the argument further by pointing out that a parallel to the preceding clause in P.Oxy. 654.27–31 ([to kekalymmenon] apo sou apokalyphthe¯set[ai soi . . .]) can be found in Matt 10:26 (kekalymmenon ho ouk apokalyphthe¯setai). The future passive apokalyphthe¯setai is a striking agreement, but the argument is somewhat weakened by the fact that the participle kekalymmenon must be completely supplied in the lacuna in P.Oxy. 654. If the Matthean parallel were to be accepted, we would have here not simply an example of the dependence of Thomas on Luke, but also an example of Thomas’ tendency, documented in my main text, to conflate Matthew and Luke. 20

This is nevertheless the approach taken by some; see, e.g., DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 60–61. Remarkably, Nordsieck (Das ThomasEvangelium, 45–47), who usually brushes aside evidence of Thomas’ dependence on the Synoptics, allows that this logion is probably influenced by Luke’s redaction, though perhaps via oral tradition. 21

22

This point is missed by Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 21–22.

The length of Frey’s argument precludes its repetition here; see “Die Lilien und das Gewand,” 122–80; a quick synopsis of his conclusions can be found on pp. 165, 169, 176–80. It is of special interest for my own presentation that Frey detects in Thomas both a tendency to abbreviate his source (more notable in the Coptic than in the Greek logion he examines) and traces of Lucan influence. This will be a regularly recurring observation in the probes of Thomas that I present in the main text. 23

See Gathercole (“Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 125–38) for the ten test cases (counting CGT 65–66 as distinct units): CGT 5, 26, 31, 33, 47, 65–66, 99, 100, and 104 (not in that order in the article and not, as Gathercole stresses, with equal probative force in every example). At the end of his probes, Gathercole (p. 143) concludes that Luke’s influence on Thomas was “very probably indirect,” perhaps “via a written Gospel harmony” and “secondary orality.” While on the whole I agree with Gathercole in this matter, some of the examples we shall see further on might argue for scribal conflation in individual cases. (Gathercole has taken up his article into his monograph, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 185–208, along with a few additional logia.) Granted the tradition-history connection between Paul and Luke, it is probably not by happenstance that Gathercole also sees some kind of influence (direct or indirect) of Paul on Thomas; see Simon Gathercole, “The Influence of Paul on the Gospel of Thomas (§§53.3 and 17),” Das Thomasevangelium. Entstehung–Rezeption–Theologie (BZNW 157; ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and Jens Schröter; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008) 72–94; 24

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cf. Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 227–49. For further arguments in favor of the dependence of CGT on Luke along with detailed bibliography on earlier stages of the debate, see Boudewijn Dehandschutter, “L’Evangile selon Thomas: témoin d’une tradition prélucanienne?,” L’Evangile de Luc. The Gospel of Luke (BETL 32; ed. Frans Neirynck; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 1989) 197–207. Patterson, in his treatment of CGT 31 (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 31– 32), never engages in a detailed comparison of the wording and syntax of the Greek text of the four canonical Gospels plus P.Oxy. 1.30–35. Instead, his starting point is the tradition-historical theories of Rudolf Bultmann and Emil Wendling, which are never fact-checked against all the different Greek texts available for control. 25

Neither of the two Pauline passages refers to Jesus. 1 Cor 4:10 speaks ironically of Paul and other apostles; 1 Cor 12:23 refers to those parts of the human body that are commonly deemed less honorable (i.e., presentable in public). 26

On the question of Luke’s redaction of Mark 6:1–6 in order to create a programmatic scene inaugurating Jesus’ public ministry, see A Marginal Jew, 1. 270–71 and the literature cited there. While admitting that Luke also draws upon strands of Q and L tradition to fill out the grand salvation-historical scene that the Third Evangelist creates in 4:16–30, Ulrich Busse (Das Nazareth-Manifest Jesu: eine Einführung in das lukanische Jesusbild nach Lk 4,16–30 [SBS 91; Stuttgart: KBW, 1978] 40–41) judges that Luke 4:24 is simply Luke’s taking over of Mark 6:4 with the substitution of dektos for atimos. Luke’s wording of the verse in the larger narrative context is meant to insert Jesus into the fate of the OT prophets that is firmly established in Luke’s view of salvation history: i.e., constant rejection of the prophets within the overarching framework of promise and fulfillment as God directs human history to his goal of universal salvation. Various other commentators suggest one or another type of combination of stray traditions and Luke’s redaction of Mark to explain Luke’s composition; see, e.g., Bultmann, Die Geschichte, 31, 122; Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke 1. 526–27. 27

On various theories about tradition and redaction in Peter’s speech to Cornelius and in the whole of Acts 10, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (AYB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998) 459–60; Josef Zmijewski, Die Apostelgeschichte (RNT; Regensburg: Pustet, 1994) 408–16. That Luke is responsible for the contents of Peter’s sermon is stressed by C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (ICC; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: Clark, 1994, 1998) 1. 497. Taking a somewhat different view, Gerhard Schneider (Die Apostelgeschichte [HTKNT 5; 2 vols.; Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 1980, 1982] 2. 63) maintains that Luke has taken over a traditional missionary sermon to the Jews and has adapted it to the situation in Acts 10. For a quite detailed consideration of the various theories about tradition and redaction in Acts 10, see Alfons Weiser, Die Apostelgeschichte (Ökumenischer Taschenbuchkommentar zum Neuen Testament 5; 2 vols.; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus [Mohn]; Würzburg: 28



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Echter, 1981, 1985) 1. 258–59. Weiser concludes that 10:35 (with dektos) is one of the verses that in content and style is typically Lucan. 29 It should be noted that the word “Nazareth” occurs only in Luke’s introduction to the story of Jesus’ rejection after preaching in the synagogue in his patris; Nazareth is not named in the Marcan or Matthean versions of the story. However, the larger context of Mark and Matthew argues that in their versions of the story the word patris likewise refers to Nazareth. All three Synoptics have made it clear by this point that Jesus either was raised in Nazareth or was known as being “from Nazareth”—or alternately as “the Nazarene” or “the Nazorean” (see Mark 1:9,24; Matt 2:23; 4:13; Luke 2:4,39,51). That patris does not carry the more general sense of “homeland” in the Synoptic story of his rejection is made clear from the reference to his going into “the [or: their] synagogue” to teach; hence patris refers to a particular place that has a synagogue—a synagogue in which those present know Jesus from his all-too-ordinary past with them and who are therefore offended by what strikes them as his unfounded claims to be a teacher, prophet, and/or miracle worker. Within the redactional context of all three Synoptics, this makes sense only in Nazareth. In contrast, in the context of John 4:43–45, patris seems to refer to a general region or territory, not a specific town. Note that there is no reference to a synagogue in the context. In the Fourth Gospel, the one great rejection of Jesus during his public ministry in Galilee occurs not in the synagogue at Nazareth but rather in the synagogue at Capernaum (6:59), at the end of his Bread of Life discourse (6:60–71). The climactic rejection of the Johannine Jesus, foreshadowed in the Prologue (1:10–11), is acted out in the Passion Narrative (chaps. 18–19).

Even if one should prefer the view that Luke 4:24 reflects a special L form of the saying, we would still be left in logion 31 with the same overall pattern that is found elsewhere in Thomas (and that we shall see repeatedly in subsequent examples): a meshing of various Synoptic forms of a saying, often with a tendency to “lean toward” Luke. Hence it will not do simply to appeal to a supposed tradition common to L and Thomas’ source. That does not explain the meshing pattern verified both here and elsewhere in Thomas. 30

The Coptic version of the saying, CGT 31 (first half), faithfully translates the version in Greek Thomas (P.Oxy. 1.30–35). The only slight change is that the noun “prophet” follows immediately upon the negative “there is not” (Coptic men) with “acceptable” (in Coptic še¯p, the qualitative form of the verb šo¯p, “to accept”) immediately after “prophet.” In effect, this represents the order found in the Greek of Luke 4:24; but the order of CGT 31 is in all likelihood due simply to the natural syntactical order of the Coptic (cf. the same order of words in the standard Sahidic version of Luke 4:24, which, however, evinces slightly different wording; hence CGT 31 is not simply a result of harmonization with the standard Sahidic). 31

32 There is a slight but intriguing distinction between the wording of P.Oxy. 1 and Coptic Thomas when it comes to the verb “to heal” in logion 31. The Greek

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f­ ragment uses a verb + noun construction, saying literally “do healings” (poiei therapeias). Just possibly, this may reflect Matthew’s rewriting of Mark in Matt 13:58: “And he [Jesus] did not do [epoie¯sen] many miracles.” The Coptic text of Thomas instead uses the verb form (therapeuo¯), which agrees with the Marcan and Lucan wording. That Thomas should introduce into this saying the idea that knowing a physician excludes being healed by him (an idea contrary to experience and common sense) may reflect his own redactional (gnosticizing?) concerns. On the odd nature of this idea, see Gathercole, “Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 126 n. 52; cf. idem, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 344–45. 33 The slight difference in wording at the beginning of the saying is probably to be explained by the different contexts of Matthew and Thomas. In Matt 10:16a, which is part of the Matthean missionary discourse, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the danger into which he is knowingly sending them: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Fittingly, then, Matt 10:16b is introduced as an exhortation that logically follows from 16a: “Therefore become clever. . . .” Since Thomas is a loose collection of sayings, logion 39 does not have a missionary charge as its overarching context. Rather, in both the Greek and Coptic versions of the logion, the first part of logion 39 is a critical statement about Jesus’ adversaries: “The Pharisees and the scribes took [away] the key[s] of knowledge. They hid them. Neither did they enter nor did they allow those trying [or: those who want] to enter to enter.” In contrast to the Pharisees and scribes, the second half of the logion emphatically shifts to the opposite type of conduct demanded of the disciples: “But you, become clever. . . .” Otherwise, the only notable difference in wording is in P.Oxy. 655, where the nouns “snakes” and “doves” seem to lack the definite articles present in both Matt 10:16b and CGT 39. However, one must take into account that the text of logion 39 in P.Oxy. 655 has many lacunae, and so any restoration must labor under some degree of uncertainty. Some scholars do in fact read the definite article with both nouns. For the critical text of P.Oxy. 655 (col. ii. 11–23) with notes, see Attridge, “Appendix. The Greek Fragments,” 123–24. Fortunately, the Coptic text of logion 39 does not suffer from the same problem. In the end, though, the presence or absence of the definite articles makes no difference in meaning, since the definite articles in Matt 10:16b carry a generic sense (note their absence in standard English translations). On Matt 10:16b and Thomas, see also Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 124. 34 On the missionary discourses, see A Marginal Jew, 3. 154–63 and the literature cited there. On Mark–Q overlaps, see in particular Rudolf Laufen, Die Doppelüberlieferungen der Logienquelle und des Markusevangeliums (BBB 54; Bonn: Hanstein, 1980).

Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 111) overlooks the function of 10:16b within the structure of the missionary discourse when he claims that “it is . . . only loosely attached to its context.” 35



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A parade example of this problem is Matt 28:16–20, the “Great Commission” pericope that ends Matthew’s Gospel. For the problem of tradition and redaction in this text, see John P. Meier, “Two Disputed Questions in Matt 28:16–20,” JBL 96 (1977) 407–24. 36

The adjective phronimos occurs in the NT in Matt 7:24; 10:16; 24:45; 25:2,4,8,9; Luke 12:42; 16:8; Rom 11:25; 12:16; 1 Cor 4:10; 10:15; 2 Cor 11:19. Since Mark and John do not use the word, and since of the two occurrences in Luke only one is a Q tradition (Matt 24:45 || Luke 12:42), six out of the seven occurrences in Matthew must be judged either M tradition or Matthean redaction. 37

38 Commentaries on Matthew regularly cite as the grand parallel a statement attributed to Rabbi Judah bar Simeon (a rabbinic teacher from the 4th century a.d.). The statement is found in Midrash Rabbah on the Song of Songs (2.14): “With me [God is the speaker] they [the Israelites] are innocent like doves, but with the nations they are cunning like serpents.” (The English translation is that of Maurice Simon, Midrash Rabbah. Song of Songs [3d ed.; London/New York: Soncino, 1983] 128). A common dating for this rabbinic midrash is ca. 6th century a.d., which would put the collection roughly half a millennium after Matthew’s Gospel. This hardly qualifies as proof of a widespread proverb before or around the time of Matthew, especially since the thought content of the midrashic passage is not that of Matt 10:16b. More to the point, the rabbinic text does not reproduce the precise wording of 10:16b, something that P.Oxy. 655 and CGT 39 both do. Another parallel sometimes cited is from a Coptic tractate found at Nag Hammadi titled The Teaching of Silvanus, a type of Christian wisdom literature; for an introduction, Coptic text, and French translation, see Yvonne Janssens, Les Leçons de Silvanos (NH VII, 4) (Bibliothèque Copte de Nag Hammadi; Section Textes 13; Quebec: L’Université Laval, 1983). In 95:7–11 (pp. 48–49), in a warning to beware of the tricks of Satan, the wisdom teacher exhorts the student to combine the wisdom of the snake and the innocence of the dove. The Teaching of Silvanus was probably written in the late 2d or early 3d century a.d.; once again, it does not reproduce the exact wording of Matt 10:16b. Probably the earliest use (and recycling) of Matt 10:16b is to be found in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. In Pol. 2:2, Ignatius alludes to Matt 10:16b; but he both changes the verb, adjectives, and nouns to the singular (since he is reformulating the text as a personal exhortation to Polycarp) and adds adverbial emphasis: “Be as clever as the snake in all things and innocent always as the dove.” This is but one of a number of uses (but never direct, word-for-word citations) of Matthew’s Gospel by Ignatius; see, e.g., Smyrn. 1:1; Phld. 3:1; Eph. 19:1–3; cf. Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums, 72–96; John P. Meier, “Matthew and Ignatius: A Response to William R. Schoedel,” in Social History of the Matthean Community (ed. David L. Balch; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 178–86. 39 Donald A. Hagner (Matthew [Word Biblical Commentary; 2 vols.; 33A and B; Dallas: Word, 1993, 1995] 1. 279) suggests guardedly that 10:16b “may well reflect

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a popular proverb”; Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 39) states that the saying was “a probably independently circulating word of wisdom”; similarly, Heinrich Greeven, “peristera,” TDNT 6 (1968) 70 n. 70; Nordsieck, Das Thomas-Evangelium, 166. Dieter Zeller (Die weisheitlichen Mahnsprüche bei den Synoptikern [Forschung zur Bibel 17; Würzburg: Echter, 1977] 136) considers 10:16b to be a paradoxical expression of profane wisdom that, through the process of early Christian tradition, became a saying of Jesus. Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 36) sees the saying as “a common Jewish mashal,” giving as the basis for that judgment a citation from Bultmann (Geschichte, 112), who simply repeats the reference to our old friend, the Midrash on the Song of Songs (see earlier in this note). It is telling that none of these authors can offer an example of this precise proverb or word of wisdom prior to or around the time of Matthew. In particular, neither Philo nor Josephus offers a strict parallel in thought and wording. A search of the Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament (ed. M. Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, and Carsten Colpe; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995) likewise comes up empty-handed. The absence of an exact parallel prior to Matthew is especially striking in the work of DeConick (The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 160), who usually supplies abundant parallels to individual sayings. Some commentators, perhaps in desperation, cast the net farther into the deep (e.g., T. Naph. 8:9–10, in its present form a Christian work), but the verbal similarities (not to mention the thought content) of such texts are so distant that they cannot be called parallels in any meaningful sense of the word. For this view, see, e.g., Robert H. Gundry, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 191. Indeed, the exact reproduction of the wording of Matt 10:16b extends even to the imperative verb “become” (ginesthe), which appears in P.Oxy. 655 (restored) and is accurately rendered in CGT 39 by the Coptic verb for “become” (šo¯pe). As a matter of fact, W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr. (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew [ICC; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: Clark, 1988, 1991, 1997] 2. 180–81) judge the imperative verb in Matt 10:16b to be redactional. That a person citing or translating Matt 10:16b would more naturally say or write “be” rather than “become” is supported not only by the Latin Vulgate (estote) but also by almost every English Bible translation of this verse from the KJV onward.—Ulrich Luz (Matthew [Hermeneia; 3 vols.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989, 2001, 2005] 2. 85) tries to argue that 10:16b most likely comes from the M tradition (perhaps already meshed with Q) because it runs counter to Matthew’s redactional theology. Despite Luz’s attempts to deflect appeals to other passages in Matthew, his reasoning seems odd, granted Matthew’s regular exaltation of those who act in a prudent manner (e.g., 7:24; 10:23 [within the missionary discourse!]; 24:45; 25:2) as well as those who act with pure intention and integrity (e.g., 5:8,13,27–30,48; 6:1; 15:10–20; 23:25–28). 40

See A Marginal Jew, 4. 384–97; cf. Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 178–79; idem, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 271 n. 20. 41



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As Schrage notes (Das Verhältnis, 56 n. 10), the Coptic demonstrative pronoun pai (“this”) would be more usual as the translation of the Greek demonstrative pronoun touto than the Coptic 3d person singular masculine personal pronoun e ntof (“he,” “it”). Yet even Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 66), who is a defender of Thomas’ independence of the Synoptics, retroverts the Coptic entof as the Greek touto.—A stylistic note is in order here: the transliteration of Coptic words follows the style sheet of the CBQ. This requires that the English letters that are ordinarily used to transliterate the Greek alphabet be used as well for Coptic letters that are the same as Greek. For the special Coptic letters of the alphabet, š is used for šai, f for fai, h for hori, j for janjia, cˇ for cˇima, and ti for the digraph ti. The supralinear stroke is represented by a raised e. Semivowels, diphthongs, and double vowels do not receive special representation in this system. Hence, for example, the Coptic word for “father” is transliterated as eio¯t, and not as yo¯t. 42

Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 24–25) declares that the version of Mark 7:15 || Matt 15:11 found in CGT 14 can be considered an independent saying that Thomas acquired “via a tradition-historical stream” independent of Mark’s Gospel. Patterson notably fails to engage in a detailed comparison of the Greek texts of Mark and Matthew and then correlate the results with the strikingly Matthewlike version of CGT 14. On p. 25 n. 33, he briefly mentions the fact that both Matthew and CGT add “mouth” to the saying, but dismisses this identical phrasing with an appeal to “an independent effort by both authors to clarify the saying.” The other Matthean redactional changes to Mark that are witnessed at the end of CGT 14 are simply ignored.—An alternate escape hatch, when signs of dependence on the Synoptics become too strong for easy dismissal, is to appeal to the possibility that Christian scribes assimilated the text of CGT to the standard text of the Sahidic NT. There are a number of problems with this solution; I touch upon a few here. (1) At times the argument for assimilation threatens to become circular. Assimilation to the standard Sahidic NT is of course a possibility. Sometimes, though, the assertion of the possibility quickly mutates into the assertion of the fact of assimilation, with no detailed argument about the individual text being offered. Behind this jump from possibility to fact seems to lie an unspoken and circular argument: because we already know (on what grounds?) that CGT is independent of the Synoptic Gospels, any strong signs of dependence (e.g., Matthew or Luke’s redactional changes to Mark or Q) must be the result of scribal assimilation. (2) As we shall soon see, a common phenomenon in the sayings of CGT that parallel the Synoptics is the tendency to mesh or conflate the Matthean and Lucan versions of a saying, with a slight preference for Luke. However one explains this phenomenon, it cannot be explained simply as “scribal assimilation.” The resulting text in CGT corresponds to no one form of the standard Sahidic NT. For example, in the detailed examination of the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (CGT 65–66) offered in the main text, we find traces of both Matthew and Mark, but it is Luke’s redactional fingerprints that are most visible—as well as Luke’s tendency to abbreviate the parable, which Thomas pushes to the extreme. The resulting text in Thomas can hardly 43

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be described as scribal assimilation to any one Gospel text. Moreover, studies of the patristic use of the Synoptics in the pre-Nicene period indicate a definite preference for the Matthean version of a saying and the tendency to assimilate texts to the Matthean form. This is not what we find in general in the CGT. At the same time, there is an obvious reason why in CGT 14 we would find strong resemblances to Matthew rather than to Luke (with no conflation between Matthew and Luke): Luke does not take over Mark 7:15. Then, too, if the resemblance of CGT 14 to the Matthean text were simply a matter of mechanical scribal assimilation, we must ask why the assimilation is so uneven: e.g., the gar introducing the saying in CGT 14, a conjunction not present in Matthew; the use of the Coptic 2d person plural pronoun as the object of the verb “defile” instead of the generic ton anthro¯pon as in Matthew. (3) More specifically, in the logion under consideration, one cannot appeal to a supposed scribal assimilation of CGT 14 to the standard Sahidic text of Matthew. Sahidic Matt 15:11 differs in notable ways from the end of logion 14 in CGT; see the comparison in Schrage, Das Verhältnis, 55–56. To take but one instance: the resumptive pronoun in CGT 14 entof is not present in Sahidic Matt 15:11, and interestingly Sahidic Mark 7:15 has the plural entooy. The only plausible explanation of CGT’s resumptive 3d person singular pronoun entof is a not entirely elegant rendering of the resumptive 3d person singular pronoun touto in Greek Matt 15:11. (4) Broadening out the claim of scribal assimilation to encompass the whole of CGT, we notice that this claim is not verified by certain key theological words and phrases that would be the most obvious candidates for assimilation but that strangely do not evidence assimilation in Thomas. For example, as shall be noted later on, Mark, Luke, and even John speak without exception of “the kingdom of God.” Matthew instead, while having a few occurrences of “the kingdom of God,” regularly changes the phrase to “the kingdom of heaven,” which is a usage unique to him in the NT. The supposedly assimilating Thomas has few occurrences of either phrase. Indeed, the Coptic text of Thomas has no occurrence of “kingdom of God” whatever. Rather, it regularly employs the absolute “the kingdom” or “the kingdom of the [or: my] Father.” If assimilation is not regularly verified in this most central of Synoptic concepts, why should we assume it elsewhere? See G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Doubleday/Image, 2001, originally 1908) 57. 44

I would maintain that when Luke’s first beatitude is read as a whole, the second half of the beatitude makes clear that the first half is to be understood as being in the 2d person (no verb or subject is expressed in the Greek). Hence hoi pto¯choi in Luke 6:20b should be understood as either vocative or in apposition to the understood subject “you.” In Matthew, in contrast, hoi pto¯choi is the subject of the understood verb. 45

46

See A Marginal Jew, 2. 319–21.

Faced with the fact that within the whole corpus of the Jewish Scriptures, the LXX, the OT Pseudepigrapha prior to the 2d century a.d., the NT, and the Apostolic 47



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Fathers, Matthew alone uses “kingdom of heaven(s)” and that he pointedly does so when redacting Marcan and Q material, Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 42–43) can only assert: “. . . that Thomas and Matthew independently of one another altered an original version of the saying about ‘God’s kingdom’ is not at all unlikely. Both apparently shared the Jewish aversion to using the divine name.” This is an odd claim for a number of reasons: (1) While the Coptic version of Thomas never uses the phrase “kingdom of God,” the phrase does appear once or twice (depending on emendations) in the Greek fragments of Thomas. Hence the author(s) of the Greek original Thomas did not in principle avoid the phrase. Moreover, in CGT, the Coptic word for “god” (noyte) does occur multiple times in logia 30 and 100. (2) It is strange to appeal to “the Jewish aversion” of the author of Thomas, in the face of the hostility that the text often shows to Jewish observances, prophecy, and indeed the Jewish Scriptures in general. (3) Logion 30 may suggest that the relative avoidance of the Coptic noun noyte (“god”) in CGT is due to inner-Christian theological disputes. (4) It flies in the face of statistical fact to claim that Matthew “shared the Jewish aversion to using the divine name” when Matthew uses the word theos (God) some 55 times (depending on how one judges variant readings), including a few cases of “kingdom of God.” 48 Thomas likewise reads literally “kingdom of the heavens,” the Coptic word for “the heavens” being in the plural: empe¯ye. 49 It may be that Thomas drops “in spirit” because for him spiritual poverty means a lack of true, saving gno¯sis (cf. logion 29). As Quarles (“The Use of the Gospel of Thomas,” 517–36, esp. 522) observes, the presence of “kingdom of heaven” in this saying cannot be attributed to Thomas’ redactional preference. As I noted earlier, CGT prefers the absolute form “the kingdom” or (less frequently) “the kingdom of the Father.” Matthew’s “kingdom of heaven” is found only three times in Thomas: logia 20, 54, and 114—the first two cases being clearly derived from the Matthean parallel. Since the conclusion of the standard Sahidic text of Luke 6:20 contains an assimilation to Matthew’s “kingdom of heaven,” one might argue that CGT 54 has been secondarily assimilated by Christian scribes to the standard Sahidic text of Luke. However, this approach must face the objection that the Sahidic form of Luke 6:20 has become so assimilated to the Matthean form that the original Lucan “yours is the kingdom of God” has been replaced by the Matthean “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Such a sweeping assimilation of the second half of Luke’s beatitude to Matthew, though present in the standard Sahidic Coptic version, is not present in CGT 54. That assimilation to the standard Sahidic version of the Gospels is not the explanation of CGT 54 is also made clear by the fact that (1) CGT 54 expresses the initial adjective “fortunate” or “blessed” with the Greek adjective makarios, while both Matt 5:3 and Luke 6:20 in the standard Sahidic NT use the Coptic inflected predicate adjective naiatoy; and (2) CGT 54 uses the copulative ne in the first half of the beatitude; the standard Sahidic’s naiatoy is followed by the marker en, which is followed in turn by the subject.

Quarles (“The Use of the Gospel of Thomas,” 518–24) offers a convincing refutation of John Dominic Crossan’s attempt to explain away the conflation of 50

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Matthew and Luke in CGT 54; cf. Crossan’s Four Other Gospels. Shadows on the Contours of Canon (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985) 37. In effect, Crossan dismisses the possibility of conflation with a wave of the hand, declaring that it would be “simpler to suggest that Thomas was mentally unstable.” This is a cavalier refusal to take into consideration the phenomenon of conflation in 2d-century Christian writings such as the Didache, Justin Martyr, and Polycarp (see the next note). A similar criticism of Crossan’s argument can be found in Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels, 50–52. Gathercole (The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 424) observes that scholars who champion the independence of this Thomasine logion “often work with too scribal a model of possible dependence”; secondary orality must be considered as a possibility here. 51 On examples of conflation in the Didache and in Justin Martyr (especially with regard to love commands and the Golden Rule), see A Marginal Jew, 4. 501; 598 n. 80; 631–32 n. 263; on Justin Martyr’s version of Jesus’ prohibition of oaths, see 232–33 n. 89. In Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians 2:3, the wording (makarioi hoi pto¯choi kai hoi dio¯komenoi heneken dikaiosyne¯s hoti auto¯n estin he¯ basileia tou theou) reflects basically a fusing of Matt 5:3 + 10 conflated with some traits of the Lucan beatitudes (omission of “in spirit,” “kingdom of God”). 52 On CGT 16, see Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” 146–47. Tuckett thinks that the strong agreement with Luke against Matthew at certain points argues against the theory of the later scribal assimilation of Thomas to the standard Coptic NT, since Matthew, not Luke, became the most popular Synoptic Gospel in the patristic church. 53 For a detailed treatment of Luke 12:51–53, see the survey of opinions by Albrecht Garsky and Christoph Heil in Documenta Q. Q 12:49–59 (ed. Albrecht Garsky et al.; Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 62–157; in more summary form, The Critical Edition of Q (ed. James M. Robinson and John S. Kloppenborg; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 377–87. In The Critical Edition of Q, neither the Matthean nor the Lucan version is judged to be entirely free from redactional additions. In particular, in Matt 10:34 || Luke 12:51, Matthew’s “sword” is preferred to Luke’s “division” for the Q reconstruction; Luke 12:52 is omitted in the Q reconstruction (presumably because it is judged to be Lucan redaction); Matt 10:35 is on the whole preferred to the more expansive Luke 12:53; but Matt 10:36 is not included in the Q reconstruction and is presumably judged redactional. Similarly, Fitzmyer (The Gospel According to Luke, 2. 994) judges that Luke “redactionally added v. 52 and modified v. 53.” One may note that the hypothetical construction of the Q saying in Documenta Q, done by scholars who are hardly intent on proving that Thomas is dependent on the Synoptics, makes Patterson’s claim (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 25–26) that Thomas simply reflects a primitive Q form of the saying appear quite weak. 54 For views widely held among commentators concerning the Matthean and Lucan redactional elements in Matt 10:34–36 || Luke 12:51–53, see, e.g., Fitzmyer,



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The Gospel According to Luke, 2. 994 (Luke added v 52 and modified v 53; Matthew has preserved the Q form better than Luke; CGT 16 is a “hybrid” of the Lucan and Matthean forms of the sayings); I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 548 (Luke 12:52 may be a “secondary interpretation” of v 53); Davies and Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 218 (Luke’s “division” for Matthew’s “sword” seems to be secondary; Matt 10:36 is probably an editorial addition). 55 More precisely, Matt 10:36 seems to be slightly closer to the text found in the MT (“for son dishonors father, daughter rises up against her mother, daughter-inlaw against her mother-in-law; [the] enemies of a man [are] the men of his house”) than to the text found in certain editions of the LXX (“for son dishonors father, daughter shall rise up against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-inlaw; [the] enemies of a man [are] all the men in his house”), though we must allow both for Matthean redactional touches and for the possibility that Matthew is using a somewhat different text (be it Hebrew or Greek, especially since different LXX manuscripts show variations in Mic 7:6). Indeed, Joseph Ziegler, in his critical edition of Micah, relegates the “all” (pantes) printed in various LXX editions to the critical apparatus; see his Duodecim prophetae (Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum; vol. 13; 3d ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984) 224. 56 The noun is derived from the verb diamerizo¯ (“divide,” “separate”); of the eleven occurrences of the verb in the NT, eight are found in Luke–Acts. Indeed, the only use in the rest of the NT (Matt 27:35 || Mk 15:24 || John 19:24) occurs in the allusion to or citation of LXX Ps 21:19 in reference to the dividing of Jesus’ garments at the cross. Not surprisingly, then, the only occurrence of the noun diamerismos in the NT is found in Luke, namely in the present passage (12:51).

It is wise to keep in mind the caveat of Gathercole (“Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 117), who points out a difficulty involved in the claim that the parallels between Thomas and the Synoptics derive from common oral tradition and that Thomas displays strong indications of oral transmission: “. . . it is by definition impossible for us now to define the specific features of oral transmission in ancient texts from the particular geographical, cultural and chronological context of Thomas and the Synoptics.” 57

58

On this, see Schrage, Das Verhältnis, 57–61.

59

On CGT 55, see Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” 148.

60 So, e.g., Davies and Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 221; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) 108.

Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 139 n. 2) misses this point when he observes in too general a fashion that “neither the expression ‘worthy of me’ nor the adjective 61

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‘worthy’ . . . are Matthew’s favorite terms.” Of course the phrase “worthy of me” would not make the list of “favorite terms,” since—and this is the telling point— this Matthean phrase occurs nowhere else in the whole of the NT. Oddly, although Nordsieck (Das Thomas-Evangelium, 220) admits that “be worthy of” is characteristic of Matthew, he once again—as is his wont—rejects the idea of a conflation by Thomas. Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 44–45) ignores the Matthean coloration of axios in an unlikely reconstruction of the Q version. Among many commentators holding this view, see, e.g., Davies and Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 221; Luz, Matthew 8–20, 108. 62

63 The last line is missing in the Codex Bezae as well as a few other witnesses (e.g., manuscripts of the Old Latin and a manuscript of the Bohairic Coptic). In my view, though, the attestation of these words is old and wide enough to support the end of v 22 as original to Mark. Similarly, I accept the last words of the previous line, for which various ancient manuscripts provide different alternate readings.

So Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 1. 595; see also Heinz Schürmann, Das Lukas Evangelium. Erster Teil (Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 1969) 300. Fitzmyer concludes (p. 596) that CGT 47 “is basically dependent on the Lucan form” of the bundle of sayings about the incompatibility of new and old, since Thomas includes the equivalent of Luke’s added verse (v 39) about the person who drinks old wine and thus does not desire new wine. I do not think that the agreement of Luke 5:39 with CGT 47 can be explained simply in terms of an independent variant tradition (so François Bovon, Luke 1 [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002] 188). It is just too much of a coincidence that the same stray saying (some version of Luke 5:39) should wind up in the exact same bundle of sayings in both Luke and CGT. Fitzmyer also points out an intriguing agreement between the Coptic version of this saying and a text-critically later form of Luke 5:39. CGT reads “immediately” (eteynoy) just before the verb “desire,” a reading that corresponds exactly to the Greek adverb eytheo¯s (“immediately”), which occurs just before the verb “desire” in the Greek text of 5:39 in later codices like Alexandrinus, the second hand of Ephraemi Rescriptus, Coridethianus, Athous Laurensis, and in general the so-called Majority text. This reading is generally judged secondary compared to the texts that lack eytheo¯s (e.g., papyrus 4, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, the original hand of Ephraemi Rescriptus, Regius, and Freerianus); interestingly, the standard Sahidic of Luke 5:39 likewise lacks “immediately.” Any idea that appearance of a form of Luke 5:39 in CGT 47 results from scribal assimilation of the Coptic logion of Thomas to the Sahidic text of Luke is falsified by the fact that Sahidic Luke 5:39 mentions the new wine first and then the old. The order in CGT 47 (old wine, then new wine) follows the order of the Greek text of Luke 5:39. For all these reasons, the attempt of Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 42) to claim that Luke and Thomas are drawing on a common oral tradition fails. 64

65 Some have argued for the reverse procedure, i.e., that Luke was influenced instead by Thomas; see, e.g., Gregory J. Riley, “Influence of Thomas Christianity on



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Luke 12:14 and 5:39,” HTR 88 (1995) 229–35, esp. 232–34. It is odd that Riley fails to understand the ironic thrust of Jesus’ wry comment on his adversaries that Luke 5:39 expresses—an obvious message within the overall theological project of Luke–Acts, but a message that Riley blithely dismisses on p. 233 n. 7. For a counterargument, see Gathercole, “Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 115–16, 136–41. For further arguments in favor of Thomasine influence on Luke, notably in Luke 12:33 parr., see Steven R. Johnson, Seeking the Imperishable Treasure. Wealth, Wisdom, and a Jesus Saying (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2008), esp. 58–79, 124–53. Gathercole’s response to Johnson’s arguments can be found in “Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 141–43 and the accompanying notes. 66 Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae, and various later manuscripts, as well as part of the Old Latin and Syriac tradition (thus, a mostly Western text-type), include at this point “and his sisters.” However, the phrase is omitted by Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and many other majuscules and minuscules of both the Alexandrian and Caesarean text-types. While judgment on this point is difficult, I think it more likely that “and his sisters” was inserted by Christian scribes under the influence of the concluding logion in v 35, which serves as the climax of this pronouncement story: “. . . he is my brother and sister and mother.” The initial statement of the situation by the crowd (v 32) and the final pronouncement by Jesus (v 35) are thus made to coincide, creating a more exact inclusio. On this problem, see Bruce M. Metzger, TCGNT (2d ed., 1994), 70–71.

Once again there is a text-critical problem, since this sentence (Matt 12:47) is omitted by the original hand of Sinaiticus, by Vaticanus, and by part of the Syriac and Coptic tradition. However, it is included by a large number of diverse witnesses; and, as Metzger observes (TCGNT, 2d ed., 26–27), v 47 appears to be necessary for the sense of the verses that follow. The omission is most likely due to homoeoteleuton (lale¯sai . . . lale¯sai). 67

Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 68) seeks to refute the indications of conflation without weighing carefully all the examples of conflation. Thomas appends at the end of logion 99 the statement: “They are the ones who shall enter the kingdom of my Father.” Statements about entering and not entering the kingdom are found in a number of places throughout Thomas. So obviously secondary is this conclusion that even Patterson (ibid.) admits that it is a “secondary development.” DeConick (The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 273) calls this statement “an early development that connects the saying into the sequence of Kingdom parables which make up the heart of the fifth speech of the Kernel”—referring to her theory that at the heart of the present CGT lies “an old speech gospel from Jerusalem, as well as a set of late accretions” (p. 7). In any event, the present form of CGT 99 cannot be explained simply by assimilation to the Sahidic of either Matthew or Luke: (1) Sahidic Matthew reads “the will of my Father who is in heaven” (following Greek Matthew), while Thomas has only “the will of my Father”; (2) Sahidic Luke follows Greek Luke in reading “my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God,” while Thomas has in the corresponding phrase “my brothers 68

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and my mother”—possibly meshing Luke’s formulation with the order of nouns at the end of the Marcan and Matthean pericope (though without the noun “sister”) or (as at the beginning of CGT 99) preferring the male over the female (cf. CGT 114). In favor of seeing indications of Lucan redaction in CGT 99 is Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 196–98; cf. Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels, 147–48. The message contained in the parable of the Mustard Seed will be treated at greater length in Chapter 40. Here we are concerned only with the question of the dependence or independence of the Thomasine version of the parable. On CGT 20, see Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” 148–53. Tuckett focuses on the question of what he discerns to be Marcan redactional elements reflected in Thomas’ version. A similar focus can be found in Franz Kogler, Das Doppelgleichnis vom Senfkorn und vom Sauerteig in seiner traditionsgeschichtlichen Entwicklung (FB 59; Würzburg: Echter, 1988) 23–26; but here the emphasis on Mark is connected with Kogler’s insistence on the idiosyncratic theory of a Deuteromarkus as the solution to the Synoptic Problem. I think more can be said about the Matthean and Lucan versions vis-à-vis Thomas. One of the weaknesses of the treatment by Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 27–28) is that he tries to refute the obvious signs of conflation without going through all four available texts word by word and phrase by phrase.—For an examination of the possible symbolism reflected in the mustard seed (which will be treated in Chapter 40), see Ryan S. Schellenberg, “Kingdom as Contaminant? The Role of Repertoire in the Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven,” CBQ 71 (2009) 527–43. On the larger question of Mark–Q overlaps, see Laufen, Die Doppelüberlieferungen; the parable of the Mustard Seed is treated on pp. 174–200. 69

70 Indeed, throughout his Gospel, Matthew frequently evinces his tendency to mesh various sources: e.g., his Sermon on the Mount (which weaves together a more primitive Q sermon [see Luke 6:20–49] with material from Q, M, and Mark) and his missionary discourse in chap. 10 (which combines Mark’s missionary discourse [6:7–13] and a Q version of the missionary discourse reflected in Luke 10:1–12).

It is difficult to say whether the Q form of the parable begins with a double question, as does Mark’s version. In other words, does Luke get the double-question opener from Mark or from Q? It is telling that on p. 400, the editors of The Critical Edition of Q register great uncertainty in their attempt to reconstruct the beginning of the Q parable. The agreement between Luke and Matthew against Mark in using the phrase homoia estin he¯ basileia argues for that much material being in the Q introduction. But as a question or as a statement? If a question, single or double? I incline to the view that Luke took Q’s language of homoia estin he¯ basileia tou theou and used it to rewrite the double question of Mark. Others, however, think that some form of the double question existed in Q; see, e.g., Zeba Antonin Crook, “The Synoptic Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven: A Test-Case for the Two-Document, Two-Gospel, and Farrer-Goulder Hypotheses,” JSNT 78 (2000) 71



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23–48, especially 24–33 (along with the bibliography cited there). Yet Crook honestly admits that the statistics concerning Matthew’s retention or omission of double questions in his sources show simply that “Matthew is almost as likely to omit or reduce a double question as he is to keep one. . . .” This is hardly a robust argument for claiming that Luke’s double question reflects Q when Mark has a double question and Matthew does not. Part of the problem here may be that, from the beginning of the comparison (p. 24), Crook is apparently committed to the thesis that Luke’s version of the parable is independent of Mark’s. Yet the author makes the candid admission further on (p. 30): “There is considerable debate on whether Luke’s double opening question reflects Markan influence.” More emphatically in favor of the double-question introduction in Q is Harry T. Fleddermann, Q. A Reconstruction and Commentary (Biblical Tools and Studies 1; Leuven/Paris/Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2005) 660–62. See logia 6, 12, 18, 20, 21, 24 (a question in the form of a request), 37, 43, 51, 52 (not a question), 53, 99 (not a question), 100 (not a question). A helpful tool in this regard is the table of various introductions to Jesus’ logia in Thomas in Enno Edzard Popkes, “Parabeln im Thomasevangelium,” Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (ed. Ruben Zimmermann et al.; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007) 853–54. 72

73 The syntax of Mark in 4:31–32 is, to say the least, loose and meandering, even apart from hotan spare˛ˉ in v 32, which simply repeats the words found in v 31 (a case of Marcan duality or possibly chiasm?). On this, see Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 397–98; Mark L. Bailey, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” BSac 155 (1998) 449–59, esp. 450. 74

See Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 397.

75 Schellenberg (“Kingdom as Contaminant?,” 534 n. 37) suggests that, since en to˛ˉ agro˛ˉ seems to be a favored Matthean expression, it is likely redactional (cf. Matt 13:24,27,31,44; 24:18,40). If, then, one judges that “upon the earth” is Mark’s redactional addition and “in his field” is Matthew’s redactional addition, the wording of the parable in CGT at this point is most probably to be explained as a meshing of Mark and Matthew; cf. Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 297 n. 2. Some commentators also see in Thomas’ “on which they work” some sort of gnosticizing allegory.

A number of translations render the Coptic noun tar as “plant,” which would make more sense (at least if one knew only Matthew or Luke’s version). But W. E. Crum (A Coptic Dictionary [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005] 423–24) lists only “branch” or “point” as basic meanings of tar.—Further gnosticizing elements in Thomas’ version of the parable are suggested by Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 395. Hultgren claims that the mustard seed “represents the spark of light, the enlightenment that comes to the Gnostic, and the tilled ground refers to the readiness of the Gnostic to receive it.” 76

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See Crum, A Coptic Dictionary, 657–58.

This harmonizing tendency cannot be explained by scribal assimilation to the standard Sahidic NT, since there the Coptic versions of Matthew, Mark, and Luke follow their original Greek texts almost exactly. 78

79 For the view that CGT instead shows dependence on the Diatessaron, see Perrin, Thomas and Tatian; idem, Thomas, the Other Gospel. While I do not agree with Perrin’s grand thesis, I think that he rightly points to (1) catchword connections as at least a partial explanation of the ordering of the logia in Thomas and (2) indications that Thomas in some way or other knew the Synoptics. However, as various reviewers have pointed out, the retroversion of the entire CGT into a supposedly original Syriac text is an extremely speculative, not to say precarious, endeavor; see, e.g., the critical comments by Robert F. Shedinger in his review of Thomas and Tatian in JBL 122 (2003) 387–91; similarly, the problems highlighted by Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, 38–42. Inevitably, Perrin’s argument becomes somewhat circular. Perrin relies in part on the Syriac text of Tatian’s Diatessaron to create his Syriac text of Thomas, yet Thomas’ dependence on the Syriac text of the Diatessaron is the very thesis that Perrin is trying to prove. Moreover, the Syriac text of the Diatessaron has been lost and can be reconstructed only by a very difficult and hypothetical process from various translations of the Diatessaron. In the end, though, as far as my project is concerned, whether Perrin’s thesis is correct is a moot point. If it is correct, then Thomas does not represent an early and independent form of Jesus’ sayings—which is the basic position I am arguing by another route. 80 I enumerate the verses of the Synoptic versions so as to include only the text of the parable proper, without the reaction of the audience, which in each case is an addition by the evangelist. Since Thomas has no audience or larger context, it naturally lacks any reaction. 81 For dependence, see Klyne Snodgrass, The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (WUNT 27; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1983); idem, Stories with Intent, 280–81. For independence, see John S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard. Ideology, Economics, and Agrarian Conflict in Jewish Palestine (WUNT 195; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2006). 82

Quarles, “The Use of the Gospel of Thomas,” 517–36, esp. 524–34.

This seems to be the view of Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 142– 43): “The story has no winners, all are ruined by the desire for the land and its produce.” But is it all that clear that, within the confines of the Thomasine version of the parable, the tenants are ruined? One could read the parable’s enigmatic non-ending as a tacit declaration of their success. 83

In regard to the shortening of Marcan material in Matthew and Luke, see the statistics in Quarles, “The Use of the Gospel of Thomas,” 534 n. 58. For the general 84



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observation that there is no neat line of development from shorter to longer or vice versa in the Jesus traditions of the first few Christian centuries, see the classic work of E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (SNTSMS 9; London: Cambridge University, 1969). 85

See A Marginal Jew, 1. 124–38.

Helpful tables comparing and contrasting the subunits of each version of the parable can be found in Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 282) and Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus, 358). As Hultgren points out (p. 356), there are many different source theories about this parable, even apart from Thomas’ independence or dependence: e.g., besides Mark there was supposedly a Q version, or an M version, or an L version. Along with Hultgren (and contrary to Snodgrass), I think that the variations in Matthew and Luke (as well as the minor agreements between the two) can be adequately explained from the redactional tendencies of each. That Matthew and Luke are simply redacting Mark without any other source being used is argued at length by Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard, 173–218. 86

All the verb apode¯meo¯ need signify is “to go on a journey,” “to depart on a journey,” or (metaphorically) “to be absent.” Notice how Luke feels he must specify in the parable of the Prodigal Son (15:13) that the younger son journeys into a distant country (apede¯me¯sen eis cho¯ran makran); without that specification, a knowledgeable reader would be surprised or puzzled by the reference to raising pigs (15:15–16). 87

Various commentators speculate on the primitive parable supposedly lying behind Mark’s version. Suggested Marcan redactional elements include the allusion to Isa 5:2 in Mark 12:1, the superfluous sending of many other slaves in 12:5cde, the qualification of the son as “beloved” in v 6, and the two-part conclusion, each part being introduced by a rhetorical question (v 9 + vv 10–11). Perhaps the best candidate is the presence of a double conclusion, which reflects perfectly Mark’s well-known stylistic trait of duality. However, since our concern is with Thomas’ version of the parable in relation to the three Synoptics, such speculation about a pre-Marcan form may be waived. 88

To be precise: Matthew abbreviates the basic story within Mark’s narrative proper by dropping whole incidents or statements. At the same time, he expands a phrase here or there as he sees fit. The result is that the overall word count of the core narrative of the parable is slightly less in Matthew (by “core narrative” I mean the plot stretching from the planting of the vineyard to the death of the son). 89

Interestingly, within the NT, the noun oikodespote¯s occurs only in the Synoptic Gospels, where it always appears in Jesus’ parables or similitudes, never in the main narrative of Jesus’ ministry. It occurs in Matthew 7x, in Mark 1x, and in Luke 4x. 90

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Hence I do not think that Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 283) is correct in claiming that there is no convincing explanation for Matthew’s omission of Mark’s agape¯tos; see also the considerations in the following note. 91

92 There may be other factors at work here: (1) Matthew’s tendency to “crossreference” key words and phrases in his Gospel to highlight corresponding scenes; (2) his concern with underlining the fulfillment of OT prophecies in the events of Jesus’ public ministry; and (3) his love of threefold patterns and groupings. Thus it may not be simply by accident that there are precisely three occurrences of the adjective agape¯tos (“beloved”) in Matthew, the three being found (1) in the two theophanies of the baptism and the transfiguration of Jesus, during which the voice of the Father from heaven announces, “This is my son, the beloved” (3:17; 17:5); and (2) in the fulfillment citation (Matt 12:18) that lies between these two theophanies, a citation that makes clear to the reader that the other two references to Jesus as “my beloved” fulfills the prophecy about the servant of the Lord in Isa 42:1—according, that is, to Matthew’s reading of the text (both the MT and the LXX read “my chosen” rather than “my beloved”). To have another reference to Jesus as agape¯tos in Matt 21:37 would spoil the pattern. For a list of other explanations for the omission of agape¯tos offered by various commentators, see Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard, 183–84.

Forcing the Jewish leaders to pronounce their own condemnation fits perfectly with Matthew’s sustained polemic against the authorities. In particular, it coheres neatly with the other parables of judgment that Matthew adds just before (21:28– 32) and after (22:1–14) this parable. 93

94 On the Matthean form of the citation and its introduction, see Beate Kowalski, “Der Matthäische Gebrauch des Psalters im Kontext seiner Parabelüberlieferung,” The Composition of the Book of Psalms (BETL 238; ed. Erich Zenger; Leuven/Paris/ Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010) 593–608, esp. 606–8.

There is a difficult text-critical problem concerning whether Matt 21:44 (which alludes to Dan 2:34–35,44–45, possibly along with Isa 8:14–15) is an original part of Matthew’s text. A slightly different form of the verse certainly belongs in Luke 20:18. While the decision regarding Matt 21:44 could go either way, I think that it is more probable that the verse has been added to Matthew’s Gospel by Christian scribes, one of whose tendencies is to harmonize the Synoptics. The 3d edition of The Greek New Testament (ed. Kurt Aland et al.; New York: United Bible Socie­ ties, 1975) gives v 44 a “C” rating (“a considerable degree of doubt”) and encloses the verse in double brackets (“passages which are regarded as later additions to the text”). However, in the 4th edition of The Greek New Testament (2d printing, 1994), v 44 is placed in single brackets (“presence or position in the text is regarded as disputed”). Metzger (TCGNT, 2d ed., 47) explains in reference to the 4th edition that while the editorial committee considered v 44 “an accretion to the text,” the verse was retained in the text “because of the antiquity of the reading and its importance 95



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in the textual tradition.” Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 286) leans toward accepting v 44 as original in Matthew, but admits that “certainty is not possible.” Among the considerations that incline me to see v 44 as secondary is its apparent absence in Papyrus 104 (probably from the second half of the 2d century a.d.). On this, see Peter M. Head, “Some Recently Published NT Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: An Overview and Preliminary Assessment,” TynBul 51 (2000) 1–16, esp. 9. Of course, one must make allowances for possible variations in counting due to different text-critical decisions. 96

97 One might argue that ephyteusen ampelo¯na (“he planted a vineyard”) in Luke 20:9 still points to ephyteusa ampelo¯na (“I planted a vineyard”) in LXX Isa 5:2. However, since both the act of planting and a vineyard are common metaphors in the OT and the intertestamental literature, Isa 5:2 can hardly claim to have a monopoly on the phrase “to plant a vineyard.” The same Greek phrase is found, e.g., in LXX Gen 9:20; Deut 28:30,39; Amos 5:11.

Since the man planting the vineyard represents God (the Father), and not Jesus (who is represented in the parable by the slain son), the reference to “a long time” is not connected with Luke’s supposed concern about the delay of the parousia. 98

This is a prime example of the type of “minor agreement” of Matthew and Luke against Mark that arises spontaneously and coincidentally when two later evangelists, both better Greek stylists and more systematic thinkers, rework a Christian text from one generation earlier. Such minor agreements are not so remarkable when balanced against the far more numerous times when Matthew and Luke go their separate ways in rewriting Mark. 99

100 The Coptic text is uncertain at this point because of a small lacuna within a word. The incomplete word is certainly Greek, but it could be either chre¯stos (“good,” “benevolent”) or chre¯ste¯s (“usurious,” or simply “a creditor”—though the Greek word can also mean “prophet” or “debtor”). While chre¯stos is well attested in Coptic texts, chre¯ste¯s is not. However, chre¯ste¯s may make better sense in the context of the fraught relations between the owner and the tenants as well as in the larger context of CGT, i.e., the preceding negative statements made about a rich man (logion 63) and merchants and traders (logion 64). Nevertheless, granted the range of meanings of chre¯ste¯s in Greek, it is unwise to construct a whole interpretation of Thomas’ version of the parable on a dubious reading of a Greek adjective. On this see, Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 160–61. Interestingly, Nordsieck (Das ThomasEvangelium, 253) argues against chre¯ste¯s as the original reading because the word never occurs again either in CGT or in the rest of the Nag Hammadi codices. But this would not be the only case of a Greek word occurring in a single logion of CGT and nowhere else in the whole of the Nag Hammadi writings. Another example, zizanion (a Greek word with a Semitic origin), occurs in CGT 57 (four times in the one parable) and nowhere else in the whole Nag Hammadi corpus.

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Theoretically, one might translate the pronoun autou at the end of Matt 21:34 as “its [the vineyard’s] fruit,” since the masculine form autou could refer to the masculine noun ampelo¯n (“vineyard”) in v 33 instead of anthro¯pos . . . oikodespote¯s (“a man . . . householder”), also in v 33. Indeed, some form of the pronoun autos occurs three times in v 33, each time referring to the vineyard. However, the larger context and flow of thought in vv 33–34 argue for autou in v 34 referring to the householder, since he is the (understood) subject of every finite verb in the parable throughout vv 33–34, with the exception of hote de e¯ggisen ho kairos (“but when the time drew near”). Hence, in the main clause in v 34 that clearly has the householder as the understood subject (“he sent his slave to the farmers to receive . . . fruits”), the natural sense of autou is “his,” thus emphasizing the right of the householder to what he demands from the farmers. Not surprisingly, therefore, “his” is the translation used by the RSV, NRSV, and the revised NT of the NAB. Even if one took autou as referring to the vineyard, the basic point of my argument would remain the same: this redactional intervention of Matthew is reflected in Thomas’ version since the phrase rendering “vineyard” (ma eneloole) is likewise masculine. 101

By way of contrast, note that in Mark 4:7 (the parable of the Sower), the construction dido¯mi + karpon has “the seed” as its understood subject (likewise in the Matthean form of the same parable, 13:8). In Heb 12:11, “discipline” (paideia) is the subject of the compound verb apodido¯sin, which has karpon as its object. Finally, in Rev 2:2 the tree of life is the subject of apodidoun + karpon. Thus, in the entire NT, the only time the simple verb dido¯mi is used with humans (the farmers) as the subject and fruit as the object (granted, in a partitive construction) is in Luke’s redactional change of Mark in Luke 20:10, followed closely by Thomas. 102

103 Not surprisingly, Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 50) tries to explain Thomas’ agreements with Matthew and/or Luke at various points in this parable by appealing to “yet another (oral or written) source for the parable, shared by Luke and Thomas. . . .” As the champions of Copernicus’s theory pointed out to the defenders of the Ptolemaic system of the universe, one can always defend any explanation if one is allowed to keep multiplying ad hoc exceptions and special entities. One of the abiding problems of defending Thomas’ independence is that one keeps bumping up against Ockham’s razor: entities are not to be multiplied without necessity—and this includes the ever-available but never provable alternate oral or written tradition available to Thomas and Luke (or, when convenient, Matthew). More specifically, Patterson tries to dismiss Luke’s redactional change of Mark in Luke 20:10 (“that they might give [some] of the fruit”) by claiming that this is not a case of Lucan redaction, since it is not Luke’s habit “to use the future indicative with hina. . . .” To be sure, the Hellenistic use of the future indicative in a hina purpose clause (as opposed to the subjunctive or at times optative in classical usage) occurs only occasionally in the NT; not surprisingly, some later Greek manuscripts replace the future indicative with the subjunctive, thus producing alternate readings. Interestingly, the future indicative after hina is witnessed most often in the lessthan-elegant Greek of the Book of Revelation, while a good number of NT authors



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do not use it at all. Yet it is precisely Luke who gives us two other examples besides 20:10: in Acts 21:24 and, more important for us, in an L passage where Luke is either freely composing or at least quite free to choose his own wording in what is a typically Lucan “symposium” scene (Luke 14:10): “that he may say to you” (hina . . . erei). On the theory that this symposium scene is Luke’s transposition into narrative of a logion attacking the scribes, lawyers, or Pharisees for seeking the first place at table (cf. Mark 12:38–39 parr.), see Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Sacra Pagina 3; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991) 226. In sum, Luke, Paul, and John the seer are the only NT authors who use the future indicative with hina at least three times. In my view, then, Patterson’s whole argument against seeing Luke 20:10 as Luke’s redactional rewriting of Mark’s text falls, and with it any defense of Thomas’ independence in this parable. 104 For the suggestion that the “slaves of the vineyard owner are either sinners or archons who keep the free men in subjection,” see Quarles, “The Use of the Gospel of Thomas,” 530–31. He points to a possibly parallel idea in the Coptic Gospel of Philip (see, e.g., 52:5–15). 105 In Thomas’ copying of Luke’s “perhaps” and using it twice within his narrative, Gathercole (“Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 121) sees a redactional tendency of Thomas, namely, to extend further a redactional feature he finds in Luke. For the full extent of Luke’s influence on Thomas in this parable, see ibid., 127–31. Gathercole (pp. 129–31) also counters the various arguments of Kloppenborg (The Tenants in the Vineyard, 173–277) in favor of Thomas’ independence in this parable.

The Coptic grammar of the particular verb used for “to respect” (šipe) demands first the use of the pronoun with a preposition (he¯tf) and then the noun as object (empaše¯re). It is intriguing to note that Thomas’ version of this parable contains two purpose clauses in the earlier part of the parable and two deliberations in the middle part, as well as the (grammatically necessary) double object of the verb “respect.” The redactional hand of a single person who favors balance and doublets seems to be at work here, rather than stray memories and multiple oral performances. 106

Thomas’ beloved tag is found as well in logia 8, 21, 63, and 96. So intent is Thomas on a terse ending in logion 65 that he chooses the shorter form of the tag; the longer version can be found at the end of logia 8 and 21: “Let him who has ears to hear, hear.” 107

For all of its use of Greek loan words, CGT never employs graphe¯ (Scripture); likewise, it never has Jesus cite an OT text explicitly and verbatim; cf. Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 32. 108

109 Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 133–35) grasps the import of logion 52 better than does DeConick (The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 184–85) or Marvin Meyer (The Gospel of Thomas. The Hidden Sayings of Jesus [San Francisco: Harper, 1992] 103). A mere piling up of parallels from the Church Fathers

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and apocryphal works does not aid understanding if careful attention is not paid to the context of the parallel and to the intent of the individual author. Perhaps the two most relevant parallels for logion 52 are the Nag Hammadi tractate titled the Apocryphon of James 6:22–7:1 and Origen’s Commentary on John 2.34 (Greek text in A. E. Brooke [ed.], The Commentary of Origen on S. John’s Gospel [2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1896] 2. 100–101); on this, see Plisch, Gospel of Thomas, 133–34. Interestingly, in the end, neither Plisch nor DeConick thinks that logion 52 goes back to the historical Jesus. On the question of whether one should translate peje as “said” or “says” in these formulaic introductions of the logia in Thomas, see Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 24–25. I stick to the traditional translation in the past tense, which is used by most translators. Plisch varies his translation according to context. 110

Contrary to the suggestion of Crossan (In Parables, 93), LXX Ps 117:22 hardly represents the earliest stage in the allegorizing of the parable of the Evil Tenants, an allegorizing that is then developed by the Synoptics. Much more likely, the addition of LXX Ps 117:22 represents form-critically a second stage in the parable’s expansion, in that it provides a positive conclusion to the parable via the son’s vindication, thus balancing and overcoming the first conclusion’s negative theme of destruction.—The fact that the reworked content of LXX Ps 117:22 appears in CGT immediately after the parable of the Evil Tenants presents problems for Patterson’s theory of Thomas’ independence (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 50–51). We are assured, though, that these problems “are not insurmountable.” Yet, instead of providing any one solution to the problem of the sequence of CGT 65–66, Patterson offers two contradictory solutions: either the parable and the psalm verse circulated together very early on, or the present position of logion 66 in CGT is a relatively late scribal alteration. 111

Yet this is precisely what Nordsieck (Das Thomas-Evangelium, 254–60), following many others, does. Curiously, John Horman (A Common Written Greek Source for Mark & Thomas [Studies in Christianity and Judaism 20; Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University, 2011] 118–20), while preferring not to appeal to a separate version of the parable known to both Luke and Thomas to account for the Lucan traits in the Thomasine version, attempts instead to explain the Thomasine version of the Evil Tenants by constructing the unlikely theory that Mark and Thomas both drew upon a common written source composed in Greek. In order to sustain this theory not only here but elsewhere in his monograph, Horman must consistently play down the redactional changes that Luke (and sometimes Matthew) makes to Mark, changes that are also found in the text of Thomas. Gathercole’s highlighting of the Lucan elements found in many Thomasine sayings paralleled in the Synoptics (see, e.g., his The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas) may serve as a sufficient refutation of Horman’s basic theory; see also Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 461–62. 112



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I use the expression “M material” rather than “M tradition” because it is difficult in this case to decide whether the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds represents M tradition heavily redacted by Matthew (so, e.g., Jack Dean Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13: A Study in Redaction-Criticism [London: SPCK, 1969] 65) or a pure creation of Matthew himself (so, e.g., Gundry, Matthew, 265; M. D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew [London: SPCK, 1974] 367–69). Obviously, if one were to adopt the view that the parable itself was a pure Matthean creation, the dependence of CGT 57 on Matthew’s Gospel would necessarily follow. In any case, many commentators view the allegorical explanation of the parable to be Matthew’s redactional creation; see the full argument in Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 81–85; cf. his supplement and corrections in his “Die Deutung des Gleichnisses vom Unkraut unter dem Weizen (Mt. 13,36–43),” Abba (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966) 261–65. Hence, if elements or echoes of the allegorical interpretation could be found in CGT 57 (which I think is the case), that too would argue for dependence on Matthew. Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 207–12) is one of the few recent authors to argue that the interpretation itself goes back to Jesus; in my opinion, his argument is an example of special pleading for a decision already taken on other grounds. One may certainly argue with this or that judgment of Jeremias on what counts as Matthean redactional style and vocabulary; he himself revises some of his arguments in “Die Deutung.” But the massive convergence of evidence from vocabulary and style, especially when joined to the redactional theology seen in the allegorical interpretation, points clearly to a Matthean creation. Davies and Allison (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 407–15, esp. 407 n. 1) represent many commentators in claiming that the parable proper should be assigned to the M tradition, while the interpretation is Matthean redaction; so, e.g., Petra von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt (Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 18; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993) 247–48. While I agree with them about the allegorical interpretation, I remain uncertain about the parable proper. The strange features of this parable, when compared to most other Synoptic parables (see Luz, Matthew, 2. 252–53), could point to a creation by Matthew himself, who then purposely shifts the theological emphasis in his allegorical interpretation. In any case, if there is an underlying M tradition, Kingsbury is correct in judging that it has been heavily rewritten by Matthew in his own style and theology. Consequently, any attempt to reconstruct the previous tradition is highly hypothetical; see some of the various attempts listed by Davies and Allison, ibid., 409–10; cf. Luz, Matthew, 2. 253–54; idem, “Vom Taumellolch im Weizenfeld,” Vom Urchristentum zu Jesus (Joachim Gnilka Festschrift; ed. Hubert Frankemölle and Karl Kertelge; Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 1989) 154–71, esp. 154–55. Tellingly, Jülicher (Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 2. 559) is so intent on preserving all the parables as coming from the historical Jesus that he maintains that, in the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Matthew has reworked a genuine saying of Jesus and hence that there is an authentic kernel in the parable. However, says Jülicher, we cannot tell what was the original content of the parable’s teaching. This is having your exegetical cake and eating it too. Somewhat more optimistic in 113

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his attempt to discern a primitive parable that goes back to Jesus is Luca Marulli, “The Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:26–30): A Quest for Its Original Formulation and Its Role in the Preaching of the Historical Jesus,” BTB 40 (2010) 69–78. While admitting that the parable is “rich in [Matthean] redactional words and expressions,” with strong resemblances as well to Mark’s parable of the Seed Growing by Itself (Mark 4:26–29), Marulli thinks he can reconstruct the original parable of Jesus by using CGT 57, which he declares (rather than proves) to be independent of Matthew’s version. At times, Marulli in effect rewrites what the Thomasine text of the parable actually says and pointedly ignores those aspects of Thomas’ version that reflect the influence of Matthew’s allegorical interpretation of the parable. For Marulli’s attempt to interpret the parable as it stands in the context of Matthew’s Gospel and his evolving Jewish-Christian community, see his article, “The Parable of the Tares and Matthew’s Strategy vis-à-vis Extreme Sectarian Impulses from within His Community,” AUSS 47 (2009) 181–202. I have tried to keep my translation of the Greek and Coptic texts as literal as possible while still being intelligible to English speakers who do not know the original languages. Hence, for instance, historical present tenses (e.g., “the slaves say,” “he says,” when most translators use the past tense for these present-tense verbs) are kept in the present. Some decisions will always be debatable. For example, I have left the Greek particle de untranslated, since I think translating it as “but” is too heavyhanded when it basically serves in this story as a connector of the narrative tissue. I have also translated the initial verb ho¯moio¯the¯ as a present tense; it may reflect a Semitic perfect tense referring to general truths (so Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts [3d ed.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1967] 129); alternately, it may simply reflect an imitation of LXX Greek. However, Kingsbury (The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, 67) takes the aorist tense literally as indicating that “the Kingdom of Heaven . . . is a present reality and already has a certain history behind it.” Granted that this is a possible meaning of the Greek aorist, would not the Greek perfect tense have made the point better? In the end, though, even apart from any Semitic influence, the aorist ho¯moio¯the¯ is intelligible simply as a general, gnomic, or perfective aorist. For an interesting parallel in classical Greek, see Plato’s Republic 510a. 114

Even Davies and Allison, who remain uncertain about whether CGT 57 is dependent on the present Matthean text of the parable (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 409), judge that Thomas’ brevity is “not a sign of originality but of secondary compression” of “something like Mt 13.24–30” (p. 415). Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 46) allows that CGT 57 may be an abbreviation of a longer version, but this longer version was not Matthew’s text, since the Thomasine version lacks any trace of Matthew’s redactional hand. As we shall see, a detailed study of the Matthean parable plus its allegorical explanation leads to a different conclusion. 115

This is the judgment of von Gemünden (Vegetationsmetaphorik, 237 n. 202 and 248 n. 271), who offers a detailed study of the parable and its Matthean interpretation from the viewpoint of both structure and content (pp. 234–49). 116



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Davies and Allison (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 412) think that “while the men were sleeping” is simply a general reference to the time that people sleep, namely, at night, which is precisely how CGT 57 interprets the phrase. However, given the lengthy interaction between the householder and his slaves at the center of Matthew’s version of the parable, I think it more likely that mention of “the men” points forward to the servants. With the at-best-glancing reference to other actors in Thomas’ version, it makes sense that he would reduce the phrase to a simple “at night”—which also coheres with Thomas’ overall tendency to abbreviate the parable severely. 117

118 On this, see Fieger, Das Thomasevangelium, 170–71; cf. Schrage (Das Verhältnis, 124), who also points out that CGT 57 states that the enemy sowed the weeds on top of the good seed. This presupposes that the good seed has already been sown, something that Matt 13:24 (“a man sowing good seed in his field”) states, but CGT 57 does not. The omission of the key midsection of this parable is, in the opinion of Goodacre (Thomas and the Gospels, 110–11), a prime example of a striking redactional tendency in Thomas, what Goodacre terms “The Missing Middle.” Goodacre (ibid., 111–27) sees this phenomenon verified as well in CGT 63, 100, 26, 89, and 36; it may also be seen in Justin Martyr’s citations of various Synoptic texts. 119 Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 141) states that the sentence narrating the man’s prohibition of pulling up the weeds “is obviously corrupt,” although Plisch is not sure what exactly the corruption is. He offers two possible emendations of the verb “to pull up,” but also suggests that one whole line may have been accidentally omitted. One can sense here a strenuous attempt to avoid admitting that the redactor, in severely abbreviating the Matthean parable, has made a mess of things. Indeed, in compressing the dialogue between the slaves and the householder in Matt 13:28–29, the Thomasine redactor may have run together in incoherent fashion apelthontes syllexo¯men (v 28) and syllegontes ta zizania ekrizo¯se¯te (v 29). Actually, we can find similar infelicities in Matthew and Luke’s redaction of passages in Mark (e.g., Mark 5:35–40, which is garbled in Luke 8:51–53). The redactor, like Homer, sometimes nods.

Liebenberg (The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 222) observes that “Thomas talks about the ‘day of judgement’ only here and nowhere else in the Gospel.” Since this embarrassing fact gets in the way of Liebenberg’s approach, he explains away the fiery eschatological scenario as “nothing more than a rhetorical device.” Dependence on Matthew, including Matthew’s allegorical interpretation, is a more direct and obvious explanation. Nordsieck (Das Thomas-Evangelium, 226– 28) misses the point that the theme of apocalyptic judgment is present in CGT 57 and that it reflects the Matthean allegorical interpretation. 120

The fact that Matthew’s allegorical interpretation heavily emphasizes the negative aspect of the final judgment in a way that the parable itself does not is underscored by Luz, “Vom Taumellolch,” 161; so too von Gemünden, V ­ egetationsmetaphorik, 121

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245 (including n. 255). Oddly, Liebenberg (The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 205–6) mentions the shift in emphasis from Matthew’s parable to his interpretation, but fails to see the relevance of this observation for the emphasis on the final part of Thomas’ version of the parable; similarly, Nordsieck (Das Thomas-Evangelium, 228), who claims that CGT 57 reflects the historical Jesus’ emphasis on patience instead of premature judgment and removal of evildoers. That is indeed the emphasis of Matthew’s parable, an emphasis that in Thomas notably shifts to the threat of fiery judgment that is also inculcated in Matthew’s allegorical interpretation. I prefer to take 13:40 as the conclusion of the catalogue, while Luz (Matthew, 2. 267) and others see it as the beginning of the apocalyptic narrative of the interpretation; so, e.g., Jeremias, “Die Deutung des Gleichnisses vom Unkraut,” 261; von Gemünden, Vegetationsmetaphorik, 244. To be sure, v 40 lacks the “X = Y” structure seen in vv 37a–39. Nevertheless, v 40, like vv 37a–39, explains the real referent of an allegorical symbol (the gathering and burning of the wheat equals the punishment by fire at the end of the age), but now in terms of a comparison (“just as . . . so”), with the verb “to be” in the future tense (estai). Once the apocalyptic narrative begins in v 41, the verb “to be” is no longer used as a type of equation sign, explaining how an element in the parable represents a future reality. Seeing v 40 as a bridge or a “transitional statement” (so Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, 94) between catalogue and narrative is another possibility. On the literary genre of a catalogue of interpretations, see Jeremias, ibid., 263. 122

Notice that no attempt is made to equate “the just” with the wheat or “the kingdom of their Father” with a barn. Pointedly, in 13:43a the just are not said to be gathered into the kingdom by the angels, a statement that could easily have been made and that could have helped to forge a connection between Matt 13:30d and 13:43a. In the last analysis, v 43a almost seems like an afterthought or a foreign body in a nimša¯l that is intensely focused on the punishment of the wicked. 123

Here I strongly disagree with Koester (Ancient Christian Gospels, 103), who claims that CGT 57 is prior to Matthew’s version, since “there is no trace of the allegorical interpretation which Matthew (13:36–43) has appended” in Thomas’ version. As I argue in the main text, the last part of CGT 57 most likely does reflect Matthew’s allegory. One senses Plisch’s discomfort with this fact when he states that his interpretation of CGT 57 “renders the warning of judgment almost needless” (The Gospel of Thomas, 143). All he can offer in defense of his interpretation, which plays down the logion’s climactic emphasis on fiery judgment, is the suggestion that “perhaps it [the fiery conclusion] was added at a later stage in the transmission history.” In contrast to this solution, DeConick (The Original Gospel of Thomas, 193) affirms that in her hypothetical “Kernel Gospel” (the earliest source of CGT), the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds warned the hearer that he or she would be held accountable precisely because “there will be a judgement, a harvest.” A wrong decision could lead to the hearer being “pulled up on the last day and burned.” DeConick, unlike Plisch, here does justice to the mention of final judgment under the 124



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metaphor of burning that is common to Matthew’s parable, to CGT 57, and most notably to Matthew’s allegorical interpretation. To excise what is common to all three articulations of the tradition simply because this inconvenient fact does not fit one’s hypothesis is not sound methodology. In light of all this, I find Fieger’s attempt (Das Thomasevangelium, 172) to explain away the fiery final judgment in Thomas’ version unconvincing. Even Liebenberg (The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 220), despite his convoluted explanation of the parable’s finale (p. 222), admits “the impossibility of not understanding this parable in an eschatological framework of some sort. . . .” I follow Luz’s suggestion (Matthew, 2. 253 n. 12) in taking eblaste¯sen and epoie¯sen as ingressive aorists: “. . . when the plants began to sprout and produce grain. . . .” Luz (“Vom Taumellolch,” 156) stresses that the difference between the weeds and the wheat would become visible while both were still growing, and not only in the final stage of ripeness. 125

Though claiming that the hostile act of sowing the weeds by “his enemy” is neither unusual nor improbable, even Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 143) admits that in CGT 57 the final sentence “completely tears down the pretense of a credible narrative. The weed becoming visible only on the day of the harvest is quite unrealistic (moreover, the discovery of the weed presupposes exactly the opposite). . . .” 126

127 Here I differ with DeConick (The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 194), who holds that CGT 57 is “intelligible on its own, needing no knowledge of Matthew’s version.” She maintains that CGT 57 seems to the modern Christian reader to lack necessary elements of the story only because the modern reader knows Matthew’s version. I think that the detailed study presented in my main text shows just the opposite. On this question, DeConick is aligned with Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 212–24; similarly, Nordsieck, Das ThomasEvangelium, 228. While he rejects the views of those like Schrage who hold that CGT 57 is intelligible only against the background of the Matthean version, even ­Liebenberg has to admit that the first half of Thomas’ version “contains barely enough information to make it intelligible” (p. 210 and n. 148). Interestingly, while Liebenberg denies that one needs the Matthean version to understand Thomas’ version, he does admit that the Thomasine version is so “elliptical” that one might argue that the present version in CGT 57 is dependent on Matthew “indirectly and probably via the oral tradition,” in other words, by way of secondary orality (p. 224). Liebenberg himself does not adopt this position. 128 These observations on individual words or phrases should be taken as a secondary or “backup” argument supporting the main argument that has already been laid out.

Interestingly, it is at the beginning of this uniquely Matthean parable within the Synoptic tradition that Thomas uses the precise phrase “the kingdom of the Father” for the first time in his Gospel—though the two words “kingdom” and “Father” 129

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have occurred together earlier in the logia. On this, see Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 209 and n. 142. 130 See Jeremias, “Die Deutung des Gleichnisses vom Unkraut,” 262. Acts 20:25 most probably contains the absolute use of “the kingdom,” though various manuscripts supply “of Jesus” or “of God.” The absolute use found in the mouths of the somewhat confused disciples in Acts 1:6 probably refers—within the story world depicted in chap. 1—to the (misguided) notion of a restoration of political sovereignty to Israel soon after the resurrection. Within Luke’s larger theological program, what is intended is a warning against the expectation of an imminent parousia. 131 On the “kingdom” language of Thomas, see Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 31–32; Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels, 66–69, 81. “The kingdom of God” (he¯ basileia tou theou) is a conjectural reading used by some editors to fill in a lacuna in logion 3 as preserved in the Greek text of P.Oxy. 654; so Harold W. Attridge, “Appendix: The Greek Fragments,” 1. 114. Similarly, Joseph A. Fitzmyer (“The Oxyrhynchus Logoi of Jesus and the Coptic Gospel According to Thomas,” The Semitic Background of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1997] 355–433 [article originally published in TS 20 (1959) 505–60]) prefers the reading “kingdom of God” in the Greek version of logion 3 (pp. 376–77), but he allows the possibility of “kingdom of heaven” (a reading supported by Hippolytus’ citation of what he calls the Gospel of Thomas in his Elenchus 5, 7). By contrast, at the corresponding point in the Coptic version of logion 3 we read simply “the kingdom.” “The kingdom of God” appears to be the correct reading in the Greek version of saying 27 in P.Oxy. 1 (again, simply “the kingdom” in CGT). 132 See Davies and Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 413. Luz (Matthew, 2. 252 n. 2) argues that autou ho echthros in 13:25 makes perfect sense in Matthew’s Greek without appealing to a Semitism. It should be translated as “his enemy” rather than as “an enemy of his” (contra Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 224). Luz likewise rejects seeing a Semitism in echthros anthro¯pos in v 28.—On the difficulties of taking the agricultural details of the story (especially the treatment of the weeds) as realistic, see Luz, “Vom Taumellolch,” 156–57. From the detailed treatment of agricultural practices in the ancient world offered by von Gemünden (Vegetationsmetaphorik, 238–43) one could construct an argument that, while some of the individual actions are highly unusual and run contrary to common practice, the story cannot be dismissed as completely impossible.

It is telling that, while Kingsbury (The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, 65–66) insists that the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds should be interpreted separately from its allegorical interpretation, he nevertheless appeals to the interpretation (p. 69) to justify his identification of “his enemy” (13:25) as the devil (13:39). 133

134

See Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 184.



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While the Coptic preposition is not entirely clear in the manuscript at this point, the critical text edited by Bentley Layton (Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7, 1. 74) reads ejen. This reading of the Coptic is accepted by Marvin Meyer, April D. DeConick, and Uwe-Karsten Plisch in their texts. However, Schrage (Das Verhältnis, 124) and Fieger (Das Thomasevangelium, 170) prefer to read men, “with.” Perhaps this reading reflects the preliminary (and admittedly incomplete and uncritical) publication of CGT by A. Guillaumont et al., The Gospel According to Thomas (Leiden: Brill; New York/Evanston: Harper & Row, 1959); see p. v and pp. 30–31 (reading men). 135

Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus, 224) identifies the zizania (a Greek noun probably of Semitic origin) as “the poisonous darnel (lolium temulentum),” a weed similar to bearded wheat; in the early stages of growth, the former is difficult to distinguish from the latter. While Davies and Allison (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2. 412) think that the identification is uncertain, it is maintained by Michael Zohary, Plants of the Bible (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1982) 161 (cf. index of the book under lolium temulentum). In any case, if we remain within the narrative world created by the parable, the logic of the story demands that early on the weed should resemble the wheat but that at a certain point in the growth process the difference should become visible. By that time, though, the roots of the weeds have become intertwined with those of the wheat, and so uprooting the former might do damage to the latter. The only safe strategy is to wait until the harvest, when both types of plants can be removed. Granted this scenario, one can see how Thomas’ pushing of the theme of the visibility of the weeds to the end of the story makes the story incoherent. If the weeds do not become visible until the harvest, no one can know that there is a problem before the harvest; cf. Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 432–33. 136

137 See Folker Siegert, Nag–Hammadi–Register (WUNT 26; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1982) 249. 138

Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, 74 (together with his n. 181).

Traits of Matthean redactional material in Thomas are pointed out by Simon Gathercole (“Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 121), along with other commentators such as Perrin, Thomas, the Other Gospel. Risto Uro (Thomas. Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas [London: Clark, 2003] 88) remarks that only in Matthew’s and Thomas’ versions (CGT 13) of Jesus’ question about his identity (along with his disciples’ replies) do we find (1) Jesus affirming the divine origin of one disciple’s confession (the beatitude spoken to Peter in Matt 16:17 and the Thomasine Jesus’ affirmation that Thomas has been intoxicated with the truth Jesus conveys) and (2) Jesus indicating that a particular disciple within the larger circle of disciples has been favored with special knowledge not expressed by the other disciples. (At the same time, Uro does not think that the Thomas version is directly dependent on Matthew.) With some hesitation, one might add to these observations 139

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that in CGT 13 Jesus speaks “three words” to Thomas. It may not be purely by accident that in Matt 16:17–19 (clearly redactional vis-à-vis Mark and Luke), Jesus speaks precisely three “words” or distinct logia to Peter: (1) the beatitude about the divine origin of Peter’s knowledge (v 17); (2) the conferral of the name Peter (“Rock”) on Simon, with an explanation of its meaning (v 18); and (3) the conferral of the keys of the kingdom, with an explanation of their meaning (v 19). Then, too, there is the theme of secret revelation not to be shared; but this element is found in different ways in all three Synoptics as well as Thomas. In any event, it is intriguing that Uro (Thomas, 135), who opts for a mixed solution of some sayings showing dependence in one way or other on the Synoptics and other sayings being independent, finds in Thomas “some echoes of Matthew’s redaction, which cannot easily be explained as later textual harmonizations. . . .” Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 200. When one considers not only all the peculiarities of Matthew’s version of the parable that are reflected in CGT 57 but also the probable influence of Matthew’s allegorical interpretation on Thomas’ version, claiming that saying 57 is dependent on a hypothetically and variously reconstructed M tradition rather than on Matthew’s Gospel seems more like an escape hatch than the most likely solution. Whether Thomas’ dependence on Matthew is a direct literary one, an indirect literary one (through catechetical collections and digests of logia), or an indirect oral one (secondary orality) is open to debate. The fact, for instance, that Matt 13:29 (as well as the standard Sahidic of Matt 13:29) uses the Greek me¯pote for “lest” while CGT 57 uses the Greek me¯po¯s may argue for secondary orality. However, granted the radical and garbled compression of the original Greek text by CGT 57, it is difficult to make a firm judgment. In view of the scribal irregularities scattered throughout the lone manuscript we have of CGT, one must also allow for a copying error. 140

141 I use the qualifier of a “clear” case, since the case of the parable of the Great Supper (Matt 22:1–10 || Luke 14:16–24 || CGT 64) is quite unclear. This problem will be addressed at length in Chapter 40; for the moment, a few comments may suffice. Some commentators judge it to be a Q parable heavily redacted by both Matthew and Luke, while others prefer to consider the two Synoptic versions to be independent M and L forms of the parable respectively; so Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 334–35. A more radical view would be to decide that Matthew and Luke present two different parables that happen to share certain common themes. Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 310), for instance, prefers to speak of “two similar stories, not two versions of the same story.” In any case, the Great Supper does not provide us with a clear case of an “L parable” taken in the sense of a parable present only in Luke’s Gospel. On the vexed question of the relation of the Synoptic versions of the parable of the Great Supper to the Thomasine version, see Gregory E. Sterling, “‘Where Two or Three are Gathered’: The Tradition History of the Parable of the Banquet (Matt 22:1–14/Luke 14:16–24/GThom 64),” Das Thomasevangelium. Entstehung–Rezeption–Theologie (BZNW 157; ed. Jörg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, and



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Jens Schröter; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008) 95–121. As will become clear in Chapter 40, I opt for the view that there were independent Matthean and Lucan forms of this parable circulating in the early church. 142 See the lengthy list of citations in Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 390–93; cf. John Drury, The Parables in the Gospels (New York: Crossroad, 1985) 136–37. In the view of Bernhard Heininger (Metaphorik, Erzählstruktur und szenisch-dramatische Gestaltung in den Sondergutgleichnissen bei Lukas [NTAbh n.s. 24; Münster: Aschendorff, 1991] 40–44) the especially striking parallels, given the presence of monologues within them, are 1 Enoch 97:8–10 (from the division known as the Epistle of Enoch); Jas 4:13–5; Seneca, Ep. Mor. 1014–5; but most of all Sir 11:18– 19. A detailed survey of key parallel texts (Qoheleth, Ben Sira, 1 Enoch, the Testament of Abraham, Seneca’s Moral Epistles, and Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead) is undertaken by Matthew S. Rindge, Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool (Early Christianity and Its Literature 6; Atlanta: SBL, 2011). Rindge stresses the variety of ways in which the intersecting problems of possessions and death are treated in these works. While not denying the prophetic and eschatological elements in Luke’s treatment of these themes, he prefers to read the parable of the Rich Fool through a sapiential lens. In his brief comparison of the Lucan and Thomasine versions of the parable (pp. 231–47), Rindge avoids taking a stand on the question of Thomas’ dependence or independence; his agnostic approach may be connected with the lack of any detailed consideration of Luke’s introductory anecdote.

For a consideration of the Hebrew text, see Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (AYB 39; New York: Doubleday, 1987) 236, 239. The Hebrew participle (me¯hit‘annôt) in v 18a that I translate as “by leading a pinched existence” literally means “by afflicting himself”; Skehan and Di Lella translate it as “through a miser’s life.” The Greek translation of Ben Sira’s grandson is on the whole quite faithful. All the more interesting, therefore, are the same or similar Greek words found in both LXX Sir 11:18–19 and Luke 12:17–19: plouto¯n/ plousiou; anapausin/anapauou; phagomai/phage; to¯n agatho¯n mou/ta agatha mou. Alongside the common vocabulary stand the common literary techniques and themes of inner monologue, the uncertain or surprising time of death, and the necessity of leaving one’s goods to another. On this, see Heininger, Metaphorik, 113–16, esp. 114. For a consideration of the interplay of death and possessions in Ben Sira, see Rindge, Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool, 66–85, esp. 73–80, with the bibliography cited there. For a reading of the Rich Fool that seeks to probe four different “textures of the text” in the parable, see David B. Gowler, “The Enthymematic Nature of Parables: A Dialogic Reading of the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16–20),” RevExp 109 (2012) 199–217. 143

I use the phrase “wisdom tradition(s)” in this discussion in a general sense, without claiming that wisdom constituted a tradition that separated itself from or even opposed the historical, legal, and prophetic traditions of Israel. Ben Sira alone 144

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constitutes a clear refutation of such a view. On the problematic nature of the phrase “wisdom tradition,” see Mark Sneed, “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ a Tradition?,” CBQ 73 (2011) 50–71. 145 To take one example of such an approach: Heininger (Metaphorik, 107–21, esp. 118) holds that Luke 12:16–20, when stripped of what he considers Lucan redactional elements, is a creation of a Christian community that utilizes Sir 11:18–19.

Note that Mark 4:10–12 parr. introduces the explanation of the parable of the Sower, not the parable itself. Those requesting the explanation are “those around him with the Twelve” (Mark 4:10) or “the disciples” (Matt 13:10 || Luke 8:9). 146

147 To be sure, both parables have as an audience a group that has been mentioned earlier in the overall narrative: the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders back in Mark 11:27, who remain to hear the parable of the Evil Tenants; and Peter, James, John, and Andrew in 13:3, whose questions trigger the eschatological discourse, at whose end stands the parable of the Watchful Doorkeeper. But in neither case does the question or challenge of an individual interlocutor immediately introduce and trigger the parable. 148

Meier, A Marginal Jew, 4. 522–27.

I do not include in this list the parable following the Prodigal Son, namely, the Dishonest Steward (16:1–8), since the latter is introduced simply by “he also said to the disciples.” The audience has thus changed from Pharisees to disciples, and the apologetic theme of finding what was lost seems to have drifted away. 149

150 While the Thomasine Jesus usually refers to the supreme invisible God as “the (living) Father,” at times he speaks of him as “my Father” (so logia 61, 64, and 99).

That Luke uses the vocative anthro¯pe (“man”) without the initial exclamatory o¯ while CGT 72 employs it (o¯ pro¯me, “O man”) is not a real difference, but rather completely explainable from the grammatical peculiarities of Hellenistic Greek and Coptic. While in classical Greek the use of o¯ with the vocative was the rule and its absence the exception, the situation is reversed in ordinary Hellenistic Greek when it is not consciously seeking to imitate classic Attic or to emphasize great emotion. Hence, the absence of o¯ is the common state of affairs in NT Greek, the exceptions being scenes in which the author/speaker expresses high emotion or (like Luke in Acts) seeks to imitate classical usage. On this, see Max Zerwick, Graecitas Biblica (5th ed.; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1960) 11–12 (no. 35). In addition, with a masculine singular noun like anthro¯pos, there is a special vocative form in Greek (anthro¯pe, so here) that cannot mean anything but the vocative. In such cases, o¯ would be all the more optional. In Coptic, on the other hand, there is no separate vocative case for nouns, which are not declined as they are in Greek and Latin. In Coptic, the vocative is usually expressed by the noun made definite by the definite article (so here) or, e.g., 151



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a possessive adjective. But because the Coptic noun with a definite article can have many syntactical uses and is therefore not immediately identifiable as vocative apart from the larger context, the exclamatory o¯, taken over from Greek, can be used to make the vocative sense of the noun clear. Goodacre (Thomas and the Gospels, 97–108) considers CGT 79 “so strikingly Lukan” that he dedicates a whole chapter to it. It is indeed another parade example of Thomas’ knowledge and use of Luke’s Gospel, probably the last of the Synoptics to be written. 152

153 For the use of tis with the sense of an indefinite article, see, e.g., Luke 10:25: nomikos tis is translated in many English Bibles as “a lawyer” (so RSV, NRSV, revised NT of the NAB), though a phrase like “a certain lawyer” is also a possible rendering. On the use of tis in ancient Greek for the indefinite article (which, strictly speaking, ancient Greek, unlike Coptic, does not have), see William Watson Goodwin, Greek Grammar (revised by Charles Burton Gulick; Boston: Ginn, 1958) 84 (no. 387); Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1984) 310 (no. 1267); on the similarity of tis to heis (the numeral “one”) in this usage, see BDF, 129 (no. 247). 154 Luke’s introductory clause, unlike Thomas’, includes the phrase “from the crowd” (ek tou ochlou). This specification is necessitated by Luke’s larger narrative context. In 12:1, Luke had emphasized that an enormous crowd was gathering around Jesus, even though Jesus pointedly addresses his remarks to his disciples (12:1 + 4). In v 4, Jesus addresses “you my friends,” and in the subsequent verses warns his followers about persecution for his sake and the need for fearless confession. Hence, when Luke introduces a vague “someone” in 12:13, it is necessary to make clear that this “someone” is not one of the disciples who have been addressed up till now, but rather an outsider from the crowd. Having no larger narrative context, Thomas needs no such clarification.

It is interesting to note that the only other vocative use of pro¯me (“man” in direct address) in Thomas is in CGT 61, where Salome uses it to address Jesus. 155

156 Contra Riley, “Influence,” 230. Basing himself on the erroneous opinion that the Greek noun meriste¯s does not appear before Luke’s Gospel, Riley constructs a complicated theory about Thomas influencing Luke. His theory is effectively demolished by the pre-Lucan citations provided by Gathercole, “Luke in the Gospel of Thomas,” 139–41.

One manuscript of the standard Sahidic Coptic of Luke’s Gospel likewise omits the noun “judge,” but other Sahidic manuscripts have it. In any case, the shorter reading does not seem to have anything to do with the possibility of Thomas’ text being assimilated to the standard Sahidic version or vice versa. Apart from the presence or absence of “judge,” the standard Sahidic text is a faithful translation of 157

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Luke’s Greek. Moreover, in the Coptic manuscript of Luke that omits “judge,” even the noun “divider” is rendered by a different noun (refpo¯rej) from the one found in Thomas. Also to be considered is the fact that the ancient versions in general show notable fluctuation at this point in the Lucan text. For a detailed text-critical consideration of the problem, see Tjitze Baarda, “Luke 12, 13–14. Text and Transmission from Marcion to Augustine,” Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (Morton Smith Festschrift; 4 vols.; ed. Jacob Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1975) 1. 107–62. At the end of his exhaustive study, Baarda (pp. 154–55) judges that CGT 72 “has all the features of a secondary development” and so “presents us with the Gnostic version of Luke 12, 13–14. . . .” I also agree with Baarda (pp. 130–55) in discounting a version of Luke’s introductory anecdote found in an Arabic document written in the late 10th century a.d. against Christian claims by a Muslim apologist named ‘Abd al-Gabba¯r. In my view, the late date of this document, in addition to the tenuous hypotheses needed to work back to a supposed early Jewish-Christian source, makes DeConick’s reliance on it (The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 229) untenable. I accept here what is a common reading of the difficult Coptic text in logion 61, which some think contains a mistranslation of the Greek; others seek to emend some of the Coptic words to make better sense of the train of thought. For the critical edition with various suggestions for alternate readings in the apparatus, see the Coptic text edited by Bentley Layton and the English translation by Thomas O. Lambdin in Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2–7, 72–77. For an example of an attempt at an emended text along with a list of other interpretations, see Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 150–53; cf. Nordsieck, Das Thomas-Evangelium, 236–41. For a somewhat different understanding of logion 61, an understanding that moves the meaning of the saying in the direction of Johannine theology, see DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 201–4. 158

Interestingly, Luke uses the noun didaskalos in his Gospel more often (17x, almost always of Jesus) than any other NT evangelist, and indeed more than any other book in the NT. In contrast, Acts uses the noun only once. 159

Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 54–56) fails to note these Lucan redactional traits in his treatment of CGT 72; contrast Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 482. 160

Similar to these Lucan introductions, but with a more specific designation of the particular man or men involved in the parable, are the parables of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:41, daniste˛ˉ tini, “a certain creditor”), the Widow and the Judge (18:2, krite¯s tis, “a certain judge”), and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:10, anthro¯poi dyo, “two men”). In addition, there are two Marcan parables that begin with anthro¯pos, but without the accompanying tis: the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1) and the Doorkeeper (13:34). While the Matthean parallel follows Mark in both cases, Luke probably has anthro¯pos tis at the beginning of the Evil Tenants 161



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parable (Luke 20:9). Understandably, on such a small point, the Greek manuscripts vary. While some later Matthean manuscripts read tis in 21:33, the more likely textual reading omits it. The manuscripts of Luke 20:9 likewise vary; tis may be original, though this is not certain. The beginning of Matthew’s version of the Lost Sheep (18:12) comes close to beginning with “a man” (anthro¯pos tis), but there we are dealing with an introductory question and then the opening of a conditional clause: “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep. . . .” The Lucan parallel (15:4) makes the beginning of the parable itself a question: “What man among you, having a hundred sheep . . . ?” On anthro¯pos tis in Lucan parables, see Heininger’s concluding remarks in Metaphorik, 220–23. In the latter two cases (the Dishonest Steward and the Rich Man and Lazarus), the verb e¯n (“there was . . .”) separates the adjective plousios from the preceding anthro¯pos tis. In the first case (the Rich Fool), the phrase “a certain rich man” stands in the genitive case, depending on the noun cho¯ra (“land”). All the more interesting, then, is the fact that Luke “throws” the genitive phrase forward in the sentence to make it the opening of the parable. 162

Hence it is surprising that Heininger (Metaphorik, 113) assigns anthro¯pou tinos plousiou (“of a certain rich man”) to a hypothetical pre-Lucan parable created by some Christian community (a parable that does not go back to Jesus). Heininger would have done better to abide by his initial observation (p. 112) that such a carefully constructed unit as Luke 12:16–20 resists any neat division into pre-Lucan tradition and Lucan redaction. Theoretically, it remains possible that Luke has taken over not just some OT sapiential motifs (found in many places besides Ben Sira) but also a particular short narrative from the oral tradition. Yet the massive rewriting by Luke the creative literary artist (a major point of Heininger’s monograph) would make the reconstruction of the hypothetical narrative source nigh impossible. See, in contrast, Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 451. 163

As was noted earlier, ancient Greek sometimes uses the indefinite pronoun or adjective tis for an indefinite article, which Coptic, unlike Greek, does have. This seems to be the case here. Hence it is correct to see the Coptic construction of indefinite article (ou) + noun (ro¯me) + Greek adjective (plousios) as the exact translation of Luke’s Greek phrase. Interestingly, the RSV, the NRSV, and the revised NT of the NAB all translate anthro¯pou tinos plousiou in Luke 12:16 simply as “a rich man.” 164

See the Sahidic Coptic text of Luke 12:16 in G. Horner, The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect (3 vols.; Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1969; originally, Oxford: Clarendon, 1911–24) 2. 242; likewise Hans Quecke, Das Lukas­ evangelium Saïdisch (Studia et textus 6; Barcelona: Papyrologica Castroctaviana, 1977) 193. Patterson (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, 47–48) completely overlooks Luke’s redactional fingerprints in CGT 63. 165

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For an overview of the use of monologues in Luke’s parables, see Philip Sellew, “Interior Monologue as a Narrative Device in the Parables of Luke,” JBL 111 (1992) 239–53; for a fuller treatment, see Heininger, Metaphorik. The instances that Sellew lists are (using his terminology) the Foolish Farmer (12:16–20), the Unfaithful Servant (12:42–46), the Prodigal Son (15:11–32), the Crafty Steward (16:1–8a), the Unjust Judge (18:2–5), and the Owner of the Vineyard (20:9–16). See also Donahue, The Gospel in Parable, 126–93, esp. 126, 176–78. Oddly, Sellew (p. 245) tries to claim that the plan of the rich man in the Thomasine parallel (CGT 63) qualifies as “ordinary external speech,” since the monologue is introduced by a stock phrase of Thomas, pejaf (“he said”). Yet CGT 63 immediately follows up the rich man’s monologue with the resumptive statement: “These were his thoughts on these matters in his mind.” (That the Coptic noun he¯t signifies here the “mind,” and not the affections of the “heart,” is rightly affirmed by Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 155.) This explicit and emphatic description of the preceding quotation as thoughts in the man’s mind indicates that “he said” is to be interpreted as “he said to himself,” i.e., in inner monologue; thus Fieger (Das Thomasevangelium, 182) is correct in referring to the rich man’s words as a Selbstgespräch. As a matter of fact, this same combination of thinking and saying is found in Luke’s version of the parable (12:17): “And he pondered within himself, saying. . . .” As often happens, what stands together in the Synoptic text is separated in CGT. Apparently, Sellew’s strange claim that CGT 63 contains “ordinary external speech” rather than a true inner monologue is influenced by his previous claim (p. 244) that the Thomasine version of the parable represents an independent source—a position that he assumes rather than proves. This assertion of the independence of CGT 63 moves Sellew to claim that “Thomas’s version of the parable is closer to what both gospel writers received in their tradition.” Once one realizes that Thomas’ version does contain a genuine inner monologue, the exact opposite judgment becomes more probable: the characteristically Lucan technique of the inner monologue provides an argument for Thomas’ dependence. 166

One might even question whether the plain statement of fact (“my master delays”) that the servant speaks to himself in Q (Matt 24:48 || Luke 12:45) really qualifies as an inner monologue in the Lucan sense, since the four-word observation in Greek lacks any sense of pondering or debating with oneself. In another bit of Q material (Matt 12:44 || Luke 11:24), one finds a brief monologue spoken by a demon who has been expelled from his human host by exorcism and can find no other resting place: “I shall return to my house whence I went forth.” But this passage probably should not be considered part of a parable. Rather, having just performed an exorcism, Jesus is commenting on how in fact exorcised demons act (bear in mind how real all this was to the ancient world) and how therefore one must be on guard against their return with still greater forces. At the end of the passage, only the Matthean Jesus, by way of comparison, applies this (in the mind of his audience) very real state of affairs to “this evil generation.” 167

168 As we have seen throughout our probes of CGT, and especially in the parable of the Evil Tenants, Thomas shows a marked tendency to move in the direction of



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Luke’s redaction. In a sense, this is true even here. Luke alone among the Synoptics expands the laconic monologue of the father found in Mark 12:6c. (The claim of Sellew [“Interior Monologue,” 248] that Mark 12:6 represents a statement spoken out loud is quite arbitrary and runs contrary to the natural sense of the text.) CGT 65 likewise develops the literary mechanism of the monologue of the father, but in its own way. Instead of expanding the single monologue of the father (as Luke does), Thomas creates a second, balancing monologue in the mouth of the father as he comments on the beating that his servant has received: “Perhaps he did not know them.” The Lucan influence in this type of expansion can be seen in the repetition of the softening “perhaps” at the beginning of what is otherwise an improbable calculation. In the Synoptics, only Luke inserts that qualification into the father’s monologue. The parable of the Lost Sheep in CGT 107 hardly qualifies, since the parable ends with the shepherd addressing the lost sheep, whom “I love more than the ninety-nine.” The single lost sheep, larger than all the others and the object of the shepherd’s unique love and care, probably represents Thomas’ ideal disciple, the solitary (or, as some would have it, the gnostic). 169

170 The noun noyte (“god”) is found only in CGT 30 and 100. Analyzing both sayings in detail would take us too far afield, especially since the Coptic text of logion 30 may be corrupt, and the partially preserved Greek text from P.Oxy. 1 differs in some notable ways from the Coptic; see DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 135–38; Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 97–99. In any event, I read both sayings as implying a denigration or “downgrading” of the term “god.” 171 Especially in popular presentations, it has not been stressed enough that only about half of the 114 logia in CGT have solid Synoptic parallels (as distinct from parallels of individual words or motifs). As noted earlier, both Plisch and DeConick agree that logion 52 does not go back to the historical Jesus. That judgment can be duplicated quite easily in the case of those sayings that reflect later Christian disputes: e.g., about the Trinity (logion 30 at least in the Coptic version), positions of leadership (logia 3, 12, 13, 114), and/or the pantheistic/mystical/gnostic syncretism widespread in the Mediterranean world around the turn of the era (logia 7, 11, 18, 19, 22, 28, 29, 49, 50, 70, 77, 83, 84, 106, 108, 114). It is precisely this syncretistic milieu that makes it difficult to choose among labels like “gnostic,” “gnosticizing,” “Middle-Platonic,” and “Platonic-Hellenistic” myths.—As for the parables in CGT that lack any clear Synoptic parallels, the three parables commonly labeled the Little Children in the Field (logion 21), the Woman with an Empty Jar (logion 97), and the Assassin (logion 98) obviously do not meet the criterion of multiple attestation. Indeed, as far as I can see, they cannot meet any of the standard criteria of historicity. At times it is claimed that one can hear in one or another of these parables “the authentic voice of Jesus.” Just as I have never had the privilege of a vision of the historical Jesus, so too I have never enjoyed the privilege of hearing his voice. I seriously doubt that any other quester for the historical Jesus has either. The whole point of

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employing criteria is to avoid the uncontrollable subjectivity (and sometimes the sentimental romanticism) involved in a judgment like “it sounds like Jesus to me” or “I hear his voice in this saying.” The Thomasine parable of the Wise Fisherman (logion 8) would enjoy multiple attestation if it were judged to be an alternate version of the uniquely Matthean parable of the Fish Net (or Dragnet) (Matt 13:47–50). However, I agree with Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus, 304) that CGT 8 and Matt 13:47–50 represent two different parables with similar imagery. Hence one cannot speak of multiple attestation of the same parable. In a somewhat different vein, Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 316) thinks that both the Matthean and the Thomasine parables “were probably built on the basis of a proverb”; he concludes that it is impossible “to reconstruct an originating structure for a Jesus parable. . . .” 172 The Thomasine tendency to conflate and/or abbreviate various forms of the Synoptics is so pervasive that it is reasonable to suppose that it held true of any earlier, hypothetical collections that were eventually brought together to create the form of the Gospel of Thomas we possess. I doubt that anything more definite can be said on this subject. The problem is that any attempt to trace the development of earlier, smaller collections involves extremely tenuous hypotheses that lie beyond any methodological control. Hence, for all the deep knowledge that her theory of a rolling corpus of oral traditions (originating in a primitive kernel Gospel that grows through later accretions) displays, I do not think that April D. DeConick has succeeded in convincing most scholars of her reconstruction of the compositional history of Thomas. For the full exposition of her theory, see her Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas. A History of the Gospel and Its Growth (Library of New Testament Studies 286; London/New York: Clark, 2005); the theory is briefly summarized in her The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation, 2–42. 173 As an aside, one might ask: If independence of a Thomasine logion were proven in an individual case, what difference would it make in the long run for the overall portrait of the historical Jesus? I raise this question because of an intriguing phenomenon pointed out by Perrin (“Recent Trends,” 188–89): in a surprisingly large number of the books and articles that have championed the independence of Thomas from the Synoptics, the logia of CGT in the end play very little if any role in the authors’ reconstructions of the historical Jesus. One is reminded of Horace in his Ars Poetica (line 139): parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Chapter 39

Searching for Likely Candidates: A Survey of the Synoptic Parables I. INTRODUCTION BY WAY OF RECAPITULATION The seven unfashionable theses in Chapter 37 and the examination of parables in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (= CGT) in Chapter 38 have led the patient reader through a gauntlet of contrarian positions on the parables. It may be helpful to pause, catch our collective breath, and ponder where we have come from and where we are going. The cumulative argument presented in Chapters 37 and 38 might seem to have placed us in a difficult if not untenable position. First, the seven unfashionable theses of Chapter 37 challenged the scholarly consensus in parable research by maintaining that most of the parables could not meet the test of authenticity posed by the various criteria of historicity. Second, Chapter 38 reinforced this position by arguing that the Coptic Gospel of Thomas does not provide an early and independent source for the sayings of Jesus in general or the parables in particular. In test case after test case, both inside and outside the parable tradition, CGT showed signs of dependence on the Synoptics. The probable conclusion arising from these tests is that, when trying to satisfy the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources, the Synoptic parables cannot call upon CGT for support. Faced with these negative results, we might well ask whether we can show that any of the Synoptic parables comes from the historical Jesus. After all, it is theoretically possible that all the parables were created by anonymous first-generation bearers of the Jesus tradition and were then added to the authentic words and deeds of Jesus on the way toward the composition of the Synoptic Gospels. In a sense, then, we seem caught between a naive Scylla and a skeptical Charybdis. Shall we relapse into the uncritical acceptance of almost all the parables as authentic Jesus tradition, or shall we embrace the opposite

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extreme of rejecting all the parables as inauthentic? While this latter option might strike most people as absurd, recent Scripture scholarship has created a track record of adopting extreme positions for the sake of fostering academic debate and/or notoriety. If some critics in the past rejected the miracle tradition of the Gospels en masse, why cannot other critics reject the parable tradition en masse? Most of the individual parables, like most of the individual miracle stories, lack multiple attestation of independent sources. I highlight these extreme options of gullible acceptance or hypercritical rejection in order to press home the key question that any student of the parables must keep asking: How do I know that this particular parable was spoken (in some form or other) by the historical Jesus? The answer to this basic how-do-I-know question, when asked in regard to a particular parable, must be the same answer that was given when any other saying or deed of Jesus was examined in our four previous volumes. We can accept this or that particular parable as authentic if it can satisfy one or more of the criteria of historicity—the same criteria that other pieces of Jesus tradition have had to satisfy. The parables get no special exemption and no special treatment. It was the contention of Chapters 37 and 38 that, without special treatment, most of the parables cannot garner sufficient positive support from the criteria. One must be clear about what this claim means and does not mean. The failure to obtain positive support from the criteria does not automatically prove that these parables do not come from Jesus. Parables lacking positive support may instead belong to that galling middle column in our minds, namely, non liquet (not clear either way). The problem with many quests for the historical Jesus is that the questers presume from the start a binary system that allows for only two options. For the skeptic, either the material is clearly proven to be authentic, or by default it must be rejected as inauthentic. For the believer, either the material is clearly proven to be inauthentic, or by default it must be accepted as authentic. Yet, as any serious historian knows, in a disputed case of historical fact a scholar can examine all the relevant data with great care, employ all the applicable criteria for reaching a balanced judgment on historicity, and still wind up with a question mark— usually because the data are so sparse and/or ambiguous. My claim is that this is the problem with most of the Synoptic parables when examined one by one. To repeat a vital point: I am not questioning that the historical Jesus used parables in his teaching. That assertion is supported by every Synoptic source (Mark, Q, M, and L) as well as by the comments of each Synoptic evangelist. The global assertion that Jesus used parables is no more in dispute among serious scholars today than is the



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global assertion that Jesus performed startling deeds that he and his followers considered miracles. Both statements are supported by massive multiple attestation of independent sources. But just as it is extremely difficult to descend from the global assertion about miracles to a judgment about an individual report of a supposed miracle (i.e., does this event, whatever its precise nature, go back to the ministry of the historical Jesus?), so too is it difficult to descend from a global judgment that Jesus spoke in parables to the individual judgment that he spoke this or that particular parable. As I have already argued in Thesis Seven of Chapter 37, the basic problem is that quite often the criteria do not apply. But it was one thing to offer a brief summary of such an argument in Thesis Seven. It is quite another thing to flesh out this argument by surveying all the narrative parables of the Synoptics in order to show that only a few parables seem likely to meet any of the criteria of authenticity. It is to that survey that we now turn, as we search among the many candidates for any parables that might sustain a credible claim to come from the historical Jesus.

II. A SURVEY OF THE SYNOPTIC PARABLES BY SOURCES Any survey of the Synoptic parables must begin by grappling with the question of how one should order, categorize, or subdivide the corpus of Jesus’ parables. We need only look at the table of contents of major books on the parables to discover that each book organizes and labels the parables in its own way.1 In most cases, the common element underlying these diverse approaches is a series of key themes or topics (usually theological, though sometimes sociological) that can serve as boxes into which individual parables can be tossed and categorized. Not surprisingly, these key themes, even when they hew close to biblical terminology, turn out to be notably different in different authors. Compounding the confusion, some authors honestly admit that a given parable may fit into more than one of the capacious themes employed as major categories. We are left asking whether there is a more objective or even-handed way of ordering the Synoptic parables. I would suggest a relatively neutral standard: the division of the parables according to the earliest independent source(s) in which each parable appears. Thus, in the following catalogue, I will order the parables according to their Gospel sources and their location within a given source: Mark, Q, M (material unique to Matthew’s Gospel), or L (material unique to Luke’s Gospel). As I draw up this catalogue, I will note alongside the source text any parallels found in the other Synoptic

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Gospels, as well as in CGT. The goal of this initial inspection is simple. In each Gospel source, we will be asking one basic question: Do any of these narrative parables give a preliminary indication of satisfying one or more of the criteria of historicity—notably, the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources—thus escaping the judgment of either “inauthentic” or non liquet?2 The emphasis here must be on the word “preliminary.” This catalogue is meant simply to surface candidates for closer inspection. In our next chapter, we will return to the promising specimens after our initial winnowing is finished. A. Marcan Narrative Parables 1. Sower—Mark 4:3–8 || Matt 13:3–8 || Luke 8:5–8 || CGT 9 2. Seed Growing by Itself—Mark 4:26–29 [|| fragment at the end of CGT 21?] 3. Mustard Seed—Mark 4:30–32 || Matt 13:31–32 || Luke 13:18–19 || CGT 20 [a Mark–Q overlap] 4. Evil Tenants of the Vineyard—Mark 12:1–11 || Matt 21:33–44 || Luke 20:9–18 || CGT 65 5. ? Doorkeeper—Mark 13:33–37 || Luke 12:35–38 [problem of (i) whether the Marcan version qualifies as a parable and (ii) whether this is a case of two different sources or even of two different parables] This quick overview shows that Mark contains four or five narrative parables. A number of initial observations will aid the winnowing process. (1) Intriguingly, CGT contains parallels to whole Marcan parables (as opposed to possible fragments) only in the cases where a Marcan parable is also taken over by both Matthew and Luke. Not surprisingly, then, as we have already seen in the cases of the Mustard Seed and the Evil Tenants in Chapter 38, CGT’s parallel to a Marcan parable regularly presents a text conflated from the various Synoptic versions. While the parable of the Sower is a difficult case to judge, even there I think it more likely than not that CGT 9 evinces signs of Synoptic influence.3 It seems unlikely, then, that CGT supplies independent attestation for any of the Marcan parables. (2) Thus, the only clear candidate for a parable that meets the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources is the parable of the Mustard Seed, since it is witnessed by both Mark and Q. In contrast, not only does the Seed Growing by Itself lack multiple attestation, it is not even taken over by Matthew or Luke.4 (3) The parable of the Evil Tenants occupies a unique place among the Marcan para-



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bles. Although it does not enjoy multiple attestation (CGT 65 shows traces of all three Synoptic versions, especially Luke), our analysis in Chapter 38 pointed to some intriguing aspects about this parable: (i) Among all the parables, only here does the Synoptic Jesus make a clear allusion to himself and his violent rejection by the authorities. (ii) The primitive version of the parable probably ended either with the death of the son or with the slaying of the evil tenants. The citation of Psalm 118, alluding to Jesus’ vindication by way of resurrection, is generally judged to be a secondary addition. This raises the possibility that we may be able to appeal to the criterion of discontinuity and/or embarrassment in constructing an argument for the historicity of the primitive version of the parable. (4) The parable of the Doorkeeper is a debatable case. Luke 12:35–38 could represent a creative rewriting of Mark 13:33–37 (hence only one source), an independent source of the same parable, or a similar but different parable. More to the point, though, the metaphor in Mark 13:33–37 is actually limited to v 34 and hence lacks the development of a story line to qualify as a narrative parable. Consequently, I do not consider the Marcan logion of the Doorkeeper to be a genuine narrative parable, let alone one that enjoys multiple attestation.5 B. Narrative Parables in Q (or: Parables Found in Both Matthew and Luke but Not in Mark, Listed in the Lucan Order) 1. Wise and Foolish Builders—Matt 7:24–27 || Luke 6:47–49 2. Servant Placed over a Household—Matt 24:45–51 || Luke 12:42–46 3. Mustard Seed—Matt 13:31–32 || Luke 13:18–19; cf. Mark 4:30–32 || CGT 20 [a Mark–Q overlap] 4. Leaven—Matt 13:33 || Luke 13:20–21 || CGT 96 5. Great Supper—Matt 22:1–10 || Luke 14:16–24 || CGT 64 [or different M and L versions?] 6. Lost Sheep—Matt 18:12–14 || Luke 15:4–7 || CGT 107 7. Talents (Pounds)—Matt 25:14–30 || Luke 19:12–27 [or different M and L versions?] The Q tradition contains a few surprises. (1) Not unlike the Synoptic parables in general, Q material is sometimes accepted uncritically as the earliest and most assured access to the teaching of the historical Jesus. Hence Q parables enjoy an almost automatic cachet among critics. It is curious, then, to note that even if we count the parable of the Great Supper and the ­parable of the Talents, Q contains only seven narrative parables—fewer

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than what we find in M and L. Indeed, if we should judge the Great Supper and the Talents to be examples of independent M and L traditions (as some critics do), Q would have only five parables.6 By way of comparison: Mark has four (some would say five), M has nine, and L a remarkable— and curiosity-pricking—thirteen parables. (2) As for the criteria, we have already seen that only the Mustard Seed, as a Mark–Q overlap, clearly enjoys multiple attestation. The Great Supper and the Talents would join the list of multiply attested parables if we moved them from the category of Q parables to the separate list of parables found in both M and L traditions. These parables would thus enjoy a good argument for authenticity, but of course not as Q parables. (3) Attempts to use other criteria to argue for the authenticity of some of the Q parables are dubious, if not specious. To take a salient example, some authors claim that in ancient literature leaven was always a symbol of corruption. Therefore, its appearance in the parable of the Leaven as a positive symbol of the kingdom of God is the sort of discontinuous and/or embarrassing rhetoric that one would expect from the historical Jesus. However, closer examination of the sources reveals that in the ancient world leaven symbolized a whole range of ideas, some positive, some negative. There is nothing inherently embarrassing or shocking in the use of leaven as a symbol of the kingdom, and hence the argument from embarrassment or discontinuity fails.7 C. Narrative Parables in M 1. Wheat and Weeds—13:24–30 || CGT 57 2. Treasure Hidden in the Field—13:44 || CGT 109 3. Pearl—13:45–46 || CGT 76 4. Fish Net—13:47–48 [Is CGT 8 a parallel? Or is it possibly a separate parable, “The Wise Fisherman”?] 5. Unmerciful Servant—18:23–35 6. Workers in the Vineyard—20:1–16 7. Two Sons—21:28–32 8. Guest without a Wedding Garment—22:11–14 9. Ten Virgins—25:1–13 [The Scene of the Last Judgment—25:31–46—is not properly a parable.]8 Coming from the Marcan and Q parables to the M tradition, we are struck by a number of differences. (1) Compared to the four (or five) parables in Mark and possibly as few as five in Q, the M source contains nine



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parables (eleven, if we count the Great Supper and the Talents as M rather than Q material). We see that Synoptic parables are by no means limited to the earliest and supposedly most reliable sources. (2) Similarly, the parables of the M tradition remind us that CGT’s parallels are not found solely in the early traditions of Mark and Q. At least three and possibly four of the M parables (the Fish Net is an uncertain case) have parallels in CGT. In other words, the parables in CGT do not always match up with the presumably earliest strata of the Synoptic tradition. (3) There is practically no debate over whether most of these nine Matthean candidates rank as narrative parables rather than similitudes. Clearly, the core metaphor of some specimens has been “stretched out” to a narrative of notable length (e.g., the Unmerciful Servant, the Workers in the Vineyard, and the Ten Virgins). Yet even the trio of very short M parables that concludes Matthew’s parable discourse in chap. 13 (the Treasure Hidden in the Field [one verse], the Pearl [two verses], and the Fish Net [four verses, counting the nimša¯l ]) contains in each instance a mini-story with an implicit beginning, middle, and end. (4) Despite the large number of M parables, it is difficult to see how any of them can meet the criteria of historicity. If we prescind from the debatable cases of the Great Supper and the Talents, the M parables by definition have no multiple attestation by independent sources in the Synoptic tradition. Other criteria like discontinuity or embarrassment do not apply. (5) To make things worse, a good number of the M parables evince what one might call a strong Matthean redactional tone, coloration, or theology. The “aggravating factor” highlighted by this fifth observation needs to be examined a little further if we are to appreciate the special difficulty involved in attributing M parables to the historical Jesus. Commentators on Matthew’s Gospel regularly underscore key themes that are typical of Matthew’s theology: the definitive separation of good and evil at the last judgment, the severity of that final judgment as a motive for good conduct in this present life, the consequent emphasis on stringent moral activity, total commitment, and constant vigilance—an emphasis that focuses on doing God’s will instead of paying lip service to it (the danger of hypocrisy).9 Such typically Matthean themes are prominent in many of the M parables (e.g., the Wheat and the Weeds, the Fish Net, the Unmerciful Servant, the Two Sons, the Guest without a Wedding Garment, and the Ten Virgins), making a claim of authenticity still more difficult to demonstrate. Indeed, in a few cases I would consider an origin stemming from the historical Jesus practically excluded. Take, for example, the conclusion (Matt 22:11–14) of Matthew’s heavily redacted version of the Great Supper (22:1–10—Q or M tradition?). Compared with Luke’s version of the story, in Matt 22:1–10 the Great Supper has become a

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detailed allegory of salvation history. As we shall see in detail in Chapter 40, Matthew’s linguistic and theological fingerprints are already clearly present in the main part (vv 1–10) of the story. The logic of the Matthean version of this parable, which ends in the present “time of the church,” demands that the hall (= the church) in which the wedding feast of the son (= the risen Jesus) is being celebrated be filled with “bad and good” alike (notice the order of the adjectives in 22:10). Here we have Matthew’s signature theme of the world in general and the church in particular being a “mixed bag” of good and evil in the present period of salvation history. However, to Matthew’s mind, things cannot be left in that messy, mixedup state. Matthew’s theology, though not the narrative logic of the Great Supper taken in isolation, demands a concluding and definitive separation of the bad from the good. To supply the desired dénouement, Matthew tacks on a separate mini-parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment (Matt 22:11–14). The logical connection between this add-on and the main parable is strained at best. How can someone suddenly pulled off the street and thrust into a wedding feast be blamed for not having the proper attire for a wedding? But for Matthew such minor problems of continuity are beside the point. His theology demands a resolution of the mixed-bag state of the church in the present world by a severe final judgment, and his add-on parable of the guest who is dragged in only to be tossed out answers his theological imperative. In my view, the most likely conclusion is that this parable about the sartorially challenged guest, a parable that makes no sense when detached from the Great Supper, is Matthew’s own creation.10 To be sure, this is an extreme case of Matthew’s redactional hand leaving fingerprints all over the composition. But traces of the same prints can be found on many of the other M parables. Granted, in themselves such traits do not prove that the other M parables do not go back to Jesus. But they make a positive proof that these M parables do in fact go back to him more arduous. The dreaded judgment of non liquet looms in the near distance. In the end, given the heavy Matthean redactional tone pervading so many of the M parables, even if we peel away everything that comes from Matthew or his M tradition, what are we left with? Indeed, is there anything left? How can we know what the contours and message of the hypothetical original parable underlying the supposed M tradition were like? D. Narrative Parables in L 1. ? Two Debtors—7:41–43 [parable or similitude?] 2. Good Samaritan—10:29–37



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3. Friend at Midnight—11:5–8 4. Rich Fool—12:16–21 || CGT 63 5. Barren Fig Tree—13:6–9 6. Tower Builder and Warring King—14:28–32 [to be counted separately?] 7. Lost Coin—15:8–10 8. Prodigal Son—15:11–32 9. Dishonest Steward—16:1–8 10. Rich Man and Lazarus—16:19–31 11. Servant’s Duty—17:7–10 12. Widow and Unjust Judge—18:1–8 13. Pharisee and Tax Collector—18:9–14 The L parables are not without their share of surprises that need to be examined at some length. (1) A major surprise is the realization that the L tradition contains the largest number of parables proper to one Synoptic source: thirteen or fourteen (if we count the double parable of the Tower Builder and the Warring King separately)—or even sixteen (if we count the Lucan forms of the Great Supper and the Talents as L rather than Q material).11 (2) If nothing else, this should raise further questions about the uncritical assumption that parables are the most assured bedrock of the Jesus tradition, material that can almost automatically be attributed to Jesus unless serious objections stand in the way. In my opinion, the opposite presumption should hold true for the L parables. To start with: for the sake of argument, let us accept the common view that the chronological order of the Synoptic Gospels (plus the hypothetical Q document) is Q—Mark—Matthew—Luke (the composition of Luke sometimes being put as late as the early 2d century). If we grant this theory, an intriguing pattern arises. In the first Christian generation, both Q and Mark are notable for the relatively small number of narrative parables they contain (by one count, as few as four each). In the second Christian generation, the number of parables proper to a given Gospel jumps to nine (or possibly eleven) in Matthew. The inflation of parables found only in a Gospel’s special source continues in Luke (composed possibly as late as the beginning of the third Christian generation), which contains at least thirteen and possibly sixteen L parables. To be sure, these statistics do not prove that the parables found only in M and L are not authentic; later literary sources may well contain primitive traditions. Nevertheless, the increasing number of unique parables in chronologically later Gospels should at least give one

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pause before presuming that any and every Synoptic parable is to be attributed to the historical Jesus unless serious objections intervene. (3) In the view of some scholars, serious objections do intervene in the case of the L parables. Not unlike the M parables, the L parables, besides lacking multiple attestation, strongly reflect the redactional theology of the Gospel in which they are found.12 Among the many theological themes and concerns pervading the massive project of Luke–Acts, a basso continuo is created by the overarching, global theme of the crossing of boundaries, be those boundaries religious, ethnic, social, or economic. This global theme finds individualized expression in the more specific themes of (i) concern for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized (including women), (ii) the consequent excoriating of the wealthy and the powerful who do not help the poor, (iii) the power of the prayer/petition of the marginalized, (iv) the unearned forgiveness offered to sinners, (v) the danger of neglecting this offer by refusing to repent, and (vi) the encapsulation of most of these themes within the theme of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God (prefigured in the Gospel and realized in Acts). One need only peruse the list of L parables to appreciate how much they are steeped in and give voice to these redactional concerns of Luke. (4) These notably Lucan theological themes in the parables unique to him are often matched and reinforced by vocabulary, grammar, literary form, and style that are typical of Luke. A prime example of such Lucan stylistic traits is the developed inner monologue, unique to L parables within the Synoptic corpus.13 In a sense, then, the L parables present us with an aggravated case of the M parables. By definition, the L parables lack multiple attestation; they are suffused with the theological concerns of Luke; and they also bear clear marks of his literary style. This is true even on the macro level: all but the first of the L parables (if, indeed, we count 7:41–43 as a parable and not a similitude) are placed by Luke in his artificially constructed Great Journey Narrative (chaps. 9–19). When we add all these considerations to the already noted “aggravating factor” that these L parables are found in the last Synoptic Gospel to be written, perhaps as late as the early 2d century, we are forced to ask: By what criterion or argument can we attribute any L parable to the historical Jesus? Even if we did suspect that a given L parable went back to Jesus, what would it sound like and what would it say once the characteristic vocabulary, style, redactional theology, and redactional context of Luke were all removed? (5) As if all this were not enough, the L parables suffer from a further handicap above and beyond what we find in the M parables. Scholars



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widely acknowledge that Luke’s Gospel, compared to Mark and Matthew, has a notable Pauline ring to it.14 In fact, at times the ring becomes quite audible in the very wording of the Gospel (to say nothing of Acts). The most notable example is supplied by the eucharistic words at the Last Supper in Luke 22:19–20. The Lucan version of the text clearly reflects Paul’s eucharistic tradition in 1 Cor 11:23–26 more than it does Mark 14:22–24.15 Hence it may not be just the overactive imagination of some commentators that sees in some of the L parables Pauline themes like justification apart from the works of the Law or the inclusion of non-Jews in the people of God. Think, for instance, of the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, and the Good Samaritan. Yet these are precisely the L parables that Christian instincts, critical or not, spontaneously want to attribute to Jesus. Here, as in Corinth, the dour Paul—or at least the echoes of his theology in Luke’s Gospel—should check the excesses of Christian enthusiasm when it comes to identifying Jesus as the source of any or all of the L parables. I readily admit, though, that all this talk about specific Lucan vocabulary, grammar, literary forms, and style—plus some theological concerns reminiscent of Paul—can sound like vague and sweeping generalizations, especially to critics who prefer to maintain the historical Jesus as the source of the L parables. One way of responding to these understandable demurs, while at the same time strengthening the conclusions we have drawn from the inventory of the L parables, is to focus on one prime example of an L parable and to subject it to detailed analysis. But which L parable might serve as the perfect specimen for the experiment?

III. A TEST CASE FROM LUKE: THE GOOD SAMARITAN If we set out in search for the perfect specimen of an L parable, the quest will not last very long. Surely no L parable is better known and loved than the Good Samaritan. Its image, message, and very title have become part of popular thought and speech—testimony to the psychological power that a well-crafted parable can exert. I dare say, many non-Christians would probably be as dismayed as most Christians by the judgment that the parable of the Good Samaritan is a creation not of Jesus but of either the early church or Luke himself. Such a claim runs counter to the tacit academic postulate that good things come from the historical Jesus and bad things come from the early church. Would that Gospel criticism were so simple.

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In fact, a solid argument can be mounted for the claim that the Good Samaritan was composed neither by Jesus nor by the early bearers of the oral tradition but rather by the evangelist whom we call Luke. A number of critics have in fact defended this less-than-popular view, prominent among them being Gerhard Sellin in a lengthy two-part article.16 While I do not agree with all of Sellin’s claims, I think that, for the most part, he constructs a credible, cumulative argument. As I take over and retool his argument, though, I think it best to begin with some general observations about the Good Samaritan as a typical L parable, reflecting the traits that distinguish L parables from other Synoptic parables. Then we can move to the details of the Good Samaritan. A. General Observations on the Good Samaritan as an L Parable (1) Taken together in a broad overview, the L parables have a different “feel” from those of Mark and Matthew.17 For example, the L parables are more focused on (i) realistic presentations of human individuals with inner psychological lives as well as on (ii) the practical moral applications of the stories. Moreover, unlike the Marcan and Q parables that Luke takes over, the L parables encompass a wide range of social and religious relations, classes, and professions: e.g., money-lender, householder, steward, vine-dresser, priest, Levite, Samaritan, innkeeper, judge, constable, publican (= tax collector), and Pharisee. As Birger Gerhardsson puts it, Luke’s special parables display the “complexity” of “civilized society more clearly” than those of Mark or Matthew.18 At the same time, they are less concerned with allegory than, most notably, the M parables.19 It is not for nothing that many critics from Adolf Jülicher onward have identified a special type of parable unique to Luke among the Synoptics, the so-called example story or exemplary narrative (Beispielerzählung). The candidates usually admitted to this exclusive club are the Good Samaritan, the Rich Fool, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. (Some commentators also include the L parable of the Dishonest Steward.) All four of these stories seek to inculcate proper attitudes and behavior by offering positive examples to be imitated or negative examples to be avoided. The message conveyed by these four stories is fairly straightforward, without the puzzling metaphorical or allegorical thrust found in some parables. All four likewise involve a surprising reversal of standard expectations. Whether or not these characteristics justify placing this quartet in a separate category or subset of parables—a point debated



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among commentators—the typically Lucan “feel” found in the L parables in general is especially palpable in this foursome, to which the Good Samaritan belongs.20 (2) But to move from a general “feel” to stylistic particulars: Luke fashions the introductions to his L parables, including the four example stories, in a strikingly characteristic fashion. None of the L parables begins with “the kingdom of God is like . . . ,” or indeed with any “like” or “similar to” terminology. Rather, all the L parables begin in one way or another with the Greek pronoun tis, in either its interrogative sense (tis ex hymo¯n, “who among you?”) or its indefinite sense (“a certain” or simply “a”). More specifically, as we saw in Chapter 38 when studying the parable of the Rich Fool, unique to Luke among the Synoptics is the type of parable that begins with some form of anthro¯pos tis, “a [certain] man. . . .”21 Sellin counts nine of the L parables as anthro¯pos tis parables. The Good Samaritan, of course, belongs to this type of parable, bearing the typical Lucan beginning: “A certain man [anthro¯pos tis] was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho . . .” (Luke 10:30).22 (3) Luke connects his L parables with some larger narrative structure or with a brief introductory situation. This literary mechanism extends from the first L parable in the Gospel (the Two Debtors, embedded in Jesus’ dialogue with the Pharisee who objects to the sinful woman anointing Jesus’ feet) to the last L parable in the Gospel (the Pharisee and the Tax Collector praying in the Jerusalem temple, introduced by the statement that Jesus, soon to arrive in the Jerusalem temple, aimed this parable at the self-righteous). When we examined the parable of the Rich Fool in Chapter 38, we noticed how many of the short introductory settings to the parables probably stem from Luke’s redactional hand. That is certainly the case with the lawyer’s question about inheriting eternal life (Luke 10:25), which is both the introduction to the parable of the Good Samaritan and a product of Luke’s massive reworking of Mark’s pericope on the two commandments of love (Mark 12:28–34). It is these Lucan narrative introductions or frames that guide the interpretation of the L parables, not an introductory phrase such as “the kingdom of God [or: heaven] is like . . . ,” the type of introduction that is at home in Mark and Matthew. (4) Many of the stories in the L parables—and not just in the so-called example stories—turn on the reversal of status, expectations, or values—or, put differently, the crossing of boundaries. This is certainly the case with the Good Samaritan, where Jewish cultic officials fail to help a (presumably) fellow Jew in desperate need, while a Samaritan “foreigner” (cf. Luke 17:18) is moved by compassion to rescue him.

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B. The Good Samaritan in Detail Within this larger context of what is characteristic of or special to the L parables in general and the Good Samaritan in particular, let us now examine the specific reasons for suspecting that Luke himself created the parable of the Good Samaritan:23 (1) The structure of the whole of Luke 10:25–37 (narrative introduction plus parable) argues for a holistic composition by Luke. Luke 10:25–37 consists of two major stages of a back-and-forth conversation between a lawyer and Jesus. Each of the two major stages (first the introduction and then the parable) has the exact same internal structure (in each case, a type of Streitgespräch or dispute story). The two stages, with their two parallel structures, coalesce to create a unified and powerful literary impact.24 Stage I Narrative Introduction: v 25—first question of lawyer to Jesus: what shall I do? v 26—first reply by Jesus in form of a counterquestion: what is in the Law? v 27—lawyer forced to answer his own question with an abbreviated form of the double command of love v 28—approving reply of Jesus ending in a command: do this Stage II Parable of the Good Samaritan: v 29—second question of lawyer to Jesus: who is my neighbor? vv 30–36—reply by Jesus in the form of a parable, culminating in a counterquestion: who is the neighbor in this story? v 37a—lawyer forced to answer his own question: the one who did mercy v 37b—Jesus’ approving reply in the form of a command: do likewise This multifaceted parallel, down to repeated key words like “do,” is too perfect to be a mere coincidence. This is all the more true since, as we have already seen, Luke alone among the Synoptics provides a whole series of narrative introductions to his parables. At the very least, then, the overall structure of 10:25–37, with its elegant parallel of two main stages of narrative (anecdote + parable), is Luke’s own composition. But can we say more about his redactional hand in each of the two stages?



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(2) The introductory narrative (a type of dispute story, apophthegm, or chreia) is clearly a product of Luke’s redaction, as a whole series of typically Lucan words, phrases, and grammatical constructions attests.25 But the argument for heavy Lucan redaction rests on still firmer ground. As we saw in Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, when we treated the double command of love, Luke 10:25–28 is simply Luke’s reformulation of the “scholastic dialogue” about the first commandment in Mark 12:28–34. No other source besides Mark is involved.26 It is therefore Luke himself who created the structure of the lawyer’s question, Jesus’ counterquestion, the lawyer’s reply to his own question, and the final command of Jesus, all tied neatly together by the inclusio of the verb “do” (poieo¯). The introductory question posed by the lawyer, “What shall I do [poie¯sas] to inherit eternal life?,”27 is carefully balanced by Luke with the concluding command of Jesus, “Do [poiei] this and you shall live.” Luke also tightens up the sprawling Marcan version of the double command by compressing the two separate commandments of love into a single two-part commandment in 10:27. The verb “you shall love” (agape¯seis) is used only once, with God and “your neighbor” as the double object in one long sentence that culminates with the key phrase, “your neighbor as yourself.” This compressed formulation of the double command of love winds up emphasizing the theme of neighbor by the device of end stress, thus providing a smooth transition to the lawyer’s second question in v 29: “And who is my neighbor?” The intervening verse (v 28), which conveys Jesus’ approval, command, and promise (“You have answered correctly; do this, and you shall live”) has a Janus-like function. On the one hand, it concludes the introductory anecdote (Stage I) with the inclusio of the two verbs “do” and “live” (vv 25 + 28). On the other hand, it looks forward to the parable (Stage II), which concludes in v 37b with precisely the same verb form in its command as in v 28: “Do [poiei] likewise.” In sum, one need only compare Luke 10:25–28 word for word with its sole source, Mark 12:28–34, to see that the narrative introduction to the Good Samaritan is a massive creative rewriting of Mark’s pericope by Luke. The intricate structure and verbal patterns are Luke’s redactional creation, and it is this redactional creation that is paralleled perfectly in the parable that follows. (3) Before we move on to examine the parable itself, we should note a further redactional construction that ties together the introductory narrative and the parable. At the pivot between the anecdote and the parable stands the lawyer’s question, seeking a definition of “my neighbor.” In itself, this is a reasonable enough question for a lawyer to raise. When imposing obligations, laws must draw clear lines and boundaries: you are held so far but

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no farther. Hence a carefully delimited definition of who qualifies as one’s neighbor would seem necessary if the lawyer is to know and comply with the exact extent of his obligation to love his neighbor.28 But this is precisely what the Lucan Jesus refuses to provide. With the typical reversal or inversion of human perspectives, expectations, or values seen in many L parables, Jesus proceeds in vv 30–37 to define the category of neighbor not in terms of the person-over-there but in terms of the lawyer himself. You are to be the neighbor to anyone (including people of a different religion or ethnic group) whom you see in need. In the end, the category of neighbor is not a matter of abstract concepts or laws but of concrete action (“do” likewise) in the face of concrete suffering. Thus, contrary to the claims of some critics, there is no basic incoherence or disruption in the treatment of the category of neighbor as one moves from the introductory apophthegm to the parable.29 Rather, the two stages of the overarching pericope are carefully composed by Luke to lead the hearer (a fictional Jewish lawyer, a real Christian audience) through a process of the “transvaluation of all values.”30 The hearer starts out with one understanding of neighbor (as defined by Lev 19:18b: one’s fellow member of the cultic community of Israel) and ends up with a transformed understanding of neighbor (as “defined” in an open-ended fashion by Jesus). The general theological theme of reversal, emphasized by Luke from the very first chapter of his Gospel (e.g., 1:46–55), finds memorable expression in this transvaluation of the meaning of “neighbor.” Indeed, once we realize that this transvaluation of the category “neighbor” is the whole point of 10:25–37, neither Stage I nor Stage II makes complete sense by itself. For instance, the question of the lawyer in v 29 (“And who is my neighbor?”), which triggers the telling of the parable, would pop up out of nowhere if Stage I were not carefully constructed precisely to introduce and motivate the question. Likewise, the concluding exchange between Jesus and the lawyer in vv 36–37 about the true definition of one’s neighbor would not make sense if the lawyer’s question in v 29, prompted by the introductory anecdote, did not in turn introduce the parable.31 The interlocking structure that holds together the whole of vv 25–37 cannot be pulled apart without a great deal of damage to both its literary art and its movement of thought. The two stages need each other to create a satisfyingly complete theological message as well as a satisfyingly complete literary composition. (4) By the time we come to an analysis of the parable proper, we are not surprised to learn that its vocabulary and style are thoroughly Lucan, reflecting among other traits Luke’s penchant for imitating LXX Greek.32 Moreover, key Lucan vocabulary correlates with key Lucan theological



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concerns. To take one striking example: Luke alone among the Synoptics displays interest in the Samaritans. The words “Samaria” and “Samaritans” are absent from both Mark and Q, our two earliest written sources for the Synoptics. In Matthew, the word “Samaria” never occurs. The word “Samaritan” appears only in the negative command Jesus gives the Twelve at the beginning of the missionary discourse (Matt 10:5b–6): “Do not go to the Gentiles and do not enter a city of Samaritans; go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” As we saw in Volume Three of A Marginal Jew, this M saying is probably either a formulation of the early church or a redactional creation of Matthew himself.33 Luke–Acts stands in stark contrast to the almost total absence of Samaritans and Samaria in Q, Mark, and Matthew.34 To understand why this should be so, it is best to start with the explicit statement of Luke’s intention in Acts and then move back to his Gospel. In the speech of the risen Jesus that opens the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus—that is to say, Luke speaking through Jesus—announces the geographical as well as salvationhistorical outline of Acts (1:8): “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and unto the end of the earth.”35 This outline is then duly played out in the subsequent chapters of Acts. The initially successful preaching of the gospel in Jerusalem meets with increasing persecution by the Jewish authorities (chaps. 1–5), culminating in the martyrdom of the Hellenist Stephen (chaps. 6–7). The persecution unleashed by Stephen’s witness and death occasions the successful mission of the Hellenist Philip (followed by Peter and John) among the inhabitants of Samaria (8:4–25). Philip then evangelizes the coastal towns of Judea, ending in Caesarea (8:26–40), where Peter will soon convert the first Gentile “community,” the centurion Cornelius along with his household and friends (chap. 10).36 Meanwhile, some of the Hellenists scattered by the Jerusalem persecution have reached Antioch in Syria, where for the first time they proclaim the gospel in programmatic and widespread fashion to Gentiles as well as Jews (11:19–25). The former persecutor of Christians, Saul/Paul (whose conversion story has been skillfully interwoven with all these developments in the burgeoning Christian mission), becomes associated with the preaching at Antioch. From there he is dispatched to begin his far-flung mission to Gentile lands, even unto the ends of the earth (which turns out to mean Rome, the capital of the empire).37 We see, then, how Luke not only has the words of the risen Jesus in Acts 1:8 fulfilled in the precise order prophesied but also has each step in the unfolding process prepare or trigger the next step. That this smooth developmental model reflects Luke’s specific theological program is clear from

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the inclusion of Samaria as an important step in the process, while amazingly Galilee, the starting point and initial center of Jesus’ public ministry, practically disappears from Acts. Galilee plays no role either in the initial prophecy of the risen Jesus or in its fulfillment.38 Samaria’s prominent place in the early part of Acts is therefore not just the result of historical facts; it bespeaks Luke’s redactional choice and theological program. In light of this clearly enunciated theological program in Acts, we can appreciate the presence of the Samaritans in Luke’s Gospel, as opposed to their absence in Mark and Q and their near-absence in Matthew. At the very beginning (Luke 9:52–53) of the Great Journey Narrative (chaps. 9–19 in his Gospel), Luke presents a scene in which some Samaritans deny Jesus entrance to their village because he is journeying to the sanctuary of Jerusalem (the rival of the Samaritan center of worship on Mt. Gerizim).39 The indignant disciples James and John want to call down fire from heaven to destroy the inhospitable Samaritans, but Jesus exercises mercy by simply going off to a different village. That Jesus’ mercy toward the Samaritans will bear fruit is intimated later on in the Great Journey Narrative when Jesus cures ten lepers (a special L narrative in 17:11–19), one of whom is a Samaritan.40 The fact that only the Samaritan “foreigner” (who nevertheless is not categorized as a “Gentile”) and not the other nine lepers (presumably Jews) comes back to thank Jesus for his healing may point forward to the Acts narrative in which the spread of the gospel to the receptive Samaritans stands in contrast to the persecution in Jerusalem (Acts 8:2–25). In other words, the contrast between unbelief and belief in Acts (note the emphasis on believing in 8:12–13) may be foreshadowed by the fact that, when only the Samaritan in Luke 17 returns to glorify God and thank Jesus, Jesus pointedly affirms that the Samaritan’s faith has healed-and-saved him (with the double meaning of the verb so˛ˉ zo¯ in Luke 17:19). The other nine lepers, neither thanking nor believing, end up receiving only a physical healing. Indeed, one might even suggest that this Lucan miracle story, with its implicit contrast between Samaritan belief and Jewish unbelief, may hint at a larger pattern in Acts: in his missionary journeys, Paul regularly meets with unbelief on the part of many Jews and then turns to the Gentiles, who (along with some Jews), receive the gospel with faith (see, e.g., Acts 13:44–52; 18:1–11; 19:8–10; 28:17–28). Only when one has grasped the overarching function of Samaritans within Luke’s theology of salvation history and “salvation geography”—a theological construct unique to Luke–Acts within the NT—can one fully appreciate the Lucan character of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The key figure of the Samaritan, acting with mercy toward a Jew in contrast to



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the official representatives of the Jewish cultic community, is the perfect embodiment of Luke’s grand theme of crossing boundaries, begun in the Gospel and completely realized in the Gentile mission in Acts.41 Indeed, it is hardly by accident that this parable (10:29–37) appears in Luke’s Gospel not only within the Great Journey Narrative (chaps. 9–19) but more precisely between the initial hostile encounter between Jesus and a village of Samaritans (9:51–55) and the healing/saving encounter with the Samaritan leper (17:11–19). Its very positioning within the Great Journey Narrative intimates the idea of moving from a negative to a positive pole by crossing a boundary. Finally, Luke’s decision to focus on a Samaritan as the paradigm of merciful aid extended to a natural enemy who has no claim to it (in this case, a Jew) may be a striking example of his skill in refashioning OT stories and themes for his Christian theological program (as seen, for instance, in his Infancy Narrative). In 2 Chr 28:8–15, we are told that some northern Israelites from the city of Samaria (v 8) took pity on prisoners who had been carried off from Judah and Jerusalem (v 10) by the Israelite army. They clothed the naked among them, gave them food and drink, anointed them, put the weak on donkeys, and brought them to Jericho, to be cared for by their fellow Judeans (v 15). After showing such extraordinary compassion to their natural enemies, the northerners returned to Samaria.42 This passage may well have supplied Luke the artist with the basic material for his literary masterpiece, a type of midrash on an OT narrative that plays with and overcomes the polarity of Samaria and Judah.43 In sum, then, the parable of the Good Samaritan, taken together with its introduction, is thoroughly Lucan on every imaginable level: the macrostructure of Luke–Acts, the macro-structure of the Great Journey Narrative, the characteristically Lucan literary structure of introductory anecdote-plusparable, the exact parallel in the literary structure of first the introduction and then the parable, the Lucan theology suffusing both parts of the bipartite pericope, the typically Lucan vocabulary and grammar, and of course Luke’s unique focus on the figure of the Samaritan, fleshed out in midrashic fashion from an OT narrative. When one surveys all the Lucan elements that make up this literary-theological whole, one must ask why any critic would feel an imperative to discover some underlying, pre-redactional parable that Luke has reworked. Even if we suspected some such substratum, how could we ever discover what it was? If we strip away every Lucan theological, structural, literary, and philological trait from 10:25–37, what hypothetical poltergeist are we left with? And, more to the point for the project of A Marginal Jew, how would we move from this poltergeist to the ­historical

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Jesus and the parable he supposedly composed? This question becomes all the more pressing when we recall the results of our survey of Jewish or quasi-Jewish groups in Volume Three of A Marginal Jew.44 The upshot of our treatment of Samaritans was that most likely the historical Jesus had little direct contact with Samaritans and rarely if ever spoke about them. This conclusion, reached largely apart from concern about the parable of the Good Samaritan, makes the project of reconstructing the original parable in the mouth of the historical Jesus all the more futile—which has not prevented commentators from embracing the project with gusto.45 My judgment on this project of reconstruction, though severe, is not meant to be unsympathetic. The tenacity of the desire to affirm that this parable goes back to Jesus is readily understandable. But let us be honest about the reasons for this tenacity. In my opinion, it is not historical-critical concerns that move people to spontaneously rebel against the notion that the Good Samaritan—and indeed some other L parables, like the Prodigal Son—does not stem from the historical Jesus. In the lives of Christians and post-Christians alike, perhaps no other parable has been so deeply embedded in one’s consciousness at so early and pivotal an age. As can be seen from the results of the Jesus Seminar, even critics who readily assign much of the Gospel tradition to later Christian invention often resist the idea that Jesus did not speak the parable of the Good Samaritan (or the Prodigal Son).46 Such a reaction is quite comprehensible on an emotional level: the heart is strangely warmed. But if we are to form our judgments not on the basis of warmed hearts and religious nostalgia but rather on the basis of the historical-critical method and clear criteria of authenticity—as we ought—the parable of the Good Samaritan is an especially vulnerable target when viewed with the cold, skeptical eye of the historical critic. If we hold fast to the affirmation that the Synoptic parables do not get a free pass, then that affirmation must hold doubly true of the Good Samaritan in particular and the L parables in general. Our hearts may be strangely warmed—but is the heat radiated by Jesus or Luke? In the end, it seems more likely that Luke is the space heater set next to our souls.47 I have spent so much time on the parable of the Good Samaritan because it is for many the paradigm, the archetype, the most well-known and beloved of all the L parables. Here, if anywhere within the corpus of special Lucan parables, critics as well as the general public presume, if not demand, an origin in the creative mind of the historical Jesus. My point is that, if such a claim turns out to be wrong (or at least unprovable) in the case of the Good Samaritan—and indeed it does—one is forced to ask: Which other L parable would provide a better or more credible candidate? Lacking mul-



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tiple attestation, appearing in the latest Synoptic Gospel to be written, and often suffused with Lucan vocabulary and theology, these parables almost defy any commentator to prove their origin in the preaching of the historical Jesus, to say nothing of providing some sort of primitive structure, wording, and message for each parable. Let me be clear: I am not claiming that every L parable is as surely a pure product of Luke the evangelist as is the Good Samaritan. It is certainly possible that some of the L parables go back to special L traditions that Luke received and redacted. Indeed such a scenario seems likely in a few cases, most notably in the parable of the Dishonest Steward (16:1–8). This parable is so opaque in its message that Luke has appended a number of different applications (16:9– 13)—one might call them scattered notes for possible homilies on the parable. None of these applications really flows from the parable itself. The problem is that, while the Dishonest Steward may well be the best candidate for some kind of pre-Lucan tradition, it is also, by universal admission of critics, the most puzzling of all the Synoptic parables, inviting as it does an almost limitless stream of different and even contradictory interpretations.48 If this be true even on the level of the literary text Luke gives us, what can be said about the form, wording, and message of a hypothetical pre-Lucan tradition? And how do we move from that hypothetical pre-Lucan tradition to Jesus? Here we come back to the basic question that, in my view, makes attribution of any of the L parables to the historical Jesus nigh impossible. To sum up, then: I do not claim that I can prove that all the L parables are creations of Luke, as is, in my view, the Good Samaritan. Nor do I claim that I can prove that no L parable goes back to the historical Jesus. What I do claim is that no critic, using the criteria of authenticity with rigor, can prove that any L parable does go back to Jesus. At best, even when we have good reason to suggest the presence of L tradition, we are left once again with a judgment of non liquet when it comes to the historical Jesus.

IV. A SOBER CONCLUSION TO OUR SURVEY Modern research on the Synoptic parables, which dates roughly from the work of Adolf Jülicher, has been marked on the whole by a sunny optimism about the parables: most, if not all, may be presumed without further ado to come from the historical Jesus. Any outliers, such as the Wheat and the Weeds or the Ten Virgins, are viewed as rare aberrations from the main corpus of parables, which surely come from Jesus because almost all critics say they do. It is that oft-asserted but rarely probed consensus that the

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whole of Volume Five, but especially this present chapter, seeks to challenge. Stripped of their unearned presumption of historicity, most of the parables cannot mount convincing arguments in favor of their authenticity. Creation by the early church or by the evangelists seems a likely explanation not only for the Wheat and the Weeds and the Ten Virgins but also, in my view, for most if not all of the L parables. Less clear cases—in other words, most of the remaining parables—are rightly assigned to the limbo of non liquet: no strong argument tips the scales in either direction. What then are we left with? In truth, very little. Our survey found only one clear case of multiple attestation: the Mark–Q overlap of the parable of the Mustard Seed. In addition, the criterion of embarrassment suggests a solitary candidate from the Marcan parables: the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard. To the consternation of pious and impious alike, none of the criteria of historicity supports any of the parables unique to Matthew or Luke, however beloved they may be. Indeed, the remarkable increase in the number of parables found only in Matthew or in Luke (as compared with Mark or Q), along with the strong redactional tendencies of these M and L parables, should make any critic all the more leery of parables specific to the two later Synoptics. Two special cases in our survey, though, remain problematic. If the parable of the Talents (or Pounds) and the parable of the Great Supper are simply cases of Q parables heavily redacted by Matthew and Luke, then they lack multiple attestation and must be consigned to the category of non liquet. If, however, they represent two instances of parables witnessed independently in both the M and L traditions, an argument from multiple attestation could be mounted. It is to a detailed consideration of the historicity and interpretation of these four lonely candidates—the Mustard Seed, the Evil Tenants, the Talents, and the Great Supper—that we now turn. NOTES TO CHAPTER 39 See, e.g., Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus), who uses theological (one might almost say homiletic) categories like “Now Is the Day of Salvation,” “The Great Assurance,” and “It May Be Too Late.” Theological categories can also be found in Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus): e.g., “God’s Extraordinary Forgiveness and Grace,” “God’s Extraordinary Love for the Lost,” “Parables of Life before God”; and Snodgrass (Stories with Intent): e.g., “Grace and Responsibility,” “Parables of Lostness,” “Parables of Future Eschatology.” In contrast, Scott (Hear Then the Parable) consciously chooses categories drawn from social life and culture: “Family, Village, City, and Beyond”; “Masters and Servants”; and “Home and Farm.” 1

The reader is reminded that we are interested in only narrative parables as defined in Chapter 37. Metaphors or similitudes that are not “stretched out” to create 2



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a short story with an implicit beginning, middle, and end (in other words, a plot line) are not treated. Inevitably, there are some gray areas in the distinction between similitudes and narrative parables. For example, in Mark, I do not consider the saying about the budding fig tree (Mark 13:28–29 || Matt 24:32–33 || Luke 21:29–31) to be a narrative parable, though some critics do. One might argue that, in the debate on the dependence or independence of Thomas, the version of the Sower in CGT (logion 9) belongs to the category of non liquet rather than “dependent on the Synoptics.” This special status is the reason why I have relegated the parable of the Sower to this endnote instead of treating it with the test cases in Chapter 38. The case of logion 9 is difficult to adjudicate for a number of reasons. In this parable, the three Synoptics (especially Mark and Matthew) stay fairly close to each other. For the most part, CGT 9 agrees with the text of Mark/Matthew, with a few hints of Luke. As with a number of the cases examined in Chapter 38, Thomas presents an abbreviated form of the Synoptic story, while at the same time adding a few touches of his own: e.g., the contrast of the seeds not sending roots “down to the earth” and not producing ears of grain “up to the sky.” Thomas’ further addition of the worm that eats the seeds makes no sense in the context of the historical Jesus, since worms were not usually crop-damaging pests in ancient Palestine, and eating seeds that have already been “choked” is more than curious (so Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas, 56). Some sort of (gnostic?) symbolism seems to lie behind these additions, but it is hard to say what it is. The question of sources is further muddled by possible instances of the assimilation of the Coptic text of logion 9 to the standard Sahidic text of the Gospels. On the details of the Coptic text, see Schrage, Das Verhältnis, 42–48; Fieger, Das Thomasevangelium, 50–55. Despite these uncertainties, I think that there are some slight indications of the dependence of CGT 9 on the Synoptics. For example, only in Mark 4:3 || Matt 13:3 does a Synoptic parable begin with idou (“behold”). That such should be the case makes perfect sense, especially in Mark, the source text. Up until this point in the Gospel, the Marcan Jesus has not spoken a single narrative parable (though he has uttered a number of similitudes in chap. 3). It therefore makes sense that, as Mark begins both the first “sermon” or “discourse” of his Gospel and the first narrative parable to boot, he should have Jesus start the parable of the Sower and thus the whole parable discourse with a solemn idou. Indeed, since the parable of the Sower is placed first partly because it comments on the whole process of speaking and hearing parables (hence its designation as a “metaparable”), the solemn opening with idou is all the more fitting. Although Matthew has presented Jesus speaking in parables before the parable discourse of chap. 13 (e.g., the Wise and Foolish Builders in Matt 7:24–27), it still makes sense for Matthew to take over Mark’s idou, since the Sower begins the (much larger) parable discourse in Matthew as well. In contrast, the presence of “behold” (eishe¯e¯te in the Coptic) at the beginning of the parable of the Sower in CGT 9 does not make the same sense, since logion 9 does not signal the beginning of a parable discourse (each logion of CGT being one or more discrete units). As a matter of fact, Thomas’ version of the Sower follows immediately upon the first narrative parable in CGT, namely, the Wise Fisherman in logion 8. Moreover, logion 9 is the only instance in CGT where “behold” introduces a narrative parable; hence 3

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the presence of the word in logion 9 cannot be explained by appealing to the regular usage of CGT in introducing parables. Thus, dependence on Mark/Matthew seems the most likely explanation of “behold” at the beginning of Thomas’ version of the Sower. Furthermore, once we enter into the story of the parable, we see in CGT 9 the same tendency to conflate Synoptic texts that was demonstrated in Chapter 38. For example, when referring to the seed, Thomas uses throughout the plural Coptic forms hoeine (“some”) and henkooye (“some others”). In the Greek text of the Synoptics, the same consistent use of the plural (ha men . . . alla de) throughout the parable is found only in Matthew. Mark uses the singular form “some . . . other” (ho men . . . allo) until the climax in 4:8, when he uses the plural alla for “others.” Luke uses the singular (ho men . . . heteron) throughout the whole parable. To take another example: Thomas’ use of a main verb for “the birds came” (ayei) corresponds exactly only to Mark’s e¯lthen (4:4); Matthew uses a participle while Luke drops the verb entirely. Yet some of Thomas’ peculiarities coincide with those of Luke. Among the Synoptics, only Luke, as he begins the parable in 8:5 (and again as he begins the explanation of the parable in 8:11), uses the noun “seed” (Greek sporos, which occurs again in the NT only in Mark 4:26–27 [the Seed Growing by Itself] and in 2 Cor 9:10 [bis]). Thomas likewise uses the noun “seed” (Coptic cˇrocˇ) in this parable, when mentioning the thorns. While Mark and Matthew use the adjective “rocky” (petro¯de¯s) as a substantive, Luke uses the noun “rock” (petra) with the definite article. Here Thomas again agrees with Luke, even to the point of using the Greek noun. Yet Thomas’ “fell upon the thorns” reproduces exactly Mark/Matthew, while Luke has “in the midst of the thorns.” Likewise, Thomas’ “and it gave fruit” (afti karpos) renders Mark/Matthew (kai edidou karpon) rather than Luke’s epoie¯sen karpon (“made fruit”). As for the yield, Thomas’ 60 (which he then doubles to 120) is taken from the 30–60–100 yield of Mark (and Matthew, in reverse order), while Luke speaks only of “a hundredfold”; cf. Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 241. Admittedly, as noted earlier, we must allow in some instances for the possibility of scribal assimilation of CGT 9 to the standard Sahidic Coptic; see, e.g., the use of the noun “rock”(petra) in Mark 4:5 in Sahidic Mark. On the other hand, if one argues for a massive assimilation of CGT 9 to the standard Sahidic, then the usefulness of logion 9 as an independent witness to the earliest available form of the parable is called into question. In the end, I am impressed by the overall tendency of logion 9 to conflate, which fits the pattern of Thomas’ use of the Synoptics seen in Chapter 38. Hence, while I grant that a judgment of non liquet in regard to the dependence of CGT 9 on the Synoptics is reasonable, I incline to the view that logion 9 shows enough traces of Synoptic influence to move it from the category of non liquet to the category of “probably dependent on the Synoptics.” For further argument on the subject, see Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” 153–56. There is a possible parallel to the end of the Seed Growing by Itself (Mark 4:29) at the end of CGT 21, but (i) the brevity of the statement, which comes out of nowhere and seems to have nothing to do with anything else in logion 21, and (ii) the paucity of significant words shared by Mark 4:29 and this last part of CGT 21 (“fruit,” “sickle”) make any firm decision about dependence or independence 4



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nigh impossible. Both texts could be independently alluding to Joel 4:13 (3:13 in some English translations; cf. Rev 14:15–16). 5 The question is complicated by the apparent redactional reworking of the tradition undertaken by both Mark and Luke; see, e.g., Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 53–55. Both evangelists seem to have rewritten traditional material with a view to the Christian hope of Christ’s coming in glory (i.e., the parousia). More to the point at issue: Mark’s version (13:33–37) should probably not be classified as a narrative parable, since most of the logia in vv 33–37 are cast in direct address (2d person plural) and are aimed at Jesus’ disciples at the end of the eschatological discourse. Within that larger Marcan context, phrases like “not knowing the time” in v 33 and “not knowing when the master (or: the Lord) of the house is coming” in v 35 refer clearly and directly to the coming of the Son of Man, as prophesied in vv 24–27. The metaphor proper—depicting a man about to go on a journey who commands and empowers his slaves to discharge their duties properly, notably the doorkeeper who is ordered to keep watch—is restricted to v 34. The story line within the metaphorical world of v 34 is developed no further. Instead, mention of the coming of the master is made in v 35, after the discourse has reverted to direct address to the disciples, exhorting them to keep watch (obviously, in the context, for the Son of Man). Thus, the disparate logia in vv 33–37 do not cohere and coalesce into a single narrative parable, and v 34 by itself is too brief and undeveloped to qualify as such. Then, too, whether Luke 12:35–38 should rank as a parallel to Mark 13:33–37 is itself questionable. A number of motifs (burning lamps, waiting for a man returning from a wedding, knocking at a locked door) are actually closer to the M parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25:1–13). The real parallels in Luke 12:35–38 to Mark 13:33–37 are reducible to the themes of (i) men (presumably the master’s servants) keeping watch for their master’s return at an unknown hour and (ii) the readiness of the men to open the door for him (a task attributed by Luke to all the servants, not just to a special doorkeeper as in Mark). One might add the specification of various hours of the night, though they differ in Mark and Luke. In sum, the lack of a real narrative parable in Mark and the lack of a sufficient number of parallel words, phrases, and sentences in Luke disqualify Mark 13:33–37 || Luke 12:35–38 as a case of one narrative parable with multiple attestation of independent sources. Not surprisingly, Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 492) does not give the Doorkeeper in Mark 13 separate consideration in his encyclopedic work; he classifies it simply as a short metaphorical saying. Reflecting how fine the borderline between long similitudes and short narrative parables can be, Birger Gerhardsson (“Illuminating the Kingdom. Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition [ed. Henry Wansbrough; JSNTSup 64; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1991] 266–309) lists Mark 13:32–37 || Luke 12:35–38 (which he calls “the Watchful Servants”) as a “narrative mashal,” but admits that it is among those “narrative meshalim . . . on the borderline,” a category in which he also places the Burglar (Matt 24:43–44 || Luke 12:39–40) and the Defendant (Luke 12:58–59). Taking a different tack, Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 212–13) detects underneath Mark 13:34–35 and Luke 12:36–38 “an originating parabolic structure” that has been “performed” in

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different ways. Since Scott does not “hear” the distinctive “voice” of Jesus in this parable, he assigns it to the early church. One sees how easily, without clear criteria of historicity, parable research can dissolve into the personal esthetic tastes of the individual commentator. Since the Q tradition is made up almost entirely of sayings material, it is not surprising that various metaphorical logia or similitudes are at times listed as narrative parables by some critics. In my view, though, none of the following candidates qualifies as a full narrative parable that draws the audience into a metaphorical story world. Q sayings often offered for consideration include (1) the Burglar—Matt 24:43–44 || Luke 12:39–40; cf. CGT 21, 103; (2) the Children in the Marketplace— Matt 11:16–17 || Luke 7:31–32; (3) the Return of the Unclean Spirit—Matt 12:43– 45 || Luke 11:24–26; (4) the Warning about Going before the Judge—Matt 5:25–26 || Luke 12:58–59. In my opinion, the sayings about the Burglar and the Children in the Marketplace are not developed sufficiently to represent mini-narratives with an implicit beginning, middle, and end. The metaphorical statement about the Burglar is a single verse made up of a contrary-to-fact condition; the following verse applies the metaphor to the disciples. The Children in the Marketplace depicts a frustratingly static situation rather than a developing story. The Return of the Unclean Spirit, if its original Sitz im Leben is indeed Jesus’ arguing with his adversaries over the practice of exorcism (the larger context in both Matthew and Luke), should probably be seen first of all not as a metaphorical narrative but rather as the consideration of a real possibility (remember how real the idea of demons, demonic possession, exorcisms, and the possible recurrence of possession was to the ancient audience). Only Matthew tacks on a comparison at the end of the unit: “So it shall be with this evil generation.” Finally, in the Warning about Going before the Judge, Jesus addresses his audience directly in the 2d person plural as he uses a series of metaphors to urge them to settle quarrels and be reconciled with adversaries while there is still time. This rhetorical style of direct exhortation lacks the underlying parabolic structure and dynamic whereby the audience is drawn into a different, metaphorical story world—as in, e.g., “the kingdom of heaven is like a king who. . . .” 6

On the range of meanings of leaven as a symbol (which need not be negative), see Schellenberg, “Kingdom as Contaminant?,” 527–43, esp. 538–41; similarly, Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 233. In contrast, note how Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 321) claims that “only the negative sense [of leaven] is evidenced in ancient literature” and proceeds to base his whole interpretation of the parable on this faulty premise (pp. 321–29). For similar claims about leaven, see Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 149; Seccombe, “Incongruity,” 168–70; more cautious is Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 406. 7

Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 543) begins his treatment of Matt 25:31–46 by admitting: “. . . this is not really a parable. At most we have a parabolic saying about the separation of sheep and goats in vv. 32–33,” which he labels “an implied similitude.” Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus, 310) makes a similar observation. Oddly, 8



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Snodgrass proceeds to give this nonparable an extensive exegesis (pp. 543–63) in his parable book. He titles the passage “The Sheep and the Goats,” although the phrase refers only to “the implied similitude,” which is dropped after vv 32–33 and never reappears in the rest of the pericope. Far from being a parable, this grand scene of judgment is rather the concluding prophecy of the Matthean Jesus that caps both the fifth discourse and the entire public ministry of the First Gospel. In Matt 25:31–46, Jesus the Son of Man and eschatological prophet clearly depicts, in no uncertain terms, what will definitely happen at the final judgment. Far from being an allusive eschatological parable, it is the reality to which all the parables and similitudes in Matthew’s eschatological discourse point. On this, see John P. Meier, Matthew (NT Message 3; Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1981) 302–6. Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus, 206 n. 77) makes the intriguing observation that Matt 25:31–46 can be called a ma¯ša¯l in the sense of an apocalyptic revelation, similar to the Ethiopic mesal found in the section of 1 Enoch (chaps. 37–71) that has been given the questionable label of “The Similitudes” or “The Parables” of Enoch. For sketches of Matthew’s redactional theology, see, e.g., Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, Überlieferung und Auslegung im Matthäusevangelium (WMANT 1; 5th ed.; Neukirchen: Buchhandlung des Erzie­ hungsvereins, 1968); Robert H. Gundry, Matthew, 5–10; Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew (Sacra Pagina 1; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991) 17–19; John P. Meier, “Matthew, Gospel of,” AYBD, 4. 622–41, esp. 637–40; Ulrich Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew (Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University, 1995); Mark Allan Powell, God with Us (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Donald Senior, What Are They Saying about Matthew? (rev. ed.; New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1996); John Riches, Matthew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) 44–104; Matthias Konradt, Israel, Kirche, und die Völker im Matthäusevangelium (WUNT 215; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2007); Daniel  M. Gurtner and John Nolland (eds.), Built upon the Rock. Studies in the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2008) esp. 53–84, 85– 107, 170–186; Mogens Müller, “Bundesideologie im Matthäusevangelium,” NTS 58 (2012) 23–42. 9

So Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 163 n. 11), following such commentators as Eduard Schweizer and Francis W. Beare. Other candidates for the list of parables probably created by Matthew would include, in my view, the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (its allegorical interpretation almost certainly stems from Matthew’s redactional hand). For various opinions on this point, see the treatment of this parable in Chapter 38. Another likely candidate is the parable of the Ten Virgins, heavily laden as it is with Matthean theological concerns; on this, see Karl Paul Donfried, “The Allegory of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25:1–13) as a Summary of Matthean Theology,” JBL 93 (1974) 415–28. Donfried concludes (p. 428) that the parable of the Ten Virgins “does not stem from the historical-Jesus level but was created by Matthew on the basis of certain traditions which he had received.” It is perhaps not by accident that Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 68–72), who tries to maintain that most of 10

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the parables go back in their originating structure or distinctive voice to Jesus, feels he must make an exception for two of the M parables: The Wheat and the Weeds and the Ten Virgins. We might well add other M parables to his list. 11 One could claim that L contains sixteen parables if the double parable (or twin parable) of the Tower Builder and the Warring King (14:28–32) were counted separately. Here, however, I follow the approach of many commentators in treating them together; see, e.g., Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 379–88; Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 196. In contrast, Gerhardsson (“The Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” 343–44; cf. “Illuminating the Kingdom,” 269), while admitting that the Tower Builder and the Warring King could be counted as one double parable, prefers to count them as two separate parables; see also Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 137–45.—As with the other Synoptic sources, I omit from my count of L parables sayings that rather belong in the category of similitudes or simply sayings containing metaphors. Two prominent cases in L are the Narrow Gate/Closed Door (Luke 13:24–25; cf. Matt 7:13–14) and Choosing Places at Table (Luke 14:7–11). (1) As for Luke 13:24–25, the larger context presents Jesus addressing an audience in the 2d person plural in what is really a prophecy about events that will occur at the last judgment. The metaphor (or similitude) of struggling to enter through the narrow door takes up only a single verse. Matt 7:13–14 uses a similar (but not exactly the same) metaphor. Contrary to the opinion of some critics, I do not consider the two texts close enough to qualify as a Q saying, nor for that matter even as two independent sources of the same saying. Rather, all we have here is multiple attestation of a particular metaphor serving a particular theme. (2) As for Luke 14:7–11, while Jesus’ words may have a higher symbolic meaning in reference to the final judgment (as intimated by v 11), the sayings as situated in their immediate context are a direct address to an audience whom Jesus urges to practice self-effacement in matters of table etiquette (a common wisdom theme). It is in this sense of wisdom instruction about proper and prudent conduct that the advice about table manners can be called a parabole¯ in 14:7. Hence Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 568) translates parabole¯ in 14:7 as “analogy” or “instruction.” This passage is no more a narrative parable than is the moral exhortation addressed in the 2d person singular to the host, which follows in vv 12–14 (likewise ending with a reference to the final judgment). In Luke’s stream-of-consciousness composition, both sets of exhortations serve to introduce his version of the parable of the Great Supper. 12 For sketches of Lucan theology, see, e.g., Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke (New York: Harper & Row, 1961); Josef Ernst, Lukas. Ein theologisches Portrait (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1985); François Bovon, Luc le théologien (2d ed.; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1988); Thomas E. Phillips, Reading Issues of Wealth and Poverty in Luke–Acts (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 48; Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2001); Hans-Georg Gradl, Zwischen Arm und Reich (FB 107; Würzburg: Echter, 2005); Paul Borgman, The Way According to Luke (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2006); Geir Otto Holmås, Prayer and Vindication in Luke– Acts (Library of NT Studies 433; London/New York: Clark, 2011).



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We have already examined the special Lucan character of the monologue or soliloquy in Luke’s parables in Chapter 38, when treating the parable of the Rich Fool. 13

14 For connections between Lucan and Pauline literature, see, e.g., Walter Radl, Paulus und Jesus im lukanischen Doppelwerk (Europäische Hochschulschriften Series 23, Theology 49; Bern: Herbert Lang; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1975); William O. Walker, Jr., “Acts and the Pauline Corpus Revisited: Peter’s Speech at the Jerusalem Conference,” Literary Studies in Luke–Acts (Joseph B. Tyson Festschrift; ed. Richard P. Thompson and Thomas E. Phillips; Macon, GA: Mercer University, 1998) 77–86. 15 I accept the common view of text critics today that, in light of the massive external evidence (including papyrus 75), the so-called “longer” version of the Lucan eucharistic words is the original form of the Gospel text. For arguments pro and con, see Metzger, TCGNT (2d ed.), 148–50.

Gerhard Sellin, “Lukas als Gleichniserzähler: die Erzählung vom barmherzigen Samariter (Lk 10:25–37),” ZNW 65 (1974) 166–89 (Part I); ZNW 66 (1975) 19–60 (Part II). The view that Luke, as a type of Christian midrashist, composed the parable of the Good Samaritan by using and fleshing out various OT and early Christian motifs is maintained by M. D. Goulder, “Characteristics of the Parables in the Several Gospels,” JTS n.s. 19 (1968) 51–69, esp. 68–69. That Luke composed the parable out of whole cloth or at least is responsible for the parable in its present literary form is held by, among others, Vincent Henry Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents (3 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1903, 1909, and 1920) 2. 300; H. F. D. Sparks, “The Semitisms of St. Luke’s Gospel,” JTS 44 (1943) 129–38. 16

17 For the basic ways in which the parables of Luke differ from those of Matthew and Mark, see Sellin, “Lukas” (Part I), 175; Donahue, The Gospel in Parable, 126– 28, 204–11; Drury, The Parables in the Gospels, 111–25. For the most part, Sellin’s list of differences is taken over from the work of Goulder, who espouses the radical position that only the Marcan parables go back to Jesus, while Matthew and Luke constructed their own parables. 18

Gerhardsson, “Illuminating the Kingdom,” 276.

19 Goulder (“Characteristics,” 54, 57, 60–61) summarizes the specific qualities of Luke’s parables by stating that they “are down-to-earth affairs, intended to impress by their reality, and he eschews the fanciful. . . . In Luke all is alive. His characters are many-sided. . . .” At times, Luke actually de-allegorizes his source, as is clear in the case of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard.

Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus, 4) notes that some critics, following Jülicher, consider example stories a third type of parable (taking the designation “parable” in its broadest sense) alongside narrative parables and similitudes. Hultgren himself prefers to see them as simply a subset of narrative parables. In contrast, Snodgrass 20

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(Stories with Intent, 13–15) entirely rejects the category of example story, placing the usual four candidates (along with the L parable of the Dishonest Steward) into a category that he labels “single indirect parables.” Snodgrass rightly points out that other parables offer examples of behavior to imitate or avoid (e.g., Matthew’s parable of the Unforgiving Servant). Yet Snodgrass admits that Luke’s quartet (plus the Dishonest Steward) “do function differently.” Instead of telling a story about persons and events (the “vehicle”) that function metaphorically to point beyond to a different reality (the “tenor,” e.g., God, his kingdom, his people), the so-called example stories are actually about the persons and actions they narrate. “No transfer is required to another arena, and therefore, we are justified in speaking of their ‘relative peculiarity’” (pp. 14–15). Thus, even Snodgrass acknowledges a different “feel” in the case of the Lucan “example stories” or “single indirect parables,” be they a separate category or not. An interesting distinction should be noted here. Some form (or variation) of the tis ex hymo¯n phraseology existed in a few Q parables and sayings (e.g., Matt 7:9–10 || Luke 11:11–12; Matt 18:12–14 || Luke 15:4–7). But anthro¯pos tis parables are unique to Luke. 21

22 To be sure, both Mark and Matthew have parables that begin with a reference to an anthro¯pos, but without tis. Sellin sees a notable difference in these Marcan and Matthean parables. In them the anthro¯pos is the chief figure in the story who dominates the action with an exercise of power at the end of the parable (e.g., the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, esp. in Mark 12:9). Sellin claims that this is not true in the same way of the anthro¯pos tis in the L parables. 23 The bibliography on the Good Samaritan is immense, though a good deal of the literature is dedicated to homiletic, pastoral, or ethical concerns. Histories of interpretation that provide further bibliography include Werner Monselewski, Der barmherzige Samariter (BGBE 5; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1967); Hans Gunther Klemm, Das Gleichnis vom barmherzigen Samariter. Grundzüge der Auslegung im 16./17. Jahrhundert (BWANT 6/3; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1973). In addition to the standard commentaries on Luke, see the standard books on parables, including Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 202–5; Crossan, In Parables, 57–66; Drury, The Parables in the Gospels, 132–35; Donahue, The Gospel in Parable, 128–34; Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 189–202; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 338–62. For a series of essays applying a structuralist approach to this parable, see John Dominic Crossan (ed.), The Good Samaritan (Semeia 2; Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1974). For larger hermeneutical issues, see Sandra Wackman Perpich, A Hermeneutic Critique of Structuralist Exegesis, with Specific Reference to Lk 10.29–37 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984); Llewellyn Welile Mazamisa, Beatific Comradeship. An Exegetical-Hermeneutical Study on Lk 10:25–37 (Kampen: Kok, 1987). Other works include Franz J. Leenhardt, “La parabole du Samaritain,” Aux sources de la tradition chrétienne (M. Maurice Goguel Festschrift; Bibliothèque Théologique;



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Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1950) 132–38; Birger Gerhardsson, The Good Samaritan—the Good Shepherd? (ConBNT 16; Lund: Gleerup, 1958); idem, “The Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” 339–63; Helmut Gollwitzer, Das Gleichnis vom barmherzigen Samariter (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1962); Robert W. Funk, “The Old Testament in Parable: The Good Samaritan,” Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) 199–223; James I. H. McDonald, “The View from the Ditch—and Other Angles,” SJT 49 (1996) 21–37; Richard Bauckham, “The Scrupulous Priest and the Good Samaritan: Jesus’ Parabolic Interpretation of the Law of Moses,” NTS 44 (1998) 475–89; Philip F. Esler, “Jesus and the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict: The Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Light of Social Identity Theory,” Biblical Interpretation 8 (2000) 325– 57; Riemer Roukema, “The Good Samaritan in Ancient Christianity,” VC 58 (2004) 56–74; Michael P. Knowles, “What Was the Victim Wearing? Literary, Economic, and Social Contexts for the Parable of the Good Samaritan,” Biblical Interpretation 12 (2004) 145–74; Thomas Kazen, “The Good Samaritan and a Presumptive Corpse,” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 21 (2006) 131–44; Preston M. Sprinkle, “The Use of Genesis 42:18 (not Leviticus 18:5) in Luke 10:28: Joseph and the Good Samaritan,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 17 (2007) 193–205; Bruce W. Longenecker, “The Story of the Samaritan and the Innkeeper (Luke 10:30–35). A Study in Character Rehabilitation,” Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009) 422–47. Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 190) holds that “a strong internal consistency links together the lawyer’s question and the parable,” but he supplies a somewhat different way of understanding the parallel between Stage I and Stage II. 24

For a list of Lucan vocabulary and stylistic traits in 10:25–28, see Sellin, “Lukas” (Part II). Sellin includes in his list: kai idou (a Septuagintism); tis placed after a substantive (Matt 0x, Mark 1x, Luke 29x, Acts 39x); the formulation of the lawyer’s question in v 25b, which corresponds exactly to Luke 18:18b, where Luke is once again rewriting Mark (10:17) by introducing the participial form poie¯sas; the introduction of direct speech by ho de eipen pros auton in v 26a; and the compression of the two separate Scripture citations found in Mark into a single sentence by kai. 25

26 Here is one of the points on which I would disagree with Sellin. There is no reason to posit any other source (e.g., Q or special L material) to explain Luke’s creative redaction of Mark 12:28–34. On this, see A Marginal Jew, 4. 484–528, esp. 522–26.

Translated with excruciating literalness, the lawyer’s introductory question in 10:25 reads, “[By] having done what shall I inherit eternal life?” This circumstantial (adverbial) use of the participle poie¯sas at the beginning of the first question highlights the concept of “doing,” which helps tie together the whole of Luke 10:25–37. 27

28

This is a point emphasized by Bauckham, “The Scrupulous Priest,” 475.

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So rightly Sellin, “Lukas” (Part II), 23–24; cf. Craig A. Evans, “Luke’s Good Samaritan and the Chronicler’s Good Samaritans,” Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Volume 3: The Gospel of Luke (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 16; Library of NT Studies 376; ed. Thomas Hatina; London/New York: Clark, 2010) 32–42, esp. 41–42. For the view that a shift in the meaning of “neighbor” between Stage I and Stage II “indicates that the parable and Lukan context were originally separate,” see Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 191–92; similarly, Longenecker, “The Story of the Samaritan,” 422–27; cf. Jan Lambrecht, “Response to Garwood P. Anderson. Parables in Luke,” ETL 86 (2010) 177–83, esp. 182. It is telling that Longenecker, while admitting that some authors have made sense of Luke 10:25–37 in its Lucan context, does not judge this “the best solution when considering the story in relation to Jesus’ ministry” (n. 3 on p. 423–24). Here we have the commonly accepted (rather than proven) presupposition that some primitive parable lies behind Luke’s formulation, a parable that most likely goes back to the historical Jesus. Indeed, many commentators do not even consider the possibility that, in the same act of composition, Luke both created the parable and massively rewrote the Marcan pericope about the first commandment (Mark 12:28– 34) to provide a typically Lucan introduction. 29

30 It is, of course, with an ironic nod to Friedrich Nietzsche that I employ his famous phrase “the transvaluation [or: re-evaluation, reversal] of all values” (Umwert­ hung aller Werthe), proclaimed at the conclusion of his work The Antichrist. For the German text in the larger context of Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christentum, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke (15 vols.; Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1980) 6. 253. My own transvaluation or reversal of the phrase “the transvaluation of all values” lies in the fact that I am employing it, in the context of the Good Samaritan, to describe the exaltation of the virtue of compassion, something Nietzsche abhorred. For the transvaluation or reversal of values as characteristic of the L parables, see Sellin, “Lukas” (Part I), 183–84.

Luke’s portrayal of the lawyer’s intention in posing the two questions and his reception of the parable’s message is debated among commentators, with many evaluating the lawyer as a negative character. For the view that the lawyer is a positive figure who “eventually understands the parable of Jesus,” see Nathan Lane, “An Echo of Mercy. A Rereading of the Parable of the Good Samaritan,” Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality. Volume 2: Exegetical Studies (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 15; Library of NT Studies 392; ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; London/New York: Clark, 2009) 74–84. Lane bases his argument on a supposed allusion to Exod 34:6–7 in Luke 10:37. I must admit that I have difficulty in hearing the “echo.” 31

For a list of typically Lucan words, phrases, and constructions in the parable proper, see Sellin, “Lukas” (Part II), 35–36; Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents, 2. 300. Sellin lists what he considers the most important Lucanisms: anthro¯pos tis (besides the L parables, see Acts 9:33); peripiptein (elsewhere in the NT only in Acts 27:41; Jas 1:2; present in the LXX at 2 Kgdms 1:6; Prov 11:5; Ruth 2:3; DanLXX 32



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2:9; 2 Macc 6:13; 9:7,21; 10:4); ple¯gas epithentes (elsewhere in the NT in the same sense only in Acts 16:23, but in Rev 22:18 in a different sense); kata with the accusative for a specific place designation (Luke 16x; Acts 53x)—with the definite article this usage occurs in the NT only in Luke (5x) and Acts (19x); kte¯nos (elsewhere only Acts 23:24; 1 Cor 15:39; Rev 18:13; frequent in the LXX, e.g., Gen 1:25,26,28; 2:20; 3:14; 6:7; 8:19; Exod 11:5), but in the NT only in Luke–Acts in the sense of “animal for riding”; agein (Luke 13x; Acts 26x; Mark 3x; Matthew 4x; in the rest of the NT, 21x); epi plus the accusative for a time designation (Luke 3x; Acts 12x; epi te¯n aurion occurs also in Acts 4:5); epanerchesthai (elsewhere in the NT only in Luke 19:15; present in the LXX at Gen 50:5; Lev 25:13; Job 7:7; Prov 3:28; TobBA 6:17; 2 Macc 4:36). Also striking is the high concentration of unusual compound words, seventeen of them occurring in 10:30–35 alone; this is a typical trait of Lucan style. In sum, Sellin claims that, apart from the hapax legomena that can be explained for the most part as derived from the LXX, one cannot point to clearly un-Lucan or pre-Lucan locutions that would argue for a pre-Lucan form of the parable. In similar fashion, Stanton argues that “the structure of the sentences and the vocabulary in this parable [i.e., the Good Samaritan] justify us in attributing it, so far as its literary form is concerned, to our evangelist.” Stanton agrees in effect with Sellin that the hapax legomena in the parable derive mostly from the LXX, which Luke seeks to echo. He also points out the fine literary style of the pericope as a whole, including the use of three participial clauses in a row in v 30. Stanton goes on to observe that the Semitisms (taken from the LXX) in this parable are not as numerous as in some other passages of the Third Gospel. Rather, argues Stanton, what we have in the parable of the Good Samaritan is an intriguing mix of some Semitisms (actually Septuagintisms) interspersed with a high number of classical Greek words and phrases. As Sparks observes (“The Semitisms of St. Luke’s Gospel,” 129–38), this same stylistic mix is seen in the latter half of Acts. Sparks suggests that the reason is the same in both contexts: namely, “St. Luke is writing the story which he has to tell in his own words” (p. 137), rather than finding a story already complete that he then proceeded to rewrite to introduce into it a combination of Septuagintisms and classical Greek. Indeed, at the end of his article (p. 138), Sparks goes so far as to suggest that Luke had no other sources for his Gospel than Mark and Q. 33

A Marginal Jew, 3. 543–44.

34 As I indicate in A Marginal Jew, 3. 547–49, the only other writing in the NT besides Luke–Acts that deals with Jesus’ relationship to the Samaritans is the Gospel of John.

On the disputed nature of the function of Acts 1:6–8 in the overall narrative of the work, see Alan Bale, “The Ambiguous Oracle: Narrative Configuration in Acts,” NTS 57 (2011) 530–46. 35

36 How the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch by the Hellenist Philip (Acts 8:26– 40) fits into the overall development of mission in this part of Acts is not entirely clear. Part of the problem is that Luke leaves us uncertain about the status of the

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Ethiopian. Is he, at the start of the story, a full convert to Judaism, or is he rather that typical Lucan figure, the Gentile “God-fearer”? The answer to that question turns in part on whether one understands “eunuch” (eunochos) in its literal, physical sense or simply as a designation for a court official. As far as we know, in the pre-70 period a physical eunuch could not become a full-fledged convert to Judaism because of the restriction inscribed in Deut 23:1 (23:2 in the MT; later rabbinic literature develops various legal distinctions on this point). However, whatever be the tradition that may lie behind the present text of Acts 8:26–40, it has been massively redacted by Luke, so the question must be how Luke understands “eunuch,” a point that remains unclear. For a treatment of the relevant historical-critical and literary problems connected with these questions, see Josef Zmijewski, Die Apostelgeschichte, 359–69; C. K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles 1. 420–26; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, 410–12. Fitzmyer argues that the line of development in Luke’s story of the spread of the Christian faith requires that the Ethiopian eunuch be understood “as a Jew, or possibly a Jewish proselyte” (p. 410). Not all commentators would agree. For example, Ernst Haenchen (Die Apostelgeschichte [MeyerK 3; 6th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968] 264) thinks that Luke has purposely left the religious status of the Ethiopian unclear. Brittany E. Wilson (“‘Neither Male nor Female’: The Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.26–40,” NTS 60 [2014] 403–22) takes the theme of ambiguity even further by interpreting the Ethiopian as a true physical eunuch, a liminal figure defying neat categories, and hence a perfect representative of Luke’s theme of boundary-breaking. For an approach that moves in a similar direction, see Scott Shauf, “Locating the Eunuch: Characterization and Narrative Context in Acts 8:26–40,” CBQ 71 (2009) 762–75. That Rome could be considered, for specific theological and literary purposes, “the end of the earth” is supported by the description of Paul’s martyrdom at Rome in 1 Clem. 5:7: “Having come to the farthest limit of the West . . . thus he [Paul] departed the world. . . .” (Possibly, though, 1 Clement alludes here to Paul’s plans to go to Spain, mentioned in Rom 15:24,28.) The theme of Rome as the limit of the West (using the word dysis, literally, the “setting” of the sun) is also touched on by Ignatius of Antioch, Rom. 2:2, likewise in a context of Christian martyrdom at Rome. On the interpretation of this geographical reference, see Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles, 1. 79–81; Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, 206–7. 37

38 Apart from the two retrospective references to the Galilee of Jesus’ public ministry (Acts 10:37; 13:31), Galilee is mentioned only in passing in the global summary of the state of the church in Acts 9:31: “Now the church throughout the whole of Judea and Galilee and Samaria was enjoying peace, being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord; and it was being given [numerical] increase by the consolation of the holy spirit.” 39

On this, see A Marginal Jew, 3. 545–46.

40 See A Marginal Jew, 2. 701–6; 3. 544–45. As can be seen in these overviews of the problem, the Samaritans functioned both in the eyes of Jews and Gentiles and in



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the literary works of Luke and John as an “in between” or “liminal” people, neither fully Jewish nor fully Gentile—though the historical Samaritans considered themselves “Israel.” Hence, in John’s Gospel, where Jesus has no significant contact with Gentiles during the public ministry (contrast the stories of the centurion’s servant and the Syrophoenician woman in the Synoptics), the brief contact with the Samaritans in John 4 serves as a foreshadowing of the mission to the Gentiles that will be made possible by Jesus’ death-resurrection (see John 12:20–26). Fittingly, then, in the whole Gospel of John, only the Samaritans give Jesus a title that intimates his universal impact and thus a universal mission in his name (4:42, “this is truly the savior of the world”). In Acts, Luke purposely positions the mission to the Samaritans (8:4–25) after the initial mission to the Jews and before any indication of a mission to the Gentiles. The Gentiles appear in the narrative as converts (i) possibly in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch (but is the eunuch a Gentile God-fearer or a Jewish proselyte?; see n. 36 in this chapter) in 8:26–40; (ii) certainly in the story of Peter and Cornelius, with a need for Peter to justify this surprising démarche to the Jerusalem church in 10:1–11:18; and (iii) most certainly in the open and widespread preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles at Antioch by the Hellenists in 11:19–26, with a major dispute resulting in 15:1–35. Notice that, by way of comparison, the conversion of the Samaritans creates no difficulty or dispute for Jewish Christians. 41 Paradoxically, it is perhaps the wholly positive nature of the Samaritan in this L parable that prevents Luke from using his characteristic “interior monologue” (or soliloquy) here. Sellew (“Interior Monologue,” 242) points out that the characters in the L parables who engage in interior monologues are not especially commendable, let alone noble, persons. As Sellew observes, “the self-satisfied, amoral, or even immoral individuals who star in these portrayals, who are looking out for their own interests above all, sometimes encounter unexpected divine intervention or retribution . . . but more often they seem able to use their craftiness or amoral reasoning to escape punishment.” This description is the exact opposite of all that the Samaritan stands for. Hence, one salient Lucan stylistic trait, the inner monologue, is necessarily missing from the parable of the Good Samaritan.

It is odd that many commentaries on the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Chronicles either do not mention or do not give detailed attention to this correspondence or to the possibility of Luke’s conscious use of this story in his parable of the Good Samaritan. Among the few commentators who do raise the question, some deny any connection between the parable and 2 Chr 28:8–15, at times for apparently apologetic reasons. Still others acknowledge the connection, but only in passing. For a brief history of the treatment of the question in scholarly literature, see Isaac Kalimi, “Robbers on the Road to Jericho. Luke’s Story of the Good Samaritan and Its Origin in Kings/Chronicles,” ETL 85 (2009) 47–53. Kalimi notes that the Chronicler in turn may have been influenced by an earlier story about treating enemies with kindness in 2 Kgs 6:20–23, though Kalimi rightly maintains that the links between 2 Chronicles 28 and Luke 10 are much stronger. Kalimi leaves open the question of whether the use of 2 Chr 28:8–15 in the parable is to be attributed to Jesus or to Luke. Also in favor of seeing the influence of 2 Chr 28:8–15 on this parable is Evans, 42

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“Luke’s Good Samaritan,” 32–42. Evans goes so far as to suggest (p. 32) that “the parable has indeed been ‘spun out of the account’ in 2 Chron. 28. 1–15.” For a list of scholars who accept the influence of the story in 2 Chronicles and of those who either deny or ignore the possibility, see his footnotes 1 and 2 on p. 32. Similar to Evans in general approach but even more detailed in his treatment of the similarities and differences between 2 Chr 28:8–15 and the Good Samaritan is Eben Scheffler, “The Assaulted (Man) on the Jerusalem—Jericho Road: Luke’s Creative Interpretation of 2 Chronicles 28:15,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 69 (2013) 8 pages (online). Like Evans, Scheffler leaves open the possibility that some form of the parable or perhaps some stimulus that gave rise to the Lucan parable can be attributed to Jesus. Scheffler suggests, for instance, that Jesus may have recalled the incident described in 2 Chronicles 28 in order to counter Jewish hatred for Samaritans, that his followers later recalled his use of this Scripture passage, and that Luke then created the parable of the Good Samaritan from the OT text and the stimulus given by Jesus’ use of it. While all this may be possible, we seem to be involved in a desperate attempt to salvage something of the parable for Jesus, when the present form of the parable—and the only form available to us—clearly comes from Luke’s creative hand. 43 On this, see Goulder, “Characteristics,” 68; Bultmann, Geschichte, 221–22. It is telling that Jean-Marie Van Cangh (“Le Bon Samaritain. Une création de Jésus ou de Luc?,” Luke and His Readers [Adelbert Denaux Festschrift; BETL 182; ed. Reimund Bieringer, Gilbert Van Belle, and Joseph Verheyden; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 2005] 239–63), in an attempt to reconstruct the original parable of Jesus that lies behind Luke’s text, feels obliged to rewrite the basic story so that the three travelers who come upon the wounded man turn out to be a priest, a Levite, and an Israelite layman. That Van Cangh must also rewrite other key parts of the whole Lucan pericope to arrive at the original form of the parable (e.g., the original parable was the direct answer to the lawyer’s question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?,” and Jesus’ final question was “Which of the three, in your opinion, has the greatest chance of inheriting eternal life?”) does not inspire confidence. But the ultimate problem with Van Cangh’s whole approach is that, while he emphasizes the enormous redactional creativity of Luke, he takes for granted that behind Luke’s activity lay a parable that went all the way back to the historical Jesus. To repeat the basso continuo of this fifth volume, why should we presuppose that scenario?

See my treatment in A Marginal Jew, 3. 532–49, esp. 546–47, with the relevant endnotes (esp. 602 n. 172). As I indicated on p. 546, the opinion of scholars on the origin of the parable of the Good Samaritan is mixed. The attentive reader will notice that while in Volume Three I leaned in the direction of some pre-Lucan tradition behind the parable of the Good Samaritan (though I did not support ultimate authorship by the historical Jesus; see pp. 602–3 n. 173), I have since come to the conclusion that evidence for such a pre-redactional parable circulating in the L tradition is lacking. 44



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It is remarkable to observe how many commentators on the parable of the Good Samaritan take for granted (instead of arguing) that the parable, in some form or other, derives from the historical Jesus. This is true of exegetes so different in their approach as Jeremias (The Parables of Jesus, 202–5, where even the initial exchange with the lawyer is apparently accepted as the historical occasion of the parable) and Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 189–202, in a more critically nuanced presentation that distinguishes the original meaning of the parable and Luke’s redactional intent). Many treatments admit in theory that one must distinguish between some original form of the parable in the mouth of the historical Jesus and the text we now have from Luke. Yet in practice the distinction is quickly waived or forgotten, and the supposedly distinct compositions of Jesus and Luke meld in the details of the exegesis. For various examples of this approach, see Bauckham, “The Scrupulous Priest,” 475–89; Esler, “Jesus and the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict,” 325–57; Kazen, “The Good Samaritan,” 131–44; Sprinkle, “The Use of Genesis 42:18,” 193–205. This (often unacknowledged) eliding of the level of Luke’s composition and the supposed level of Jesus’ creation of the parable is proclaimed with refreshing honesty by Esler (p. 325), when he states his presumption that the parable is “either authentic or that, even if it is a Lucan creation (the view I prefer), Luke so well understood . . . the message of Jesus that for the most relevant purposes it does not particularly matter whether it is authentic Jesus material or not.” For anyone seriously engaged in the quest for the historical Jesus, it does matter. 45

See, e.g., Funk et al., The Five Gospels, 323–24 (the Good Samaritan in red font), 356–57 (the Prodigal Son in pink font). The editors note that almost 50 percent of the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar voted red for the Prodigal Son; “a few black votes pulled the average into the pink category” (p. 357). In The Five Gospels, red represents the judgment that “Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it”: pink indicates the judgment that “Jesus probably said something like this” (p. 36). In both cases, the reasoning offered for a judgment of authenticity is surprisingly flimsy. For example, the authenticity of the Good Samaritan as a parable originally spoken by Jesus is supposedly demonstrated by the fact that the parable “redraws the map of both the social and the sacred world” (p. 324)—something that is quite true of Luke–Acts, which is much more concerned about Samaritans than apparently the historical Jesus was. (As an aside: it is telling that, from all the L parables, the Jesus Seminar’s The Parables of Jesus. Red Letter Edition [ed. Robert W. Funk, Bernard Brandon Scott, and James R. Butts; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1988] lists only the Good Samaritan and the Dishonest Steward as “red parables” [p. 74]). As for the Prodigal Son, in contrast to Funk and his associates, Drury (The Parables in the Gospels, 139–47) marshals strong arguments for Lucan composition of this parable. After listing all the Lucan vocabulary, grammar, syntax, theological themes, and typically Lucan allusions to the OT in this parable, Drury asserts (p. 142): “Anyhow, enough has been said . . . to land us in the preposterous position that if Jesus is the author of this parable [i.e., the Prodigal Son] then it must follow that there is a case for his authorship of Luke’s Gospel.” One could easily expand this general argument by detailed studies of aspects of the Prodigal Son that reflect the sort of grasp of 46

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Greco-Roman literature that might be expected of a cultured cosmopolitan rather than a Jewish prophet from Galilee. For example, Callie Callon (“Adulescentes and Meretrices: The Correlation between Squandered Patrimony and Prostitutes in the Parable of the Prodigal Son,” CBQ 75 [2013] 259–78) highlights the stock elements of Greco-Roman comedy that Luke employs in the parable. Luke’s theological concerns and literary style within the context of the larger Greco-Roman world are also emphasized by Trevor J. Burke, “The Parable of the Prodigal Father. An Interpretative Key to the Third Gospel,” TynBul 64 (2013) 217–38 (though without engaging the question of whether the parable ultimately comes from the historical Jesus). That the Prodigal Son expresses a theology of conversion that is characteristic of Luke (and, in this case, not of Paul) is the contention of David Morlan, “Luke and Paul on Repentance,” Paul and the Gospels. Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences (Library of NT Studies 411; ed. Michael F. Bird and Joel Willitts; London/New York: Clark, 2011) 115–45, esp 123–31. In sum, the same basic set of arguments that I have employed in this chapter to show that the Good Samaritan is a creation of Luke also applies to the Prodigal Son. Granted, some commentators might reply that these arguments are offset by indications that the parable of the Prodigal Son sits awkwardly in its present place in the Gospel, a sign that its literary context is secondary. Hence it is a traditional unit that Luke took into his Gospel. Actually, such a claim about the parable’s awkward position in its immediate context is debatable, but let us grant it for the moment for the sake of argument. Even then, it is hardly a decisive claim. In light of the fact that Luke composed the two longest books in the NT, indeed the only two books that are intentionally meant to function as two parts of one literary work, it is hardly a leap of logic to suppose that Luke was a longtime teacher, preacher, and leader of one or more Christian communities toward the end of the 1st century a.d. It could well be, then, that small masterpieces like the parable of the Prodigal Son were first formulated by him in his oral teaching and preaching before they were incorporated into his grand literary project. An alternate approach, which brings us more or less to the same ultimate conclusion, is the suggestion of Marc Rastoin (“Le génie littéraire et théologique de Luc en Lc 15.11–32 éclairé par le parallèle avec Mt 21.28–32,” NTS 60 [2014] 1–19) that the parable of the Prodigal Son is Luke’s creation in the sense that it is the result of his creative rewriting of a traditional parable that was similar to Matt 21:28–32 (The Two Sons); according to Rastoin, this rewritten unit, whose style is totally Lucan, reveals the literary and theological genius of Luke. If that should be the case, how would we get back from Luke through a hypothetical source to whatever was the original parable of Jesus? If, as I have argued, the parable of the Good Samaritan is a creation of Luke, the various attempts made by scholars to use the parable to discern Jesus’ views on the Mosaic Law in general or purity laws in particular must be judged hopelessly flawed from the start. This is especially true of the presentations of Bauckham, “The Scrupulous Priest,” 475–89; and Kazen, “The Good Samaritan,” 131–44. Even if we were to grant that some earlier version of Luke’s parable goes back to Jesus, we cannot draw any historical conclusions about Jesus’ position on purity rules from the parable without knowing the wording of the supposedly original version, since 47



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a minor change in certain key words would likewise change our deductions about Jesus’ views. In particular, before a scholar can state how the parable informs us of Jesus’ position on purity, he or she must deal with a number of serious philological and historical problems. (1) What is the original Aramaic that lies behind the allimportant but rare Greek word he¯mithane¯ (“half-dead”) in Luke 10:30? A great deal of the argument about purity rests on the priest’s dilemma in possibly exposing himself to incurring ritual impurity from a corpse (something forbidden to a priest unless the deceased was a close relative). Complicating the problem is the fact that the Greek word for “half-dead” does at times occur in contexts that indicate that the “half-dead” person can speak and move. See, e.g., 4 Macc 4:11, where the impious Apollonius falls to the ground “half-dead [he¯mithane¯s],” yet proceeds to stretch out his hands and beg the Hebrews to pray for him; see likewise Joseph and Aseneth 27:3 + 29:1, though the presence of he¯mithane¯s in 27:3 is not textually certain. If the wounded person in Luke’s parable is “half-dead” in the sense witnessed in 4 Macc 4:11, he would still be able to manifest by word and/or action that he was not dead and therefore posed no immediate danger of corpse impurity to a Jewish priest. In the end, though, all of this information brings us no closer to knowing the meaning of the pivotal Aramaic word that would supposedly underlie the Greek he¯mithane¯s. (2) Then, too, there is the question of whether later rabbinic texts may be invoked to show that at least some legal experts allowed a priest to bury a corpse found abandoned in the open country (me¯t miswâ). The mere fact that purity was a lively ˙ (as witnessed, for example, by many texts subject of debate around the time of Jesus from Cave 4 at Qumran, notably 4QMMT) does not in itself resolve the question of whether it is legitimate, when commenting on the Good Samaritan, to invoke rabbinic texts like m. Nazir 7:1—all the more so when (i) this rabbinic text concerns the relative obligation of a Nazirite and a high priest encountering an abandoned corpse and (ii) the prevailing consensus of the sages in this text states that the obligation to bury the neglected corpse lies with the Nazirite, not the high priest. More to the point, on what grounds do we suppose that Luke or the historical Jesus (or the audiences of either Luke or Jesus) knew about the subtleties of rabbinic opinions attested only one to two centuries later? (3) The presence of the Levite in the story, who functions along with the priest as a contrast-figure to the Samaritan, creates even greater difficulty for seeing this parable as a vehicle of Jesus’ views on purity. Nothing known about Levites either from the OT or from Jewish literature at the time of Jesus supports the opinion that Levites were under the same purity prohibitions as priests in the matter of coming into contact with corpses; on this, see Amy-Jill Levine, “The Many Faces of the Good Samaritan—Most Wrong,” BARev 38/1 (2012) 24, 68, esp. 24. (4) One must remember that, on the level of Luke’s redactional composition, we are not justified in attributing to Luke the knowledge of the Samaritans’ approach to the Mosaic Law and purity rules that a modern historian of religion might possess. As a matter of fact, even Luke’s grasp of the geography of Samaria vis-à-vis Galilee and Judea seems shaky at best; see, e.g., 17:11 (“and it came to pass while he [Jesus] was traveling to Jerusalem and was passing between [literally, ‘going through the middle of’] Samaria and Galilee . . .”), a geographical notice that occurs toward the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem! In brief, Luke’s knowledge of Samaritans,

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as evidenced in his Gospel and Acts, can be summed up as follows: the Samaritans count as foreigners and as a distinct religious group in the eyes of Jews (but they do not count as Gentiles); a major point of tension between Samaritans and Jews is the status of the Jerusalem temple as the proper goal of religious pilgrimage; the Samaritans are given to a ready belief in miracles that leads to credulity when confronted with charlatans; yet they prove open to receiving the Christian message. To impute to Luke or to the literary character of the “good Samaritan” that he creates in this parable a precise knowledge of first-century Samaritan views on the Mosaic Law in general or purity rules concerning the dead in particular is to go beyond the evidence. Indeed, even today, how much do scholars know for certain about Samaritan purity rules concerning the dead in the period prior to a.d. 70? 48 Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 406–9) lists sixteen different approaches to the interpretation of this sphinx of a parable. Paradoxically, he also argues that the parable originates with Jesus on the grounds that such a “notoriously difficult” parable would hardly have been created by the early church. I suggest that anyone who is attracted to such an argument first review Volumes One to Four of A Marginal Jew and catalogue all the difficult, confusing, perplexing, or confounding statements that are attributed to Jesus in Gospels but that wind up being judged creations of the early church or an evangelist. For an analysis of different tendencies in the interpretation of the Dishonest Steward down through the ages, see Brian C. Dennert, “A Survey of the Interpretative History of the Parable of the Dishonest Steward (Luke 16:1–9),” From Judaism to Christianity: Tradition and Transition (Thomas H. Tobin Festschrift; NovTSup 136; ed. Patricia Walters; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010) 145–52. Dennert’s contribution serves as an appendix to an essay in the same volume by Edmondo Lupieri, “Mammona iniquitatis: Can We Make Sense of the Parable of the Dishonest Steward?,” pp. 131–43. Both Dennert and Lupieri think that the Dishonest Steward is one of the most difficult Gospel parables to interpret; both feel that the best way forward is to focus on the meaning of the parable within its wider Lucan context. Lupieri in particular voices his skepticism about the possibility of identifying the original meaning of this parable in regard to Jesus; he states that he would be satisfied if he could simply understand what the evangelist meant by it (p. 134 n. 9). For a more detailed history of the interpretation of the Dishonest Steward in the 19th and 20th centuries, see Dennis J. Ireland, Stewardship and the Kingdom of God (NovTSup 70; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1992) 5–47.—I find even less convincing as candidates for authentic parables of the historical Jesus the other “example stories” in Luke besides the Good Samaritan and the Dishonest Steward. In this, I disagree with the reasoning process of Timothy A. Friedrichsen (“The Temple, a Pharisee, a Tax Collector, and the Kingdom of God: Rereading a Jesus Parable (Luke 18:10–14a),” JBL 124 [2005] 89–119), who uses the fact that the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is an example story unique to Luke (with the unlikely model of a tax collector) as a basis for arguing for the historicity of the parable as coming from Jesus. Friedrichsen reasons that, since the parable is not simply a story about humility in prayer (something that is asserted rather than proven), on the level of the historical Jesus the parable refers at least implicitly to



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the Kingdom of God. One is reminded of the old dictum that what is gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied. In addition, Friedrichsen argues that there is a disjunction between Luke’s introduction to the parable (v 9, warning against those who are confident about their own righteousness while despising others) and the actual prayer of the Pharisee. But in the parable proper, the Pharisee’s prayer (despite its formulation as a prayer of thanksgiving) is concentrated on himself, not on God. His prayer suffers from a terrible case of the “I’s” and blithely contrasts the righteous Pharisee both with “the rest of human beings” in general and with the tax collector nearby in particular. There is thus no great disjuncture between the warning in the introduction and the failing presented in the parable. Nor does the jarring nature of the reversal of expectations, with the tax collector extolled as the model to be imitated, argue against composition by Luke. Such a reversal of expectations and/or values is common in Luke’s theology from chap. 1 of his Gospel onward (see, e.g., Luke 1:24,51–53,59–63), and is exemplified perfectly in the Good Samaritan. Furthermore, even if Friedrichsen’s arguments proved that the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector was not created by Luke himself, once again we would simply be transferred to the level of a pre-Lucan tradition, not necessarily to the level of the historical Jesus. To harp on a main theme of this chapter: one of the greatest barriers to proving that most of the parables come from Jesus is the difficulty of moving from a possible pre-evangelist tradition to the teaching of Jesus himself. What arguments can get us across that chasm when the criteria apply to so few parables?

Chapter 40

The Few, the Happy Few For many readers of A Marginal Jew, the conclusion drawn from Chapter 39 was probably not a welcome one. After all the effort expended on the narrative parables of the Synoptics in the last three chapters, we apparently wind up with so little: four parables that might qualify as candidates for the coveted accolade of going back to the historical Jesus. Actually, our sense of disappointment should be accompanied by a sense of déjà vu. We have been here before. In Volume Four of A Marginal Jew, we spent a great deal of time on Jesus’ relation to Jewish purity rules, only to conclude that much of the Gospel material on the subject came from the early days of the church. I stressed then what I stress now: such negative results are paradoxically a positive gain. For example, in the case of the purity laws, items from the Synoptics have all too often been blithely cited to reconstruct the historical Jesus—either a radical Jesus rejecting purity laws root and branch or an observant Jesus accepting the purity system while questioning individual points within the acceptable range of debate. It is a positive gain to realize that both claims and portraits are equally dubious. Put more broadly, it is a positive gain to wake up to the fact that various traits of some commonly accepted portraits of Jesus are simply bogus and should be jettisoned. Put still more broadly, our nescience in some areas of the historical Jesus is much greater than in others, and it is vital for any quester to know that. At least with the purity rules, though, a fair number of my Christian readers might well shrug their shoulders and think, “No great loss.” (Needless to say, many Jewish readers would beg to differ.) I suspect that my Christian audience will react with less insouciance when faced with my conclusions about the Synoptic parables. Here we run up against a basic problem with the historical-critical method: it is an equal-opportunity offender. Unfortunately, trying to be just a little bit critical is like trying to be just a little bit pregnant. Throughout the four previous volumes of A Marginal Jew, I have rigorously applied the historical-critical method to the sayings and deeds of

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Jesus recounted in the Gospels in order to discern what is or is not authentic. As much as possible, I have let the chips fall where they may. I may not now suddenly retreat from or discard this method simply because I don’t like the outcome in the case of the parables. A critical method becomes critically important precisely when it runs counter to our desires and forces us to face unpleasant truths or probabilities. Despite the received wisdom of over a century of parable research and despite my own personal inclinations, sober historical inquiry has led me to a wildly unpopular conclusion: only four Synoptic parables are likely candidates when it comes to the judgment of “authentic.” As we have seen, they are the Mustard Seed, the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, the Great Supper, and the Talents/Pounds. They are the sole survivors of the initial winnowing process that took up Chapter 39. But will a closer examination of each parable sustain our initial hunch about these happy survivors? This present chapter seeks to answer that question. We shall examine each parable in turn, first reviewing basic insights about sources, structure, and content, and then moving to the question of whether the parable can satisfy any of the criteria of historicity. Fortunately, when it comes to the Mustard Seed and the Evil Tenants, we have already done a good amount of the necessary exegetical spadework in chapter 38, when we studied these parables’ possible relation to CGT. In these two cases, we will first recall and expand upon the results of our previous examination and then weigh the question of each parable’s historicity.

I. THE MUSTARD SEED (MARK 4:30–32 || MATT 13:31–32 || LUKE 13:18–19)1

To recapitulate what we saw in Chapter 38: the version of the parable in CGT (logion 20) is most likely a conflation of the versions found in all three Synoptic Gospels. Different elements of the parable that are proper to Mark, Matthew, and Luke respectively all appear in CGT 20. Especially in such a short unit of sayings material, such a phenomenon can hardly be attributed to mere chance—all the more so if we agree with various exegetes that some of the Synoptic material paralleled in logion 20 reflects the redactional activity of one or more Synoptic evangelists. With CGT 20 put aside, the next question to consider is the relationship among the three Synoptic versions of the parable. As our inspection of the texts of Mark, Luke, and Matthew in Chapter 38 suggested, the most probable solution is that we have in this parable an example of a Mark–Q

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overlap. In other words, a saying attributed to Jesus was preserved in different forms in two independent streams of early oral tradition, streams that we label Mark and Q.2 Such Mark–Q overlaps are nothing new to readers of A Marginal Jew. We encountered a prime example of this phenomenon early in Volume Two, namely, in the Baptist’s promise of “one who is coming” to baptize with the holy spirit (Mark 1:7–8 || Matt 3:11–12 || Luke 3:15–18).3 Other examples examined in A Marginal Jew include Jesus’ saying about binding the strong one (Mark 3:27 || Matt 12:29 || Luke 11:21–22) and his missionary discourse (Mark 6:4–13 || Matt 10:1,5–15 || Luke 9:1,2–5 || Luke 10:1–12).4 In this last case, Matthew shows his tendency to mesh Marcan and Q material, while Luke keeps the two traditions separate (Luke 9:1,2–5 = Mark; Luke 10:1–12 = Q). As in the missionary discourse, so in the parable of the Mustard Seed, Matthew meshes Mark and Q. Once we grant that there were two independent primitive forms of the Mustard Seed, it is useless to ask which is the original form of the parable. It is quite conceivable that, during his public ministry, Jesus spoke this parable more than once, adapting it to the precise audience and purpose of the moment. In any event, the parable clearly took on different forms in the oral tradition of the early church. Fortunately, for all the multiple oral performances that may have taken place, the basic structure and content of the parable remained fairly stable down to its redaction by the three Synoptists. All three agree in having the mini-story move through an introduction and then three stages of the narrative.5 The introduction presents Jesus announcing a comparison of the kingdom of God/heaven with a particular event.6 (1) The metaphorical story that follows the introduction begins with a mustard seed being sown in the ground/field/garden; Mark and Matthew mention that it is “the smallest of all the seeds.” (2) The mustard seed grows into a large plant (“the largest of all shrubs” in Mark and Matthew) and indeed becomes a tree (in Matthew and Luke). (3) The result of the growth is that the birds of heaven dwell in its branches (or in its shade, in Mark’s version). In this short enigmatic parable we have a good example of C. H. Dodd’s description of a parable’s function to tease the mind into active thought.7 This parable is not a mystical riddle that enlightens students by leading them to understand that there is nothing to understand on the rational level. On the contrary, some things in this parable are clear from the start. (1) The Synoptic Jesus illumines the meaning of “the kingdom of God” by comparing it to a simple, well-known process: the planting of a mustard seed that in due time grows into a shrub (or tree) of remarkable height. The fact that all three Synoptic versions of the story move from planting through growth (the verb auxano¯, “to grow,” is used by Matthew and Luke, while



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Mark uses anabaino¯, “to go up” or “to ascend”) to the production of a large plant suggests that at least part of the message conveyed by the comparison has to do with the theme of notable growth or development. Thus, the kingdom of God, the subject of the comparison in every version of the parable, is neither an abstract idea or archetype in heaven nor an inert entity here on earth. It is a dynamic reality that, by its own inner power, grows or develops in the world of human experience, while at the same time not being a product of human endeavor.8 (2) But is that the whole of the comparison? The Marcan and Matthean versions emphasize—and the Lucan version implies—a further theme: the contrast between the small mustard seed and the plant it produces.9 Mark and Matthew hyperbolically and inaccurately call the mustard seed the smallest of all seeds and the plant that it germinates (again, hyperbolically and inaccurately) the largest of all shrubs (or pot herbs, lachana).10 Heightening the contrast, Matthew adds to his shrub designation the term found in Q: tree (dendron)—which is the sole designation of the plant in Luke. While the explicit contrast between “smallest” and “largest” does not appear in Luke’s version of the parable, the opposition within a single verse of “seed” and “tree” certainly hints at the notion of contrast. The contrast becomes more than a hint when we remember that this is not any seed but a mustard seed. While it is not true that the smallness of the mustard seed was proverbial throughout the ancient Mediterranean world (as is sometimes claimed), Jewish material extending from the sayings of Jesus to the sayings of the rabbis in Mishna and Talmud indicates that the tiny size of the seed was a familiar metaphor among Jews.11 Hence, while the theme of contrast is more muted in Luke (and probably Q), it is still present. The use of the word “tree” (dendron) in Luke as the terminus of the process that begins with a seed—as opposed to the terminus expressed by Mark’s lachana (“vegetable,” “pot herb”)—inevitably conveys the idea of contrast.12 The upshot of all these botanical observations is that it is wrongheaded to play off the theme of growth against the theme of contrast, as though the parable of the Mustard Seed must have only one point or focus (a common mistake among interpreters unduly influenced by Adolf Jülicher).13 Not unlike a real mustard seed, this tiny parable has the dynamic power to yield a number of related ideas, insights, or challenges.14 (3) A third related theme may be intimated by the concluding words of the parable, where the birds of heaven dwell in the plant’s branches (Matthew and Luke) or under its shade (Mark). Although the adjective “all” is not used, the very phrase “birds of heaven” conjures up the idea of a gathering of a group that enjoys the habitation (kataske¯noo¯, “to dwell”) that the

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branches or shade of the plant affords.15 This in turn points to the dynamic expansion of God’s kingly rule, enveloping groups of people who find a place to dwell and rest “in” or “under” the kingdom of God. Many exegetes push this point further: they see in the image of the birds dwelling in the tree branches or under its shade an allusion to one or more OT texts. The texts supposedly depict the Gentile nations finding protection under God’s royal rule in the end time. Such an idea is appealing since it finds expression elsewhere in Jesus’ sayings, such as his inclusion of the Gentiles in the eschatological banquet shared by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 8:11–12 || Luke 13:28–29).16 In my opinion, however, claims about OT allusions go beyond the evidence provided by the wording of the final part of the parable. It is telling that commentators appeal to various OT passages rather than agreeing on a single text as the source of the image of birds dwelling in or under a tree. The Greek versions of Ezek 31:3–6; 17:3–4,22–23; Dan 4:10–12 (Theodotion); and LXX Ps 103:12 are all cited, but an inspection of these passages shows that no one text supplies an exact parallel in wording, thought, or metaphor.17 (i) For example, the LXX of Ezek 31:3–6 speaks of Egypt as a tall cypress (a cedar in the MT).18 In v 6, “all the birds of heaven nested [enosseusan] in its boughs, and under its branches all the beasts of the field begat [their young]; in its shade every multitude of nations lived [kato¯ke¯sen].” Ezekiel proceeds with a threat that the mighty Egyptian empire will be humbled by a still mightier empire: the lofty cypress will be cut down. Needless to say, Ezekiel’s haughty cypress, which is punished by God, hardly provides a direct analogy to the kingdom of God in the parable of the Mustard Seed. One must engage in contorted exegesis of the Synoptic parable, turning it into a “light-hearted burlesque” of Ezekiel’s taunt, in order to create a connection.19 Supposedly, the parable is upending traditional expectations about the eschatological kingdom of God. This ingenious exegesis might be more convincing if the parable of the Mustard Seed had directly quoted Ezek 31:6, or if it had portrayed the mustard seed growing up to become not a generic tree (in the Q, not the Marcan version) but rather a cedar or cypress. Alas, it does not. In Matt 13:32 || Luke 13:19, the mustard seed just becomes “a tree,” while in Mark 4:32, the poor seed does not even make it that far. In Mark, it just becomes “the largest of all the bushes” (literally, “all the vegetables” or “pot herbs,” lachano¯n). Apparently, this Synoptic parable is willing to engage in hyperbole about the mustard plant, but even hyperbole has its limits: no cedar in sight. The Ezekiel text does not have the cedar/ cypress growing out of a mustard seed, and the parable of the Mustard Seed does not have the seed growing into a cedar or cypress. To be convincing,



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the claim of an allusion to Ezek 31:3–6 would require firmer evidence than is offered. (ii) Some exegetes refuse to be discouraged, though, since similar vocabulary can be found elsewhere in the OT. Indeed, in the Book of Ezekiel itself, tree symbolism reappears in another complicated ma¯ša¯l. In Ezek 17:3–4, the image of a cedar with its crest torn off by an eagle begins an extended allegory about King Nebuchadnezzar, who in 597 b.c. deposed King Jehoiachin of Judah and took him captive to Babylon, while placing Zedekiah on Judah’s throne instead. Zedekiah, allied with Egypt, rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, who once again exiled Judah’s king to Babylon, this time destroying Jerusalem in the process (587/586 b.c.). But in 17:22–23, Ezekiel (or a later author) reworks this allegory for a more positive message. This time around, God takes a shoot (the Davidic line of Judah’s royal house) from the crest of the cedar and plants it on a mountain of Israel. The shoot becomes a great cedar—obviously, a prophecy of the restoration of the Davidic line after the Babylonian exile. This new cedar becomes a great tree; “under it every beast shall rest [anapausetai], and every bird [pan peteinon] shall rest under its shadow.” However intriguing the resonance of the restoration of a Davidic king in the end time might have been to the Synoptic evangelists (at least Matthew and Luke),20 one must admit that the LXX of Ezek 17:22–23 has few words in common with the parable of the Mustard Seed, and the overall story is quite different. Even with the inventive imagination of modern exegetes, one can hardly compress the complicated, multipart allegory that takes up the whole of Ezekiel 17 into the two or three verses of the parable of the Mustard Seed. Then, too, one wonders how 1st-century Galilean peasants, hearing this parable for the first time from the lips of the historical Jesus, could possibly catch the erudite allusions to various texts in Ezekiel that have taken me a couple of paragraphs to explain to a highly educated audience. (iii) If one finds Ezekiel lacking, one can always turn to the Greek text of Dan 4:10–12 (in the Theodotion, not the LXX, version) for some words and symbols also found in our parable.21 Once again we have a great tree, under which were dwelling (kateske¯noun) the wild beasts, and in whose branches the birds of heaven settled down (kato˛ˉ koun ta ornea tou ouranou). Besides the fact that the Greek vocabulary is only partially similar to that of the Synoptic parable, the sense of the imagery is totally different. Even if we ignore the fact that there is no small seed that grows into a large tree, the mighty tree depicted by Daniel represents Nebuchadnezzar in his powerful and arrogant reign. The tree is suddenly cut down, a prophecy of divine judgment on Nebuchadnezzar. We are told (without any use of a tree metaphor) that a

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fit of madness will reduce the king to the condition of a wild beast for seven years, after which he will return to his senses and acknowledge the true God. None of this has anything to do with the tiny mustard seed growing into a shrub or tree. (iv) As a final reminder that we are dealing with general scriptural motifs and vocabulary that are not tied to any one context, be it prophetic or apocalyptic,22 we might turn our attention to the lyric description of nature found in LXX Ps 103:12: near the brooks winding through the mountains “the birds of heaven shall dwell” (ta peteina tou ouranou kataske¯no¯sei).23 What separates this poetic passage within a creation hymn of praise and thanksgiving from the previous prophetic texts is that the phrase “the birds of heaven shall dwell” is simply part of a realistic description of the beauties of nature created by God. The phrase is not a metaphor for anything else; it is certainly not a symbol of apocalyptic eschatology or the gathering of the Gentiles to Mt. Zion. Two further observations cast doubt on the attempt to find one specific OT prophecy to which the end of our parable is supposedly alluding. First, each of the Greek OT texts we have examined mentions not only the birds of the air but also the beasts of the field. Yet that constant motif from all four OT texts is absent from the Synoptic parable in any of its forms. This absence supports the suggestion that the parable of the Mustard Seed is employing a general agricultural theme found in the OT and elsewhere, and not one particular text from among those we have studied.24 Second, the set phrase “the birds of heaven” (ta peteina tou ouranou) occurs in a number of other sayings of the Synoptic Jesus (Matt 6:26; 8:20 || Luke 9:58; Luke 8:5) without triggering an Easter egg hunt among exegetes for the particular OT passage to which this common phrase supposedly points. The upshot of this rapid review of OT texts cited as background for our parable is clear: imaginative critics have pressed the final phrase of the parable of the Mustard Seed too far by reading into it specific OT allusions that are not there. The finale of the parable is simply employing traditional biblical language—language found in various OT contexts—in order to express in graphic fashion a basic affirmation: God’s royal rule in the end time may begin in a small and apparently insignificant way, but it will expand by its own inner dynamism into a great reality that will provide a secure dwelling for many. One need not scour the whole of the OT to grasp that the metaphorical language of the “birds of heaven” is pointing to some group of people enveloped by and dwelling in the kingdom. Whether this group represents the regathered tribes of Israel, or the Gentiles who find a home among God’s people, or even the whole of humanity recreated in the end



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time is something the parable, taken by itself, does not make clear. Like many parables, it intimates a basic message while at the same time teasing the mind with various possibilities and further applications. This is not to deny that at times the historical Jesus may have employed detailed allegory in a parable: the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard is a prime candidate. But, in contrast to such allegory, the two verses of the Mustard Seed are content with conjuring up an intimation of the kingdom of God with a few fundamental themes: growth, contrast, and the gathering of a group that dwells securely in the kingdom. Can anything further be grasped from this small cluster of themes? Read in isolation, the parable of the Mustard Seed says relatively little. To probe the parable’s meaning more deeply, we have to situate it in some larger context. Indeed, the key to any broader understanding of a single parable of Jesus lies in the answer to a basic question: what is the larger context provided by the teaching and ministry of the historical Jesus that can place this parable within a larger yet specific universe of meaning?25 Only this larger framework, constructed for the most part without drawing on the parables (to avoid circular reasoning), can provide a valid context for interpreting the parables on the historical level. Whether they reflect critically on their method or not, questers for the historical Jesus regularly and almost automatically interpret any given parable by situating it within what they construe the overall message of Jesus to be.26 Thus we get whole books interpreting the parables as, inter alia, prophetic proclamations of future eschatology, a prophetic critique of 1st-century social, economic, and political structures, a sage’s clever lessons on how to deal with life in this world, or a gnosticizing call to open one’s eyes to the ever-present reign of God in one’s life. The problem is that all too often, especially in books dedicated to detailed explanations of each of Jesus’ parables, the overall interpretive context is either simply taken for granted or consciously borrowed from some noted quester (e.g., Joachim Jeremias, Ernst Käsemann, or E. P. Sanders) or, alternately, some noted philosopher (e.g., Martin Heidegger or Paul Ricoeur). Either way, rarely do the specialists on parables justify their particular choice of the larger context into which they insert the parables. To be sure, one appreciates that no one scholar can do everything, especially in a large book analyzing each of the parables in detail. But such an approach cannot escape the objection of arbitrariness or circular reasoning. At least if one is thinking in terms of the historical Jesus, by what right does the author of a parable book place the parables within the larger framework of a future-oriented eschatological Jesus (à la Jeremias or Sanders) rather than a Jesus who teaches

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subversive wisdom about present human existence and society (à la Crossan or Funk)? In the end, for the interpretation of a parable of Jesus to be credible on a historical level, the interpreter of the parables must justify not just the detailed analysis of each parable but also the overarching interpretation of the historical Jesus that makes sense of the individual parable.27 It is this scholarly conundrum (and especially the danger of circular reasoning) that has led me to place my treatment of Jesus’ parables so late in the overarching project of A Marginal Jew. The first four volumes of A Marginal Jew have slowly filled in the overall contours of Jesus’ ministry and message, starting out with his origins and the chronology of his life (Volume One), proceeding to a treatment of his mentor John the Baptist, which prepared the way for Jesus’ central eschatological message and his claim to have performed various miracles (Volume Two), his intentional gathering of various inner and outer circles of followers, along with his conscious positioning of himself over against other groups competing for influence in 1st-century Palestinian Judaism (Volume Three)—all of which cleared the way for studying his key teachings on the Mosaic Law (Volume Four). While such detailed examination of his words and deeds inevitably involved paying attention to various metaphorical sayings and similitudes, I carefully avoided calling on the corpus of his parables as a whole to reconstruct the major components of this emerging portrait. Thus, as we began Volume Five, we already had at hand a fairly detailed picture of Jesus’ ministry and message, the prefabricated framework into which we can now place the parables for fuller interpretation. I cannot stress enough that this lengthy process—the long and dusty road of the first four volumes—is essential for understanding the parables as part of the historical message of the historical Jesus. Read in isolation, as autonomous pieces of literary art bereft of any 1st-century author or context, the parables can be made to mean anything a clever interpreter wants them to mean—witness parable research from the 1960s onward. Indeed, in a modern context, a radical hermeneutic might claim that all Gospel interpretation is nothing but autobiography wearing the mask of historical or literary criticism. In such a theory, what the text says or how the implied reader supposedly responds to the text is simply what the modern critic wants the text to say, simply how he or she responds to the text against the backdrop of his or her own life. In my opinion, the only bulwark against such a solipsistic approach to parables—parables used as flattering mirrors held up to the critic’s face—is first to construct a portrait of the historical Jesus largely apart from the parables and then to situate the parables within the portrait that has emerged. Hence my placement of the parables so late in the overall project.



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Granted this strategy, let us apply it to the parable at hand. How does the parable of the Mustard Seed fit in with the portrait of Jesus sketched in the first four volumes? Volume Two made the case for Jesus as an eschatological, Elijah-like prophet who proclaimed a future kingdom of God that was to some degree already present and active in Jesus’ ministry. The “already” aspect of the kingdom in Jesus’ ministry no doubt seemed paltry and insignificant on the larger stage of Palestinian or Roman power-politics. But Jesus affirmed that in his liberating action of exorcising demoniacs, “the kingdom of God has [already] come to you” (Matt 12:28 || Luke 11:20).28 Sending out a ragtag group of twelve disciples on a brief preaching mission to various Israelite towns may have seemed to many an empty symbolic gesture, but Jesus asserted that the way a town received or rejected his envoys would determine its fate at the final judgment.29 In other words, Jesus asserted that (1) God’s rule was already powerfully at work in his preaching and healing; and (2) however small his mission appeared at the moment, there was a vital organic connection between it and the vast and visible coming of God to judge and save on the last day. It is in this context that we must hear the message of the Mustard Seed: despite appearances, the kingdom is present and growing—and yet what a contrast there will be between its small beginnings and its grand dénouement, when all the tribes of Israel, prefigured in Jesus’ formation of the circle of the Twelve, will be regathered.30 Twelve disciples gathered around Jesus and the twelve tribes regathered at the end: what a contrast, yet one that involves a living, integral connection. Thus, using language found in Israel’s prophets and psalms, Jesus the eschatological prophet speaks the parable of the Mustard Seed not as a truism about great things having small beginnings but rather as a purposefully tiny encapsulation of the grand story of the kingdom of God: present and “buried” in the soil of Jesus’ apparently paltry ministry, but guaranteed to expand into a vast kingdom embracing all of regathered Israel. The Mustard Seed is a perfect example of parable as prophecy, of everyday reality as a symbol of an eschatology in which a contrasting “already” and “not yet” are organically linked. Once again we see that parables belong to Jesus primarily as prophet rather than as wisdom teacher. At the end of this examination of the parable of the Mustard Seed, the question of whether the parable goes back to the historical Jesus almost answers itself. Uniquely among the parables found in all three Synoptics, the Mustard Seed fulfills the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources, being witnessed in both Mark and Q. To this main argument we may now add a second, confirmatory argument: the parable also meets the criterion of coherence. It fits perfectly with the eschatological message and

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ministry of Jesus the prophet that we have slowly reconstructed in the previous volumes of A Marginal Jew. In a curious and somewhat comic way, then, the parable of the Mustard Seed truly embodies as well as proclaims the triumph of the smallest. In the previous and present chapters of Volume Five, a two-verse parable has been judged authentic, while the lengthy and much-more-admired parable of the Good Samaritan has been judged a creation of Luke. As the Jewish Jesus might well say, go figure.

II. THE EVIL TENANTS OF THE VINEYARD (MARK 12:1–11 || MATT 21:33–43 || LUKE 20:9–18)31

Since it is notably longer than the parable of the Mustard Seed, the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard required more detailed treatment in Chapter 38. To recapitulate the results of our examination: the structure of the parable as it stands in Mark 12:1–11 comprises five stages: 1. the setup, in which a man plants a vineyard and leases it to (tenant) farmers; 2. the sending of the owner’s slaves to collect fruit from the farmers; the slaves are rejected, beaten, and in some cases killed; 3. the sending of the owner’s son, with the owner hoping that the farmers will respect his son; 4. the killing of the son by the farmers, with the hope that they will inherit the vineyard; 5. the double conclusion, each conclusion beginning with a rhetorical question posed by Jesus and immediately answered or explicated by Jesus: a. Jesus asks what the owner will do and replies that the owner will destroy the farmers and lease the vineyard to others; b. Jesus asks, “Have you not read this Scripture text?” and then explicates his own question by quoting LXX Ps 117:22–23, “The stone that the builders rejected, this became the cornerstone. . . .”32 In Chapter 38, we proceeded to move through the five stages of the parable in each Synoptic Gospel as well as Thomas. The decision about sources that resulted from our analysis did not seem to support an argument for the historicity/authenticity of the parable (i.e., that the parable comes from the historical Jesus). The version in CGT 65–66 proved to be a conflation and



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abbreviation of the texts of all three Synoptics, with Luke’s redaction of Mark being especially influential.33 As for Matthew and Luke, their versions of the parable are best explained as two independent redactions of Mark’s narrative; there is no need to appeal to a hypothetical M, L, or Q source. Hence the earliest version of the parable available to us is Mark’s text and whatever hypothetical source may lie behind Mark. Therefore, despite the four versions we possess, the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources supplies no argument for this parable’s authenticity. Perhaps one might be tempted instead to mount an argument from the criterion of Palestinian environment discussed in Volume One of A Marginal Jew:34 namely, that the parable reflects the circumstances of viticulture in Jewish Palestine around the turn of the era (in other words, an argument from “contextual plausibility” or “local color” à la Gerd Theissen). As a matter of fact, John S. Kloppenborg has gathered an impressive collection of fifty-eight papyri from the first centuries b.c. and a.d. that deal with socioeconomic problems connected with viticulture in the eastern Mediterranean.35 These papyri range over such varied topics as the leasing of a new vineyard, disputes with tenants over wages, complaints about taxes on a vineyard, charges that laborers have been unfairly expelled by the owner from a vineyard they had leased, complaints about laborers seizing a vineyard, reports of theft and violence at harvest time, and a legal suit against previous lessees of a vineyard. The basic themes of conflict and violence involved in leasing vineyards and enforcing the terms of the lease are thus well documented for the period around the turn of the era. While some details in the narrative of the Evil Tenants may strain credulity (e.g., the owner’s willingness to send his only son after his servants have been beaten and even killed; the farmers’ presumption that they will inherit the vineyard if they kill the son),36 the overall scenario fits in well with what we know of cultivating and leasing vineyards in the eastern part of the ancient Mediterranean world in the first centuries b.c. and a.d. However, that is all the testimony of the papyri can tell us. While some of the papyri collected by Kloppenborg refer to Galilee, most deal with conditions in Egypt from the 3d century b.c. to the 4th century a.d. The parable of the Evil Tenants could therefore have been composed by any person knowledgeable of viticulture in the eastern Mediterranean during this time. Nothing in the “local color” or “plausibility” of the parable demands that the author be Jesus of Nazareth or even a Palestinian Jew.37 If neither multiple attestation nor coherence argues for the authenticity of the Evil Tenants, does any other criterion support it? In my view, one can argue for the parable’s going back to Jesus from the criterion of

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e­ mbarrassment (or, if one prefers, discontinuity)—though, admittedly, the argument is a long and circuitous one. To try to clarify the line of reasoning, I will lay out the argument in three major steps. Step One: The Nimša¯l as Literarily Distinct from the Story of the Parable. Our argument starts with a number of insights from form and tradition criticism as applied to Synoptic parables. To begin with: as we have seen repeatedly in previous chapters, the core of any Synoptic parable is by definition a self-contained short story with at least an implicit beginning, middle, and end. In some parables, the Synoptic Jesus adds to the story (which is usually, though not always, narrated in the past tense) some sort of commentary on or application of the parable’s message, what later rabbis will call a nimša¯l. It is vital to bear in mind that this commentary by Jesus, when it is present at the end of the parable, is not part of the narrative proper, that is, the story made up of past events. Rather, the nimša¯l is appended after the events that make up the parable’s story have come to a conclusion.38 This flows naturally from the function of the nimša¯l, namely, to explain or apply the completed narrative to the audience. (1) To take a striking example: it is only after the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–35) is finished that Jesus asks the lawyer the key question (10:36): Who proved to be the neighbor to the victim of the robbers? When the lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy” (literally, “the one who did mercy with him”), Jesus concludes his application or interpretation of the parable with a command, “Go and do likewise” (10:37). One sees here not only how the nimša¯l comes after and is literarily distinct from the story within the parable but also how Jesus’ concluding commentary can take different literary forms. At the end of the Good Samaritan his commentary uses both question and command within a dialogue; elsewhere his nimša¯l is a simple direct statement, long or short. (2) Interestingly, in a few cases where a parable lacks a nimša¯l, a brief phrase at the beginning of the parable can function as an elliptical interpretation of the parable that follows. Such is the case with the Q parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders. The two halves of the parable are introduced by “everyone who hears these words of mine and does them shall be like . . . and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them shall be like . . .” (Matt 7:24 + 26 || Luke 6:47 + 49). Similarly, the only hint of an interpretation of the Q parable of the Servant Placed over a Household— apart from the larger eschatological context—is contained in the opening question, “Who then is the reliable and prudent servant whom . . .” (Matt 24:45 || Luke 12:42). In contrast, some parables found in both Matthew and Luke lack any interpretive element at the beginning or end of the parable



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itself (as distinct from the wider context or redactional framework). Such is the case with the parables of the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, the Great Supper, and the Talents (or Pounds).39 (3) As for the M parables, we find many parables with a nimša¯l, though others lack it. The Wheat and the Weeds is unique in that it imitates the Marcan parable of the Sower: instead of a short application at the end of the parable, a long allegorical explanation is placed at some distance from the parable, with other material intervening. The parables of the Treasure Hidden in the Field and the Pearl have no nimša¯l, while the Fish Net (Matt 13:47–48) receives an allegorical eschatological explanation that is as long as the parable itself (vv 49–50). The Unmerciful Servant and the Workers in the Vineyard both have brief, generic applications, while the nimša¯l of the Two Sons is longer and more specific. The Guest without a Wedding Garment returns to the brief, generic form of commentary (“the called are many, the chosen are few”), as does the final M parable in Matthew’s Gospel, the Ten Virgins (“watch therefore, since you know not the day or the hour”). (4) The L parables show a mix similar to M. The Two Debtors, the Good Samaritan, the Friend at Midnight, and the Rich Fool all have some sort of application or explanation immediately following the parable, while the Barren Fig Tree does not (though the preceding pericope announces the message directly: repent or perish). The Tower Builder, the Warring King, and the Lost Coin all have appended explanations, while the Prodigal Son, though illuminated by Luke’s larger context (15:1–10), has no nimša¯l immediately following the parable. The Dishonest Steward (16:1–8) is graced with a whole series of attempted explanations (16:9–13), though none of them really fits the parable all that well. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus has no nimša¯l that follows the parable proper, though the words of Abraham at the end of the parable (16:29 + 31) make the parenetic thrust of the parable clear enough. In contrast, the short parable of the Servant’s Duty (Luke 17:7–9) receives a pointed nimša¯l. The parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge receives both an introductory explanation from Luke (18:1) as well as a detailed explanation from Jesus at the end of the narrative. Intriguingly, the nimša¯l is made up of two rhetorical questions (18:6 + 7), not unlike the parable of the Evil Tenants. But in Luke 18:8, these two rhetorical questions are then followed first by a positive, emphatic statement of the parable’s message (v 8a) and then by a loosely connected Son of Man saying, formulated as a rhetorical question as well (v 8b)—thus constituting a truly complicated nimša¯l. It should be noted, though, that this four-part nimša¯l does not take up and advance the story presented in the parable proper.

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Somewhat simpler is the final L parable in Luke’s Gospel, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, which has both an introductory setting of the scene (18:9) and a brief, generic comment at the end (18:14b). What does this brief overview of the explanations, applications, or comments appended to Synoptic parables teach us? First, such explanations are not essential to the literary genre of a Synoptic parable, since some parables in each Synoptic source (Mark, Q, M, and L) lack them. Second, the explanations that do occur come in many shapes and sizes. Some parables have brief, generic applications or “tags” that can be tacked on to various parables. Other parables have longer applications that fit the particular parables they follow. Still other parables have a series of statements and/or questions following them. This sort of “serial nimša¯l” may have only a loose connection with its parable (so, e.g., the Dishonest Steward and, to some degree, the Widow and the Unjust Judge). Third, it is worth noting that no Marcan parable—apart from our present case of the Evil Tenants—has a nimša¯l immediately appended to the text of the parable proper. Interestingly, the number of appended comments increases as we move to Q parables, and they especially proliferate in parables proper to Matthew and Luke. Here we may notice a striking, if rough, symmetry. Just as the number of parables increases as we move from Mark through Q to Matthew and Luke, so does the number of explanations that follow the parables. This raises the intriguing question of whether such appended commentaries were all that typical of the parables actually spoken by the historical Jesus. Step Two: The Relation of the Double Conclusion of the Evil Tenants to the Parable Proper. Bearing in mind these insights into the nature, function, and frequency of the nimša¯l, let us now return full circle to the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard. Remembering that it is the nature of a nimša¯l (i) to appear after the story proper of the parable has finished and (ii) not to advance the plot of the completed story, we will review the five stages of the Evil Tenants as we find it in Mark, paying careful attention to the beginning, middle, and end of the parable’s story: (1) The setup (Mark 12:1) begins the narrative in the past by using the aorist tense of the verb (= single past act): “A man planted [ephyteusen] a vineyard. . . .”40 All the subsequent verbs in this setup of the story are likewise in the aorist (“placed around . . . dug . . . built . . . leased . . . went on a journey”), and all have “a man” as the understood subject. Clearly the man/ owner/father is one of the lead characters of the story, the one who sets the plot in motion. Note too that, at the end of the setup, the other major (collective) actor, the tenant farmers, is introduced. The plot will be developed



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by the back-and-forth action of these two main characters, as they struggle over the main inanimate “character” of the story, the vineyard. (2) The sending of the slaves by the owner (vv 2–5) is also narrated completely in the past with aorist verbs (e.g., apesteilen, “he sent”). Every finite verb, including all the negative actions of the tenant farmers, stands in the aorist (“they beat . . . sent away empty-handed . . . wounded in the head and dishonored . . . killed”).41 (3) The sending of the son begins with the imperfect tense (duration in the past) since the verb refers to an ongoing state of affairs (eichen: “he still had one person, a beloved son . . .”).42 After this one instance of the imperfect tense, the narrative reverts to the series of aorists as the story’s action resumes with “he sent” the son. (4) The killing of the son continues the chain of aorists: the farmers “said” to one another, “Let us kill him”; so they “killed” the son and “threw him out” of the vineyard.43 (5) It is when we come to the double conclusion of the parable, made up of two rhetorical questions posed by Jesus, that we sense a sudden break with the series of aorists. The first conclusion in particular signals that we are leaving the story world made up of past events. (i) In the first rhetorical question, Jesus abruptly asks, using the future tense of the verb, “What will the owner of the vineyard do?” Jesus answers his own question with three more future verbs: “He will come and will destroy the farmers and will lease the vineyard to others.”44 (ii) Jesus then continues with a second rhetorical question, but one in which the owner and the farmers are no longer mentioned. Instead, the second question is addressed directly and explicitly to his audience and is formulated in the aorist: “Or have you not read this Scripture text?” Jesus then completes his rhetorical question (which strictly speaking is never answered, though the quotation functions as a de facto answer) by citing LXX Ps 117:22–23: “The stone that the builders rejected, this became the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes.” Thus, the second rhetorical question, unlike the first, moves back to the aorist tense, in both Jesus’ initial question and in the OT citation that follows, with only the final line (“it is wonderful”) using the present tense. Despite the return to the aorist tense, the break with the parable proper is clear from the disappearance of the owner and the farmers in vv 10–11. Step Three: Six Questions on the Form and Content of the Parable. What are we to make of this five-stage structure, unique within the corpus of the Synoptic parables, with its shifting tenses and actors and its double

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c­onclusion that continues the story of the parable? Our analysis so far prompts us to pose six key questions about the form and content of the Evil Tenants. The answers to these six questions will lead us to a judgment about the historicity of the parable. (1) Where does the parable proper end? Understood as a self-contained narrative that, in the case of the Evil Tenants, tells a “once-upon-a-time” story in the past tense, the parable proper comes to an end when Jesus, the teller of the story, intervenes and asks a question of his audience in his own person and voice, a question that inquires—using a future tense—about a future event. The Marcan Jesus then answers his own question by foretelling a future event with three future verbs. Thus, both question and answer break with the series of past events narrated with aorist verbs within the story world of the parable. In other words, this sudden shift in tenses, along with Jesus’ abrupt breaking into the once-upon-a-time story world in order to address his audience, signals that the narrative proper of the parable has come to an end in v 8 with the death of the son and the dishonoring of his corpse.45 Yet what a jarring, puzzling, shocking ending to the story! The farmers kill the heir, profane his corpse by denying it decent burial, and presumably (since the story “dead-ends” here) carry out their plan to take possession of the vineyard. If this is where the parable originally ended— talk about teasing the mind into active thought!—one can well understand why this disturbing ending would have called forth attempts to add a more satisfying conclusion, one that would allow the arc of tension in the story to come to rest. (2) But is that what the first conclusion actually does with its rhetorical question and reply in v 9? To a certain extent, yes. After all, the two main actors introduced in the setup of the parable (v 1) were the owner of the vineyard and the farmers (notice: not the son, who is not mentioned until v 6, who is always the object, not the initiator of action, and who is dead by the first half of v 8). Indeed, at the end of the parable proper in v 8, only the farmers are left on the stage, and the gross injustice of murder (which permits the seizure of the vineyard) seems to be the last word of the story. It is this moral as well as esthetic imbalance in v 8 that the first conclusion in v 9 seeks to redress. In v 9, the owner and the farmers are reintroduced as the main characters (as they were in v 1), with the owner being the actor who determines the flow of events (as in v 1). As the decisive actor, he both restores the balance of justice by destroying the murderers (eye-for-eye justice, to be sure) and restores the original situation presented at the beginning of the parable by leasing out the vineyard to others (presumably farmers who will fulfill their legal obligation, as Matt 21:41 states explicitly).



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(3) Still, does the first conclusion of the parable in v 9 supply a satisfying conclusion? Only to a certain degree. The first conclusion, with the killing of the farmers and the re-leasing of the vineyard, does resolve the shockingly unjust state of affairs in 12:8, where the murderous farmers remain unpunished and free to seize the vineyard. And yet . . . and yet . . . this first conclusion still leaves us with the unresolved murder of the only beloved son, on whose corpse the corpses of all the slaughtered farmers are now presumably piled. Neither esthetically nor morally does this first conclusion qualify as a completely satisfying resolution of the parable’s core narrative. This is what probably called forth the second conclusion in vv 10–11, made up of (i) Jesus’ introductory rhetorical question, which immediately leads into (ii) the final resolution of the narrative tension via the citation of LXX Ps 117:22–23.46 (4) But how can the second conclusion deliver a final resolution to the tragic story when, within the story world of the parable, the son is dead and must stay dead in that story world? Although the tenses of the verbs in the second conclusion move back to the aorist, we should not be deceived into thinking that the past narrative of the parable is simply being resumed. A major shift of perspective is signaled by the fact that the actors involved in the events referred to in Mark 12:10–11 include, at least in v 10a, the audience listening to Jesus’ parable: “Have you [Jesus’ audience] never read . . . ?” By this question, addressed directly to Jesus’ “real” audience (within the world of Mark’s Gospel), we latter-day listeners, along with Jesus’ audience in the temple precincts in Mark 11–12, are forcefully yanked outside the story world Jesus created in vv 1–8 of the parable. The audience that has been listening to Jesus in Mark 11–12, notably the hostile temple authorities, is asked about its past act of reading (and, of course, understanding) the Jewish Scriptures, specifically certain verses in Psalm 118 (= LXX Psalm 117). However, once the citation of LXX Ps 117:22–23 begins, two new actors, not previously mentioned in Mark 12:1–9, are introduced: (i) the group made up of the anonymous builders, who rejected the stone, and— moving beyond metaphor—(ii) the Lord (God of Israel), who makes the rejected stone the cornerstone (or, alternately, the keystone) of some building, a building that remains otherwise unidentified.47 Clearly, with this Scripture citation, we have been pulled outside the past story world of the parable in vv 1–8—and even outside the future story world of v 9. At least in v 9, the owner and the farmers of the parable are still the two main characters. Now, in vv 10b–11, we move into the world outside the parable, the world to which the parable was pointing all along. The key verbal link between the parable world of vv 1–8 and the “real”

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world of vv 10b–11 is the Greek word kyrios (“lord,” “master,” “owner”) that is used both for the owner of the vineyard (ho kyrios tou ampelo¯nos) in the first conclusion (v 9) and for the Lord God (para kyriou) in the second conclusion (v 11).48 With one of the two main characters from the parable (the owner) now clearly identified as the Lord in v 11, the collective character of the “builders” of v 10 must inevitably be equated with the other main (collective) character of the parable world, the collective character who does indeed refuse and reject throughout the parable: the farmers. This leaves the last “character” of the psalm quotation, namely, the stone, which is the sole passive figure in the citation. The stone is acted upon by both the builders (negatively) and the Lord (positively). The only character within the story world of the parable that would correspond with the solitary stone is the only son, loved by the owner/father and killed by the farmers. Putting the three characters together, we see how LXX Ps 117:22–23, used as the scriptural key to the meaning of the parable, finally brings the arc of tension in the story to rest. The farmers (= the builders) have rejected the son (= the stone), indeed with the ultimate rejection of murder. But in a dazzling act of power that leaves us spectators (“in our eyes”) marveling, the owner of the vineyard (= the Lord) reverses the rejection of his son and makes him instead the triumphant key figure to a new order of things (the otherwise unexplained cornerstone of a building).49 At this point, we realize how far beyond the story world of the parable we have been led. In the second conclusion, the Lord God has reversed the negative action of the builders/farmers, who rejected/murdered his son. Reversing the stone’s rejection (i.e., the son’s dishonorable death), the Lord exalts him to the place of honor by making him the cornerstone (or keystone) of the new structure (the new state of affairs). Obviously, to Mark and his Christian readers, this reversal of the rejection and death of the only beloved son by the astounding action of God can refer only to the resurrection of Jesus the Son after his rejection (by the very temple authorities to whom Jesus is speaking this parable) and his dishonorable death on the cross. Hence only in the second conclusion of vv 10–11 is the shock of the totally negative ending of v 8 (within the past story world of the parable) overcome and all tensions resolved. The first conclusion, still operating with the parable’s characters of the owner and the farmers, sees punitive justice done—in the future, but nevertheless within the realm of the story’s human characters and the realm of the humanly possible. The second conclusion sees redemptive justice done to the son—but only by moving into a scenario that lies beyond the narrative characters of the parable as well as beyond the realm of the humanly possible. Beyond all human capacity and beyond



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the realm of human time and space, the Lord God has reversed (past act in the aorist!) the rejection and death of his son by raising him to life and to a pivotal position in the new order of things.50 (5) Granted all this, are we justified in referring to the first (v 9) and second (vv 10–11) conclusions of the parable of the Evil Tenants as the application, explanation, or nimša¯l of the parable in the same sense that we have used these terms for the conclusions we have examined in other Synoptic parables? The answer must be no. In other Synoptic parables, the application or nimša¯l—when it is present—provides either (i) an allegorical explanation of various elements and events in the parable (e.g., “the angels will separate the evil from the just” in the parable of the Fish Net); or (ii) assurance of God’s answer to the prayers of the suffering (e.g., “will not God vindicate his elect?” in the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge); or (iii) a brief, general truth applicable to all (e.g., “the last will be first and the first will be last” in the Workers in the Vineyard, or “the called are many, but the chosen are few” in the Guest without a Wedding Garment, or “so it is with the person who stores up treasures for himself but is not rich in his relation to God” in the Rich Fool); or (iv) a specific challenge to the immediate audience of the parable (e.g., “go and do likewise” in the parable of the Good Samaritan).51 Notice: all of these explanations or applications are appended only after the parable’s story (usually told in a past tense) is finished. None of these explanations continues and completes with a satisfying conclusion a story that is “left hanging” in the parable proper. Taken by itself, the story in each Synoptic parable is complete.52 The significance, applicability, or thrust of the story may, however, be enigmatic; hence the function of the nimša¯l, namely, to clarify the reality to which the parable is pointing or to inculcate the lesson embodied in the story. But as a narrative, each parable stands on its own; no nimša¯l advances any further the plot of the story contained within the parable. The one grand exception to this rule in the whole of the Synoptic tradition is the parable of the Evil Tenants, which thus “sticks out” in more than one way within the corpus of Synoptic parables. This lengthy analysis (via form and literary criticism) of why and how the Evil Tenants is so different from other Synoptic parables points the way to its probable tradition history. Most likely, what stood at the beginning of the tradition was some version of the basic story (told in the past tense) that we find in Mark 12:1–8.53 The shocking, jarring, puzzling ending of the story, lacking any sense of resolution (the son murdered, his corpse dishonored, the murderous farmers in possession of the vineyard) called forth the two different conclusions (first punishment of the farmers, then vindication

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of the son).54 This development may have occurred in either one or (more probably) two stages of expansion. One reason for thinking that the expansion occurred in two stages is that a single two-part expansion would have more likely followed the natural and chronological order (for the believing Christian) of first the vindication of the son through resurrection and then the destruction of his killers (probably a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem). (6) What, then, is the upshot or “payoff” of this form and tradition analysis of the Evil Tenants for the question of the parable’s authenticity/historicity? The hypothetical historical scenario that arises is this: confronted by his adversaries (probably the temple authorities in Jerusalem and probably close to the final Passover of his life), the historical Jesus tells a veiled allegorical parable of prophetic judgment, a parable in which he recapitulates the history of Israel as the story of a whole line of prophets sent by God to his people. The tragic dénouement of this story is that all the prophets are rejected and some of them are martyred by those in power. Up to a point, the sacred history that this parable reflects is quite traditional. Jeremiah (Jer 7:24–28; cf. Bar 1:19–20), Chronicles (2 Chr 36:13–21), and EzraNehemiah (Neh 9:26–37) all sum up the history of Israel in a similar way. As modern critics would put it, it is the grand pattern of the deuteronomistic history. Later Jewish traditions would elaborate this pattern still further by multiplying stories about the martyrdom of the prophets.55 The new and truly audacious element that Jesus adds to this familiar way of synopsizing Israel’s history of salvation and judgment is that Jesus claims that the climax of this story involves God sending not just another prophet but rather his son. In the final, shattering disaster in this history of disasters, the rulers kill the son and throw out his corpse, denying it burial and presumably leaving it to rot in public—the very worst fate imaginable in the ancient Mediterranean world. Thus does Jesus intimate to his adversaries that (i) he knows full well what may await him if he insists on pursuing his confrontation with them and that (ii) he understands his dire destiny within the framework of Israel’s salvation history. Indeed, having presented himself during his ministry as the Elijah-like prophet of the end time, he is simply pushing his self-understanding to its logical conclusion: his final fate will be that of Israel’s rejected prophets (including his mentor, John the Baptist), with the difference that Jesus sees himself as the culmination of this prophetic line and of Israel’s history. Put in the metaphorical terms of the parable’s story, he is not just another slave but rather the son. That is all that the word “son” need mean within the confines of this parable.56 What if anything more Jesus might understand by



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this parabolic language of “son” will have to be explored in Volume Six of this series. For the time being, we must be content with restricting our understanding of the word “son” to the climactic role that the son plays within the narrative dynamics of a story involving a father/owner who demands the yield due him, the slaves who are the first ones sent to voice the owner’s demand, and the tenants who refuse the owner’s demand to the point of murdering his emissaries. In the narrative, the son has meaning insofar as he functions within this deadly network of relationships and brings the conflict to a climax. If this be the sense of the original parable on the level of the historical Jesus, then Jesus is telling a parable of prophetic judgment (the supreme example of Jesus’ parables as a prophetic genre!) that ends with his death at the hands of the temple authorities. That is the end, period. There is no resolution or reversal of this tragic injustice within the story world of the parable proper; all attempts at rectification of the injustice come from later hands and lie outside the story world of this puzzling ma¯ša¯l. From this analysis of the Evil Tenants one can easily infer the argument for the parable’s authenticity. It is inconceivable that the early church, creating this parable from scratch, would have ended this metaphorical account of Israel’s salvation history simply and solely with the tragic death of Jesus, without recompense or reversal, with Jesus destroyed, shamed, and unburied, and with his enemies triumphant. From the earliest days of the church, any reference to Jesus’ death in a creedal formula was regularly accompanied by a reference to its reversal in Jesus’ vindication via exaltation, ascension, or (most commonly) resurrection. For example, at the heart of the earliest pre-Pauline formulas of faith lies the indissoluble union of death– hyphen–resurrection: e.g., 1 Cor 15:3–5; Rom 4:25; and Phil 2:6–11 (with Jesus “exalted” instead of “raised”). Likewise at the heart of the kerygmatic speeches of Peter in Acts lies the reversal pattern of “you [the Jerusalem authorities] crucified him . . . [but] God raised him from the dead” (see, e.g., Acts 4:10; cf. 2:22–24,32–36; 3:13–15; 5:30; also 13:27–30). For all their differences, all four Gospels, in their form and tradition history, “grew backward” from a core Passion Narrative plus a proclamation of resurrection; a continuous narrative of the public ministry gradually developed as a sort of extended introduction. Moreover, the primitive Passion Narratives lying behind our Gospels, a primitive pre-Pauline formula, and some kerygmatic speeches in Acts all unite in affirming a particular aspect of Jesus’ death: he was buried. Putting together the glancing statement in the laconic creed Paul cites in 1 Cor 15:4 (“he was buried”), the references to Jesus’ burial in Acts (2:29–32; 13:29), and the stories of Jesus’ burial contained in the quite

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different pre-Marcan and pre-Johannine Passion Narratives (Mark 15:42– 47; John 19:38–42), we can see, from the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources, that, from its earliest days, the Christian movement believed that Jesus had been buried, whatever the precise circumstances. This common belief collides with what the narrative of the Evil Tenants clearly indicates (Mark 12:8): after murdering the son, the tenants simply throw his corpse out of the vineyard. In other words, the tenants deny their victim decent burial and so dishonor him even beyond a violent death. This scenario is discontinuous with the widespread view in the NT that Jesus was buried. Thus, not only the core content but also the form and tradition history of the NT in all its various articulations make it nigh impossible that the primitive form of the parable of the Evil Tenants (roughly Mark 12:1–8) was composed by some believer in Christ in the early post-Easter period of the church. Whether we appeal to the criterion of embarrassment or discontinuity, the primitive version of the parable reflected in Mark 12:1–8, whatever its precise wording, makes sense only in the mouth of the historical Jesus—most likely in his final clash with the Jerusalem authorities, occurring during his last days in Jerusalem prior to his death in the year a.d. 30, shortly before Passover.57 The two conclusions to the parable that we find in Mark 12:9 + 10–11—punishment of the adversaries and vindication of the son—are early additions created by the church in the light of its Easter faith, additions meant to reverse the embarrassment of having Jesus’ story of his own destiny end simply in death and dishonor. This judgment is reinforced in the case of the second conclusion to the parable by the fact that both LXX Ps 117:22–23 and other citations of OT passages speaking of a “stone” appear scattered through the NT as christological proof texts. These OT texts were taken by early Christians to be prophecies of Jesus’ being rejected by some in Israel, although he would be chosen and/or vindicated by God and accepted by at least some members of God’s people. Prime examples of such a diffused “stone-prophecy” tradition can be found in Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33; Eph 2:20; and 1 Pet 2:6–8.58 In Acts 4:11, Peter applies LXX Ps 117:22 to the post-Easter scene in Jerusalem: the stone is Jesus, the builders who rejected him (“you the builders”) are the hostile temple authorities whom Peter is addressing, and the event of becoming the cornerstone (ho genomenos eis kephale¯n go¯nias) is equated with Jesus’ resurrection—all just as in Mark 12:10. Rom 9:33 conflates Isa 28:16 and Isa 8:14: Jesus is the stone rejected by the unbelievers in Israel, who come to grief because of their lack of faith, while the believing remnant plus the Gentiles are not put to shame for trusting in the stone (LXX Isa 28:16 uses the adjective akrogo¯niaion, “[a stone] lying at the extreme corner,”



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which is not taken over by Paul in Rom 9:33). 1 Pet 2:6–8 strings together a remarkable catena of stone prophecies. In v 6, the author cites Isa 28:16, including the adjective akrogo¯niaion. In v 7, the author distinguishes between believers, for whom Christ the cornerstone is precious, and unbelievers, the builders who rejected the stone that became the cornerstone (citing LXX Ps 117:22). In v 8, the author moves to Isa 8:14: for unbelievers, Christ is “a stone [lithos] of stumbling and a rock [petra] of scandal.” In Eph 2:20, both Jewish and Gentile believers are “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being himself the cornerstone [akrogo¯niaiou].” Clearly, then, there was a widespread tradition in the early church of using OT prophecies about a stone to refer to Jesus as rejected, accepted, and ultimately victorious. Hence, in Mark 12:10–11, the appending of the second conclusion to the parable of the Evil Tenants is just another example of the early church’s use of stone prophecies such as LXX Ps 117:22–23 to interpret Jesus’ resurrection as God’s reversal of the unjust judgment of the “builders,” that is, the temple authorities.59 In sum, for the first Christians, a parable ending in the tragic death of the son, with no vindication for him or punishment of his enemies, was unthinkable. It was thinkable for the historical Jesus. In conclusion, then, the parable of the Evil Tenants can take its place alongside the parable of the Mustard Seed as one of the few parables for which we have positive arguments favoring authenticity. But at least in these two cases, the question of sources (pre-Marcan tradition for the Evil Tenants, a Mark–Q overlap for the Mustard Seed) could be answered relatively easily, opening up a path for a clear-cut argument for authenticity. As we shall see, the question of sources is more muddled—as is the whole argument—in the case of our next two candidates: the parable of the Great Supper and the parable of the Talents/Pounds.

III. THE GREAT SUPPER (MATT 22:2–14 || LUKE 14:16–24)60

A. The Question of Sources and Redaction in the Versions of Matthew and Luke Notably different versions of the parable of the Great Supper are found in Matt 22:2–14, Luke 14:16–24, and CGT 64. The comparison of Thomas’ form of the parable with the Matthean and Lucan forms is difficult for multiple reasons. Two in particular stand out: (i) uncertainty about the source(s) that Matthew and Luke are using and (ii) the marked differences between

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Matthew and Luke in the language, narrative details, and location of the parable in the larger context of each Gospel. Hence I think it wiser to begin by analyzing the Matthean and Lucan versions of the parable, without complicating the investigation still further by bringing into the mix CGT 64. To put it bluntly, Matthew and Luke’s versions contain more than enough problems on their own. After we have clarified the questions surrounding the sources and redaction of the two Synoptic forms of the parable, we will be in a better position to judge whether CGT 64 represents an independent version of the Great Supper.61 Having put aside CGT 64 for the moment, we begin with a direct comparison of Matthew and Luke. For the purposes of A Marginal Jew (i.e., does the parable ultimately come from Jesus?), the key question here is one of sources. If Matthew and Luke represent redactional reformulations of the same parable that both evangelists drew from Q, one would not be able to invoke the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources to argue for the authenticity of the parable of the Great Supper. If, on the other hand, the notably different “performances” of the parable in Matthew and Luke reflect the fact that the Great Supper was preserved in different forms in both the M and the L traditions (an M–L overlap on the analogy of Mark–Q overlaps), then the argument from multiple attestation would hold. Which seems the more likely option? To attempt to answer this difficult question, I think it advisable to move through a four-step probe of the data. I apologize to the reader beforehand that such a lengthy and circuitous process will require some repetition along the way. But I think that it is the only way to arrive at a fairly secure conclusion in such a murky matter. The process I adopt will involve the following four steps: (1) First, we shall “X-ray” the two versions of the parable of the Great Supper to focus on the common skeletal outline of the narrative, while noting briefly the major differences between Matthew and Luke. In other words, we shall ask the question: What is the bare minimum that Matthew and Luke have in common? (2) Second, we shall examine Matthew’s text in detail to see if we can detect phrases and ideas that reflect his redactional style and theology. (3) Third, we shall do the same with Luke’s text. (4) In the fourth and final step, we shall correlate the results of all three probes to see if they converge on a common explanation of the data. 1. The bare minimum that Matthew and Luke have in common, with a brief listing of differences. When we put the texts of Matthew and Luke side by side, we can extract the following shared content, made up of the “least common denominator” of the plot line of the story:



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(i) The introduction: a large meal. “A man” (Matthew: a king) gives a large, festive meal (Matthew: a marriage banquet for the king’s son; Luke: a supper to which “many” have been invited).62 (ii) The man sends his slave(s) to summon the invited. Matthew mentions a group of slaves, while Luke has only one slave sent at the hour of the supper. This difference in the number of slaves is preserved throughout the parable. Only in Luke does the slave give voice to the man’s summons in direct address: “Come, for it [i.e., all the elements of the meal] is now ready.”63 (iii) The short statement of refusal. Both versions have a short, global statement that the guests refused the summons. Matthew states that “they did not wish to come.” Luke says that “they all began immediately to excuse themselves.”64 (iv) The detailed statement of refusal. Here Matthew and Luke completely diverge as they elaborate the refusal. (a) In Matthew, the king sends out “other slaves” on a second mission to the guests. The renewed invitation in Matt 22:4 is expressed by direct address within direct address: “Say to those who have been invited, ‘Behold, I have prepared my meal.65 . . . My oxen and fatlings are slain and all is ready.66 Come to the marriage feast.’”67 The invitation in Matthew meets with two different responses. First, some of the invitees ignore the summons and go off, one to his field (or farm), another to his business (as a trader or merchant). Second, the rest seize his slaves, treat them insultingly, and kill them. Nowhere in this narrative do any of the guests give voice to an excuse. Indeed, it is the king and his slaves who speak. The guests say nothing to express their refusal; they only act. (b) In Luke, there is no second delegation of a slave or slaves. Instead, the short statement about making excuses (14:18, with paraiteisthai used without an expressed object) is elaborated in direct address by three guests, each guest voicing a different excuse in the first person singular. The first says: “I have bought a field [or: farm] and must go to see it.” The second says: “I have bought five yoke of oxen and I am going to test them.” The third says: “I have married a wife and therefore cannot come.” The first two excuses end with the request: “I ask that you hold me excused.” The flat affirmation of the third guest that he simply cannot come obviates such a request.68 The slave returns to tell “his master” what has happened. No such report is possible in Matthew, since all the slaves have been killed. Matthew does not state how the king finds out about the killings. (v) The angry response of the host. In both Matthew and Luke, the man becomes angry, but the anger finds concrete expression in radically different ways.

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(a) In Matthew, the basic story expands in a way that breaks with both the time line and any credible plot line.69 With everything prepared for the banquet, the king sends his troops, destroys the murderers of his slaves, and burns their city. He then addresses his slaves (the original delegation?) with a remarkably calm understatement: “The wedding feast is indeed ready [it was ready before the military campaign was unleashed!], but those who had been invited were not worthy [as indicated by their first slaughtering the slaves and then being slaughtered themselves].” At this point, Matthew rejoins the core story: the king retaliates against the insult of the guests’ refusal to come by extending the invitation to the marriage feast to unlikely substitutes, namely, any and all whom his slaves find on the roads outside the king’s city. (b) In Luke, the man’s anger leads immediately (without the Matthean military interlude) to the man’s retaliation: the replacement of the originally invited guests with unlikely substitutes. Contrary to Matthew, though, the replacement is accomplished in two stages: The master first orders the slave to go out quickly to the broad spaces and narrow alleys of the city and to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame—all the marginalized inhabitants of the city. No Matthew-like narrative of the fulfillment of the order follows. Rather, Luke abridges the succession of events by having the slave immediately announce that the order has been carried out, but that there is still room in the banquet hall. The master then orders the slave to go out to the roads and hedges outside the city and make people come in “that my house may be filled.” Luke alone concludes the parable with a final declaration by the frustrated host, underlining his retaliation: “For I say to you [plural, though the master is supposedly speaking to the one slave]70 that none of those men who had been invited will taste of my supper.” Thus, the element of threat and/or punishment is sounded more clearly in the last words of Luke than of Matthew. Matthew instead ends the parable of the Great Supper on an ambiguous note: the wedding feast is filled with “both bad and good.” In what follows, the clear note of threat and punishment is sounded by Matthew in the distinct parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment, where, however, it is aimed at only one of the replacements, not at all the original guests. What, then, are we to make of this common skeletal outline, which is fleshed out with so many noticeable differences to create the full stories of Matthew and Luke? First of all, the pattern of identical skeletons (i.e., identical core narratives) with contrasting details helps us sort out the three possible solutions to the sources question, namely: (1) We are dealing with two different parables telling two different stories, with some elements that, by



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pure chance, happen to be the same. (2) We are dealing with Matthean and Lucan redactional versions of the same Q parable. (3) We are dealing with the same basic parable, which, however, has been transmitted to Matthew and Luke independently through two different sources, M and L respectively. Unlike the hypothetical case where Q would be the common source known by both, in this scenario neither evangelist would know the version of the parable that the other evangelist knew. Faced with these options, what conclusions should we draw from our inspection of both versions?71 (1) The skeletal outline shows that the first option (two different parables with some common traits) is unlikely.72 There is enough of a common story present in both versions to conclude that we are dealing with the same basic parable that has been developed in different ways by the two evangelists and/or their sources. By way of contrast, think of all the Synoptic parables or similitudes in which a master gives his slaves, servants, or sons orders that they do or do not carry out (e.g., the Evil Tenants, the Doorkeeper, the Servant Placed over a Household, the Talents/Pounds, the Workers in the Vineyard, the Two Sons, the Barren Fig Tree, the Dishonest Steward, and the Servant’s Duty). As is clear from this list, the general theme of obedience or disobedience to the master’s orders is realized in a variety of Synoptic parables that are quite different from one another. We would not want to claim that all these parables are all merely variations of a single parable. In contrast, in the parable of the Great Supper, we have more than a general theme that is played with in different ways in different narratives. In the Great Supper, we have a common plot line and a common list of characters who act in similar though not identical ways. If we take our “X-ray” photo of the Matthean and Lucan versions, the narrative of the basic parable, that is, the skeletal outline detached from the differing details of the two versions, turns out to be composed of these five stages of action: (i) A man gave a large festive meal. (ii) He sent out slaves (or one slave) to summon those who had already been invited, since everything was now ready for the feast. (iii) Contrary to all rules of honor and courtesy, every single guest refuses to heed the summons. (iv) The mundane concerns of a few of the guests (farming, business) are mentioned in order to intimate the basic problem: the personal interests of the guests outweigh any concern they might have about insulting the honor of their host. (v) Angered by this insult to his honor and generosity, the man retaliates by having his slave(s) invite the social inferiors of the original guests, indeed anyone they can find on the roads outside the master’s city, so that

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his banquet hall will be filled. The social insult now boomerangs back upon the original guests. This common core of the story confirms that we are dealing with a single parable preserved in two different versions rather than with two different parables.73 Indeed, as we shall see later on, one can detect in this narrative a recurring theme in Jesus’ teaching, be it in the form of beatitudes (Luke 6:21–23 par.), parables like the Evil Tenants (Mark 12:1–8 parr.), or sayings like “Many will come from east and west . . .” (Luke 13:28–30 par.): the theme of eschatological reversal. Those who presumed that they were the insiders find themselves on the outside, while the (sometimes despised) outsiders, with no claim of their own to stand on, are made insiders. A warning to the smug elites and a promise to the neglected nobodies: these are twin motifs that run through many of Jesus’ sayings. (2) It is clear, then, that we are dealing with a single parable expanded in different ways. But are we dealing with two highly redacted forms of a Q parable or with separate M and L versions that came to Matthew and Luke in already disparate forms? At this juncture it is good to remind ourselves of how we identify certain Synoptic passages as Q material. A unit is declared to be Q tradition if its basic content, found in both Matthew and Luke but not present in Mark, shares a fair amount of common vocabulary in roughly the same order and syntactical constructions. Prime examples would be the Baptist’s call to repentance in Matt 3:7–10 || Luke 3:7–9, the “eye is the lamp of the body” saying in Matt 6:22–23 || Luke 11:34–35, the “no man can serve two masters” saying in Matt 6:24 || Luke 16:13, Jesus’ reply to the Baptist’s disciples in Matt 11:4–6 || Luke 7:22–23, and the similitude of the children playing in the marketplace in Matt 11:16–19 || Luke 7:31–35. The requirement of exact agreement in wording and syntax can be lessened somewhat when (i) similarity of vocabulary is matched by similarity of structure and (ii) differences in vocabulary, syntax, or content can be explained by the redactional style and theology of each evangelist. Sometimes the decision is not clear-cut, a point that explains disagreements among Q scholars as to the exact extent of Q material. The parable of the Great Supper is a case in point. Do the Matthean and Lucan parables share enough common vocabulary and syntax in roughly the same order to assign both of them to Q? In my opinion, no. The amount of shared vocabulary occurring in the same order is remarkably sparse. To list the most obvious cases:74 (i) Both versions begin with the noun anthro¯pos (“man”), who gave (literally in the Greek, “made”: Matthew uses the aorist epoie¯sen, Luke the imperfect epoiei) some sort of feast (in Matthew a marriage feast, in Luke a supper).



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(ii) The verb kaleo¯ occurs in various places in the story with the meaning of either “to invite” or “to summon” (e.g., kalesai in Matt 22:3 and ekalesen in Luke 14:16). Indeed in Matt 22:3, the two meanings stand side by side: kalesai tous kekle¯menous, “to summon those [already] invited”; both active and passive forms occur in Luke 14:16 + 17 as well. (iii) Various forms of the verb erchomai (“to come”) and its compounds appear in both Matthew and Luke (e.g., the aorist infinitive “to come” [elthein] in Matt 22:3; the present imperative “come!” [erchesthe] in Luke 14:17). (iv) Not surprisingly, various forms of the verb “to say” (e.g., legei, eipen) occur in both versions. (v) Both the verb “to prepare” (he¯toimaka, Matt 22:4) and the adjective “ready,” “prepared” (hetoima, Matt 22:4,8; Luke 14:17) occur. (vi) Hearing of the refusal of his invitees, the host becomes angry (o¯rgisthe¯ in Matt 22:7; orgistheis in Luke 14:21). (vii) The noun “city” (polis) occurs in both versions, but in reference to different cities (the city of the murderers in Matt 22:7; the householder’s city in Luke 14:21). (viii) The noun “way” or “road” (hodos) is used in both versions of the command of the host to seek out new invitees (Matt 22:9–10; Luke 14:23). (ix) Common also is the theme of the banquet hall being filled, though different verbs are used (pimple¯mi in Matt 22:10; gemizo¯ in Luke 14:23). (x) Finally, different compound forms of the verb ago¯ (“to bring,” “to lead”) are used to describe the slaves’ (or slave’s) action of bringing the replacement guests into the festal hall (Matt 22:10: syne¯gagon; Luke 14:21: eisagage). How impressive is this list? The presence of words that occur frequently or almost constantly throughout both Gospels (e.g., “say,” “do,” “come,” “come out,” “man,” “city,” “way,” “send”) is insignificant for an argument about sources. Certain other words (e.g., “master,” “slave”) are common to a number of parables. When we put aside all these common words, the shared vocabulary in the Matthean and Lucan versions is not all that great: kaleo¯ used in the two senses of “to invite” and “to summon,” hetoimos used to indicate that the meal is “ready to be eaten,” and orgizo¯, used at the same place in both versions to express the host’s anger. One might well ask: Could the basic story shared by Matthew and Luke be told at all without these key words? In the end, our list of ten common words or themes simply confirms the fact that we are dealing with the same narrative parable, not two different parables. But Matt 22:2–10 and Luke 14:16–24 do not share enough identical vocabulary and syntax in the same or similar order to qualify as two redactional retellings of the same unit of Q tradition.75

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(3) Thus, by a process of elimination, we reach the conclusion that the two versions of the parable most likely flow from distinct M and L sources.76 But this leaves us dealing with hypothetical entities so vague that they make the Q document look reliable by comparison. What did these M and L versions look like when they first came into the possession of Matthew and Luke? Were they written down or were they merely stray oral traditions? What if one version was already in written form while the other was still oral? How do we distinguish the traditional material that Matthew and Luke received from the material that each evangelist added or altered? The point of piling up these difficult questions is to make us aware of how little we know once we designate a Synoptic parable a product of separate M and L traditions. At best, all we can do is make certain general observations about our two redactors, observations based on what they tend to do with Marcan and Q material elsewhere as well as what their overall redactional theologies are. We can then apply these insights to the two versions of the Great Supper. After we have identified as best we can the redactional material in the Matthean and Lucan versions and subtracted these redactional elements from the Matthean and Lucan texts, we will correlate these hypothetical M and L versions of the parable with the skeletal outline that we have extracted from the Matthean and Lucan versions at the beginning of this process. 2. An analysis of Matthean redactional traits in Matt 22:1–10. Let us begin with Matthew’s setting the stage for his story in v 2. Matthew likes to introduce parables and similitudes with some form of “the kingdom of heaven is like” (see 13:24,31,33,44,45,47,52; 18:23; 20:1; 25:1), and he also likes to feature kings, noblemen, and affluent people in his parables (e.g., Matt 13:24–30,45–50; 18:23–35; 20:1–16; 25:14–30).77 Such is the case here. Most commentators see his hand in the expansion of a relatively simple story (better reflected in Luke) into a grand allegory of salvation history.78 The festive meal in the original parable has become the wedding feast (= the eschatological banquet) that the king (= God the Father) gives for his son (= the exalted Jesus).79 A number of allegorical features seem to be borrowed from the Marcan parable of judgment spoken by Jesus during his last days in Jerusalem, namely, the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–8 || Matt 21:33–39).80 As in his version of the Evil Tenants, so in his version of the Great Supper, Matthew presents more than one delegation of slaves sent to make a request or demand (note the same Greek phrase, apesteilen tous doulous autou, “he sent his slaves,” in Matt 21:34 and 22:3; and palin apesteilen allous doulous, “again he sent other slaves,” in Matt 21:36 and 22:4). Matthew is clearly redacting the version of the Great Supper he has received, assimilating it to



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the parable of judgment (the Evil Tenants) that was already anchored in the setting of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem. This use of parallel structures and wording, employed by Matthew throughout his Gospel to form large units of material, continues with the murder of the slaves sent in the second delegation (22:5–6). Thus, in both the Evil Tenants and the Great Supper, Matthew has two delegations of slaves; and in both the second delegation faces violence, including murder.81 The murder of the slaves is shocking enough in the parable of the Evil Tenants, though somewhat intelligible against the cultural background of the taut and fraught relations between land owners and tenant farmers in the ancient Mediterranean world. In contrast, the murder of the slaves sent to summon supposed friends or acquaintances of the host to the host’s banquet is totally without basis in the story world and destroys the tone of plausibility with which the parable began. Even more bizarre and beyond the world of real events is the king’s response, unleashed in the midst of a marriage feast where the steaming hot food is ready to be eaten. The marriage banquet is apparently put into suspended animation while the king sends his troops to destroy the murderers and burn their city. Here Matthew’s desire to insert a reference to the Jewish War and the destruction of Jerusalem is so powerful that it overwhelms not only plausibility but also any coherent time line in the narrative.82 The initial story launched in the first verses of the parable has been completely disrupted. Just as jarring, in its own way, is the sudden return to the world of “reality.” Having killed all the invited guests and burned their city to the ground, the king coolly and dispassionately remarks to his slaves: “Those who had been invited were not worthy.” There is almost something comical in this understatement in the midst of such an over-the-top narrative. But this understatement allows the king to return to the realm of sane action with which the parable began. The king now replaces those who refused to come by sending his slaves outside the city to summon to the feast any and all they can find.83 The result is that the marriage feast, disdained by the original guests, is now filled with their replacements, people who were quite literally “outsiders.” At this point Matthew adds one of his typical themes, the mixture of “bad and good” in this present world and in the church that lives within it (cf. 13:24–30,36–43,47–50; 24:10–13; 25:1–13,31–46). The Matthean theme of “both bad and good”—the reversal in the natural order of the adjectives is meant to be striking—at the end of the parable serves as a hook on which Matthew hangs his separate M parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment (22:11–14). Having made the original parable an allegory of

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salvation history in the present time of the church, Matthew needs a dénouement at the last judgment to set things straight. For only then, in Matthew’s theology, will there be a definitive separation of the bad from the good, the former being punished as they deserve. Such is the fate of the sartorially challenged guest, who is thrown out of the feast amid a chorus of familiar themes (vv 13–14; cf. 8:12; 25:30): “the outer darkness” and “the weeping and gnashing of teeth.”84 Putting aside the separate parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment, we are now in a position to isolate the major redactional alterations made by Matthew to the primitive parable, alterations that serve the evangelist’s allegory: (i) The host has been promoted to being a king, and the festive meal has been turned into a wedding banquet for the royal son.85 The theme of the wedding banquet points forward to the M parable of the Ten Virgins in Matt 25:1–13, a parable with strong Matthean redactional traits, if not a Matthean creation.86 (ii) The two separate delegations with different slaves makes no sense in the original parable of the Great Supper, but makes perfect sense in Matthew’s version of the parable of the Evil Tenants. There the first delegation is either beaten, killed, or stoned, making a second delegation composed of different slaves necessary. Such is not the case in the primitive form of the Great Supper. (iii) The killing of all the slaves in the second delegation is wildly out of place in a story about inviting friends to a marriage feast. It echoes the theme of the fate of the martyred prophets, a theme that makes sense in the allegory of the Evil Tenants. In Matthew’s version of the Great Supper, the theme of the killing of the slaves seems to be reapplied to the killing of Christian “prophets” (i.e., early Christian missionaries; cf. Matt 23:34), though the fit is an awkward one. (iv) The sending of the troops and the burning of the city is obviously allegorical and does not jibe with the basic story of the original parable. (v) The theme of “both bad and good” at the end of the main parable is a Matthean theological concern that introduces the appended parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment. When we subtract these redactional elements from Matthew’s version of the parable, an interesting correlation results. Matthew’s full text minus his redactional features yields a brief story that is quite similar to the five-part skeletal outline of the parable’s narrative that we constructed by “X-raying” both the Matthean and Lucan versions of the parable to get at a common denominator. In both the slimmed-down Matthean version (stripped of the



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redactional elements) and in our initial skeletal outline, we have identified the same primitive story: (i) A man (apparently of some means) gives a festal meal. (ii) He sends his slave(s) to summon to the meal the guests who had been previously invited. (iii) The guests insult the host. Indeed, all of them refuse to come to the feast, despite the host’s insistence that everything is now ready. (Perhaps there was some mention of various personal concerns or business affairs of the guests that they consider more important than the meal, but this point is not clear.) (iv) The angered host, who has been dishonored by the original guests, retaliates by summoning to his meal all those whom his slaves happen to meet on the various roads outside the city. (v) Thus, the honor of the host is restored by having his banquet hall filled with guests, while the original guests are implicitly dishonored by being replaced with people who are of lower social status (a point merely hinted at in the original story: the replacements are all whomever the slaves chance upon on the roads). 3. An analysis of Lucan redactional traits in Luke 14:16–24. The correlation between our hypothetically original “skeletal outline” (extracted from both Matthew and Luke) and the Matthean version of the parable minus Matthew’s redactional additions offers some guidance as we now evaluate Luke’s form of the parable. Even with this help, though, the task of discerning Lucan redaction remains difficult.87 (i) On the one hand, Luke does not engage in the heavy allegorization and expansion of the narrative undertaken by Matthew. Hence there is relatively little by way of obvious blocks of Lucan redaction to be removed en masse (contrast Matt 22:6–7,11–14). But does this mean that the parable as it now stands in Luke’s Gospel is exactly what he received? One should not rush to such a judgment uncritically. (ii) For, on the other hand, certain theological themes typical of Luke are visible, notably the themes of rich and poor, elites and the marginalized, and the danger of becoming absorbed in the goods and concerns of this present world.88 In addition, a modicum of salvation-historical allegory may peek through toward the end of the narrative.89 For example, the two distinct stages in the slave’s mission to invite new guests to replace the old (Luke 14:21–23) seem unnecessary. In the first stage of the slave’s mission, the slave is sent to the socially and/or economically marginalized (the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame) who live within the city of the host (14:21: “Go out quickly to the broad spaces and narrow alleys of the city”).90 When

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this mission does not bring in enough people to fill the banquet room in the host’s house, the slave is sent out on a second mission but this time apparently outside the city (14:23: “Go out to the roads and hedges”). In Luke’s mind, the two missions may represent in miniature the story of the Christian mission in the Acts of the Apostles: first to the Jews (mainly chaps. 1–9) and then to the Gentiles (mainly chaps. 10–23, with chaps. 10–15 acting as a transitional stage).91 More specifically, in the depiction of Paul’s missionary journeys in Acts, we find an intriguing pattern as the Apostle moves from city to city: while some Jews accept the Gospel, many reject it, which leads Paul to turn to the Gentiles (see, e.g., Acts 13:42–48; 18:1–11; 19:8–10; 28:23–28). Luke’s parable of the Great Supper ends in 14:24 with a formal statement (“for I say to you”) that underlines the theme of contrast and reversal: not one of those originally invited will taste the meal, in contrast to the marginalized and outsiders, summoned at the last minute.92 The presence of this configuration of Lucan themes in Luke’s version of the parable warns us not to assume that the shorter, less heavily allegorized form Luke presents is identical to the L tradition he received or to the still more primitive version of the parable that stood behind the M and L traditions. Luke’s redactional hand has molded his text, but the distinction between tradition and redaction is less clear in Luke than in Matthew. Nevertheless, we do have a few hints of Luke’s redactional hand. For instance, Luke’s introduction to the parable is as plainly redactional as Matthew’s.93 As is his wont with L parables, Luke’s introduction (14:15–16) consists of a preliminary setting of the scene (the typically Lucan scene of a meal) and a verbal interchange (or brief anecdote) that raises one of the themes taken up by the parable. This introductory scene is then followed by the initial phrase “a certain man . . .” (anthro¯pos tis, v 16). As we have seen repeatedly in our investigation of Lucan parables (notably, the Rich Fool), this pattern of an introductory anecdote (or saying) + “a certain man [or woman]” is a reliable sign of Lucan redaction (e.g., 10:25–37; 11:1–8; 12:13–21; 13:1–9; 14:25–33; 15:1–3,8–10,11–32; 18:1–8,9–14).94 What might have stood at the beginning of the parable in the oral tradition before Luke reshaped it is difficult to say. It may be that the original opening of the parable would have been “the kingdom of God is like . . . ,” or something similar. The reason for this surmise is that, in Luke’s introductory anecdote, a guest at the meal that Jesus is attending piously speaks a beatitude to Jesus: “Fortunate is the person who eats bread [i.e., shares a meal] in the kingdom of God.” Since it is extremely rare for anyone in the Synoptic Gospels other than Jesus to use the phrase “the kingdom of God” in his speech, it is possible that this verse is a “back formation” by Luke.95 In other words,



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Luke could have taken “kingdom of God” from the original opening of the traditional parable, used it in his introductory anecdote, and substituted his typical “a certain man” as the parable’s beginning. The possibility that “kingdom of God” originally stood at the beginning of the parable could find further support in the fact that Matthew’s version of the parable begins with “the kingdom of heaven is like a king. . . .” Yet this suggestion remains just a possibility, since Matthew regularly supplies his parables with an opening such as “the kingdom of heaven is like. . . .” Indeed, the precise formulation Matthew uses here with the aorist passive form of the verb (literally, “the kingdom of heaven was made like . . . ,” Matt 22:2) is also found in 13:24, the beginning of the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds—a parable that, as we saw in Chapter 38, has been strongly shaped by Matthew’s hand (if not simply created by Matthew). Moreover, since Matthew makes the host of the Great Supper a king celebrating his son’s wedding, the introduction mentioning “the kingdom of heaven” fits Matthew’s redactional activity perfectly. Since, then, both Matthew and Luke may be responsible for their respective openings, we must remain unsure about how the M and L versions of the parable originally began. Luke’s single sending of a single slave to summon the original guests may be a traditional element, reflecting the relative simplicity of the primitive version of the parable, where a private individual and not a king is holding the banquet.96 However, since Luke, unlike Mark or Matthew, has only one slave sent out each time in the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Luke 20:10–12; cf. Mark 12:2–5 || Matt 21:34–36), the use of a single slave throughout the parable of the Great Supper (Luke 14:17,21–23) could reflect Luke’s redactional hand. The relation between tradition and Lucan redaction in the list of the guests’ excuses (Luke 14:18–20) is likewise unclear. That all the guests excuse themselves (14:18a) at the last minute is demanded by the plot of the core story. But the source of the three specific excuses listed by Luke (14:18b-20) is debatable. I think that at least the present formulation of the excuses is due to Luke’s redactional activity.97 First, there are indications of Lucan vocabulary and style.98 Second, some Lucan scholars have detected a Lucan redactional technique that involves composing patterns of repetitions and specifically patterns of repeated excuses in both the Third Gospel and Acts; Luke 14:18–20 would be a prime example.99 Third, at least some of the excuses reflect Lucan redactional concerns (e.g., being held captive by one’s material possessions, letting marital ties impede the call to discipleship).100 Fourth, the structure in this part of the parable of the

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Great Supper curiously reflects the structure found in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:29–37), which, as I have argued in Chapter 39, is a Lucan creation from start to finish. Notice, for instance, how the “law of threes” is employed in the center of both parables. In the Good Samaritan (10:31–33), we have the succession of three people who are challenged to respond to the critical situation they are suddenly faced with: the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan. The list of the three characters builds to a climax when the disreputable outsider turns out to be the genuine loving neighbor. In the Great Supper, we have the succession of three guests offering excuses when challenged to respond to the host’s summons: the man who bought a field, the man who bought five yoke of oxen, and the man who has married (14:18b–20). Again, there is a certain climax in that the first two guests in Luke formally ask to be excused, while the third instead bluntly insists that “I cannot come”—without uttering a request to be excused.101 In both parables, this three-stage action at the center of the parable is then followed by a two-stage resolution at the end of the parable. In the Good Samaritan, with the emotional response of mercy mentioned as the motivation (esplagchnisthe¯, 10:33), the Samaritan (i) first gives the victim immediate aid, puts him on his donkey, and brings him to an inn where he personally cares for him (10:34); (ii) then, the next day, he provides for his continued care by paying the innkeeper to look after the victim until he (the Samaritan) returns (10:35). Similarly, in the Great Supper, with the emotional response of anger mentioned as the motivation (orgistheis, 14:21), (i) the host (= the householder) first orders his slave to bring into the banquet the poor and handicapped living within the city (14:21); (ii) then, when the banquet hall is still not filled, he sends the slave to those outside the city (those on the roads and country lanes, 14:23). Anton Vögtle, along with various other commentators, argues strongly for the second sending of the slave to lastminute guests to be the redactional creation of Luke.102 This pattern of three stages of action at the center of the story followed by a two-stage resolution of the plot certainly does not prove that Luke’s parable of the Great Supper is a pure Lucan creation. The Matthean parallel demonstrates just the opposite. But the fact that the pattern of three stages at the center of the parable plus two stages at the end is not paralleled in Matthew’s version of the Great Supper but is paralleled in a parable that is a pure Lucan creation (i.e., the Good Samaritan) favors the view that the precise structuring of events in Luke’s version of the Great Supper (Luke 14:16–24) comes from Luke’s redactional hand. I think it likely, therefore, that the three excuses offered in Luke 14:18b– 20 are, at least in their present order and precise wording, Lucan formula-



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tions.103 Such a decision is particularly significant in light of the key verb paraiteomai, which Luke employs in a special sense in his list of excuses. In Luke 14:18, all the guests begin “to excuse themselves [paraiteisthai].” Then in v 19, the first two speakers both end their particular excuses with the refrain: “I ask you, hold me [or: consider me] excused” (ero¯to¯ se, eche me pare˛ˉ te¯menon). To appreciate the special nuance of this use of paraiteomai, the sense of the verb in this Lucan context needs to be placed within the spectrum of meanings that this verb possesses in ancient Greek. Hardly among the most frequently used verbs in Greek, this compound of the basic verb aiteo¯ (“to ask,” “to demand”) and the preposition para has a relatively narrow range of core meanings: “to beg of or from another,” “to ask a favor,” “to avert by entreaty,” “to decline,” “to refuse,” “to reject,” and “to avoid.” From here various further meanings spread out to include “to demand exemption from,” “to ask to be excused,” “to decline an invitation,” “to divorce or dismiss a spouse,” “to relieve by medical means,” and “to beg off (especially from punishment).”104 Within this larger compass, the specific sense of “to decline an invitation to a meal” represents a minor meaning, and the still more specific Lucan sense in our immediate context, “to ask to be excused from an invitation to a meal previously accepted,” is understandably rare. Despite this range of meanings, the verb paraiteomai is rare in the Greek Bible, though a variety of meanings is witnessed in the LXX and the NT.105 The LXX contains only eight examples, with a range of meanings such as “to ask permission (to be excused from a meal),” “to entreat,” “to excuse,” and “to ask forgiveness (for what one has already done).” The verb is slightly more frequent in the NT, occurring twelve times in all. Most of the NT texts use the verb in the sense of “to entreat,” “to reject,” or “to avoid.” All the more striking, then, is the usage unique to Luke 14:18–19 within the NT: “to excuse from a social obligation (specifically, a meal) previously accepted.” Indeed, in the whole of the LXX and the NT, this precise meaning occurs only in Luke 14:18–19 (three times).106 To be sure, the idea of excusing oneself from an obligation or an invitation does occur both in the LXX and in secular Greek, including the historians Polybius (The Histories, 5.27.3) and Josephus (Ant. 7.8.2 §175; 12.4.7 §197).107 But neither in Polybius nor in Josephus do we find an exact parallel to Luke’s usage in the parable of the Great Supper, since in the two former authors the texts do not speak of trying to get oneself excused from a social obligation that one has already accepted.108 In addition, the wording of the phrases in Polybius and Josephus is not exactly the same as Luke’s.

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Since the exact wording and meaning of the phrase found in Luke’s version of the parable are relatively rare, it is all the more remarkable that Luke’s full sentence (14:18 + 19), “I ask you, hold me excused” (ero¯to¯ se eche me pare˛ˉ te¯menon), finds a perfect verbal parallel in a Latin epigram of Martial (Epigrams 2.79): excusatum habeas me rogo.109 This parallel is especially intriguing because it occurs in a context referring to a refusal of an invitation to dinner extended by a friend or acquaintance. Granted Luke’s broad knowledge and use of various Greek styles, as well as the number of Latinisms in his two-volume work,110 one need not be surprised by his use of a Latinism in his version of the parable, employing the perfect passive participle of paraiteomai (namely, pare˛ˉ  te¯menon) to render the Latin excusatum.111 In my opinion, then, it is highly likely that Luke, the cosmopolitan author who likes to display his command of many different literary styles (ranging from Septuagintalisms through elegant, formal Greek to Latinisms), is personally responsible for the use of paraiteomai in this special sense in his version of the excuses offered by the invitees. As we shall see, this decision about Lucan composition is of some importance when we come to study CGT 64 in section B later. More to the point in our present discussion, though, Luke’s special use of paraiteomai in a relatively rare meaning supports the view that Luke is responsible for the precise wording of the excuses in 14:18–20.112 Moreover, one can see how Luke’s wording of the excuses serves one of his larger concerns. All three excuses intimate that the invitees are upper-class elites focused on acquiring property and wealth (marriage in the Greco-Roman world being an important commercial exchange).113 Thus does Luke, well-known for his concern about the proper use of wealth and the needs of the disadvantaged of society,114 heighten within this parable the contrast between the initial group of invitees, made up of the well-to-do (vv 18–20), and the second group, made up of the poor and marginalized (v 21). In light of all this, it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to take Luke’s version of the Great Supper as coterminous with the most primitive form of the parable or even the particular L tradition that Luke received.115 The simple reason for this caution is that there are hints of redactional traits in Luke’s version of the parable. First of all, to Luke’s redactional hand belong both the introductory anecdote and the opening phrase (“a certain man”). The use of a single slave throughout the narrative may likewise be redactional, though this is less certain. Also redactional is probably the precise wording of the three excuses (including the specialized sense of paraiteomai, employed three times) and the two missions of the slave at the end



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of the parable, first to those inside the city and then to those outside. The specification of the group inside the city (14:21) as “the poor, maimed, blind and lame” (tous pto¯chous kai anapeirous kai typhlous kai cho¯lous) neatly repeats the list of guests (probably a Lucan redactional composition) in Jesus’ direction not to invite those who can reciprocate the host’s generosity (14:13).116 Indeed, concern about the poor and the disabled is a typical redactional trait of the Third Gospel. This concern is only reinforced by the final group of guests, those outside the city walls, who would have been not only geographically but also socially the farthest removed from the affluent host.117 The concluding statement of the host in v 24 (with its odd plural “you,” hymin, though the addressee is ostensibly the single slave) is accepted by some commentators as Luke’s addition to the end of the parable.118 What remains as pre-Lucan in this analysis? The parable begins with an otherwise unidentified man (but obviously an affluent person, e.g., the head of a large household) holding a large festive meal. Having already invited the guests, he now sends out a slave (or slaves) to notify them that all is ready and that they should now come to the banquet. Instead, and contrary to natural expectations, all the invited persons offer excuses for not coming. (At this point, some individual excuses may have been mentioned, but how many or of what kind cannot be determined.)119 Reacting with anger, the host sends his slave(s) out to gather into his banquet hall anyone the slave(s) might happen to meet on the streets or lanes. The result is that the festival hall is filled with many different types of people, including the socially marginalized. 4. The correlation of all three probes. If we compare (i) the hypothetical outline of the parable that we abstracted from the points that the Matthean and Lucan parables have in common, (ii) the Matthean form of the parable minus the Matthean redactional features, and (iii) the Lucan form of the parable minus its Lucan redactional features, we wind up with roughly the same parable in each case. This is perhaps as close as we can hope to get to the primitive form of the parable, which was then transmitted to Matthew and Luke in the varying formulations of the M and L traditions. To recapitulate the results of this tripartite correlation, the primitive form of the parable consisted of the following: (i) Setup (The Summons to the Feast). Whatever the precise introductory phrase, the parable began with a man who is giving a festive meal for a large number of invitees. (ii) First Stage of Plot. The host sends out his slave(s) to summon those already invited to come to the meal.

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(iii) Second Stage of Plot (The Problem Arises). The invitees all refuse to come to the meal. Some indication is given of the various commercial or personal commitments that cause the invitees to reject the summons. (iv) Third Stage of the Plot (Return of the Slave[s]). The slave(s) report the invitees’ refusal to the master. (v) Fourth Stage of Plot (Reaction of the Master and Resolution of the Problem). In anger, the master sends out his slave(s) to invite any and all whom the slave(s) may chance to meet on the roads (inside and/or outside the city). The explicit result is that the master’s banquet hall is filled with guests. The implicit result is that the host gains honor and gratitude from the newly invited, who had no claim on him, while those originally invited (probably understood to be of high status) are shamed by being replaced by people of no notable status, people whom the slave(s) just happened to encounter on the roads.120 It must be stressed that this bare-bones summary of the parable probably developed and mutated in various ways during many oral performances before it attained to the M and L formulations used by Matthew and Luke respectively. The great differences apparent in the hypothetical versions that Matthew and Luke received and redacted confirm our view that the two evangelists were not using one common text (Q) but rather separate written or oral traditions that we label M and L. Granted this conclusion, the parable of the Great Supper meets the criterion of multiple attestation of independent sources and therefore probably comes from the historical Jesus. This decision naturally raises a further question: What can be said about the parable’s meaning on the lips of Jesus, as distinct from the redactional emphases we have detected in Matthew and Luke?121 From all we have seen so far, one point is obvious: we cannot reconstruct the exact wording of the parable as spoken by Jesus—all the more so because he may have spoken it in different forms on different occasions to different audiences for different purposes. Granted this, how can we detect the core message, thrust, or intent of the parable as it came from Jesus? Here is where the strategy of reserving the treatment of Jesus’ parables to late in the series of A Marginal Jew proves helpful. We have already learned a great deal about the core proclamation and detailed teaching of the historical Jesus in the first four volumes and in the preceding chapters of Volume Five. It is within this interpretive framework that we can place the parable of the Great Supper. In other words, we can gain some guidance for interpreting the parable by looking back to material already judged authentic. In this way, the parable is not bereft of any and every larger frame of reference, leaving it open to whatever the clever modern interpreter wants to see in it (not unlike some



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modern abstract paintings). Rather, the redactional frames supplied by the evangelists may legitimately be replaced by the interpretive frame supplied by the words and work of the historical Jesus authenticated in the previous chapters of A Marginal Jew. The motif of a householder who sends out slaves to issue a summons or demand to a recalcitrant group of people is also found at the beginning of the parable of the Evil Tenants (Mark 12:1–8 parr.). In that parable, the householder was clearly God, the slaves were the (repeatedly rejected) prophets sent to Israel, and the recalcitrant group was apparently the temple authorities hostile to Jesus. The identification of the stock images of the householder and his slaves with God and his prophets seems at first glance to hold true as well for the parable of the Great Supper. Yet there is a difference. In the parable of the Great Supper, it is not a question of a relatively small number of tenant farmers tending a vineyard. Rather, many people have been invited to a “great supper” (Luke 14:16) or to a “marriage feast for the son” of a king (Matt 22:2). The strenuous effort exerted to fill the banquet hall at the end of the parable (Matt 22:9–10; Luke 14:21–23) likewise underlines the large number of people involved. In previous volumes of A Marginal Jew, we have seen how Jesus used meal imagery to depict the eschatological banquet or final salvation. Clear cases include the Q saying about many coming from east and west to recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God (Matt 8:11–12 || Luke 13:28–29) and the Marcan saying about the bridegroom and his guests at the wedding banquet (Mark 2:19a parr.).122 If the meal symbolizes final salvation in the kingdom of God, then it is hardly surprising that those invited are not a relatively small group (such as the tenant farmers would be), but rather “many” (so explicitly in Luke 14:16; implicitly in Matt 22:7, where armed troops have to be dispatched by the king “to destroy those murderers and burn their city”). The broad sweep of this imagery would seem to argue against the parable being aimed solely at the temple authorities. It would also make no sense to depict the temple authorities as the sole invitees to the eschatological banquet. Rather, the many invitees to whom the slaves (= the prophets) are sent seem to be the people of Israel as a whole. As we have seen repeatedly, Jesus, the Elijah-like prophet of the end time, is not concerned simply with a holy remnant (à la Isaiah of Jerusalem), but rather with the regathering of all twelve tribes of Israel in the end time.123 Hence, in the parable of the Great Supper, Jesus the eschatological prophet is apparently warning his fellow Israelites that his message to them is so urgent precisely because it is the final invitation issued by God to his people. Their response to Jesus will

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determine whether they are admitted to the eschatological banquet that is imminent. To neglect or reject this summons because one is too occupied with business or family or whatever is to risk losing salvation. There will be no second chance. Others will be invited to the banquet to take the place of the original guests who fail to respond. Who these others are is not clear in the primitive form of the parable. If we turn again to the Q saying (a contrast logion) in Matt 8:11–12 || Luke 13:28–29, we may receive a hint: “Many shall come from east and west and shall recline [at table] with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God. But you will be thrown out.” As I argued in Volume Two of A Marginal Jew, this logion indicates that the historical Jesus did prophesy the inclusion of (some? many? all?) Gentiles in the eschatological banquet, while some Israelites would find themselves excluded.124 It is possible that the same idea may be present in the parable of the Great Supper, though any reference to the Gentiles must be inferred from other sayings of Jesus. It remains possible that Jesus instead is warning stringently observant Jews that their place in the kingdom may be taken by Jews who are socially or religiously marginalized.125 If, however, we accept the line of interpretation that sees Jesus hinting at the inclusion of Gentiles, two important points must be kept in mind: (1) Jesus is speaking metaphorically of the final day of salvation, not of the ongoing course of Israel’s history in this present world. Only on the last day will some (many? all?) Gentiles be included and some Israelites excluded. There is no idea of a mission to the Gentiles prior to the last day—contrary to what will quickly develop in the early church. (2) Likewise, Jesus’ warning to his fellow Israelites must not be read as a threat that Israel as a whole might be excluded from final salvation. If we are not to press too far the allegorical elements in the Matthean or even the Lucan version of the parable, a fortiori we are not to do so in the rhetorical situation of the viva voce preaching of an itinerant Jesus as he warned, cajoled, and entertained his various audiences, be they peasants, Pharisees, rich landowners, or temple authorities. In the concrete context of his ministry, at any given time Jesus would have spoken this parable to this or that group of his fellow Jews as a salutary warning not to ignore his urgent final message, lest they suffer the consequences on the last day. Each person hearing the parable would be challenged by the story to place himself or herself with those who accept the invitation, not with those who reject it. Thus, if my readers will excuse language reminiscent of Rudolf Bultmann, there is in this parable a pressing call to existential decision. Or, to use language reminiscent of Joachim Jeremias, time is short. Decide now, or soon it will be too late and your place will be taken by another. It is this monitory summons to Israel that we



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should hear in this parable if we are asking about the intent of the eschatological prophet called Jesus. The Great Supper is the great and final call to Israel to accept the eschatological prophet’s message before it is too late. B. Is the Version of This Parable in the Gospel of Thomas Independent of the Synoptics? The analysis presented in section A has produced what I consider fairly reliable conclusions about the sources and redaction of the Great Supper in both Matthew and Luke. Yet the complexity of the relationship between the two Synoptic versions of the parable, highlighted by our analysis, underlines why a decision about Thomas’ relation to the Synoptics in the case of CGT 64 is so difficult. For that reason, I think it wise to begin our treatment of logion 64 by recalling what we have learned about the tendencies of Thomas from Chapter 38: (i) A number of logia display Thomas’ tendency to conflate two or even three Synoptic versions of a unit. The parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1–8; CGT 65) is a prime example. (ii) Likewise evident in that example is Thomas’ penchant for abbreviating the main story line, while at times adding material that will favor his hermeneutic. (iii) As the Evil Tenants also shows, in his conflations Thomas will sometimes lean heavily in the direction of the Lucan version of a parable. (iv) Finally, we see in Thomas’ version of the Evil Tenants, as elsewhere in CGT, the desire to play down, eliminate, or explicitly reject connections with the OT, salvation history, Judaism, or the early church. Hence allegorical elaborations added by the evangelists tend to be stripped away. Granted all these tendencies of Thomas—tendencies we have seen repeatedly in both parables and nonparabolic sayings—it is hardly surprising that CGT 64 shares few words or phrases with Matthew’s version of the Great Supper. To recall briefly what we have learned in section A: as almost all commentators agree, Matthew has expanded the core parable to make it an allegory of salvation history, with special emphasis on the time of the church. The supper has become a wedding feast (gamous, 22:2) that a king (God the Father) has prepared for his son (the risen and exalted Jesus). The sending out of slaves to summon the guests, while borrowing the motif of the slaves from the parable of the Evil Tenants (where they symbolized the OT prophets), represents in the Great Supper the mission of early Christian preachers, who encounter rejection and martyrdom from those who had already been invited, namely, the people of Israel (vv 3–6). The king responds angrily—and quite improbably in the context of a meal waiting to be eaten—by sending his troops to wipe out the murderers and burn their city.

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(The idea that all those rejecting the slaves live in one city—obviously not the king’s city—pops up out of nowhere.) The campaign of the king’s troops is patently a symbol of the Jewish War of a.d. 66–70, and the burning of the city represents the destruction of Jerusalem. After the destruction of the city, the new mission of the slaves (naturally, a different group of slaves from those who have been killed) symbolizes, in Matthew’s artificial periodization of salvation history, the proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles. The newly invited form a ragtag and morally dubious group (“all those you find, both bad and good,” v 10), a group that did not share the previous invitation (the covenant with Israel), a group that is now suddenly summoned from all over the map (“go out to the roads outside the city gates,” v 9). Paradoxically, it is at this point of his salvation-historical allegory that Matthew senses a problem he himself has created. With the gathering of bad and good alike, Matthew’s allegory has brought us up only to the present time of the church, which embraces a mixed bag of members produced by the Gentile mission. To resolve this typically Matthean problematic, Matthew adds (and probably creates) the parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment (vv 11–14) to bring salvation history to its dénouement at the last judgment, complete with Matthew’s beloved theme of the separation of the good and bad on the last day, complete with weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness. Matthew is fond of severe warnings about the final judgment. The point of this recapitulation of Matthew’s narrative, analyzed at length in section A, is that there is little in Matthew’s allegory of salvation history that the author and/or compiler of Thomas would have found palatable or usable. Thus, we need not be surprised that parallels between the Matthean and Thomasine versions are few and far between. Nevertheless, there are a few similarities: (i) Insofar as CGT 64 uses the verb “he prepared” (entarefsobte), Thomas is closer to the use of the equivalent Greek verb, “I have prepared” (he¯toimaka, v 4), found only in Matthew, than he is to the related adjective “prepared” or “ready” (hetoima), which both Matthew (22:4,8) and Luke (14:17) employ. (ii) Matthew, not Luke, states that one of the guests who brushes aside the invitation goes off to his business (emporian, v 5). CGT 64, while paralleling Luke in having the guests articulate their excuses in direct discourse, parallels Matthew in that the first guest speaks of having to arrange financial accounts with some businessmen or merchants. Here the Coptic text uses the Greek noun emporos (cf. Matthew’s emporian) for “businessmen” or “merchants.”



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(iii) In both Matt 22:9–10 and CGT 64, we see the slave(s) sent out only once to gather in people found on the roads. In Luke, the single slave is sent out twice. (iv) The people the slaves find on the roads are described twice in Matthew as “whomsoever you find” (in the direct address of the king, v 9) and as “all those they found” (in the 3d person narrative, v 10). The same group is described as “those whom you shall find” in the speech of the host (“the master”) in CGT 64. Interestingly, there is no such equivalent clause in either of Luke’s two sendings of the slave to bring in the marginalized of society to the banquet.126 In sum, when one thinks of how antithetical the Matthean allegory of salvation history is to Thomas’ theological tendencies, we should perhaps be surprised that there are four points of comparison rather than none. However, not unlike the case of the parable of the Evil Tenants, the agreements of CGT 64 with the Synoptics lie mostly on the side of Luke. This is not terribly surprising, since Luke’s version has none of Matthew’s heavyhanded detailed allegory of salvation history, though Luke’s formulation is not without some traces of his own view of the set order of God’s plan. Complicating the comparison between Thomas and Luke is that the agreements between Luke 14:16–24 and CGT 64 vary in weight. However, taken as a whole, the large number of agreements is weighty enough.127 (i) Luke’s parable begins in 14:16 with his signature anthro¯pos tis (“a [certain] man”). As we saw in our treatment of the parable of the Rich Fool in Chapter 38 and the parable of the Good Samaritan in Chapter 39, the use of some form of anthro¯pos tis at the beginning of a parable is a regular sign of Lucan redaction. Thomas’ noun + indefinite article, ouro¯me (“a man”), corresponds perfectly to Luke’s wording. (ii) The opening sentence in both Luke and Thomas speaks of the man’s making (Luke) or preparing (Thomas) a “supper” (deipnon in Luke’s Greek, which Thomas employs as well instead of a Coptic noun). The noun deipnon may reflect Lucan redaction, since the word occurs only at the beginning (vv 16 + 17) and end (v 24) of the parable, thus creating an inclusio. Indeed, deipnon is the very last word of the entire parable in Luke. It also forms an inclusio with the saying of Jesus that opens the whole larger sequence leading up to the parable (14:12): “He [Jesus] said to the person who had invited him [to dine], ‘When you give a midday meal [ariston, literally “breakfast”] or a supper [deipnon], do not invite your friends. . . .’” It is the deipnon in this saying that the parable then picks up as its sole designation of the banquet within the parable. Interestingly, these are the only occurrences of deipnon in Luke–Acts apart from a mention in a saying

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that Luke takes over from Mark (Luke 20:46 || Mark 12:38–40). Thus, the carefully positioned deipnon in Luke 14:12,16,17, and 24 may well be a redactionally created pattern. In contrast, Matthew never uses deipnon in his Gospel except for his reproduction of the same Marcan saying (Matt 23:6 || Mark 12:39). Throughout his version of the Great Supper, Matthew uses gamos (“wedding feast,” “wedding banquet,” 22:2,3,4,8,9,10, as well as in vv 11–12 of the added parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment), though he also uses ariston (“breakfast,” “midday meal”) in v 4. This concentrated use of gamos within a single parable may come from Matthew’s redaction, since the noun occurs nowhere else in Matthew’s Gospel except in the M  parable of the Ten Virgins (25:10), which shows heavy signs of Matthean redaction and might even be a redactional creation. In sum, then, Thomas’ use of deipnon clearly agrees with Luke, not Matthew. (iii) Matthew has a group of slaves sent twice to those originally invited. The first time, we are told laconically that the invitees did not wish to come. On the second mission, the slaves deliver a detailed message from the king in direct address. While some simply ignore the invitation and leave to take care of agricultural or commercial concerns, the rest seize the slaves and proceed to abuse and kill them (an echo of the parable of the Evil Tenants). In contrast, both in Luke and in Thomas, the master sends out a single slave only once to the invitees, none of whom abuses or harms the slave. (iv) Luke’s description of the slave of the master in 14:17 is ton doulon autou (“his slave”), which is exactly the same as Thomas’ description (pefhmhal). (v) The invitees proceed to make a series of excuses, one excuse for each guest. (vi) The recalcitrant guests are enumerated. In Luke, we have “the first said . . . and another said . . . and another said,” for a total of three guests. In Thomas, the guests are enumerated in a similar way, though the phrases “the first . . . and another . . . and another . . . and another” are not the subjects of the verb “said” but rather the object of the preposition in the phrase “he [the slave] went to the first . . . to another . . . to another . . . to another.” A further difference is that Thomas has four guests making distinct excuses, while Luke has only three. The excuses are similar but not the same. In Luke, they involve buying a field or a farm (agros), buying five yoke of oxen, and marrying a wife. In Thomas, the four excuses involve settling accounts with merchants, buying a house, giving a banquet (deipnon) for a friend getting married, and buying a village, villa, or farm (the Greek loan word is ko¯me¯) and receiving the rent. What remains the same is that each enumerated guest (“the first . . . another . . . another”) gives a different excuse to



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the same servant.128 The extra excuse in Thomas could be explained by his clearly redactional polemic against preoccupation with business and money, voiced openly in Thomas’ addition to the end of the parable: “Buyers and merchants shall not enter the places of my Father.” (vii) In both Luke and Thomas, each guest speaks his excuse to the slave in direct address and in the 1st person singular. (viii) Both Luke and Thomas employ the Greek verb paraiteomai in the special meaning explored in section A. There is no need to repeat the results of our survey of the word’s usage here. Rather, the point to be emphasized is that Thomas shares Luke’s use of the verb in a relatively rare sense, though with a notable difference. Luke’s use of the verb paraiteomai in the special sense of “I ask that you hold me excused [from the social obligation I previously accepted]” is perfectly intelligible in Hellenistic Greek. In contrast, the Coptic text of Thomas, which employs paraiteomai as a Greek loan word in the list of individual excuses, contains an awkward construction. CGT 64 uses the verb twice in the first present tense (tierparaitei) with the Greek noun deipnon (“supper”) as the direct object (as indicated in the Coptic by the object marker placed before the noun). The meaning of this construction has to be something like “I ask to be excused from the supper” or “I make my excuses for not coming to the supper.” In the case of the fourth and final guest excusing himself, the guest simply uses the verb tierparaitei, apparently with the direct object understood. It is likely that the Coptic usage here is a somewhat garbled attempt to represent a Greek text that uses paraiteomai in the special sense of “to ask to be excused from an invitation or social obligation previously accepted.”129 In the whole of the NT, only Luke uses paraiteomai in this specific sense, and only in this parable (three times). As we have already seen in section A, the other nine occurrences of the verb in the NT always reflect the ordinary meanings of “request,” “beg,” “avoid,” or “reject.” Clearly, then, CGT 64 knows either Luke’s version of the parable or a version very close to Luke’s. If, moreover, Luke is responsible for the precise wording of the excuses, as I have argued previously, then necessarily Thomas knew and used Luke’s text. (ix) In the third excuse offered in both Luke 14:20 and in the corresponding sentence in CGT 64, the guest says, “I cannot come” (in Luke: ou dynamai elthein; in Thomas, tinaši an).130 (x) After all the excuses are made, the single slave returns to his master to report the refusals. Luke has “and coming the slave reported to his master,” while Thomas reads “the slave came to his master and said. . . .” Thomas’ use of a main verb instead of Luke’s participle “coming” (paragenomenos) is necessitated by the fact that most Coptic verbs have no participial forms.131

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(xi) The master’s reaction is introduced by a clause that is almost exactly the same in both works. Luke has “the master of the house [oikodespote¯s] said to his slave,” while Thomas reads “the master [pjoeis] said to his slave.” (xii) The order that the master gives the slave (for the second time in Luke, for the only time in Thomas) specifies: “Go out to the roads” (Luke 14:23: exelthe eis tas hodous; Thomas: bo¯k epsa nbol anhiooye). In both works the purpose of the mission is to “bring” people in (Luke 14:21: eisagage; Thomas: enioy). In view of all these parallels, some of them word for word, one must allow that Thomas knew either Luke’s version of the parable or something very similar, which Thomas has redacted for his own purposes and with his own additions. But, as we have also seen, at a few points CGT 64 veers instead in the direction of Matthew’s version.132 Mutatis mutandis, this is the same phenomenon that we saw when we examined Thomas’ version of the Evil Tenants. Hence, taking into account the many similarities to Luke and a few similarities to Matthew, I think that the most likely understanding of CGT 64 is that it reflects Thomas’ usual meshing of Synoptic sources, with a preference for Luke’s simpler version and with a few additions to underline Thomas’ redactional concerns (notably, his dislike of merchants and traders conducting business). Moreover, if, as I have argued in section A, the wording of the three excuses in Luke (with the relatively rare use of paraiteomai in the sense of excusing oneself from an invitation formerly accepted) is Lucan redaction, the dependence of CGT 64 on the Synoptics becomes all but certain. To conclude: CGT 64 supplies no independent attestation of multiple sources for the parable of the Great Supper.133 However, its attestation is not necessary in our quest for the historical parables of the historical Jesus. The independent M and L versions of the parable supply the sufficient multiple attestation of independent sources to make it more likely than not that the parable of the Great Supper comes from the historical Jesus.134

IV. THE TALENTS/POUNDS (MATT 25:14–30 || LUKE 19:11–27)135

A. The Question of Sources and Redaction in the Versions of Matthew and Luke Having worked through the many problems connected with the parable of the Great Supper, we can hardly avoid a sense of déjà vu as we come to our final specimen, the parable of the Talents/Pounds. As was the case



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with the Great Supper, we have two parables, one in Matthew and one in Luke, that apparently have the same basic story, but are told with different vocabulary and different details. Also reminiscent of the two versions of the Great Supper is the complication that one version of the story has a subplot that the other lacks. However, while it was Matthew who contained the curious subplot in the case of the Great Supper (namely, the murder of the king’s messengers and the burning of the murderers’ city), it is Luke who has the subplot in the parable of the Talents/Pounds (namely, the nobleman who goes abroad to acquire the status of king). Another difference that distinguishes the Talents/Pounds from the Great Supper is that, unlike the latter, the former has no parallel in CGT. By this point in Volume Five, the attentive reader can probably surmise that I consider this no great loss since, from all we have seen so far, a Thomasine version would most likely evince dependence on Matthew and/or Luke. Naturally, though, for those who champion the independence of most, if not all, of the Synoptic-like material in Thomas, the absence of a parallel in CGT means the loss of a valuable tool for reconstructing a hypothetical primitive version of the parable. Another, though minor, problem, likewise reminiscent of the parable of the Great Supper, is that the parable we will now examine is known by a variety of names. The Matthean version of the parable under review is almost universally called the parable of the Talents. The stability of the title stems in part from the fact that the word for the extremely large unit of money in the parable (the Greek noun talanton, “talent”) has passed over into common English usage as a word for an innate human skill or aptitude—though that is not the meaning of talanton in ancient Greek or in the parable.136 Around the time of Jesus, as a unit of money, a single talent would have been worth roughly six thousand denarii and thus about twenty years’ worth of wages for an ordinary day laborer.137 The designation of the Lucan form of the parable has proved more problematic and hence variable. For the smaller monetary unit in Luke’s version, the Greek text uses the noun mna, which designates a coin worth roughly three months’ wages for a day laborer, in other words, about one hundred denarii—much less than a talent. And unlike talanton, the Greek word mna never became a common English word. The traditional translation in older English Bibles (e.g., the King James Version, the RSV) was “pound.” Not only is that less than enlightening for present-day Americans; it also hardly corresponds to the value of the English pound today. Despite fluctuations, the present-day English pound never comes near the value of three months’ wages for a day laborer. As Tolstoy or Lenin might ask, what then is to be done? Up until now, in the previous sections of Volume Five, I have used the traditional title, the

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parable of the Talents/Pounds, so as not to confuse the reader. But now that we are plunging into a detailed analysis of the two versions of the parable, we should be more exact. When referring to Matthew’s version, the solution is simple: I will continue using the well-known “parable of the Talents.” When speaking of Luke’s version, I will use instead the label, “the parable of the Minas”—the word “mina” being the more pronounceable, if not the more wildly popular, English transliteration (hardly a translation) of the Greek mna.138 When speaking in a general or global way about both versions of the parable or about the underlying story common to both, I will use a phrase like “the parable of the slaves entrusted with money” or “the parable of the money entrusted to the slaves.”139 With nomenclature settled, let us move on to the pivotal question, that of sources. As with the parable of the Great Supper, any decision about the “historicity” or “authenticity” of the parable of the money entrusted to the slaves—that is, whether it goes back to the historical Jesus—depends largely on the prior decision about sources. If the two versions of the parable come from two different sources, e.g., M and L, then we have a prima facie argument for historicity, based on the criterion of the multiple attestation of independent sources. If instead we judge the two versions to result from Matthew and Luke independently reworking a parable contained in Q, then the criterion of multiple attestation does not apply. In light of all that we have learned from our study of other parables, it is difficult to see how any other criterion could be invoked to establish historicity. We can now appreciate how similar our present problem is to the one we faced when treating the Great Supper. The overall problem can be broken down into a number of distinct questions, taken in order: Are we dealing with two versions of a single parable or two different parables that just happen to have similar stories? If we are indeed dealing with a single parable, does it come from Q or from two independent sources, M and L? If we decide for M and L, and if we decide that the parable lying behind these sources is authentic, what might have been its message or purpose in the mouth of the historical Jesus? In an attempt to answer these questions, we will use a step-by-step approach similar to the one we employed when analyzing the Great Supper: (1) We shall investigate whether we can isolate a common skeletal outline latent in the two versions of the parable of the slaves entrusted with money, that is, a common narrative underlying the two “performances” of the parable by Matthew and Luke. This will help us decide whether we are dealing with two versions of the same parable or with two different parables.



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(2) If we decide that we are dealing with two versions of one basic parable, we will try to determine whether the two performances contain enough common words, phrases, syntax, and order in the story to justify attributing the parable to the Q source. (3) We will examine the Matthean version in detail in an attempt to detect phrases and ideas that may be due to Matthew’s redactional hand. (4) We will likewise examine Luke’s version in order to detect Luke’s redactional additions or modifications. (5) We will correlate the results of all our probes to see whether we can come up with a hypothetical form of the parable that might well go back to the historical Jesus. 1. We begin, then, with our first question. Can we isolate the bareminimum story that Matthew and Luke have in common (along with a quick initial glance at some of their significant differences)? (i) The introduction: the dominant character is introduced along with the essential subordinate characters. A man (anthro¯pos, qualified by Luke as eugene¯s, “noble”) is about to go on a journey (Luke adds, “to a distant country”); hence he summons (kaleo¯) his slaves (douloi, three in Matthew, ten in Luke). (ii) The plot is set in motion: the man commissions his slaves by giving each a sum of money (five talents, two talents, and one talent respectively to the three slaves in Matthew; one mina each to the ten slaves in Luke). The intent of the man (implicit in Matthew, explicit in Luke) is clear: the slaves are to engage in some sort of business or trade to increase the capital entrusted to them while the man is away.140 Matthew proceeds to narrate what the three slaves did while the man was away; this part of the narrative is lacking in Luke but presupposed by the dénouement of his version. (iii) The master returns and holds a reckoning with his slaves. Upon his return the man—now referred to in both versions as the “master” (kyrios) of the slaves—summons the slaves to settle accounts with them (so Matthew) or to find out what profit they had made by trade (so Luke). Thus, both evangelists present us with a scene of reckoning. (iv) The first two (successful) slaves report. (Here, contrary to the expectations he has created, Luke suddenly agrees with Matthew in having only three—not ten—slaves report their activity and its results.) (a) In Matthew, the profits are larger in absolute amounts: the first slave has used his five talents to gain five more; the second has used his two to gain two more. In Luke, the gains are huge proportionately. The first slave has used his one mina to gain ten minas (a 1,000 percent profit), while the second has used his one mina to gain five (a 500 percent profit).

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(b) Both slaves are commended by their master (“well done, good slave”) and are promised sizable rewards. In Matthew, we hear the master’s promise of greater responsibilities (presumably over larger sums of money) and the vague invitation, “Enter into the joy of your master.” In Luke, the reward is specific and political: governance of ten and five cities respectively, the number of cities mirroring the number of minas earned. (v) The third slave reports. Both Matthew and Luke give more space to the interaction between the master and the third slave than to the interaction with either of the first two slaves. In addition, the scene with the third slave is more psychologically charged and dramatic. The rule of end stress holds: here, clearly and emphatically, we have the climax of the story of the slaves entrusted with money. Interestingly, and perhaps not by accident, Matthew and Luke agree much more in their vocabulary and order in this scene than in the previous parts of the parable. What creates the dramatic conflict in this scene is the fact (revealed beforehand by Matthew, but not by Luke) that the third slave has failed to fulfill the commission (implicit in Matthew, explicit in Luke) given him by his master to make money by engaging in business. The long scene develops step by step:141 (a) The slave explains his lack of activity in psychological terms: both his own psyche (he was afraid) and that of his master (he is a severe, demanding, grasping person). (b) The slave expatiates on the personality trait of the master with an agricultural metaphor: “you harvest what you did not sow.” (c) The slave’s fear led him to protect the money by hiding it in a safe place (in Matthew: buried in the ground; in Luke: wrapped up in a cloth). (d) The master’s angry reaction consists of —a condemnatory address to the slave: “wicked slave,” —a mocking repetition of the slave’s description of the master as demanding, —a complaint that the slave could have at least invested the money with a banker so that the master could have gotten it back with interest. (e) The master punishes the third slave by ordering that the slave’s money be given to the first slave, the one with the most money. (f) The master (or Jesus?) grounds this surprising punishment with a maxim expressing a paradox: “To everyone who has, [more] will be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” (This verse stands out as being the only one that is almost completely the same in vocabulary and order in both Matthew and Luke). [(g) The parable may have ended with a still more severe punishment for the third slave; but the editing of Matthew and Luke has so transformed their respective conclusions that one cannot be sure.]



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This rapid overview of the elements common to Matthew’s parable of the Talents and Luke’s parable of the Minas suggests two conclusions: (1) Our “X-ray” of the Matthean and Lucan texts brings to light a coherent narrative—and not just some similar motifs—that underlies both parables. We are thus justified in speaking of one parable that has come down to us in two versions or performances, one Matthean and one Lucan. The claim that we are dealing with two different parables with some similarities fails to deal adequately with the common “spine” of a single narrative that runs up and down the length of both parables, as well as the critical mass of nearly identical words and clauses found toward the end of the parable.142 (2) The same judgment cannot be made about Luke’s additional story or subplot, in which the master becomes a nobleman who journeys to a distant country to obtain the status of king, is opposed by subjects who do not want him to become king, returns triumphant with the kingship, and has his rebellious subjects slaughtered in his presence. This story, sometimes called the parable of the Throne Claimant, is found only in a few verses of the Lucan version, with no trace in Matthew. Hence, given our goal of questing for the historical Jesus, the Throne Claimant necessarily falls out of our consideration, since it has no chance of meeting the criterion of multiple attestation. In addition, though, it may well be that there never was a separate parable of the Throne Claimant. The sole segments that we have of the Throne Claimant are v 12 (which also serves as the beginning of the parable of the Minas), v 14 (which speaks of the rebellious subjects whose opposition to the king launches a distinct story or subplot), v 15a (the return of the king, which is also part of the main story about the slaves), and finally—after the whole complicated story of the slaves with their minas has been told to its end—v 27, where, almost out of the blue, the nearly forgotten story of the rebellious subjects is reintroduced by the king’s order to slaughter them in his presence. Even if we combine vv 12 and 15a (which also belong to the story of the slaves) with v 14 and v 27, we hardly have a coherent parable with a discernible message. At the very least, something must be supplied to connect v 15a and v 27, with the beginning of v 27 also being rewritten.143 What such a parable, however reconstructed, might have meant in the mouth of the historical Jesus is still more difficult to say.144 How did this Throne Claimant material come to be inserted into what was already a complete parable about slaves entrusted by their master with money? We may be able to find a clue to the rationale for the insertion of this extraneous material in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. In both his Jewish War (J.W. 2.1.1–2.7.3 § 1–113) and his Antiquities (Ant. 17.8.1–17.13.5 §188–355), Josephus recounts the rocky rise and precipitous fall of a son of King Herod the Great named Archelaus.145 Before his death

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in 4 b.c., and after a number of changes to his will (due in part to his unfortunate tendency to kill off members of his family), Herod the Great had designated Archelaus as his main heir and therefore as “king.”146 After Herod the Great’s death, and after Archelaus had slaughtered some three thousand opponents while they offered sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple during Passover, Archelaus, who was all too like his father in cruelty but not in competence, journeyed to Rome to have Caesar Augustus confirm Herod’s will and formally confer on him the title of king. From the start, though, he was opposed by other members of his family; Antipas, his brother, sought the throne instead. To make things worse, some time later a delegation of Jews and Samaritans from Palestine arrived in Rome to petition Augustus not to make Archelaus king, given the latter’s record of cruelty at the very start of his reign. Augustus struck a compromise by making Archelaus “ethnarch” (“ruler of the [Jewish] people”) for the time being, with power over Judea, Idumea, and Samaria, and with a promise of future kingship if he proved a competent ruler. (The disappointed Antipas received Galilee and Perea instead with the title of tetrarch.) However, Archelaus’ ongoing brutality continued to cause unrest, and so Augustus finally deposed him in a.d. 6, thus ushering in the period of direct Roman rule in Judea under a prefect. Most, though not all, commentators on the parable of the Minas see the turbulent career of Archelaus as the historical source for the Throne Claimant motif in Luke’s version of the parable. Despite the near consensus on this point, one must admit that the reference is not certain. After all, the nobleman in the parable does in fact acquire the kingly status he seeks; and Archelaus, who had engaged in a bloody slaughter before he set out for Rome, did not slaughter a large number of his enemies immediately upon returning from Rome. Moreover, under Rome’s imperial sway, all sorts of rulers journeyed to Rome to have their kingship conferred or confirmed. Herod the Great, Archelaus’ father, was one of them. He traveled to Rome to be appointed king of the Jews in 40 b.c.; upon finally capturing Jerusalem and becoming king in fact in 37 b.c., he presided over a mass slaughter of his enemies (J.W. 1.11.3–4 §281–285; 1.18.1–2 §347–353). Like father, like son. Still, the elements of a journey to a distant country in order to receive the title of king, the hatred of the ruler by his subjects, an embassy of his subjects sent after him to block his attainment of kingship, and the theme of the ruler’s slaughter of a large group of his opponents all converge to make Archelaus the most likely candidate—though not the absolutely certain one—for the historical background to the Throne Claimant motif. Even if we grant that the Throne Claimant motif in the parable derives from the career of Archelaus, it remains baffling how or why this tidbit of Roman power-politics in Palestine would supply a motif that the historical



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Jesus would use as a subplot in a parable addressed to his Galilean followers. Given that Jesus’ experience of political rule—just like that of his mostly Galilean audience—would have been that of the relatively peaceful reign of Archelaus’ brother, Herod Antipas, we are hard pressed to understand why the historical Jesus would have constructed a puzzling parable that rested on events that neither he nor many in his audience could have remembered from personal experience or even have known about. Hence, along with many exegetes, I think that the narrative of the Throne Claimant never existed as a separate parable and does not go back to the historical Jesus.147 Rather, it was added as a subplot to the parable of the servants either by a bearer of the pre-Lucan tradition or (more likely in my view) by Luke himself. Throughout his two-volume work, Luke displays a keen interest in the interaction between both Judaism and nascent Christianity on the one hand and the Roman empire and its rulers on the other (see, e.g., Luke 2:1; 3:1–2; 13:1,31; 23:6–12; Acts 10:1–11:18; 13:4–12; 16:19–40; 18:12–17; 22:22–30; 23:12–28:30). In addition, Luke’s insertion into this parable of the theme of a man achieving kingship serves his larger literary and theological project, since he places this parable immediately before Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. Indeed, Luke alone among the Synoptics has Jesus directly hailed as king at his entry into the ancient Davidic capital (Luke 19:38). Luke continues the theme of Jesus’ kingship and kingdom throughout his Passion Narrative (see, e.g., Luke 22:28–30; 23:2–3,42–43; cf. Acts 1:6).148 All signs, therefore, point to a Lucan redactional insertion into the traditional parable of the Minas that he had received. Within the overall theology and narrative of Luke–Acts, the parable of the Minas, thanks to its subplot, marks out various stages of salvation history: Jesus’ dealing with his disciples during the public ministry, his going away into a far country via his death-resurrection-ascension, his reception of kingly status at the right hand of the Father, the successful or not-so-successful mission of his disciples during his absence, his return at the end of this present world, and his holding a final judgment that metes out reward and punishment. We may thus drop the Throne Claimant motif from further consideration, since it has nothing to do with any possible tradition that might reach back to the historical Jesus. In sum, then: behind Matthew’s parable of the Talents and Luke’s parable of the Minas we find not two different parables but two versions of the same parable containing the same basic story. Since we have reached this conclusion, the next question follows logically. 2. Can we attribute the parable of the servants entrusted with money, found in both Matthew and Luke, to Q? If one works with a vague definition

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of Q as any and all material that happens to appear in both Matthew and Luke, then the question answers itself. However, our analysis of the parable of the Great Supper reminded us that it is possible for a particular saying or deed of Jesus to be transmitted in variant forms via the special traditions of Matthew and Luke respectively, apart from Q. Hence something further is required to justify our assigning a unit of tradition to the hypothetical written document we call Q. In my opinion, that further requirement is a certain critical mass of the same words, phrases, and grammatical constructions in roughly the same order. Such clear examples of Q are found, for instance, in the call of the Baptist to repentance (Matt 3:7–10 || Luke 3:7–9) and the narrative of the triple temptation of Jesus (Matt 4:1–11 || Luke 4:1–13). Thus, to answer the question of whether the parable of the servants entrusted with the money qualifies as Q material, we need to take an inventory of the same or similar words and phrases found in the Matthean and Lucan versions. (i) Words or phrases that are exactly the same in dictionary form and grammatical form, allowing for slight variations in word order, include (the first numeral in parentheses indicates the relevant verse in Matt 25:14– 30, the second numeral the relevant verse in Luke 19:12–27): anthro¯pos (14,12); doulous (14,13); edo¯ken (15,13); lego¯n kyrie (20,16); auto˛ˉ (21,17); doule agathe (21,17); pistos (21,17); kai . . . kyrie (22,18); kai ho (24,20); kyrie (24,20); se hoti (24,21); ei anthro¯pos (24,21); ouk espeiras kai (24,21); auto˛ˉ (26,22); pone¯re doule (26,22); e˛ˉ deis hoti (26,22); ouk espeira (26,22); mou + argyrion or argyria (27,23); kai eltho¯n ego¯ or kago¯ eltho¯n (27,23); an . . . syn toko˛ˉ or syn toko˛ˉ an (27,23); arate . . . ap’ autou (28,24); kai dote to˛ˉ  echonti ta(s) deka (28,24); and most of the proverb common to Luke 19:26 and Matt 25:29 (twelve words being the same). The final verse of each version (Matt 25:30; Luke 19:27) has no significant words in agreement with the other version and certainly does not come from Q.149 (ii) Words and phrases that share the same dictionary form but not the same grammatical form and that are not necessarily in the same order include: ekalesen/kalesas (14,13); to¯n doulo¯n/tous doulous (19,15); proseltho¯n/e¯lthen (22,18, of the second slave coming to his master); kai . . . ho (22,18, of the second slave); proseltho¯n/e¯lthen (24,20, of the third slave); therizo¯n/therizeis (24,21); ou/ouk (26,21). (iii) We need to remember that the sum total of these words and phrases that are the same or similar in Matthew and Luke needs to be measured against the total wordage of the Matthean and Lucan pericopes. In Matthew, the total wordage is 302; in Luke, the total wordage is 224.150 What then is the upshot of these word counts and comparisons? If we omit iso-



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lated definite articles and the conjunctions “and” and “but,” the total number of words that are exactly the same in dictionary form and grammatical form are 52 (44, if we omit the proverb cited in both Matt 25:29 and Luke 19:26). This is not especially impressive when set against a total wordage of 302 and 224 in Matthew and Luke respectively. Words that have the same dictionary form but not the same grammatical form and that do not appear already on our first list contribute just six more words to the total. More to the point, what lessens the probative nature of these agreements is that many of these words are extremely common terms that occur frequently throughout the four Gospels: “man,” “slave,” “give,” “have,” “master [lord, kyrios],” “say,” “he/him,” “good,” “bad,” “you,” “that,” “[you] are,” “I/me/ my,” “know,” “come,” “with,” “take,” “from,” “come,” “not.” When we subtract these frequently occurring words, the shared words that stand out as specific to the two versions of our parable are few and far between: for example, “good [and faithful] slave,” “wicked slave,” “I did not sow,” “money,” “with interest.” Then, too, the careful reader will notice that the exact same word forms cluster around the confrontation between the master and the third slave. Indeed, as already noted, the only verse that provides almost exactly the same wording in the same order is the proverb cited by the master in Matt 25:29 || Luke 19:26. But the consensus of commentators is that this sentence is not original to the earliest form of the parable of the slaves entrusted with the money; rather, it is a stray saying that has gravitated to the end of the story to provide a clear, though ill-fitting, moral. The same proverb occurs in the parable discourse at Mark 4:25 and is repeated with slight variations in Matt 13:12 and Luke 8:18b—as well as in various expressions of popular ancient wisdom outside the Bible.151 Moreover, this stray proverb does not exactly fit our story of the slaves entrusted with the money. No one reading the parable without the concluding proverb would think of describing the third slave as someone “who does not have [anything].” The whole point of his pusillanimous safekeeping of the money given him by the master is to hold on to what he has so that he can give it back to the master at the final accounting—something he does in both Matt 25:25b (“see, you have what is yours”) and Luke 19:20b (“behold, your mina”). From the beginning of the story, the presumption of the third slave in both versions of the parable is that he will not possess the money as his own, but will return it to his master—not exactly what the proverb has in mind. Perhaps more to the point, the main thrust of the parable is concerned with the need to take great risk for great gain, with the refusal to take any risk resulting in complete loss— not precisely the message inculcated by the proverb. In brief, then, the one

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verse that might argue strongly for a common written source (because of the large amount of common words in the same grammatical form and order) is instead probably secondary to the original parable, added very early on in the oral transmission of the pericope. I admit, though, that this last point is not certain; one cannot exclude the possibility that the historical Jesus used a well-known proverb to bring the parable to its conclusion, even though the proverb is not a perfect fit. In any event, in my opinion, we are faced with a situation quite different from the Baptist’s call to repentance and the triple temptation of Jesus. The two versions of this parable about slaves entrusted with money lack the critical mass of the same words in the same or similar grammatical form and order to justify an identification of the unit as Q material.152 By default, then, the two versions must be classified as special Matthean and special Lucan traditions.153 This leads us to our next question. 3. Can we detect indications of Matthew’s redactional additions or modifications to the M tradition he received? The first obvious redactional modification of the parable by Matthew is its location within his Gospel, namely, toward the end of his sprawling eschatological discourse (chaps. 24–25).154 Matthew has more than doubled the size of Mark’s eschatological discourse (Mark 13), providing us with ninety-seven verses instead of Mark’s thirtyseven. But Matthew’s redactional changes to Mark’s discourse are not evenly distributed. The first half of Matthew’s discourse is basically a reworking of Mark 13, with various additions and modifications. The second half is made up mostly of Q and special Matthean material and carries a strong parenetic thrust. With his love of triads,155 Matthew first presents us with three short similitudes exhorting disciples to vigilance (24:37–44): the generation of Noah, two men and two women working, and the householder and the thief. This is followed by a second triad of three parables of increasing length: the prudent or profligate slave (24:45–51); the prudent and foolish virgins (25:1–13); and finally, our parable, the slaves entrusted with money (25:14–30). With this parable, all parables end. The Matthean Jesus proceeds to conclude the eschatological discourse (the second largest discourse in Matthew after the Sermon on the Mount) as well as the whole of the public ministry with a direct description of the last judgment (a prophecy that is not a parable, despite some metaphors used in the description of the judgment, such as the sheep and the goats). Clearly, then, Matthew has positioned the parable of the Talents ever so carefully; it is the final and climactic parable in the whole series of his eschatological similitudes and parables. Indeed, it is the last full-dress parable Jesus will speak in the Gospel. Obviously, its message is of paramount concern



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to Matthew, and it is therefore hardly surprising that we hear his voice more than once coming through the traditional story. But hearing a voice and seeing precise redactional changes in wording are two different things. Since there was apparently no common written source (e.g., Q), detecting the exact verbal reformulations of Matthew is not easy. Fortunately, Matthew has an absolute mania for carefully ordered structures within a literary unit; this gives us something of an entrée into his work.156 As with the ordering of the three small similitudes followed by the three longer parables, as with the first half of the Sermon on the Mount (nine beatitudes, three similitudes, six antitheses, three pious practices), and as with the collection of miracle stories in chaps. 8–9 (three groups of three miracle stories), Matthew shows in the internal structure of the Talents his love of threes and multiples of threes. The Matthean story of the Talents can be neatly divided into three main sections: (1) the man entrusts his possessions to three slaves (vv 14–15); (2) the three slaves act upon their master’s commission: the first two engage in trade with their talents, the third buries his single talent in the ground (vv 16–18); (3) the master returns and holds an accounting with each of the three slaves, rewarding or punishing accordingly (vv 19–30). In each of the three sections, each of the three slaves is distinguished by the amount of talents he receives (section one), the amount of talents gained (or not gained) in trade (section two), and the corresponding reward or punishment each slave receives for his achievement or failure (section three). The sections increase in length as the amount of attention given to each slave increases. Thus, precise parallels are balanced with step-by-step expansions. The structure of the entire parable may thus be outlined as follows: (1) Section One (vv 14–15): the man, summoning his slaves, entrusted his possessions to them: (i) to the first, five talents, (ii) to the second, two talents, (iii) to the third, one talent, with the specification: “to each according to his ability”; then the man departed. (2) Section Two (vv 16–18): the activity of the three slaves with the results: (i) the first worked with the five talents and gained five more, (ii) the second similarly gained two more, (iii) the third hid his talent in the ground. (3) Section Three (vv 19–30): “after a long time,” v 19: the master returned and settled accounts with the slaves: (i-a) v 20: the first slave, approaching (proseltho¯n), (a) having received five talents,

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(b) brought five more, (c) repeating in direct address the events narrated in v 16 of Section Two. (i-b) v 21: his master replied (a) by praising the slave (“well done, good and faithful slave”), (b) by stating the rationale for a great reward (“you were faithful over a few things; I will place you over many”); and (c) by announcing the reward: “enter into the joy of your master.” (ii-a) v 22: the second slave, approaching (proseltho¯n), (a) having received two talents, (b) brought two more, (c) repeating in direct address the events narrated in v 17 of Section Two. (ii-b) v 23: his master replied [precisely as he did to the first slave] (a) by praising the slave (“well done, good and faithful slave”), (b) by stating the rationale for a great reward (“you were faithful over a few things; I will place you over many”), and (c) by announcing the reward: “enter into the joy of your master.” (iii-a) vv 24–25: the third slave, approaching (proseltho¯n), having received one talent, now breaks the pattern by bringing back only what he received, along with a very different report in direct address: (a) 24b: rationale for action: “I know you are a hard man, harvesting where you did not sow and gathering where you did not winnow”; (b) v 25a: report of past action: “in fear I buried the talent”; (c) v 25b: return of money with no gain: “you have what is yours.” (iii-b) vv 26–30: his master replied with [here the multiple endings to Matthew’s version of the parable pile up, creating two groups of threes] (a) v 26a: denunciation of slave as “wicked and lazy”;157 (b) v 26b: mocking repetition of slave’s characterization of his master (from v 24);



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(c) v 27: explanation of the epithet “lazy”: slave could at least have gotten interest from a bank; (d) v 28: first punishment: take away his talent and give it to first slave; (e) v 29: rationale of this punishment by way of a proverb (“to everyone who has [more] will be given. . . .”); (f) v 30: second punishment: cast useless slave into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

A number of points become clear from this outline. First, the sheer amount of space (vv 19–30) given over to Section Three of the parable, that is, the reckoning of the master with his slaves, shows that this is where the emphasis and climax of the story lie.158 Second, in Section Three, the narrative of the activity of the first two slaves and the reward given them is formulaic, recapitulating the story already told and repeating in the case of the second slave what the master has already told the first. Third, and in contrast, the exchange between the master and the third slave is anything but formulaic. It is a lively give-and-take, marked by psychological insight and emotion. The third slave speaks bluntly (and perhaps both naively and foolishly) of his perception of his master as hard, grasping, demanding (and possibly dishonest—but by whose standards?).159 The slave highlights his fear as the motivating force for holding on to the one talent he had rather than risking it to gain more. His utter cluelessness—right after describing the demanding, driving nature of his master—is summed up by the curt conclusion of his explanation: “Here, you have [what is] yours.” His master replies first with a withering denunciation (“wicked and lazy slave”) that is meant to be the exact opposite of his double praise of the first two slaves (“good and faithful slave”).160 He mockingly repeats the unflattering personality sketch foisted on him by his slave, without saying whether it is true or false.161 Rather, he uses the slave’s estimation of him to ground his complaint and accusation: armed with such knowledge, the fearful slave should have at least engaged in the relatively safe venture of investing the talent with bankers to gain some interest, however meager. Having pronounced judgment on the slave, the master now proceeds to penalties. The first, relatively mild punishment that the master inflicts (v 28), namely, the transfer of the one talent from the third slave to the first (perhaps intended primarily as an act of shaming), is separated from the second, much harsher and definitive punishment (v 30) by the proverb (v 29) that fits neither the punishment nor the whole parable exactly.

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This overview confirms the claim already made: (i) Section Three of the parable is the focal point of interest; (ii) the exchange between the master and the third slave obviously contains the grand climax and dominant message of the whole parable. It fits perfectly with Matthew’s unrelenting drumbeat in chapter 25 (as well as throughout his Gospel, especially the five great discourses): the stern reckoning of the last judgment awaits not just unbelievers but also, and above all, believers who claim to be loyal servants of their Master (kyrios)—especially church leaders (Matt 7:15–27; 10:32– 39; 13:36–50; 18:6–9,23–35; 24:45–51; 25:1–13,31–46). They in particular must make sure that they do as well as say, that they are good trees that bear good fruit, that, in short, they do the will of their heavenly Father (23:3; 7:16–20,21). This is clearly the thrust and emphatic message of the parable of the Talents. To strain to find some different kind of message in it smacks of the artificially inventive approach of academics desperate to find something new to say about an endlessly studied text. Matthew’s redactional hand is thus abundantly clear in the overall structuring, shaping, and aiming of the parable as a vehicle conveying his particular theological vision. But can we discern more specific traces of Matthew’s redactional activity in the text? Granted the evidence of such heavy contouring of the narrative according to typically Matthean structures and themes, it is hardly arbitrary to consider words and phrases characteristic of Matthew—especially when they lack a Lucan parallel—as most likely coming from Matthew himself. Let us quickly run through an inventory of words and phrases that may come from the redactor. Section One (vv 14–15): In v 14, the conjunction ho¯sper (“just as”) occurs in Matthew 10x, Mark 0, Luke 2x, and John 2x. Moreover, ho¯sper occurs both before (24:27,37) and after (25:32) this parable, thus creating a verbal link in the second half of the eschatological discourse. This reinforces the claim that with ho¯sper Matthew intends to forge a connection not simply with the immediately preceding verse (v 13: “keep watch, then, for you do not know on what day your master is coming”)—an exhortation that does not fit the main thrust of the story of the Talents—but rather with the whole monitory parenesis of the eschatological discourse, especially its second half. The verb paradido¯mi (“to hand over”) is used more by Matthew’s Gospel than by any other book of the NT. More to the point, in this parable it serves, as so often in Matthean composition, as a key word that, by repetition, helps structure and tie together the whole pericope (vv 14,20,22). Interestingly, this compound form of the verb is lacking in Luke’s parable of the Minas, which uses the simple verb dido¯mi (“to give”) throughout the parable. The mention of “his property” (ta hyparchonta autou) may be a



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redactional link Matthew forges back to the parable of the Servant Placed over the Household in Matt 24:45–51.162 In v 15, Matthew carefully lists the slaves and the amounts they receive with the Greek particles ho men . . . ho de . . . ho de . . . (“the one . . . the other . . . the other”), a stylistic trait typical of Matthew but lacking in the Lucan parallel. The relatively enormous amounts of money expressed by five (or even two) talents is characteristic of Matthew’s tendency to increase monetary values, compared to his sources and parallels.163 Matthew may increase the monetary units here in order to stress symbolically both the greatness of God’s gifts entrusted to believers (and especially church leaders) but also the weighty responsibility that the recipient bears and the gravity of the final reckoning. Along with the gifts comes the fact of the variety of the gifts, with the explanation that they are given according to each individual’s ability—thus hammering home Matthew’s insistence on personal responsibility (cf. Matt 16:27; Mark 13:34). Section Two (vv 16–18): Significantly, this whole section, which narrates in detail what each slave did during the master’s absence, does not exist as such in Luke’s version. At best it is hinted at in Luke 19:13b, the master’s explicit command to “engage in business while I am away.” When we take into account that (i) Section Two is superfluous to the Matthean narrative as a whole, since the information it conveys is repeated in Section Three, that (ii) its existence conveniently creates the three-part structure of the Matthean parable as a whole, that (iii) it supplies the three-step subdivision that Section Three will take up and expand upon, and that (iv) it is completely lacking as a structural component in Luke’s version, it is more likely than not that the whole of Section Two is a Matthean creation. Individual words and phrases typical of Matthew and not present in the Lucan parallel reinforce this impression: e.g., the superfluous participial form of poreuomai (“to go”), eytheo¯s (“immediately”), labo¯n (“taking”), ergazomai (“to work”), kerdaino¯ (“to gain”), and krypto¯ (“to hide”). Hence it is likely that both the substance and the precise wording of Section Two come from Matthew himself, who creates Section Two out of what is now Section Three. Section Three (vv 19–30): The third section begins with the telling phrase “after a long time” (meta de polyn chronon), which takes up the theme of the “delay of the parousia” that Matthew has been stressing in all three of the longer parables (24:45–25:30) as he comes toward the end of his eschatological discourse. The key word “time” (chronon) in 25:19 echoes “my master is delaying [chronizei]” in 24:48 and “while the bridegroom was delaying [chronizontos]” in 25:5. The three-stage reckoning with the three slaves that follows is reflected in Luke’s version as well (where the presence

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of only three slaves does not fit the earlier part of Luke’s story) and is essential to the way the parable reaches its climax. The agreement of Luke with Matthew at this point shows that the three-stage reckoning comes from the basic stock of the parable. Hence it is likely that Matthew read the pattern of threes from Section Three back into Section Two and perhaps even into Section One. Typical Matthean vocabulary in Section Three includes proserchomai (“to approach,” especially in the participial form); it occurs in Matthew 52x, in Mark 5x, and in Luke 10x. In our parable, Matthew uses the participial form three times (vv 20,22,24), with each of the three slaves, to help structure Section Three; the word does not occur at all in Luke’s version of the story. The verb synairo¯ (“to settle” an account) occurs in the NT only here and in the special M parable of the Unforgiving Servant (18:23,24). Perhaps not by accident these two special Matthean parables also contain the only NT occurrences of the monetary unit called “talent”: once in 18:24 and thirteen times in our fittingly titled parable of the Talents. The verb prosphero¯ (“to bring,” “to offer”) in 25:20 may well come from Matthew’s hand; it occurs in Matthew 15x, in Mark 3x, and in Luke 4x (but not in Luke’s version of this parable). As we have already seen, kerdaino¯ (“to gain”) in vv 20 and 22 is likewise typically Matthean. Matthew probably added pistos (“faithful”) to the address to the first two slaves (vv 21 and 23). Luke has only the adjective agathos (“good”) in 19:17, and Matthew evinces a general tendency throughout his Gospel to multiply adjectives vis-à-vis his sources. The repetition of the whole commendation and reward, addressed to the first slave in v 21 and the second slave in v 23, is due to Matthew’s desire to create parallels and balance. Matthew may also have introduced the repetition of a participial form of the verb lambano¯ (“to take”), each time modifying a slave, in 25:16,18,20, and 24.164 Both Matthew and Luke have the proverbial agricultural metaphor (“reaping where you did not sow”), but only Matthew continues the agricultural metaphor with “gathering where you did not winnow.” Luke instead, taking up the financial motif suggested by the mention of “interest” in the context, continues with “withdrawing what you did not deposit.” On this point, it is not possible to decide which version is more original, if indeed either is. Likewise uncertain is whether the primitive form of the parable spoke of burying the money in the ground (so Matthew) or putting it aside in a cloth (so Luke), though the former action was a common way of protecting valuables and money in the ancient Near East, especially in times of war, civil disturbance, and banditry (cf. Matt 13:44; Josephus, J.W. 7.5.2 §115). Although commentators often cite rabbinic parallels for both modes



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of protection, the rabbinic texts are centuries later and appear to address the different legal issue of one person depositing goods with another person for safekeeping rather than for investing and profit-taking.165 In v 25, the third slave repeats a number of the key words from the narrative of Section Two (v 18). The two adjectives in the master’s address “wicked and lazy slave” in v 26 both echo the two adjectives (“good and faithful”) in vv 21 and 23 and stand in contrast to the simple “wicked slave” in Luke 19:22. Again, the balancing hand of Matthew is visible. Likewise balancing are the two phrases “what is yours” (v 25) and “what is mine” (v 27). That the primitive parable spoke of the first slave winding up with ten pieces of money (as in Matt 25:28) is made likely by the fact that Luke breaks with his own story line by incongruously describing the first slave in 19:24 as “the one who has ten minas.” This hardly makes sense when this slave’s distinguishing characteristic in Luke’s version is that he is now in charge of ten cities (19:17). As we have seen, the ill-fitting proverb in Matt 25:29 || Luke 19:26 was probably added to the primitive parable early in the oral tradition (though the possibility that it was used by the historical Jesus to conclude the parable cannot be entirely excluded). The final verse in Matthew’s version (25:30), “Cast the useless slave into the outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” is a pastiche of phrases Matthew uses elsewhere (cf. 8:12; 13:42,50; 22:13; 24:51).166 Here at the end of Matthew’s version, the eschatological reality once again peeks through the metaphorical narrative, as it did in 25:21,23 (“enter into the joy of your master”). Our conclusion from this inventory is clear: this parable has been so carefully structured and rewritten by Matthew in his typical vocabulary and style that it is impossible to reconstruct word for word the M tradition Matthew used. The best we can do is to suggest an outline of the narrative of the parable’s earlier form. (1) Summons of the Slaves and Departure of the Master. A man summoned his slaves (most likely, three) and gave them units of money (implicitly, to engage in business or trade). The dénouement in both Matthew and Luke suggests that the amounts of money given were not all the same, and the first amount may have been five units, since the first slave winds up in Matthew and Luke with ten units (perhaps because the master is a king in Luke, the reward is instead ten cities). My surmise is that the second slave received two units and the third one unit, but the amount given the second slave is not entirely clear. In the original parable, there was probably no superfluous narrative detailing the slaves’ activities while the master was away. (2) Return of the Master and the Reckoning. Upon his return, the master calls upon each slave in turn to report his results; the master reacts to each

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report. (Hence the second half of the parable is naturally much longer than the first.) (i-a) The first slave has increased his initial amount to ten units (so too in Luke). (i-b) The master praises him as a good slave and rewards him with further wealth and responsibility. (ii-a) The second slave reports that he has acquired two units more for a total of four (five in Luke). (ii-b) The master grants the same or similar reward as the first slave received. (iii-a) The third slave returns the single unit that he had kept in safe hiding, without risking it on business. He did this out of fear, knowing the demanding, grasping nature of the master, who reaps where he did not sow. (iii-b) The master responds to the third slave: 1. By calling him “wicked,” for the slave knew the demanding nature of his master; therefore, at the very least he should have invested the money in a bank so that upon the master’s return the master might have gotten his money back with interest. 2. By punishing him by commanding that the one unit of money be taken from him and given to the slave with the ten units. 3. By basing the punishment on the proverb, “For to everyone who has, more will be given. . . .” (As noted earlier, this proverb may not have been original to the primitive form of the parable, instead being attached to it as its rhetorical conclusion and moral by the time the parable had come independently into the hands of both Matthew and Luke.) [4. Both Matthew and Luke conclude their forms of the parable with a more severe punishment, but both endings come from the respective evangelists.] 4. Let us turn now to ask the same basic question of Luke’s version. Can we detect indications of Luke’s redactional additions or modifications to the L tradition he received? As with Matthew, Luke’s shaping hand is seen most clearly in the larger redactional setting. In the case of Luke, this redactional setting is the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem prior to the passion. Here we encounter a major change that Luke undertakes vis-à-vis the Marcan narrative structure that he inherited: Luke vastly expands the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem for his final Passover. That journey takes only



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one chapter (chapter 10) in Mark’s Gospel. Luke transforms it into a grand march that takes up close to half of Luke’s Gospel (9:51–19:28). While the Great Journey Narrative meanders widely in regard to both physical geography and theological topics, every now and then Luke reminds the reader of the continued journey and ascent to Jerusalem, the city of destiny (9:51– 56,57; 10:1,38; 13:22,33; 17:11; 18:31,35; 19:1,11,28). The goal toward which Jesus is heading is not just a place but the saving event decreed by God’s plan: the full “going up” or “being taken up” (anale¯mpseo¯s in 9:51) into heaven via passion, cross, death, resurrection, and ascension. It is within this artificial structure of one grand journey (a useful container for all sorts of teachings and incidents) that the introduction to Luke’s version of the parable of the Minas makes sense. Having encountered the tax collector Zacchaeus in Jericho—the last city on the pilgrims’ road before one begins the physical “ascent” to Jerusalem—Jesus concludes that encounter with two saving pronouncements (Luke 19:9–10): “Today salvation has become an event [egeneto] in this house, since even he [i.e., the despised “sinner,” Zacchaeus] is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and save what was lost.” Two important points about salvation are made in these two sentences: (1) Salvation has become an event (egeneto, the aorist of the verb “to become”), an event not to be simply awaited on some apocalyptic last day, but rather an event already experienced today. (2) The coming of salvation to Zacchaeus has de facto come about through the coming of the Son of Man, that is, Jesus, to save the lost. To be sure, Luke, like most NT authors, juggles the dialectic of salvation-already-present and salvation-yet-to-come throughout his Gospel. Still, the scene in Jericho, with Jesus proclaiming salvation as an accomplished event for Zacchaeus simply by virtue of the fact of Jesus’ coming, could easily lead the enthusiastic pilgrim crowd to suppose a still greater imminent “coming”: the proximate coming of Jesus to Jerusalem as the apocalyptic event ushering in the last days and the full coming of the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, the pericope immediately following the parable of the Minas is the narrative of Jesus’ “triumphal entry,” which occasions jubilant expectation. The disciples acclaim Jesus precisely as “the King who comes” (19:38) on the Mount of Olives (the site of the ascension in Acts 1:12).167 Among the Synoptists, Luke alone has the throng directly proclaim Jesus as King at his triumphal entry; clearly, the long-prophesied Davidic King (cf. Luke 1:26–33) has finally come to David’s ancient capital. Granted, then, Jesus’ regularly recurring teaching about the kingdom of God throughout the Great Journey Narrative of chaps. 9–19, granted J­ esus’

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declaration about salvation being present “today” because of his own coming, and granted what is about to happen at the triumphal entry, the introduction that Luke composes for his parable of the Minas makes perfect sense (19:11): “As they [the crowd at Jericho] listened to these [words of Jesus about present salvation], he [Jesus] proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem and they [the crowd] thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.” Throughout our survey of special L parables, we have seen repeatedly how Luke crafts a short anecdote or introductory sentence to set the stage for a parable—and thus give the parable his particular theological “spin.” This is obviously the case with 19:11, marked as it is with Lucan vocabulary and style.168 However, having studied Matthew’s parable of the Talents, we might be puzzled by how the basic story behind the Talents could possibly be recycled by Luke to serve the purpose of dampening the crowd’s overenthusiastic expectation that the kingdom of God was about to appear in all its visible, palpable fullness. Matthew’s parable of the Talents does speak of the master being away and returning “after a long time” (Matt 25:19), but that phrase is most likely a redactional addition by Matthew. At first glance, then, it would seem that the primitive version of this parable about servants entrusted with money would be quite unsuited to the redactional setting in which Luke has placed it. But that would be to vastly underestimate Luke’s literary and theological creativity. To adapt the primitive parable to his editorial needs, Luke introduces the subplot of the Throne Claimant into the main story. But we must not be led astray by this intriguing addition. Even in Luke, the story of the slaves entrusted with money remains the overarching narrative that holds the whole parable together. For all his changes, Luke keeps the basic framework of the master (i) going away; (ii) entrusting money to his slaves and commissioning them to trade while he is away; (iii) returning and settling accounts with his slaves; (iv) praising and rewarding the first two slaves who have increased the monetary units they received; (v) listening to the fearful excuse of the third slave, who simply put aside the one unit he received because he knew his master was demanding; (vi) rebuking the third slave as wicked for not at least depositing the money in a bank to gain interest; (vii) punishing the third slave by transferring his one unit to the first slave, who already has ten; and finally (viii) concluding with a proverb (“to everyone who has more will be given . . .”). The whole substance of the traditional parable stands out clearly and can well stand by itself. But Luke has seen an opening for a further use of the main story. In the primitive form of the parable’s narrative, no reason is given why the master



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goes away, and he is apparently away long enough for the first two slaves to make large profits. Luke, the evangelist most interested in weaving the story of Jesus and the church into 1st-century Roman history, comes up with an explanation for the master’s journey and absence right out of Roman and Palestinian politics. To recapitulate what we have already seen about Roman history: any number of times around the turn of the era—the most prominent case for Jews being Archelaus, the son of Herod the Great—some aristocrat or ruler would journey to Rome to receive the status of king or to have that status confirmed. Luke calls upon this scenario to explain the master’s journey and lengthy absence in the story world of the parable. But, as noted earlier, the special case of Archelaus gives Luke a further opening. As Josephus relates, some Jews and Samaritans followed Archelaus to Rome to try to block his appointment as king. They succeeded to the extent that Caesar Augustus gave Archelaus the lesser title of ethnarch for the time being, with the possibility of promotion to king if he proved a competent ruler. Archelaus, cruel from the start (according to Josephus), was not especially kind to his opponents when he returned home. Luke inserts this less-than-edifying story of Roman-Jewish relations into the primitive parable by way of two key verses at the beginning and the end of the parable of the Minas. In v 14, after the master commissions his slaves and leaves, Luke tells us: “But his subjects [or ‘citizens’; the Greek politai can mean either] hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying ‘We do not wish this man to be king over us.’”169 We hear nothing further of these rebellious subjects or the effect of their intervention until the very end of the parable. After the master, now king, has pronounced both judgment on the third slave (v 24) and a proverb drawing out the moral of the story (v 26), we are suddenly reminded by Luke of the subplot that was left hanging (v 27): “But as for these enemies of mine who did not wish me to be king over them, bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” Clearly, these two verses at the beginning and end of the parable have nothing intrinsic to do with the main story of the parable. They could just as easily be omitted without the rest of the parable being disturbed in the least; nothing else need be changed. The reference to the nobleman who becomes king supplies to any curious reader the perfect reason for the journey and lengthy absence. The reader is likewise not surprised by the fact that the former nobleman, now a king, can bestow governance of ten or five cities on his competent slaves as a reward (19:17,19). In effect, what Luke has cleverly done, right in the opening verse of his parable, is to provide a narrative clasp that holds the two plots together. Instead of Matthew’s simple introduction (25:14a), “just as a man going on

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a journey, summoned his slaves . . . ,” Luke begins (19:12–13a), “a certain nobleman went into a distant country to obtain for himself the status of king and then return; calling his ten slaves . . .” This complicated opening to the story sets in motion both the main plot of the slaves entrusted with money (19:13,15–26) and the admittedly skeletal subplot of rebels opposing a throne claimant and his subsequent revenge on them (19:14,27). Simply listing these verses makes clear that, at its core, the so-called parable of the Throne Claimant is nothing more than two disconnected verses. These two verses make sense only because they are complemented by two other verses that serve the main story as well: v 12, in which a nobleman journeys into a distant country to become king; and v 15, in which the nobleman returns, having received the kingdom. What, then, is the upshot of this analysis? Most likely, the subplot of the Throne Claimant is a pure creation of Luke’s as he adapted the traditional parable of the servants entrusted with money to his own redactional setting. A number of considerations makes this quite probable: (1) While reflecting in general the Roman practice of installing or confirming client kings, Luke’s story of the Throne Claimant reflects fairly closely the particular story of Archelaus. No other NT author exhibits so great an interest in the intersection of Roman and Jewish-Palestinian history and politics as does Luke (whether or not he always gets his facts straight). The family of Herod seems to hold a special fascination for him in both his Gospel and Acts. (2) As we have seen multiple times in our survey of the parables, the introductory anecdotes, scenes, or sentences that precede special L parables are almost invariably composed by Luke himself. Once we appreciate that the sentence introducing the parable of the Minas (19:11), the concluding verse of the pericope (19:28) that acts as an inclusio to 19:11 (“and having said these things, he proceeded ahead, ascending to Jerusalem”), and the whole overarching structure of the Great Journey Narrative are all Luke’s creation, then the most natural conclusion is that the Throne Claimant verses of the parable (19:14,27), which fit awkwardly within the main plot of the parable but cohere perfectly with the surrounding redactional composition of Luke, are most likely redactional as well. (3) Taken in isolation, the verses in the parable referring directly to the subplot of the Throne Claimant (vv 14 + 27), make little or no sense. Even granted Luke’s interest in Roman history, what is the point of his inserting these verses in a parable dealing with a different topic? These verses make sense when they are seen as a Lucan allegory (however partial and imperfect) of Jesus’ great “going up” or “ascent”—physically to Jerusalem,



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but spiritually and soteriologically to his kingly reign in heaven—an ascent accomplished by way of his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. In terms of the Throne Claimant allegory, Jesus is going on a journey (begun physically when he left Galilee, accomplished spiritually via his deathresurrection) into a distant country (heaven, by way of his ascension), where he will receive his royal power as Messiah and Lord (cf. Acts 2:34–36). (Fortunately, Luke knows when not to push an allegory too far: we are spared the image of Caesar Augustus playing God the Father.) While Jesus is away in the distant country receiving his royal status, his servants/slaves (the members of the church) are to use the gifts he has given them to trade for his profit and increase (the mission of the church, with ever increasing members). After an unspecified interval, the master will return with full power as king to exercise judgment (Jesus’ return in glory and the universal judgment; cf. Acts 10:36–42). Upon his return, he will reward the zealous members of the church, rebuke and chastise the less-than-zealous members, and severely punish those who actively opposed his assumption of kingly rule. While these opponents might be thought to include all evildoers, in light of the imminent entrance into Jerusalem, the Jerusalem authorities are no doubt especially in view. Indeed, for Luke, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, prophesied by Jesus at his triumphal entry (19:41–44), prefigures the final judgment still to come (note the progression from destruction of Jerusalem to the parousia in the course of Luke 21:1–36). In sum, given this neat fit between the story of the Throne Claimant (filled out by the main plot of the Minas) and the grand story of Jesus in Luke– Acts, the most probable conclusion is that vv 14 + 27 (along with the connective tissue in vv 12b + 15a) are not the remnants of a separate parable. Nor are they an alternate form of the parable of the slaves entrusted with money, an alternate form that over decades of oral tradition developed the additional theme of the Throne Claimant. Rather, these verses are purely Luke’s creation, anchoring a stray parable about slaves and money within the climax of the Great Journey Narrative and pointing forward to what is about to be fulfilled in Jerusalem as well as at the parousia. This excursus on Luke’s creation of the Throne Claimant verses clears the way for us to treat the rest of the parable of the Minas as a reflection of the parable Luke received—still, however, with various redactional modifications. What, then, in the main story might come from Luke and what from his tradition? In v 12, “a man” (anthro¯pos), who also begins Matthew’s version (25:14) has become, in typical Lucan style, “a certain man” (anthro¯pos tis), who in turn is elevated to the status of a nobleman (eugene¯s), thus preparing the way for the subplot of the Throne Claimant. Originally, then,

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the parable most likely spoke simply of “a man,” no doubt a businessman of some sort. The statement that he was going into a distant country could be original, but the purpose, “to obtain for himself a kingdom,” is obviously a Lucan clasp connecting the main plot to the subplot of the Throne Claimant. In v 13, the main story begins when the man summons his ten slaves and gives them ten minas, one for each slave, along with his command to trade while he is away. Skipping over v 14 (the opposition from the nobleman’s enemies), we come to the master’s return, now as king, and the summoning of his slaves for an accounting.170 Here we find reason for suspecting that Matthew’s three slaves were original to the parable. Despite the fact that Luke says in v 15 that the new king summoned “those slaves to whom he had given the money” because he wished to question them about their earnings, only three slaves appear in the dénouement of the main plot: v 16, “the first”; v 18, “the second”; and v 20, “the other”—not “another.”171 In light of this exact counting, these three slaves are hardly intended simply as random samples of the ten slaves, all the more so since the story proceeds inexorably from the first, who made ten minas, to the second, who made five, and then to the third, who simply kept safe the one mina he had received. Luke’s story at this point is coherent and complete, not an extract from a greater whole that told of the earnings of each of the ten slaves. Thus, Matthew seems to have preserved the original number of slaves. Luke may have increased the number to ten as befitting a nobleman, soon to become king. What of the amounts and units of money? Here most commentators decide the other way, that is, in favor of Luke. If the monetary unit of the talent had been original to the story, it is difficult to see why Luke, while elevating the man to the status of an aristocrat, would at the same time have reduced the princely unit of a talent to a mere mina. Actually, the use of minas would fit somewhat better with the idea of a merchant who owns only three slaves, à la Matthew. Granted that Matthew has a tendency to increase monetary amounts in his Synoptic material and that he alone in the NT uses the noun talanton (here and in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant), the more pedestrian mina (occurring only in this Lucan pericope in the whole of the NT) may be original. But did the master give the three servants the equal commission of one mina each or rather the unequal distribution of five, two, and one talent to the three slaves respectively? At this point, not only can we not be sure; it is even difficult to decide what seems more probable. At the settling of accounts, the Matthean slaves have gained five, two, and no units respectively. The Lucan slaves gain ten, five, and no units respectively. Interestingly, the absolute monetary worth of the sums gained is greater in Matthew (a talent



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being the largest single unit circulating in the ancient Mediterranean world), while the percentage of yield is greater in Luke (ten additional minas earned with the one mina given to the slave by the master, while the Matthean slave earns only five talents in addition to the five talents given him by his master). If I were to guess, my surmise would be that the amounts of money entrusted to the slaves were five, two, and one—thus clearly distinguishing the three slaves from the start—and that the yield was five more, two more, and none. But at this point we are dealing with a purely subjective impression of what makes for a “tidier” and clearer story. Once again, we must remind ourselves that if the primitive parable goes back to Jesus, he may well have told it a number of times in a number of different ways. What of the rewards that the master gives to the slaves? The first two slaves are both praised with, “Well done, good servant!” Another indication that minas rather than talents were the original units of money in the story is given by the beginning of the master’s promise of reward: “Because you were faithful over a few things [so Matthew; Luke has ‘over very little’].” Five talents would never be considered “very little” or “a few things” in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially if the speaker is a mere merchant rather than a monarch. The mina is thus the more plausible unit in the primitive story. Whether the praise spoken to the first slave was spoken in full to the second slave as well (as in Matthew), or in abbreviated form (as in Luke), must remain unclear. More unclear still is the precise reward given to the first two slaves. In Matthew, the vague promise, “I will set you over many things [sums of money?],” is followed by the still vaguer invitation, “enter into the joy of your master.” The ultimate reward in Luke is much more specific and practical: the governance (and no doubt the income) of ten and five cities respectively for the first two slaves. If, as I have argued, the original parable spoke of a merchant (not a king) with three slaves, the reward of ten or five cities is impossible. If there was a specific, concrete reward in the original parable, it has been lost to us. The best we can surmise is that the parable contained a general promise that the slaves who had proved reliable with small sums of money would be given greater responsibilities with larger sums. Matthew and Luke come closer together in the climactic scene, the confrontation of the master with the third slave. There is a slight difference in order: in Matthew, the slave first describes the demanding nature of his master and then the paralyzing fear that led him to hide the talent in the ground. He ends by presenting the master with the single talent. Luke has the reverse order. First, the slave presents the master with the single mina; then he explains that he laid it aside in a sweat cloth (soudarion) for

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safekeeping; and finally he explains his fear, based on the demanding nature of the master. We lack solid grounds for preferring one order over the other. The reasoning common to the slave in both Matthew and Luke is that the master harvests what he does not sow—a perfect metaphor for a grasping, greedy businessman who pinches every penny till it screams for mercy.172 Matthew and Luke are also close in the master’s reply. He rebukes the slave, substituting “wicked slave” for “good slave” in his address, and complaining about the lack of at least bank interest. The original parable’s action ended with the master demanding some bystanders (or slaves) to take the one unit of money away from the third slave and to give it to the slave with the ten units. Here again, Matthew is shown to be closer to the original. Since Luke had the master already reward the first slave with authority over (and therefore the revenue from) ten cities, it makes no sense to give him one more mina, or indeed even to designate him as the man with ten minas rather than the man with ten cities. Perhaps there is a hint here that in the original parable the first slave had been rewarded by this master by being allowed to keep the ten minas he had made. (Notice, the first two slaves are never said to actually hand the money back to their master.) Hence the reward of one more mina would make some sense. Needless to say, the third slave is not allowed to keep his mina (he did not expect to do so), but the transferral of the only mina he has to the fellow slave who has already acquired ten through his own success is a further rhetorical slap in the face by the master. As far as we can tell, in the original parable, this was the only punishment mentioned. Both Matt 25:30 (throwing the third slave into the outer darkness) and Luke 19:27 (slaughtering the rebellious subjects) are redactional additions. Whether each replaces some earlier form of severe punishment is impossible to say. Likewise, we have already seen that the proverb that ends the parable in both the M and the L versions does not really fit the parable and therefore is probably not original. The third slave has already offered his mina back to his master, and in any case he certainly entertained no illusion that he would ever get to keep it. So, in a sense, he can hardly be described as having anything. More to the point, the original sense of the proverb as a piece of popular wisdom was probably a glum “secular” observation from a worldweary sage about how life really works: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”—usually in the sense that the rich get richer no matter how little they work, and the poor get poorer no matter how hard they work. This hardly fits our parable, where the first two slaves, by working hard, did achieve large profits and rewards, while the third slave gained nothing because he refused to engage in business and risk his capital. That this stray



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proverb was open to multiple applications in the Synoptic tradition can be seen from the somewhat different sense it acquired when applied to the understanding of Jesus’ parables in general (Mark 4:25 || Matt 13:12 || Luke 8:18b). As a matter of fact, the parable of the Talents/Minas is hardly the only parable in the Synoptics that attracted stray sayings to its conclusion as redactors sought to supply a clear moral or application to an open-ended or ambiguous story. The string of sayings tacked on to Luke’s parable of the Dishonest Steward (16:1–8, followed by various applications in vv 9–13) is a prime example of the phenomenon, just a few chapters earlier in Luke. 5. What, then, is our final conclusion about the primitive form of the parable that arises from all this sifting and comparing? In other words, what is the earliest version of the parable available to us? Putting aside specifically Matthean modifications (e.g., “talents,” “after a long time,” “outer darkness”) as well as those of Luke (the whole Throne Claimant subplot along with the nobleman becoming a king, the rebellious subjects who are slaughtered in the end, the ten slaves), we arrive at the following svelte outline (Greek phrases common to both streams of the tradition are noted in parentheses): (1) Introduction. A man (anthro¯pos) was about to leave on a journey (apode¯meo¯). (2) The Commission. He summoned (kaleo¯) his slaves (hoi douloi heautou) and gave them ([para]dido¯mi autois) minas: to the first five minas, to the second two, and to the third one. (Implicit, if not explicit, in this giving of money was the command to engage in business in order to make more money.) (3) The Return and Reckoning. The man (henceforth referred to as kyrios, “master”) returned ([epan]erchomai) and summoned his slaves (douloi) to render an account of their business dealings and profits. He deals with each of the three in order: (i-a) The first slave came, saying [lego¯n], “Master [kyrie], I have made five more minas.” (i-b) The master said to him, “Well done [eu(ge)], good slave [doule agathe]! Because you have been faithful over a few things, I will place you over many. Take the ten minas.” (The nature of the reward the master gives the slave is admittedly speculation on my part.) (ii-a) The second came and said, “Master [kyrie], I have made two more minas.” (ii-b) He said to him, “You, too, take the four minas.” (Again, speculation.)

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(iii-a) The other came, saying, “Master [kyrie], here is your mina, which I hid in the ground. For I feared you [phobeomai], since you are a demanding man; you reap [therizo¯] what you did not sow [speiro¯].” (iii-b) He said, “You knew that [e˛ˉ deis hoti] I reap what I did not sow. Why did you not put my money [argyrion mou] in a bank, so that when I came [eltho¯n ego¯], I might have got it back with interest [syn toko˛ˉ ].” (4) The Final Judgment:    (i) Depriving and shaming the third slave: “Take from him [arate ap’autou] the mina and give it to the one has ten [kai dote to˛ˉ echonti deka].” [(ii) Possibly some more severe punishment concluded the original story, in place of the extremely severe punishments added by Matthew and Luke. Quite early on in the oral transmission of the parable, a stray proverb (“to everyone who has, [more] will be given . . .”) was added by way of a moralizing conclusion. Alternately, but less likely, the proverb was an original part of the parable.] This, then, is the earliest hypothetical stage of the tradition that we can reconstruct. But did something like this originate with the historical Jesus? And if so, what would it have meant during his public ministry? B. The Meaning of the Parable of the Talents/Minas in the Ministry of Jesus By this time, the question of whether some form of the parable of the Talents/Minas goes back to the historical Jesus practically answers itself. As in the case of the Great Supper, so in the case of the Talents/Minas, we have an unusual example of a parable preserved not by the Marcan and/or Q traditions, but rather one preserved in the separate streams of the special Matthean and special Lucan traditions. Hence the criterion of the multiple attestation of independent sources is satisfied. We are therefore justified in judging it more likely than not—this is as firm as a judgment about an individual parable of Jesus can be—that the parable of the slaves entrusted with money goes back in some form (or in multiple forms) to the historical Jesus. We might at first feel frustrated that so much work on a single parable leads to such meager results. But, if we glance back at the strikingly different redactional versions of the story that we have in Matthew’s parable of the



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Talents and Luke’s parable of the Minas, we should instead be grateful that we can reach the judgment of “probably authentic,” as well as obtain a fair sense of the overall structure and content of the primitive parable. Does any other criterion reinforce our judgment, based as it is on the criterion of multiple attestation? I would suggest that the criterion of coherence does offer some secondary support. Looking back over all that we have seen about Jesus’ teaching in these five volumes of A Marginal Jew, an intriguing general pattern emerges from many of his pronouncements, especially when taken together with his actions. The core proclamation of Jesus focuses not primarily on human action but on God’s action, a final, definitive action totally beyond human control. Jesus’ core proclamation is that the kingdom of God—that is, God exercising his power to establish his full, conclusive rule over Israel and over the whole world—is coming, indeed, is already present to some degree in Jesus’ words and deeds, and will soon be present in all its fullness. If the reader will excuse a Jesus-like similitude, the coming of the kingdom of God is like Hurricane Thea approaching the Florida mainland. Humans can learn about its approach from farsighted forecasters, and they can either wisely prepare for its coming or foolishly ignore its imminent arrival. But they can do nothing to stop it, alter its timetable, or change its nature. So too, despite endless homiletic nonsense spouted from pulpits, humans can do nothing to “hasten the coming of the kingdom of God,” let alone “build” or “form” it. Jesus does not call upon his followers to create or form the kingdom of God. He calls upon them to respond to its inexorable coming and partial presence in his ministry. They do so by radically changing their lives according to Jesus’ ha˘la¯kâ, his way of interpreting and enacting God’s will in the Torah in light of the culmination of Israel’s history. This doing of God’s will according to the eschatological prophet Jesus is understood neither as an exercise in blind obedience for obedience’ sake nor collaborative action that will bring about the kingdom. As with the covenant with Abraham, the covenant at Sinai, the covenant with David, the various liturgical renewals of the covenant in the First and Second Temples, and the hopes for a renewed or new covenant in the last days, obedience to God’s will as expressed in the covenant carries the promise of reward. Here we must be careful not to read back into the preaching of the historical Jew named Jesus a nervous concern about “reward-talk,” a concern that stems from a dubious Christian reading of Paul’s polemic against justification by works of the Law. Unless we ignore a regularly recurring motif in the teaching of Jesus—including that teaching that can be reasonably judged authentic—the Jewish Jesus saw nothing wrong with assuring a faithful Israel

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of the reward that God had promised the patriarchs and their descendants if they kept his covenant and walked in his ways. The whole idea that God’s absolute initiative and sovereign freedom in offering salvation to his people, with the consequent obligation that they do his will, is somehow antithetical to his promise of reward to those who keep his commandments was as completely foreign to Jesus the Jew as it was to the writers of the Jewish Scriptures.173 The Jesus who pronounces beatitude on the poor and hungry because God—and God alone—can and will fill them with the good things of the kingdom on the last day is the same Jesus who promises his disciples that whoever loses his life will save it (Mark 8:35 || Matt 10:39 || Luke 17:33 || John 12:25).174 It is the same Jesus who promises the Twelve who give up all things to follow him that on the last day they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt 19:28 || Luke 22:30).175 To be sure, Jesus rejects a Greek-style ethics of reciprocity precisely because it expects that the good deeds done by one human being to another will be paid back by that other human being in this life. The follower of Jesus does good to others simply as a reflection of the goodness of God, Creator and Father, with an assurance that God will not be outdone in generosity in the end. In making such a promise, Jesus inculcates not a spirit of demanding one’s rights from God or of calculating what God owes the disciples. Rather, Jesus inculcates a radical freedom that allows one to be generous and loving because God will more than requite the disciples’ finite good deeds with an infinite goodness that is beyond calculation and beyond strict retributive justice. What is the point of this little summary of Jesus’ preaching? Put simply, there is at the basis of Jesus’ proclamation an underlying structure, indeed, an underlying story: (1) God the Creator has exercised his sovereign initiative by freely choosing to make Israel his people and to lead them to salvation. (2) This free gift of election and salvation in turn calls for obedience from the people who have freely agreed to enter into a covenant relationship with their God. (3) This obedience in turn leads to the fullness of eschatological blessings that God promised his faithful people from the beginning. Gracious election leads to faithful obedience that leads to eschatological reward. The relevance of this brief sketch of the underpinnings of Jesus’ end-time proclamation to Israel is that it is encapsulated in our parable of the slaves entrusted with money. The master in the parable exercises his sovereign initiative in giving his slaves money and responsibility. Indeed, in his complete freedom as master over his slaves, he gives to each slave precisely as much money as he sees fit. With the free bestowal of the money comes grave re-



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sponsibility; consequently, the “good” slaves exert themselves to the utmost to fulfill the trust placed in them. No specific reward was promised them for carrying out their charge, but in fact their master proves incredibly generous in lavishing rewards upon his faithful slaves at the reckoning. Apparently, they keep the money they have made while receiving greater responsibilities over larger sums. The slave who shrinks from his task, however, is deprived of what was given him and is shamed in the presence of his peers. Thus, the structure of (i) free gift that generates (ii) serious obligation that generates (iii) overflowing reward—the structure that lies at the heart of Jesus’ overall message—lies also at the heart of the parable of the Talents/Minas. While our argument for authenticity rests mainly on the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of coherence does lend its voice in support. To whom, though, is Jesus speaking this parable that mimics much of his message in miniature? Some authors, such as Joachim Jeremias and C. H. Dodd, suggest that the audience is made up of scribes, Pharisees, or temple authorities—in other words, religious authorities who have taken the Word of God enshrined in the Torah and have buried it in the ground of their punctilious ritual observances, instead of making it widely available, practicable, and fruitful for the common people of the land (or perhaps even the Gentiles).176 Need we say, after all we have seen in Volume Three of A Marginal Jew, that this is a hopeless caricature of the various Jewish groups active at the time of Jesus? More to the point, two out of the three slaves in the parable are presented in a positive light as having fulfilled the master’s charge and as therefore receiving praise and recompense. Who are they supposed to represent if the parable is taken purely as a polemic and warning spoken to Jewish authorities? More credible, instead, is a reading of the parable as an exhortation-pluswarning spoken by Jesus to his disciples, a summons to rise to the challenge of his demanding call to leave all and follow him. This interpretation is not disqualified by the fact that Jesus lets the “end stress,” the emphatic conclusion of the parable, fall on the negative picture of the slave who is so paralyzed by fear that he refuses to take the risk that his master’s commission poses. This stern warning is likewise part of Jesus’ proclamation, the part perhaps most glossed over in present-day attempts to make his strange message palatable to moderns. But Jesus is insistent: along with sovereign grace, serious demand, and superabundant reward comes the possibility of being condemned for refusing the demand contained in the gift.177 Indeed, one might argue that no aspect of Jesus’ teaching is more pervasive in the many different streams of Gospel tradition, and no aspect is more passed over in silence today. All the more telling, then, is the fact that this aspect

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takes up the greater part of a parable that summarizes in miniature all that Jesus has to say to his disciples. In fact, when we consider how this parable encapsulates the global message of the eschatological prophet to the people of Israel, perhaps it is a mistake to restrict its audience to Jesus’ disciples or to any one group within Israel as opposed to Israel as a whole. Jesus may well have adapted this parable any number of times to various audiences on his preaching tours, but always with the same underlying intent: to call Israel to fulfill its vocation as Israel in the end time. Here we have a striking and final example of why the dynamic, charged, tensive, metaphorical speech of Jesus’ parables cannot be reduced to one neat “point” in a Sunday school lesson. We have exhausted the few, the precious few parables that can make a solid claim to go back to the historical Jesus. It remains to sum up what we have learned about parables and the historical Jesus in some concluding observations. NOTES TO CHAPTER 40 Besides the standard commentaries on the Gospels and on the parables of Jesus, see Clayton R. Bowen, “The Kingdom and the Mustard Seed,” AJT 22 (1918) 562–69; Albert J. Matthews, “The Mustard ‘Tree,’” ExpTim 39 (1927–1928) 32–34; Kenneth W. Clark, “The Mustard Plant,” Classical Weekly 37 (1943–44) 81–83; A. M. Hunter, “The Interpretation of the Parables,” ExpTim 69 (1957–1958) 100– 104; Nils A. Dahl, “The Parables of Growth,” ST 5 (1951) 132–66, esp. 147–48; Hans-Werner Bartsch, “Eine bisher übersehene Zitierung der LXX in Mark. 4, 30,” TZ 15 (1959) 126–28; Otto Kuss, “Zum Sinngehalt des Doppelgleichnisses vom Senfkorn und Sauerteig,” Bib 40 (1959) 641–53 (= “Zum Sinngehalt des Doppelgleichnisses vom Senfkorn und Sauerteig,” Studia Biblica et Orientalia [AnBib 11; 2 vols.; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1959] 2. 73–85); Franz Mussner, “1QHodajoth und das Gleichnis vom Senfkorn (Mk 4,30–32 Par.),” BZ 4 (1960) 128–30; Jacques Dupont, “Les paraboles du sénevé et du levain,” NRT 89 (1967) 897–913; idem, “Le couple parabolique du sénevé et du levain,” Jesus Christus in Historie und Theologie (Hans Conzelmann Festschrift; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1975) 331–45; Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, 76–84; Klaus-Peter Hertzsch, “Jésus herméneute. Une étude de Marc 4, 30–32,” Reconnaissance à Suzanne de Diétrich: Foi et Vie: Cahiers bibliques (ed. Simone Frutiger; Paris: Foi et Vie, 1971) 109–16; Harvey K. McArthur, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” CBQ 33 (1971) 198–210; John Dominic Crossan, “The Seed Parables of Jesus,” JBL 92 (1973) 244–66, esp. 253–59; idem, In Parables, 45–49; Robert W. Funk, “The Looking-Glass Tree Is for the Birds,” Int 27 (1973) 3–9; Alberto Casalegno, “La parabola del granello di senape (Mc 4, 30–32),” RivB 26 (1978) 139–61; Rudolf Laufen, “BASILEIA und EKKLESIA. Eine traditions- und redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung des Gleich1



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nisses vom Senfkorn,” Begegnung mit dem Wort (Heinrich Zimmermann Festschrift; BBB 53; Bonn: Hanstein, 1980) 105–40 (= Die Doppelüberlieferungen der Logienquelle und des Markusevangeliums [BBB 54; Bonn: Hanstein, 1980] 174–200); Craig L. Blomberg, “When Is a Parallel Really a Parallel? A Test Case: The Lucan Parables,” WTJ 46 (1984) 78–103; Kogler, Das Doppelgleichnis; Wendy J. Cotter, “The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven: Their Function in the Earliest Stratum of Q,” Toronto Journal of Theology 8 (1992) 38–51; Volkmar Hirth, “Die baumgrosse Senfstaude—Bild der wahren Königsherrschaft,” BN 83 (1996) 15–16; Bailey, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed”; Crook, “The Synoptic Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven,” 23–48, especially 24–33; Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 276–335; Timothy A. Friedrichsen, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed: Mark 4, 30–32 and Q 13, 18–19. A Surrejoinder for Independence,” ETL 77 (2001) 297–317; Fleddermann, Q. A Reconstruction and Commentary, 658–73; Schellenberg, “Kingdom as Contaminant?,” 527–43. For a detailed study of the phenomenon of Mark–Q overlaps, see Laufen, Die Doppelüberlieferungen. For a brief review of various Synoptic source theories as applied to the Mustard Seed, see Kogler, Das Doppelgleichnis, 31–42. Kogler’s own presentation is harmed both by his adoption of the unlikely Deuteromarkus hypothesis (i.e., Matthew and Luke draw upon a later, thoroughly revised form of the Mark we have) and his presumption of (rather than any argument for) the origin of the Mustard Seed in the teaching of the historical Jesus. The idea that the Mustard Seed was present in both Mark’s source and Q is widely accepted among exegetes treating this parable; see, e.g., Dahl, “The Parables of Growth,” 147; Dupont, “Le couple parabolique,” 333; Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13, 76–77; McArthur, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” 198–99; Crossan, “The Seed Parables of Jesus,” 254; Friedrichsen, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” in which he argues against Fleddermann’s unusual theory that Mark knew Q (Q. A Reconstruction and Commentary, 665–66). 2

See Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2. 32–40. This particular overlap is unique within the Synoptic tradition because the overlap has independent parallels in Acts 13:25 and John 1:26–27,33. 3

4 For the saying on binding the strong man, see A Marginal Jew, 2. 417–22; for the missionary discourse, A Marginal Jew, 3. 154–63.

To my mind, the presence of a mini-story or simple plot (with, at least implicitly, a beginning, middle, and end involving some sort of process or change) justifies calling the Mustard Seed a narrative parable rather than a similitude. In this, I differ with Snodgrass and a number of other parable scholars. Snodgrass demands a detailed plot to move a unit of tradition from the category of similitude to that of parable. For his system of classification, see Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 9–15. He makes a point of classifying the Mustard Seed as a similitude rather than a parable because “none of the [Synoptic] forms has a developed plot . . .” (p. 216). 5

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As is often pointed out in books on Jesus’ parables, the comparative formula “the kingdom of God is like . . .” intends to compare the kingdom not with the individual noun that follows next in the text (e.g., a mustard seed, a lump of leaven, a treasure, a merchant) but rather with the whole story, event, or process that is narrated in the parable. The same point is often made with reference to the later rabbinic parables that begin with similar formulas, either lengthy (“I will tell you a parable. To what is the matter comparable? To . . .”) or severely abbreviated (simply a laconic “To . . .”). On the various introductory formulas, see McArthur and Johnston, They Also Taught in Parables, 109–18 (summarizing what is laid out at much greater length in Robert M. Johnston, Parabolic Interpretations Attributed to Tannaim [Ph.D. dissertation; Hartford, CT: Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1977] esp. 530–32). On p. 100 of his The Parables of Jesus, Jeremias begins to explain how the introductory formula compares something to a whole state of affairs or story, but then proceeds to muddy the waters by claiming that, in certain cases, the kingdom of God is being compared not to one person or object in the parable but rather to another (pp. 101–2). For instance, he states that in Matt 13:45 the kingdom is compared not to a merchant in search of fine pearls but rather to a pearl. The more accurate observation is rather the one that he makes on pp. 100–101: as in rabbinic so in Synoptic parables, the introductory formula “is like . . .” compares some theological reality (e.g., “the kingdom of God”) not with the individual person or object that follows in the parable but rather with the whole state of affairs or story that follows (“it is the case with . . . as with . . .”). 6

7

Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 16.

Some exegetes shy away from the idea of the kingdom of God growing, developing, or expanding in the world of human experience because they identify such an idea with the old liberal Protestant presentation of the kingdom as a social reality evolving in the world according to the laws of development immanent in human history. This easily leads in turn to the kingdom of God being equated with enlightened social progress, or with a Hegelian-style vision of the evolution of human consciousness, or even with the Christian church as it unfolds in history. Needless to say, Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God (examined at length in Volume Two of A Marginal Jew) deals with God’s coming to rule over Israel and the world in the end time. Hence it is antithetical to any equation of the kingdom of God with forces, structures, or institutions that originate in and belong to this present world. 8

As to the question of which plant the Greek word sinapi (“mustard”) designates, see the various possibilities in Kogler, Das Doppelgleichnis, 45–55. Along with most commentators, Kogler holds that the most likely candidate for the mustard seed is the black mustard (brassica nigra), though the white mustard is also a possibility. Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 220) states that “the mustard seed is one millimeter in diameter and is so tiny it requires from 725 to 760 seeds to equal one gram (one twenty-eighth of an ounce).” As Snodgrass notes, this seed grows quickly to a notable height, reported variously as six, twelve, or sometimes even fifteen feet (so Hultgren, 9



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The Parables of Jesus, 395). Descriptions of the great height of the mustard plant in rabbinic literature (e.g., y. Peʾa 7:4) may at times be hyperbolic, but they reveal the thought-world of ancient inhabitants of Palestine who knew the plant firsthand. 10 Strictly speaking, the grammatical form mikroteros is comparative and so we might translate “. . . is smaller than all [other] seeds.” But in koine Greek, the comparative form can stand for the superlative, and so we might translate instead “. . . is the smallest of all seeds”; see Zerwick, Graecitas Biblica, 47 §147. The same point holds true of the comparative form meizon, “larger.” In any case, the basic sense remains the same. 11 See, e.g., m. Nid. 5:2, where the mustard seed is used as a metaphor for a very small amount; so likewise m. Tohar. 8:8; m. Nazir 1:5; b. Ber. 31a. Besides the parable of the Mustard Seed, the ˙Synoptic Jesus is presented as using the mustard seed as a metaphor for smallness in Matt 17:20 || Luke 17:6: faith like a grain of mustard has the power to move a mountain or a mulberry tree. Noteworthy here is that this logion does not explicitly mention the small size of the mustard seed (which is key to the force of the metaphor) but rather presumes it as widely known. This use of the mustard seed as a symbol of smallness seems more at home in the Jewish rather than in the pagan Greco-Roman tradition. For example, farther afield, Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca historica, 1. 35, 2) speaks of the contrast of starting out very small yet becoming quite large, but he is referring to the Egyptian crocodile in the Nile: ho men krokodeilos ex elachistou ginetai megistos.

This Lucan/Q form of the contrast (employing “tree” instead of “shrub”), rather than being outrageously hyperbolic, may be judged to remain within the realm of the real, since even the Greek botanist Theophrastus (the successor of Aristotle) admits that the word dendron (“tree”) can be stretched to include pot herbs (lachana), in which category he includes the mustard plant. On this, see Theophrastus’ Historia plantarum (Enquiry into Plants = Peri phyto¯n historias) 1.3.2–5 and 7.1.1; and, for commentary, Clark, “The Mustard Plant,” 81–83. Hence Liebenberg (The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 311–13) is not correct in claiming that Luke’s use of dendron creates an unusual element in the story that is hyperbolic; for a similar mistake, see Matthews, “The Mustard ‘Tree,’” 32. 12

13 For attempts to privilege one or another theme in the parable (with some authors distinguishing among the emphases in Mark, Q, and Jesus), see, e.g., Kogler, Das Doppelgleichnis, 190 (the original message of Jesus’ parable was not growth but contrast); Cotter, “The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven,” 47–48 (the Q parable emphasizes the theme of growth); Claus-Hunno Hunzinger, “sinapi,” TDNT 7 (1971) 290–91 (the focus is not on the process of growth but on the contrast between seed and plant, with special emphasis on the small beginning); Schellenberg, “Kingdom as Contaminant?,” 542 (the implicit contrast in the Q parable is not between the small seed and the full-grown tree but rather between the expected herb or shrub and the surprising tree; the contrast between smallest and largest in the

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Marcan version is probably a later addition); Dahl, “The Parables of Growth,” 148 (the lesson of the parable is not so much the “great results of the work of Jesus,” but rather the “organic unity” between his apparently insignificant ministry in Israel and the future kingdom of God); Kuss, “Zum Sinngehalt,” 651 (both contrast and development); Mussner, “1QHodajoth,” 129–30 (emphasis on contrast, but element of growth admitted); Dupont, “Les paraboles du sénevé et du levain,” 900–907 (Mark emphasizes opposition between beginning and end, Luke does not emphasize contrast, and Jesus underlines the decisive meaning of the present time, its unique value in salvation history); Hertzsch, “Jésus herméneute,” 115 (emphasis on transformation or metamorphosis: the paradoxical affinity between the smallest and the greatest); McArthur, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” 207–10 (two major emphases in primitive form: the contrast between the insignificant sowing and the significant results that follow; the fulfillment of the promised divine blessings, contained in the significant results); Funk, “The Looking-Glass Tree,” 7 (Jesus asserts that the kingdom of God will erupt out of the power of weakness and refuse to perpetuate itself by the weakness of power); Casalegno, “La parabola,” 155 (both contrast and the process of growth); Laufen, “BASILEIA und EKKLESIA,” 115–17 (n. 61 on p. 115 lists the opinions of various authors; Laufen thinks that the chief idea is the contrast between smallness and largeness, but that this emphasis includes rather than excludes the idea of growth). As I indicate in the main text, I think that any attempt to restrict the message of the parable to a single point or emphasis misses the richness of this dense metaphorical discourse. The smallness of the literary unit of the Mustard Seed nicely reflects its main image. If we include in each form of the parable its introductory sentence, Mark’s version has fifty-five Greek words, Matthew forty-five, and Luke forty. (One must make allowance for text-critical variations.) This phenomenon of Mark having the longest version, Matthew the middle-length version, and Luke the shortest version is seen elsewhere in the material common to the three Synoptics. Indeed, more generally, Luke often abbreviates the material he takes over from Mark; the same may be true of his handling of Q. 14

Some translations (e.g., RSV, NRSV) state that the birds “make nests.” This is to read into this parable the vocabulary of certain OT texts that are often cited to interpret the parable’s finale (see later discussion). The fact is that our parable simply speaks of birds “dwelling”—and birds dwell in trees even when they are not building or inhabiting nests. 15

16

A Marginal Jew, 2. 309–17.

For various theories about which, if any, of the frequently mentioned OT texts are being cited or alluded to at the end of the parable of the Mustard Seed, see Kogler, Das Doppelgleichnis, 147–77; Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 291–94; Dahl, “The Parables of Growth,” 147; Dupont, “Le couple parabolique,” 343; McArthur, “The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” 202–3; Funk, 17



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“The Looking-Glass Tree,” 4–7. Funk is paradigmatic of a whole school of thought in that he simply presupposes that the Synoptic parable alludes to the Ezekiel texts as well as Daniel 4. No detailed analysis of the Greek texts of the parable and the Greek versions of the OT passages is offered. In addition, key points of Funk’s quasi-homily on the parable appear nowhere in the parable itself (e.g., the ephemeral nature of the mustard plant, the theme of the faith of the individual believer). The Hebrew text of Ezek 31:3 is difficult, and various emendations are suggested. The MT as it stands speaks of “Assyria [ʾaššûr], a cedar [ʾerez] of Lebanon.” The LXX reads Assour for ʾaššûr and kyparissos (“cypress”) for ʾerez. Various editors of the MT suggest that instead of ʾaššûr one should read the Hebrew noun teˇ  ʾaššûr; this noun designates some kind of tree, quite possibly a cypress. The botanical puzzle is made even more complicated by the fact that in some OT passages the Hebrew noun ʾerez may not mean what we mean by “cedar.” 18

19

So Funk, “The Looking-Glass Tree,” 7.

On royal associations of tree imagery in the ancient Near East and on various early messianic interpretations of the tree symbolism in Ezekiel 17 (apart from the NT and hence apart from our parable), see William R. Osborne, “The Early Messianic ‘Afterlife’ of the Tree Metaphor in Ezekiel 17:22–24,” TynBul 64 (2013) 171–88. 20

The Greek Theodotion text of Dan 4:12 (the key verse) is closer to Aramaic Dan 4:9 than is the LXX version. Likewise, the LXX version of Dan 4:10,12,11 (note the order) is not as close in wording to the Synoptic parable; for example, instead of saying (as does Theodotion) that the birds of heaven dwelt in the tree’s branches (en tois kladois autou), the LXX states that the birds of heaven “nested in it [i.e., the tree].” McArthur (“The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” 203) entertains the possibility that Mark 4:32b is closer to the LXX text of Dan 4:12, while Matthew and Luke (and presumably Q) are closer to the Theodotion text of Dan 4:21. But McArthur immediately adds that it is conceivable that the dependence is not on any one OT text. In favor of seeing an allusion to LXX Dan 4:12,21 in Matt 13:32 is Jonathan T. Pennington, “Refractions of Daniel in the Gospel of Matthew,” Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality. Volume 1: Thematic Studies (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 14; Library of NT Studies 391; ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; London/New York: Clark, 2009) 65–86, esp. 68, where he calls the allusion to Daniel a “cameo appearance.” Pennington does not exclude possible references as well to LXX Ps 103:12; Ezek 17:22–23; and Ezek 31:5–6. 21

The prophetic or apocalyptic use of the tree imagery in these OT passages may in turn be borrowing from one of the grand myths of the ancient world: the “world tree” or perhaps even the “tree of life.” On the persistence of the imagery of the tree of life and the garden of Eden in the literature of early Judaism and early Christianity, see Peter T. Lanfer, “Allusion to and Expansion of the Tree of Life and Garden 22

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of Eden in Biblical and Pseudepigraphal Literature,” Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality. Volume 1: Thematic Studies (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 14; Library of NT Studies 391; ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias; London/New York: Clark, 2009) 97–108. The LXX continues the verse with “out of the midst of the rocks they will give forth [their] voice [in song].” The MT has instead “from among the thick foliage they will give forth [their] voice” (though the rare Hebrew word for “thick foliage” creates textual difficulties). Thus, the MT contains an indirect reference to the trees in which the birds dwell; there is nothing about trees in the LXX version of the verse. Still, the agreement between Matt 13:32 and LXX Ps 103:12 (ta peteina tou ouranou kataske¯no¯sei [kataske¯noun in Matt 13:32]) leads Beate Kowalski (“Der Matthäische Gebrauch des Psalters im Kontext seiner Parabelüberlieferung,” 593–608) to speak (p. 599) of a word-for-word citation of the Psalm verse in Matt 13:32 (so too, one might add, in the Marcan and Lucan versions). 23

Here I agree with Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus, 291–94; similarly, Crossan, “The Seed Parables of Jesus,” 255. McArthur (“The Parable of the Mustard Seed,” 202–3) wavers on the issue. Other authors argue for this or that OT text being the primary source of the allusion. Kogler (Das Doppelgleichnis, 174–77, esp. 163–65) stands out for arguing that at the earliest stage of the tradition (perhaps stemming from the historical Jesus), the allusion was to MT Ezek 17:23, but that the clear connection with the Masoretic version of this OT text was lost when the parable was translated into Greek. His position relies on a somewhat dubious reconstruction of the tradition history of the parable, based as it is on the hypothesis of Deuteromarkus. Kogler’s thesis becomes even more questionable when he goes on to claim that the allusion to Ezek 17:23 gives the parable a messianic character, by which Jesus intended to refer to himself in a veiled fashion as the Messiah who inaugurates the kingdom of God. 24

We must remember that, at this point in our investigation, we are asking about the historical context of Jesus’ own ministry ca. a.d. 28–30. Hence the literary context created by the redactional activity of each evangelist (i.e., the relatively short parable discourse of Mark 4 early in Jesus’ ministry, the much larger and more artfully constructed parable discourse of Matthew 13 about halfway through the public ministry, and the loose, stream-of-consciousness context of the meandering Great Journey Narrative in Luke 9–19) obviously cannot supply the answer to the question we are posing at this juncture. 25

The importance of the historical context of Jesus’ preaching and ministry for interpreting the parables was one of the great contributions to parable research made by Joachim Jeremias and C. H. Dodd. In my opinion, though, both Jeremias and Dodd (along with many others after them) took this insight too far when they presumed that they could discern the precise situation in which and the precise audience to which the historical Jesus addressed a given parable (as distinct from the 26



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redactional setting created by the evangelists). With few exceptions, notably the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, the parables are too generic in their message to allow such specificity. Jesus may well have spoken the same basic parable in different situations to different audiences for different rhetorical purposes. Granted, my objection does not hold for those who waive any concern with the historical Jesus or the meaning of his parables within his 1st-century Jewish-Palestinian context. Scholars unconcerned about the historical Jesus usually seek (or create) the meaning of the parables in a modern or postmodern context, be that Christian or, e.g., Marxist socioeconomic analysis, psychological analysis from a Freudian or Jungian point of view, an existentialist hermeneutic of human life that prescinds from God and religion, or even a postmodern hermeneutic that revels in the indeterminacy of the parables, a hermeneutic that playfully turns everything upside down and inside out without ever arriving at any definite message (diversity is all). While such a literary-intellectual exercise can prove an entertaining romp, one must accept from the start that in any such approach uncontrolled by historical criteria or context, a given parable means or can be made to mean whatever the scholar wants it to mean. The parables become simply Rorschach inkblots for the interpreter to play with: right you are if you think you are. 27

28

A Marginal Jew, 2. 404–23.

29

A Marginal Jew, 3. 154–63.

30

Ibid., 148–54.

31 There is no point repeating here the lengthy bibliographies available in monographs on this parable; see in particular the bibliographies in Klyne Snodgrass, The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (WUNT 27; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1983) 119–26 (supplemented by the exegesis and notes on the parable in Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 276–99, 677–86); Ulrich Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer (WUNT 77; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1994) 387–426; John S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard, 587–618. My concern in what follows in the main text is a judgment about whether the parable of the Evil Tenants, in whole or in part, goes back to the historical Jesus. Exegetical observations are therefore limited to what is relevant to that question, with secondary matters being relegated to the endnotes. For detailed exegesis of all aspects of this parable, see, in addition to the previously mentioned monographs, the standard commentaries on Mark, notably Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium (HTKNT 2; 2 vols.; Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 1976, 1977) 2. 213–24; Robert H. Gundry, Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 659–64, 682–91; Paul Lamarche, Evangile de Marc (EBib 33; Paris: Gabalda, 1996) 278–81; Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 (Word Biblical Commentary 34B; Nashville: Nelson, 2001) 210–40; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007) 540–49; Joel Marcus, Mark (AYB 27 and 27A; 2 vols.; New Haven/London: Yale University, 2000, 2009) 2. 801– 15. For a treatment that pointedly waives the q ­ uestion of the origin of the Marcan

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version of the parable in Jesus’ ministry in favor of interpreting it in its Marcan context (especially the reference to “the others” to whom the vineyard is given in Mark 12:9), see Kelly R. Iverson, “Jews, Gentiles, and the Kingdom of God: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants in Narrative Perspective (Mark 12:1–12),” Biblical Interpretation 20 (2012) 305–35 (taking “the others” as a reference to the Gentiles). From a grammatical point of view, the quotation of LXX Ps 117:22–23 in Mark 12:10b–11 stands in apposition to and explains the noun graphe¯n (“Scripture text”), the object of the verb oude anegno¯te (“have you not read . . . ?”). Being a rhetorical question, the phrase “have you not read” presupposes that the audience (the temple authorities) has indeed read the text. From a functional point of view, then, the quotation in effect answers the further question that would necessarily arise in the mind of anyone hearing v 10a: “What Scripture text do you mean?” 32

In favor of the dependence of the Thomasine form of the parable on the Synoptics, especially Luke, see Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 217–19; cf. Jean-Marie Sevrin, “Un groupement de trois paraboles contre les richesses dans l’Evangile selon Thomas. EvTh 63, 64, 65,” Les paraboles évangéliques. Perspectives nouvelles (ed. Jean Delorme; Paris: Cerf, 1989) 425–39. For a defense of Thomas’ independence with regard to the Evil Tenants, see Crossan, In Parables, 86–96; for a rebuttal, see Quarles, “The Use of the Gospel of Thomas,” 517–36, esp. 524–34. Crossan, like many others who take CGT 65 to be the original form of the parable, attempts a socioeconomic interpretation in the context of “the Galilean turbulence of the period” (Crossan, ibid., 96); cf. Funk et al., The Five Gospels, 101, 510–11; also Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 74–75 (“a realistic description of the revolutionary attitude of the Galilean peasants towards the foreign landlords . . .”). In a similar vein, Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh (Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels [2d ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003] 200) suggest that the pre-Marcan parable was a warning addressed not to the temple authorities in Jerusalem but rather to absentee landowners in Galilee who expropriated and extorted “the produce of the land from their tenants.” One of the problems of such an approach (besides the fact that it totally ignores the plausible context agreed upon by all three Synoptics in order to invent a purely hypothetical context) is that it presupposes a Galilee in constant social and political turmoil during the time of Jesus. Actually, compared with Judea, the Galilee of Herod Antipas seems to have been relatively quiet and stable; on this see A Marginal Jew, 1. 278–85. In fact, after a detailed study of climate, wars, and political upheavals, Morten H. Jensen (“Climate, Droughts, Wars, and Famines in Galilee as a Background for Understanding the Historical Jesus,” JBL 131 [2012] 307–24) concludes that in Galilee “the periods under first Antipas and then Agrippa I and finally direct Roman rule seem to have been times of peace and stability.” In addition, one should note that nothing in Mark’s story indicates either that the tenant farmers are oppressed and impoverished peasants or that the owner of the vineyard is a foreigner or is living abroad, contra Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 2. 215; see also Marcus, Mark, 2. 811. As Evans points out (ibid., 232), the Hellenistic papyri from Egypt indicate that at times “wealthy commercial farmers” would sign “lease 33



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agreements to supervise large, profitable farms”—a better fit for the affluent temple authorities who, at least in all the Synoptic versions, are the target of the parable. Indeed, if one were to insist on finding a likely socioeconomic background for this parable in the mouth of the historical Jesus (a dubious project in any case), Judea and in particular Jerusalem, governed on a day-to-day basis by the wealthy high priestly families and the lay nobility, would be the more probable candidate. And this is precisely the setting that all three Synoptics give the parable. A Marginal Jew, 1. 180. Some authors would refer to this argument in terms of “coherence,” understood in a wide sense: i.e., coherence not simply with other words and actions of Jesus, but also with the Palestinian geography, culture, and history in which he operated. 34

Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard, 355–586. Kloppenborg also supplies a useful summary of major approaches to the interpretation of the Evil Tenants in the 19th and 20th centuries: (i) as an allegory developed by the early church (pp. 50–70); (ii) as an allegorical parable spoken by Jesus himself (pp. 71–105); and (iii) as an original “realistic fiction” later overlaid with allegorical interpretations (pp. 106–48). 35

36 The claim by some commentators (e.g., Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 74–76) that the tenant farmers take the arrival of the son to mean that his father is dead and that therefore the death of the son would leave them free to inherit the vineyard (i) arbitrarily introduces into the parable a key plot mechanism that is simply not present in the text (a common problem with the exegesis of Synoptic parables) and (ii) presumes a legal state of affairs that did not hold true in Palestine in the early 1st century a.d. under either Roman or Jewish law. The contorted attempts by scholars like Jeremias to show how the expectations of the tenant farmers were realistic both misrepresent the actual political and social situation in Galilee at the time of Jesus and ignore the fact that the cold-blooded murder of the son by the farmers would invalidate any claim they otherwise might have in Roman or Jewish law to inherit the vineyard. On these points, see Marcus, Mark, 2. 803–4. For a sober attempt to balance the realistic elements of the parable with the fictional or highly imaginative, see Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer, 117–31. In my opinion, the unrealistic elements in the story begin in Mark 12:5: after the tenants have not only beaten, dishonored, and wounded a number of slaves, they proceed to kill one of the owner’s slaves. That the owner would continue to send “many others,” with some being beaten and others being killed, is incredible. That he would then send his son (apparently alone), with the bizarrely unrealistic hope that the tenants would respect him, leads us into a world of pure fantasy in v 6. Hence, by the time the tenants have killed the son with the hope of inheriting the vineyard (vv 7–8) and the owner, after providing no armed defense for his slaves or his son, uses massive force in v 9 to “destroy the tenants,” any pretense of a realistic narrative has long since evaporated. Here I must disagree with John S. Kloppenborg (“The Representation of Violence in Synoptic Parables,” Mark and Matthew I. Comparative Readings: Understanding the Earliest Gos-

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pels in their First-Century Settings [WUNT 271; ed. Eve-Marie Becker and Anders Runesson; Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 2011] 323–51), who claims (pp. 334–35) that vv 1–8 have “at least . . . the ring of verisimilitude,” while v 9, with its deus ex machina conclusion, does not. By the time we reach v 9, the ship of realistic narrative has long since sailed; it went over the horizon by the end of v 5. For parallels to the Evil Tenants in the parables of the later rabbis, see Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 220–22. Evans conflates the question of the plausibility of the characters’ actions in the parable with the question of whether the Evil Tenants goes back to the historical Jesus; but one question does not logically depend upon the other. In addition, Evans (pp. 224–28) uses the claims of Semitisms in the Marcan text as well as echoes of the MT and the (much later) Targum of Isaiah (on which, see A Marginal Jew, 2. 287 n. 113) to argue for the parable’s authenticity. A problem with Evans’s argument is that he seems to work with a binary mind-set: the parable comes either from the historical Jesus or from the later Greek-speaking Christian church in the Diaspora. Here as elsewhere in disputes over authenticity a third option is ignored: creation by disciples of Jesus who heard and learned from his parables during the public ministry and who imitated his creativity in the early days of the Aramaic-speaking church in Palestine. This third possibility has bearing on a suggestion made by many scholars in favor of the parable’s authenticity, especially conservative exegetes who argue for the entirety of Mark 12:1–11 (including the two conclusions) coming from the historical Jesus. These exegetes point out that in the Semitic original of the parable there was a wordplay on the Hebrew word for “son” (be¯n) and the Hebrew word for “stone” (ʾeben). This wordplay would have tied the narrative proper of the parable (“son” in v 6) with the second conclusion of the parable (“stone” in v 10). Hence the whole parable would have come from Jesus, and not from the later Greek-speaking church of Mark or his forebears. There are two problems with this approach: (1) Presumably, Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic, as usual. While the Hebrew be¯n is used as a loan word in Aramaic, the native Aramaic word for “son” is bar. Then, too, while Aramaic does use ʾeben for “stone,” it also possesses native Aramaic words for the concept, including the famous kêpa¯ʾ. Since all retroversions from our Greek texts of the Gospels to a supposed original Aramaic must remain hypothetical, we must allow for the possibility that the original Aramaic form of the parable used bar for “son” and kêpa¯ʾ for “stone,” eliminating the supposed wordplay. (2) Even if one should allow that the original Aramaic of the parable used be¯n and ʾeben, the presence of such a wordplay does not prove that the whole unit of Mark 12:1–11 comes from the historical Jesus. Allowing for a creative stage in which disciples of Jesus imitated his parable-making in the early days of the Aramaic-speaking church in Palestine, nothing would prevent such disciples from creating the wordplay when they added 12:10–11 to provide a proclamation of God’s vindication of his son after a narrative that ended simply with the son’s death. 37

38 Some might see Matt 25:29 || Luke 19:26 as an exception, but the maxim contained in these verses can be understood as a concluding comment spoken by a char-



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acter within the world of the parable. Likewise, Luke 16:31, with the introductory eipen de auto˛ˉ (“but he said to him . . .”), is ostensibly spoken within the world of the parable by Abraham, addressing the rich man. 39 In making this claim, I am not counting the stock and generic phrase “The kingdom of God [or: heaven] is like . . .” as a specific interpretive element in the same sense that the phrase “Who then is the reliable and prudent servant . . .” is. The latter phrase supplies a specific focus and interpretation to the parable it introduces that the former phrase does not. 40 Since the focus of the analysis in the main text is the structure and movement of the story in the parable, viewed through the prism of form, tradition, and literary criticism, I do not engage in detailed commentary on the individual verses. Secondary observations on individual words and verses will be confined to these endnotes. To begin at the beginning: in Mark 12:1, it is generally agreed by commentators that Mark (though not necessarily Luke) is alluding to the beginning of Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isa 5:1–7), though Mark’s wording does not agree completely with either the LXX or the MT. See, for instance, the analysis of Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer, 78–98. In all such comparisons, though, one must remember (1) the fluidity of text types and versions around the turn of the era and (2) the caveat that the move from comparisons between OT texts and their NT appropriation on the one hand (especially when one is not dealing with direct quotations) to theories about the form-critical stages of the NT text on the other can be highly speculative. One must also realize that the OT source text (i.e., Isa 5:1–7) should not be pressed to explain every aspect of the Marcan parable. A clear example of this is the fact that in the Song of the Vineyard, it is the vineyard that is at fault for failing to produce fruit, and hence Yahweh wreaks his vengeance on the vineyard itself, rendering it incapable of further fruit-bearing. In contrast, in the Marcan parable, it is presupposed that the vineyard has yielded fruit, but that the guilty tenants refuse to hand over the part of the harvest that belongs to the owner; on this change of focus, see Gundry, Mark, 659. In the end, though, the tenants are destroyed not for refusing to hand over the fruit but rather for the murder of the owner’s son. The still-existing vineyard is then leased to new tenants with presumably positive results. One sees, then, how misleading it would be to press a point-by-point correspondence between Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard and Mark’s parable of the Evil Tenants. In any event, the metaphor of the people Israel as the vine or vineyard of Yahweh is widespread enough in the OT and intertestamental literature (see, e.g., Isa 1:8; 27:2; Ezek 19:10; Ps 80:8–16) to be immediately recognizable in Mark 12:1. Granted this traditional imagery, the “man” in Mark 12:1 would almost automatically be identified by a Jewish audience with God—an impression that is confirmed by Mark’s later reference to the man as “the owner [ho kyrios] of the vineyard” in v 9; on this see Marcus, Mark, 2. 804–5. In view of how the parable’s story develops, one should note how the OT theme of Israel as God’s vineyard is sometimes joined by the prophets to a denunciation of Israel’s leaders for having hurt or destroyed the vineyard (e.g., Isa 3:12–14; Jer 12:10).

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The number of slaves sent and the number of times they are sent varies in each Synoptic account. There is nothing inherently unlikely in Mark’s presentation of a single slave being sent, since his “receiving some of the fruit” might well refer not to hauling off a vast basket of grapes but rather to receiving the monetary value from the sale of some of the grapes. That violence was in fact wreaked upon such legal emissaries in an agricultural context is attested by the Hellenistic papyri; besides the lengthy dossier compiled by Kloppenborg, see Martin Hengel, “Das Gleichnis von den Weingärtnern Mc 12:1–12 im Lichte der Zenonpapyri und der rabbinischen Gleichnisse,” ZNW 59 (1968) 1–39, esp. 11–31.—The curious verb kephalioo¯ (Mark 12:4)—used in other Greek writings in the sense of “to sum up” or “summarize” (see, e.g., Sir 32:8) but nowhere else in the sense of “to wound in the head”—has led to endless speculation by commentators; given the ascending order of outrages in Mark’s version of the story and the fact that the verb ekephalio¯san is followed immediately by e¯timasan (“they dishonored [him]”), the mystery verb most likely refers to striking or wounding a person in the head, or possibly mistreating his head in a dishonorable way (e.g., shaving the head or beard; cf. 2 Sam 10:2–5 and its LXX version); on various suggestions, see Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer, 102–4. The order of the two verbs argues against the ingenious suggestion of John Dominic Crossan (“The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,” JBL 90 [1971] 451–65, esp. 452) that the servant referred to in Mark 12:4 is John the Baptist. Moreover, John’s beheading in Mark 6:27 is narrated with a different compound of the verb: apekephalisen—an odd choice if Mark intends any reader to recognize an at best obscure cross-reference. Even more unlikely is the suggestion by some scholars (e.g., David Stern, “Jesus’ Parables from the Perspective of Rabbinic Literature: The Example of the Wicked Husbandmen,” Parable and Story in Judaism and Christianity [ed. Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod; Studies in Judaism and Christianity; New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989] 42–80, esp. 63–68) that in the original parable (in what conceivable form?) John the Baptist was the final figure sent by the owner of the vineyard. As Marcus points out (Mark, 2. 803), in the parable the son is murdered by a group called “the builders” (most likely understood from the beginning as the temple authorities in Jerusalem), while Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, was the sole person possessing the power to kill the Baptist—both in Mark and in Josephus. 41

42 The qualification in 12:6 of the one person left as “a beloved son” (huion agape¯ton) may serve multiple literary and theological purposes: (1) Within Mark’s total composition, it evokes the two descriptions of Jesus by the voice from heaven at the baptism and the transfiguration (1:11; 9:7). (2) There may also be a reference to Isaac, Abraham’s son, whom the LXX of Gen 22:2 describes as “your beloved son” (ton huion sou ton agape¯ton) precisely in the context of God ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son. The MT of 22:2 speaks instead of “your only son.” The Hebrew adjective for “only,” ya¯hîd, is often translated in the LXX by agape¯tos, a translation ˙   case by the fact that the MT continues in v 2 with the made all the easier in this further description of Isaac: “. . . whom you love.”



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There may be a number of scriptural allusions here: (1) The plot of Jezebel to fulfill King Ahab’s wish to obtain the vineyard of the recalcitrant Naboth; Jezebel has Naboth killed so that Ahab may seize his “inheritance” (kle¯ronomian in LXX 3 Kgdms 20:3 = MT 1 Kgs 21:3), i.e., the vineyard; (2) the plot of Joseph’s brothers to kill him (Gen 37:18–28), with the exact same words uttered by the wouldbe murderers in LXX Gen 37:20 as in Mark 12:7: “Come, let us kill him” (deute apokteino¯men auton). Pesch (Das Markusevangelium, 2. 219) notes that the same phrase (deute apokteino¯men) is used in the plot to kill Joseph’s wife Aseneth and his brother Benjamin in Jos. Asen. 27:8; for a critical text with a German translation, see Joseph und Aseneth (ed. Eckart Reinmuth; Sapere 15; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2009) 56–137, esp. 124. Pesch also points to echoes of the Joseph story present in Mark 12:1–11 that are likewise found in various passages of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 43

It is odd that Evans (Mark 8:27–16:20, 236) speculates that the answer to Jesus’ first rhetorical question was originally given by the crowd. This is a strange suggestion on a number of grounds: (1) No text-critical evidence and no Synoptic parallel support this idea. (2) This suggestion completely ignores Mark’s carefully constructed literary balance of the two rhetorical questions posed by Jesus and immediately answered (directly or indirectly) by Jesus. (3) In Mark’s composition, the immediate addressees and those immediately reacting to the parable are the chief priests, scribes, and elders (11:27), not the crowd, which is only mentioned as the object of the leaders’ fear (12:12). Indeed, one wonders what the crowd would mean by “he will give the vineyard to others” (v 9). On the level of Mark’s redactional theology, the natural opposite of the rejected temple authorities would be the leaders of the early church (see Marcus, Mark, 2. 805, 813–14, who also considers the possibility that for Mark the “others” are the increasingly Gentile church)—a meaning impossible to attribute to the Jewish crowds in this or any other scene in Mark’s Gospel. At the same time, it needs to be stressed that in Mark (as perhaps distinct from Matt 21:43), the reference is to a change in leadership in Israel, not a replacement of Israel by the church. 44

Pesch (Das Markusevangelium, 2. 220–23) thinks that, while Mark 12:10–11 (the psalm citation) is an early addition by the primitive Christian community, the whole of the parable in 12:1–11 is free of redactional additions by Mark. Hence, for Pesch, the original parable ended with v 9. Even more conservative is the view of Evans (Mark 8:27–16:20, 231), who restricts Mark’s redactional additions to vv 1a,5b, and 12; everything else, at least in substance if not in exact wording (he allows for assimilation of OT texts to the LXX) comes from Jesus. More common is the view among exegetes that the pre-Marcan parable originally ended with what I call the first conclusion (v 9), which foretells the destruction of the tenants by the owner of the vineyard; see, e.g., Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer, 97–98; Collins, Mark, 543; Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 70–77. Among these authors, views on what if anything goes back to the historical Jesus differ. On the question of where the 45

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parable originally ended, I side with John Dominic Crossan (Four Other Gospels [Minneapolis/Chicago/New York: Winston/Seabury, 1985] 57), who rightly sees a break occurring first in v 9, instead of waiting for vv 10–11. While I do not agree with all of Crossan’s arguments (he accepts the independence and primitive nature of CGT 65–66), he is right in maintaining that Jesus’ rhetorical question in v 9a “breaks the parabolic closure . . . [as] the tense is changed from past to future.” Crossan also notes that “the owner’s belated use of force and his decision to go on with the leasing program thereafter does not increase the narrative plausibility.” Finally, Crossan suggests that the rhetorical question in v 9a is a secondary allusion to Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard, where in LXX Isa 5:4 (the MT is basically the same) God asks a rhetorical question: “What shall I do further for my vineyard that [literally in the LXX: ‘and’] I have not done for it?” Notice how God’s question, “What shall I do . . . ?,” becomes Jesus’ question, “What shall the lord [or owner, kyrios] of the vineyard do?” While not every argument Crossan brings forward is of equal validity, his basic insight about the break in v 9 is convincing. A similar (though not the same) position is held by Klauck (Allegorie und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten, 310), who sees v 9 as a pre-Marcan addition to the parable. In Klauck’s view, the ending in v 9 introduces a deus ex machina in contradistinction to the “open ending of the original parable.” 46 On the many philological, exegetical, and hermeneutical problems connected with Psalm 118 (= LXX Psalm 117), see the standard commentaries on the psalms, e.g., Franz Delitzsch, Die Psalmen (5th ed.; Giessen/Basel: Brunnen, 1894; reprint 1984) 703–10; Arthur Weiser, The Psalms (OTL; London: SCM, 1962) 722–30; HansJoachim Kraus, Psalms 60–150 (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989) 392–401; Robert G. Bratcher and William D. Reyburn, A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Psalms (New York: United Bible Societies, 1991) 986–95; Konrad Schaefer, Psalms (Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001) 288–91; see also Joachim Jeremias, “Kephale¯ go¯nias—Akrogo¯niaios,” ZNW 29 (1930) 264–80; Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer, 126–27. The psalm (and especially vv 22–23) has called forth a number of monographs; see, e.g., Michael Giesler, Christ the Rejected Stone  .  . . (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, 1974); Michel Berder, “La pierre rejetée par les bâtisseurs”: Psaume 118,22–23 et son emploi dans les traditions juives et dans le Nouveau Testament (EBib 31; Paris: Gabalda, 1996); Martin Mark, Meine Stärke und mein Schutz ist der Herr. Poetologisch-theologische Studie zu Psalm 118 (FB 92; Würzburg: Echter, 1999); Michael Cahill, “Not a Cornerstone! Translating Ps 118,22 in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures,” RB 106 (1999) 345–57. Many problems that concern the commentators (e.g., what are the divisions of the literary structure; in which formcritical category should the psalm be classified; whether the occasion of the psalm is a military victory, the autumn feast of Yahweh’s enthronement, or the feast of Sukkoth; how the various voices in the psalm should be identified, such as the chorus, the individual worshiper, the king, or the priests) would not have concerned either Jesus or Mark and so are irrelevant to our purpose. Whether the psalm had acquired an eschatological or messianic sense in the pre-Christian period is a more relevant question, but unfortunately one for which there is no definite ­answer at present. Such



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eschatological or messianic tones are certainly found in later Jewish literature. Evans (Mark 8:27–16:20, 228–30, 238) uses this later literature, especially the Targum of the Psalms (which interprets Psalm 118 with messianic and Davidic references), to understand the mind of the historical Jesus as he cites this psalm. However, the use of the Targum of the Psalms is problematic, since the “date of composition . . . remains very uncertain,” according to David M. Stec, The Targum of Psalms (The Aramaic Bible 16; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004) 2. Stec inclines to a date between the 4th and 6th centuries a.d., “but this is little more than guesswork.” See also Paul V. M. Flesher and Bruce Chilton, The Targums: A Critical Introduction (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2011). Flesher and Chilton note that the Targum of the Psalms belongs to the wider category of the Targums to the Writings (the ke˘ tûbîm), most of which “were composed rather late,” usually in Late Jewish Literary Aramaic, “the latest Aramaic dialect of the Late Aramaic period” (pp. 230–31). Flesher and Chilton go on to caution that modern academic study of the Targum of Psalms is still in its early stages (pp. 252–54). In view of the scarce direct or indirect evidence of the targum’s existence in the ancient period, I would favor composition in the early medieval period, but the question remains murky. Whatever one’s estimate, one has to accept that a work like the Targum of the Psalms doubtless went through a number of stages of tradition and redaction over a lengthy period. In any event, the free and creative translation (if one can even call the text of v 22 in the targum of Psalm 118 a translation) is striking: “The architects forsook the youth among the sons of Jesse [i.e., David], but he was worthy to be appointed king and ruler” (so Stec, ibid., 210). On the wider question of targums and Jewish messianism, see Samson H. Levey, The Messiah: An Aramiac Interpretation (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1974). The odd thing about this psalm citation is that the extratextual realities to which “the stone” and “the builders” refer are clearer in Mark’s Gospel (Jesus and the temple authorities respectively) than they are in the original text of the psalm. At least on the level of Mark’s redaction, the “builders” who “rejected” (apedokimasan) the stone in 12:10 are clearly cross-referenced with the elders, high priests, and scribes (the same group as in 11:27, who presumably are the audience of the parable in 12:1), who will cause the Son of Man to be “rejected” (apodokimasthe¯nai, 8:31) in the Passion Narrative; on this, see Collins, Mark, 548. In contrast, commentators on the Book of Psalms argue over whether the original referents of “the builders” in MT Ps 118:22 were the Gentile nations and their rulers, who despised Israel (so Schaefer, Psalms, 291), or the people of Israel and/or some subdivision thereof: the rulers of Israel in general, the king in particular, the temple priests, or those who work on the temple (see, e.g., Delitzsch, Die Psalmen, 708; Giesler, Christ, 52). The “stone” is even more difficult to interpret. Some exegetes suggest that MT Ps 118:22 is citing a popular proverb (see, e.g., Bratcher and Reyburn, A Translator’s Handbook, 993; Cahill, “Not a Cornerstone!,” 345–57) and applying it to, e.g., the king, the people Israel, or the individual worshiper (or, in later Judaism, to a messiah; see Berder, “La pierre rejetée,” 204–45). Others reject the idea of a proverb (for which there is no proof) and interpret the metaphor of the stone as a symbol chosen by the author of the psalm, who uses an image seen in other OT passages that speak of a 47

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stone (e.g., Isa 28:16; Zech 4:7; cf. MT Neh 3:34; Ezra 3:10–12); so Martin Mark, Meine Stärke, 252. In any event, the general sense seems clear enough: some individual or group that was previously despised and rejected has experienced a great reversal, thanks to the help of Yahweh, and has become valued and honored for the firm stability he or they offer. 48 The para kyriou of LXX Ps 117:23 translates me¯ʾe¯t yhwh of the MT (which means, according to Martin Mark [Meine Stärke, 254], “with the help of Yahweh”). The citation in Mark 12:10b–11 reproduces exactly that of the LXX, which differs only slightly from the MT.

The problems with the cornerstone begin with the question of how the Hebrew phrase rôʾš pinnâ (literally, “head of corner”) in MT Ps 118:22 should be translated—part of the problem being that the Hebrew phrase is a hapax legomenon in Tanak. (A similar but not identical phrase is found in Jer 51:26a [ʾeben le˘ pinnâ, “a stone for a corner,” which is parallel to ʾeben le˘ môsa¯dôt, “a stone for foundations” in v 26b]; the question remains whether these two phrases in the first two lines of a tricolon are strictly synonymous or simply similar in meaning.) The likely candidates for the proper meaning of the phrase in MT Ps 118:22 include “cornerstone” (a square stone set where two walls meet), “foundation stone” (a stone placed at the foundation of a building, usually at a corner), “keystone” (a wedge-shaped stone set at the apex of an arch and locking its stones into position), the vaguer “capstone” (a finishing or protective stone set at the top of some structure or wall), or a “coping stone” (a stone that is part of the top layer or course of a masonry wall). Exegetical confusion on this point is compounded because commentators often use some of these phrases interchangeably, ignoring the subtle differences among them. Scholars who favor “cornerstone” and/or “foundation stone” include Bratcher and Reyburn, A Translator’s Handbook, 993; Mark, Meine Stärke, 243–49; Weiser, The Psalms, 728; R. J. McKelvey, “Christ the Cornerstone,” NTS 8 (1961–1962) 352–59 (though his major concern is with Eph 2:20–22). Even if one holds this to be the original meaning of the Hebrew phrase, one has to allow for a possible shift in meaning when the Hebrew was translated into Greek; on this, see Delitzsch, Die Psalmen, 708. However, a number of commentators, influenced by the opinion of Jeremias (“Kephale¯ go¯nias,” 264–80), opt for translations like “keystone” (which is not always sufficiently distinguished from “capstone”), the “capital” on the top of a pillar, or the “pinnacle” of a building; see, e.g., Marcus, Mark, 2. 808–9; Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 238. While admitting the inherent vagueness and ambiguity of the term, Cahill (“Not a Cornerstone!,” 356–57) prefers the idea of a stone on the top of a fortified wall or tower. Although I think that the thrust of the metaphor in the Marcan context favors the idea of “foundation stone” or “cornerstone” in 12:10 (on this, see Mell, Die “anderen” Winzer, 126–27), the question is not relevant to my purposes, since I judge the citation of LXX Psalm 117 in Mark 12:10–11 to be a later Christian addition to the core parable that goes back to Jesus. 49

For the Marcan Jesus, speaking within the story world of Mark’s Gospel, this aorist is a “prophetic aorist”; for the actual Christian audience listening to Mark’s Gospel, the aorist refers to an event now past. 50



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This observation is made in regard to the Synoptic parables in general, irrespective of their origin in the historical Jesus, the early church, or the evangelist. It is all the more telling that this claim applies to all the Synoptic parables that have applications or explanations, whether or not these parables are authentic. 51

52 This is not to deny that some parables may leave questions in the listener’s mind “to tease it into active thought.” For example, the main plot of the parable of the Prodigal Son is set in motion by the younger son’s request for his share of his father’s estate and his speedy departure to a foreign country after receiving it, only to waste the whole inheritance in short order (Luke 15:12–13). That plot line reaches a satisfying, if surprising, conclusion in the father’s forgiveness of his son and the restoration of the son to his former position, along with his father’s justification of his paradoxical action to his angry older son (vv 22–24,31–32). The attentive listener may indeed wonder whether the older son will finally accept his father’s invitation to enter the house and join in the celebration—a question not answered within the story world of the parable. However, one should note the following: (1) No further explanation or nimša¯l supplied by Jesus resolves this question by advancing or adding to the narrative (unlike Mark 12:9 + 10–11); the whole rhetorical ploy of the ending of the Prodigal Son aims at placing the listeners in the position of the older son and having the listeners answer that question for themselves. (2) More to the point: as far as the main plot line of the Prodigal Son begun in vv 12–13 is concerned, it does reach a satisfying closure. 53 Commentators differ over what exactly Mark added to the primitive version of the parable. Apart from the introductory narrative in 12:1a, frequently mentioned candidates include the generalizing second half of v 5: “. . . and many others, some of whom they beat, others of whom they killed.” While this vague multiplication of emissaries emphasizes the deuteronomistic theme of the large number of prophets sent to Israel “early and late,” it disrupts the “law of threes” found in many popular folk narratives and in a number of parables. The law of threes is reflected in the parable in the way in which the owner sends out in order precisely three slaves, each meeting a worse fate: from beating through injury-plus-shame to death. Piling up an unnumbered mass of further emissaries, some merely beaten, others killed, destroys the carefully ascending line of greater crime and horror, all focused on three distinct individuals. The other main candidate for a Marcan (or at least a post-Jesus) addition is part or all of the phrase “one . . . beloved son” in v 6. Obviously, in Mark’s Gospel, this phrase carries the high christological sense given it by the voice of God at the baptism (1:11) and the transfiguration (9:7). But need it have such an openly christological meaning in a hypothetical primitive form of the parable spoken by Jesus? Here opinions differ, with some commentators deleting “one,” others deleting “beloved,” and still others deleting both words. At the very least, the word “son” is demanded by the core narrative of the parable, not only as a contrast-figure to the previously sent “slaves” but also as a necessary link in the chain of the plot, since the farmers act at the climax in vv 7–8 because the one sent is the heir, whose death would clear the way for them to obtain the vineyard. This makes sense only if the victim of their final murder is the owner’s son and, at least by implication,

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his only son. In the end, my own opinion is that the overloaded second half of v 5 and perhaps the words “one” and “beloved” were added to the parable by Mark or a pre-Marcan redactor. I doubt whether much more that is probable can be said. Other exegetes, however, offer more detailed reconstructions with many more Marcan or pre-Marcan additions. Mell (Die “anderen” Winzer, 97–98), for instance, reconstructs the original form of the text as Mark 12:1b–5b,6 (without “only” or “beloved”), 7ab (omitting the reference to the son’s being the heir), 8a,9. Inevitably, any such detailed reconstruction must remain highly speculative. At this point, some might wish to reopen the question of the independent and/or primitive nature of the version of the Evil Tenants in CGT 65. After all, the Thomasine version of the story ends with the killing of the son—exactly what I am suggesting was the case with the primitive version of the parable that stands behind Mark’s version. But here we have a perfect example of how a second stage of redaction can accidentally and unknowingly replicate the hypothetical original version of a text. As we saw in Chapter 38, specific redactional concerns of the Thomasine author (e.g., rejection of OT Scripture, prophecy, and typology, as well as the rejection of any notion of stages of salvation history tied to the Jews; avoidance of references to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead; and a desire to eliminate clarifying explanations of parables, thus creating enigmas whose secret meanings must be sought) caused the author to prune the Marcan parable severely. In this, he was following the example of Luke, who had already abbreviated the Marcan text to a notable degree. The resulting text in CGT 65 coincides in some respects with the hypothetically primitive version I suggest; but this is a matter of coincidence, not of Thomas having special access to such a primitive tradition. Actually, there is nothing all that unusual in a second stage of redaction of a NT text just happening to revert accidentally to a primitive form of the tradition. As we saw in both Volume One (pp. 132–33) and Volume Four (pp. 102–28) of A Marginal Jew, this phenomenon occurs when Matthew redacts Jesus’ prohibition of divorce in Mark 10:11–12. In Matt 19:9 (Matthew’s parallel to Mark 10:11–12), under the influence of the Jewish-Christian tradition of his church, Matthew removes Mark’s ideas that a woman can divorce her husband or that an adulterous husband commits adultery against his first wife. In omitting these views of divorce, which reflect Roman rather than Palestinian-Jewish culture, Matthew accidentally returns the Marcan version of the prohibition of divorce to its hypothetically primitive version. This unwitting coincidence is due not to Matthew’s superior knowledge of the most primitive form of Jesus’ sayings but rather to his pruning of the Marcan version for his own theological purposes. The same pattern is visible in CGT 65 vis-à-vis the Synoptic versions of the Evil Tenants. 54

For relevant texts from the OT, intertestamental literature (e.g., the Lives of the Prophets), Qumran, Josephus, and the rabbis, see Odil Hannes Steck, Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten (WMANT 23; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967). For his treatment of the parable of the Evil Tenants, see pp. 269–73. On the wider topic, see Joachim Jeremias, Heiligengräber in Jesu Umwelt (Mt. 23, 29; Lk. 11, 47). Eine Untersuchung zur Volksreligion der Zeit Jesu 55



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(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958). On pp. 11–12, Jeremias notes that the present form of the Lives of the Prophets is the result of Christian redaction; however, he thinks that the original basic work was of Jewish origin and was composed prior to a.d. 70. For a similar view on dating, see Douglas R. A. Hare, “The Lives of the Prophets,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (AYBRL; ed. James H. Charlesworth; 2 vols.; New Haven/London: Yale University, 1983, 1985) 2. 379–99, esp. 380–81. As already indicated, “one” (hena) and “beloved” (agape¯ton) in 12:6 may be Marcan or pre-Marcan additions to the original parable. 56

57 It is strange that some critics dispute this setting, which fits the thrust of the parable perfectly and is accepted by all three Synoptics (and not all of Mark’s settings are taken over by Matthew and Luke when it comes to the other parables), only to waive any attempt to establish an alternate setting or purpose for the parable.

On “stone testimonies” and stone metaphors in general, see C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures (London: Fontana/Collins, 1952, reprint 1965) 21, 24–25, 35–36, 41–43, 69; also Edward Gordon Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (London: Macmillan, 1949) 268–77; Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 149–68. 58

Not surprisingly, this stone tradition continues beyond the NT into the patristic period; see, e.g., Barn. 6:2–4 (citing both Isa 28:16 and LXX Ps 117:22,24). The stone tradition is also seen in later Jewish texts (e.g., some targums), but I am leery of retrojecting such traditions into the pre-Christian period. 59

60 For convenience’ sake, I use the title “parable of the Great Supper” for both the Matthean and the Lucan forms of the parable, though strictly speaking this title fits Luke’s version much better than Matthew’s. For a sample of various views on the parable, with references to further bibliography, see, in addition to the standard commentaries on Matthew and Luke, Agnes Smith Lewis, “Matthew xxii. 4,” ExpTim 24 (1912–13) 427; William B. Selbie, “The Parable of the Marriage Feast (Matthew xxii. 1–14),” ExpTim 37 (1925–26) 266–69; Herbert Musurillo, “Many Are Called, but Few Are Chosen,” TS 7 (1946) 583–89; Francis W. Beare, “The Parable of the Guests at the Banquet: A Sketch of the History of Its Interpretation,” The Joy of Study (Frederick Clifton Grant Festschrift; ed. Sherman E. Johnson; New York: Macmillan, 1951) 1–14; E. H. Merriman, “Matthew xxii. 1–14,” ExpTim 66 (1954– 55) 61; Edmond Boissard, “Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen,” TD 3 (1955) 46– 50; K. R. J. Cripps, “A Note on Matthew xxii. 12,” ExpTim 69 (1957–58) 30; Eta Linnemann, “Überlegungen zur Parabel vom grossen Abendmahl, Lc 14,15–24/Mt 22,1–14,” ZNW 51 (1960) 246–55; Wolfgang Trilling, “Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Gleichnisses vom Hochzeitsmahl Mt 22,1–14,” BZ 4 (1960) 251–65; Karl H. Rengstorf, “Die Stadt der Mörder (Mt. 22,7),” Judentum, Urchristentum, Kirche (Joachim Jeremias Festschrift; ed. Walther Eltester; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960)

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106–29; Edmund F. Sutcliffe, “Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen,” ITQ 28 (1961) 126–31; Otto Glombitza, “Das grosse Abendmahl: Luk. 14:12–24,” NovT 5 (1962) 10–16; Victor Hasler, “Die königliche Hochzeit, Matth. 22,1–14,” TZ 18 (1962) 25–35; Richard J. Dillon, “Towards a Tradition-History of the Parables of the True Israel (Matthew 21:33–22:14),” Bib 47 (1966) 1–42; Sverre Aalen, “St Luke’s Gospel and the Last Chapters of 1 Enoch,” NTS 13 (1966–67) 1–13; Ernst Haenchen, “Das Gleichnis vom grossen Mahl,” Die Bibel und Wir. Gesammelte Aufsätze II (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1968) 135–55; Heinrich Schlier, “The Call of God,” The Relevance of the New Testament (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) 249–58; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The Parable of the Great Supper,” Law in the New Testament (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1970) 126–55; Ferdinand Hahn, “Das Gleichnis von der Einladung zum Festmahl,” Verborum Veritas (Gustav Stählin Festschrift; ed. Otto Böcher and Klaus Haacker; Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1970) 51–82; Anton Vögtle, “Die Einladung zum grossen Gastmahl und zum königlichen Hochzeitsmahl. Ein Paradigma für den Wandel des geschichtlichen Verständnishorizonts,” Das Evangelium und die Evangelien (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1971) 171–218; idem, Gott und seine Gäste: Das Schicksal des Gleichnisses Jesu vom grossen Gastmahl (Lukas 14,16b-24; Matthäus 22,2–14) (Biblisch-Theologische Studien 29; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1996); Georg Eichholz, Gleichnisse der Evangelien: Form, Überlieferung, Auslegung (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1971) 126–47; Alfons Weiser, Die Knechtsgleichnisse der synoptischen Evangelien (SANT 29; Munich: Kösel, 1971) 58–71; Dan O. Via, Jr., “The Relationship of Form to Content in the Parables: The Wedding Feast,” Int 25 (1971) 171–84; Paul H. Ballard, “Reasons for Refusing the Great Supper,” JTS 23 (1972) 341–50; James A. Sanders, “The Ethic of Election in Luke’s Great Banquet Parable,” Essays in Old Testament Ethics (J. Philip Hyatt Memorial Volume; ed. James L. Crenshaw and John T. Willis; New York: Ktav, 1974) 245–71; W. Selwyn Dawson, “The Gate Crasher,” ExpTim 85 (1973–74) 304–6; Detlev Dormeyer, “Literarische und theologische Analyse der Parabel Lk. 14,15–24,” BibLeb 15 (1974) 206–19; Humphrey Palmer, “Just Married, Cannot Come,” NovT 18 (1976) 241–57; Rudolf Pesch and Reinhard Kratz, “Gleichnis vom grossen Gastmahl,” So liest man synoptisch (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1978) 39–60; Eugene E. Lemcio, “The Parables of the Great Supper and the Wedding Feast: History, Redaction and Canon,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 8 (1986) 1–26; Luise Schottroff, “Das Gleichnis vom grossen Gastmahl in der Logienquelle,” EvT 47 (1987) 192–211; eadem, “Verheissung für alle Völker (Von der königlichen Hochzeit) Mt 22,1–14,” Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (ed. Ruben Zimmermann et al.; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007) 479–87; eadem, “Von der Schwierigkeit zu teilen (Das grosse Abendmahl) Lk 14,12–24 (EvThom 64),” ibid., 593– 603; Elaine Wainwright, “God Wills to Invite All to the Banquet, Matthew 22:1–10,” International Review of Mission 77 (1988) 185–93; Ben F. Meyer, “Many (= All) Are Called, but Few (= Not All) Are Chosen,” NTS 36 (1990) 89–97; David C. Sim, “The Man without the Wedding Garment (Matthew 22:11–13),” HeyJ 31 (1990) 165–78; idem, “Matthew 22.13a and 1 Enoch 10.4a: A Case of Literary Dependence?,” JSNT 47 (1992) 3–19; Victor E. Vine, “Luke 14:15–24 and Anti-Semitism,” ExpTim 102 (1990–91) 262–63; Jan Lambrecht, Out of the Treasure. The Parables in the Gospel



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of Matthew (Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 10; Louvain: Peeters; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 127–42; Willi Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14 (SNTSMS 85; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995); W. Gregory Carey, “Excuses, Excuses: The Parable of the Banquet (Luke 14:15–24) within the Larger Context of Luke,” IBS 17 (1995) 177–87; Richard Bauckham, “The Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast (Matthew 22:1–14) and the Parable of the Lame Man and the Blind Man (Apocryphon of Ezekiel),” JBL 115 (1996) 471–88; Willard M. Swartley, “Unexpected Banquet People (Luke 14:16–24),” Jesus and His Parables (ed. V. George Shillington; Edinburgh: Clark, 1997) 177–90; Hans Klein, “Botschaft für viele—Nachfolge von wenigen. Überlegungen zu Lk 14,15–35,” EvT 57 (1997) 427– 37; Klyne Snodgrass, “Common Life with Jesus. The Parable of the Banquet in Luke 14:16–24,” Common Life in the Early Church (Graydon F. Snyder Festschrift; ed. Julian V. Hills; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1998) 186–201; Rudolf Hoppe, “Das Gastmahlgleichnis Jesu (Mt 22,1–10/Lk 14,16–24) und seine vorevangelische Traditions­ geschichte,” Von Jesus zum Christus. Christologische Studien (BZNW 93; Paul Hoffmann Festschrift; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1998) 277–93; idem, “Tischgespräche und Nachfolgebedingungen. Überlegungen zum Gleichnis vom grossen Mahl Lk 14,16–24 im Kontext von Lk 14,1–35,” “Licht zur Erleuchtung der Heiden und Herrlichkeit für dein Volk Israel.” Studien zum lukanischen Doppelwerk (BBB 151; Josef Zmijewski Festschrift; ed. Christoph Gregor Müller: Hamburg: Philo, 2005) 115–30; John Paul Heil, The Meal Scenes in Luke–Acts (SBLMS 52; Atlanta: SBL, 1999) 106–11; Allan W. Martens, “‘Produce Fruit Worthy of Repentance.’ Parables of Judgment against the Jewish Religious Leaders and the Nation (Matt 21:28– 22:14, par.; Luke 13:6–9),” The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables (ed. Richard N. Longenecker; Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000) 151–76; W. J. C. Weren, “From Q to Matthew 22,1–14. New Light on the Transmission and Meaning of the Parable of the Guests,” Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus (BETL 158; ed. Andreas Lindemann; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 2001) 661–79; Warren Carter, “Resisting and Imitating the Empire. Imperial Paradigms in Two Matthean Parables,” Int 56 (2002) 260–72; Maria Cristina Pennacchio, “La parabola del banchetto nuziale (Mt 22,1–14) nell’esegesi origeniana,” Origeniana Octava. Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition. Papers of the 8th International Origen Congress, Pisa, 27–31 August 2001. Volume I (BETL 164; ed. Lorenzo Perrone et al.; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 2003), 687–98; Wesley G. Olmstead, Matthew’s Trilogy of Parables. The Nation, the Nations and the Reader in Matthew 21:28–22:14 (SNTSMS 127; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2003); Christian Münch, Die Gleichnisse Jesu im Matthäusevangelium. Eine Studie zu ihrer Form und Funktion (WMANT 104; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2004) 139–40, 203– 4, 255; Miguel Pérez Fernández, “Rabbinic Texts in the Exegesis of the New Testament,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 7 (2004) 95–120, esp. 109–13; Daniel C. Olson, “Matthew 22:1–14 as Midrash,” CBQ 67 (2005) 435–53; Luise Schottroff, Die Gleichnisse Jesu (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005) 69–78 = The Parables of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 49–56; Joseph Verheyden, “Evidence of 1 Enoch 10:4 in Matthew 22:13?,” Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honor of Florentino García Martínez (Supplements to the

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Journal for the Study of Judaism 122; ed. Anthony Hilhorst, Emile Puech, and Ei­bert Tigchelaar; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007) 449–66; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Homer, Hesiod, and Q,” BeO 50 (2008) 105–12, esp. 110–111; Elizabeth Dowling, “Slave Parables in the Gospel of Luke—Gospel ‘Texts of Terror’?,” AusBR 56 (2008) 61– 68, esp. 65; Peter-Ben Smit, Fellowship and Food in the Kingdom (WUNT 2/234; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2008) 157–67; Martin Ebner, “Symposion und Wassersucht, Reziprozitätsdenken und Umkehr. Sozialgeschichte und Theologie in Lk 14,1– 24,” Paulus und die antike Welt (FRLANT 222; Dietrich-Alex Koch Festschrift; ed. David C. Bienert, Joachim Jeska, and Thomas Witulski; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008) 115–35; John J. Kilgallen, Twenty Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (Subsidia biblica 32; Rome: Biblical Institute, 2008) 81–96; Bruce W. Longenecker, “A Humorous Jesus? Orality, Structure, and Characterisation in Luke 14:15– 24, and Beyond,” Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 179–204; Gregory E. Sterling, “‘Where Two or Three Are Gathered,’” 95–121; J. Lyle Story, “All Is Now Ready: An Exegesis of ‘The Great Banquet’ (Luke 14:15–24) and ‘The Marriage Feast’ (Matthew 22:1–14),” American Theological Inquiry 2 (2009) 67–79; Gary M. Burge, Jesus, the Middle Eastern Storyteller (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009) 43–53; James Metzger, “Disability and the Marginalisation of God in the Parable of the Snubbed Host (Luke 14.15–24),” Bible & Critical Theory 6 (2010) 23.1–23.15 (online); Guillaume Ingipay Migbisiegbe, “Loyalty to Jesus, Not to Judaism in Matthew 22,1–14,” EstBib 68 (2010) 473–90; Michael Theobald, “‘. . . und er schickte seine Heere aus’ (Mt 22,7). Der Gott des Gekreuzigten—ein Gott auch der Gewalt?,” TQ 191 (2011) 304–14; Marianne Blickenstaff, “Matthew’s Parable of the Wedding Feast (Matt 22:1–14),” RevExp 109 (2012) 261–68; John D. Crossan, The Power of Parable. How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (New York, HarperOne, 2012), esp. 108, 190–91; Joseph Nalpathilchira, “Everything Is Ready: Come to the Marriage Banquet.” The Parable of the Invitation to the Royal Marriage Banquet (Matt 22, 1–14) in the Context of Matthew’s Gospel (AnBib 196; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2012); Ernest van Eck, “When Patrons Are Patrons: A Social-Scientific and Realistic Reading of the Parable of the Feast (Lk 14:16b-23),” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 69 (2013) 14 pages (online). It was precisely this complicated and much-disputed relationship between the Matthean and Lucan forms of the Great Supper that led me to delay the treatment of CGT 64 until Chapter 40, instead of taking it up in Chapter 38. 61

62 Luke states openly what is implied in Matthew and is also known from a variety of ancient Mediterranean sources. In the case of large festive meals, an initial invitation would be sent to the prospective guests before the meal was prepared. Those who accepted the initial invitation would then receive a second invitation (or summons) when the meal was ready to be eaten. The particular custom reflected in this parable is mistaken by Lewis (“Matthew xxii. 4,” 427), who instead searches far afield in the Slavonic version of Ahiqar. (By way of a rough analogy to the ancient custom, one might think of the present-day courtesy of sending out to prospective



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wedding guests a “save the date” notice before the formal invitation confirming the exact time and place is issued.) 63 Technically, the understood subject is a vague neuter plural noun or pronoun (e.g., panta, “all things”), as the predicate adjective hetoima (“ready,” “prepared”) shows. As is usual in ancient Greek, a neuter plural subject takes a singular verb (so here, estin).

The phrase apo mias in Luke 14:18 is of uncertain meaning. Some commentators suggest “unanimously,” but this seems redundant when the immediately following subject is pantes (“all”). Other commentators see here a Semitism, e.g., min hada ˙   with the meaning of “all at once” or “immediately”; so, e.g., Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 176 n. 17. Aalen (“St Luke’s Gospel,” 3) thinks that Luke’s unusual apo mias parallels epi mias in a Greek fragment of 1 Enoch 99:9, thus suggesting that there is a literary connection between Luke’s Gospel and the Greek version of 1 Enoch. In an interesting coincidence, Sim (“Matthew 22.13a,” 3–19) argues that Matthew’s use of the symbolism of the binding and expulsion of the man without the wedding garment (Matt 22:13) is taken directly from the text of 1 Enoch as preserved in the Codex Panopolitanus (1 Enoch 10:4a). However, Verheyden (“Evidence,” 458–66) considers it “highly implausible” that Matthew or his source was citing 1 Enoch 10:4; indeed, Verheyden suggests that 1 Enoch 10:4 may show the influence of Matthew’s Gospel on the textual tradition of 1 Enoch (p. 466) in a Christian milieu. 64

The Greek word is ariston, literally “breakfast”; but the word can also be used for the midday meal. 65

66 Notice how Matthew’s panta hetoima (“all things are ready”) in Matt 22:4 corresponds to Luke’s hetoima estin (“they are ready”) in Luke 14:17.

Notice how Matthew’s deute (“come” in 22:4) corresponds to Luke’s erchesthe (“come” in 14:17). 67

Some commentators see in the excuses offered by the guests an allusion to the conditions listed in Deuteronomy that excuse some individuals from taking part in a holy war; see, e.g., Vine, “Luke 14:15–24,” 263; Swartley, “Unexpected Banquet People,” 184–85. For problems with such an approach (e.g., the list of excuses similar to the excuses in Deuteronomy is found in Luke’s version of the parable, but the reference to military action is in Matthew’s version), see Palmer, “Just Married,” 241–57 (with a treatment of various authors’ opinions). Derrett (“The Parable of the Great Supper,” 126–55) presents a highly imaginative and complicated variation on the appeal to Deuteronomy by combining it with Zeph 1:1–16, as read through the lens of much later Jewish material, including the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and the Midrash Rabbah. Derrett blithely moves back and forth among Jewish documents compiled centuries after Jesus and the evangelists. The assurance that they contain traditions 68

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dating to or before the time of Jesus is given without any convincing proof. On this, see Lemcio, “The Parables of the Great Supper and the Wedding Feast,” 23 n. 7. 69 As Trilling notes (“Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte,” 251), it is generally accepted that vv 6–7 (and also vv 11–14) are secondary additions to the original parable. We shall explore the reasons for this position at greater length later.

Jesus as the speaker of the parable and especially of this concluding “lesson” may be peeking through in this firm and final affirmation (“for I say to you”), with “you” (hymin) in the plural despite the fact that the “slave” (doulos) has been in the singular throughout the Lucan form of the parable. This may be an indication that v 24 is secondary in the tradition and possibly a Lucan redactional creation. Snodgrass (“Common Life,” 199) puts the point somewhat differently when he suggests that “the voice of Jesus and the host merge at this point,” with the plural “you” referring to all those present or to all those reading or hearing the parable. Linnemann (“Überlegungen,” 248) tries instead to understand the plural “you” as addressed to “the public” (?) by the householder, who wishes to explain his actions; in this way, Linnemann seeks to save v 24 for the core narrative of the parable, an exegetical move that sets up the problematic that drives her interpretation of the parable. 70

71 I pass over source theories and consequent interpretations of the parable that lie outside the critical mainstream and, in my opinion, are highly improbable. For example, Glombitza (“Das grosse Abendmahl,” 10–16, esp. 14) entertains the view that Luke knew and abbreviated the longer form of the parable seen in Matthew; Luke’s redaction supposedly creates a literary unit that is not a parable but rather a monitory exhortation and a narrative, in brief, a teaching. One’s confidence in Glombitza’s approach is not strengthened by his wildly allegorical interpretation of Luke’s version (all in the name of redaction criticism): to refuse the invitation to the feast means not to receive Jesus’ sacrifice, which brings forgiveness; one thus falls outside the covenant that was formed apart from merit out of the Lord’s free grace of election. We seem close at this point to a certain type of patristic exegesis.

So rightly Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 11; Eichholz, Gleichnisse der Evangel­ ien, 128. 72

73 Here I differ with Snodgrass (Stories with Intent, 299, 310), who claims that we are dealing in Matthew and Luke with “two similar stories, not two versions of the same story” (p. 310). At times, however, Snodgrass seems to contradict his own position. For example, on p. 304, he not only speaks of “this parable” in the singular as occurring in different places in Matthew and Luke but also proceeds to discuss how “Luke uses his version of this story.” On p. 305, Snodgrass states that, by his count, out of the 233 words in Matt 22:1–14 (note that he includes here the separate parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment, thus comparing apples with oranges), only 12 are identical in Luke 14:15–24: eipen, kai apesteilen, autou, tois kekle¯menois, hetoima, agron, autou [again], and eis tas hodous. An additional seven



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Greek words, occurring in different forms, are also shared: anthro¯pos, poiein, doulos [twice], eipein, orgizein, and exelthein. While all this constitutes a good argument against a common written source such as Q, it does not exclude the idea of a single parable undergoing multiple oral and written performances in different streams of tradition (i.e., M and L). As often happens in Snodgrass’s Stories with Intent, the unproven presupposition that some form of the parable goes back to the historical Jesus is the hidden engine that drives the whole project. For a comparison of the texts of Matt 22:1–10 and Luke 14:15,16–24 that underlines and highlights common vocabulary, see John S. Kloppenborg, Q Parallels (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1988) 164. On p. 166, Kloppenborg lists scholars who argue for or against the parable’s Q provenance. Kloppenborg summarizes the arguments pro and con thus: (1) Those who argue against Q’s being the source point to “the minimal verbal agreements between Matthew and Luke.” (2) Those who support Q as the source emphasize the verbal agreements that do exist, the basic agreement in plot, and the redactional tendencies of Luke and especially Matthew in rewriting the parables. That said, the practical difficulties involved in reconstructing a hypothetical Q text are made plain in The Critical Edition of Q (ed. James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg; Leuven: Peeters, 2000) 432– 49; the suggested Q text is mostly a web of empty spaces, words placed within brackets, and whole verses that contain nothing but question marks. There is a bracing honesty here. Once one rejects the a priori dogma that the Q text of the parable was more or less the text of Luke, it becomes very difficult to establish what the hypothetical Q text might have looked like. 74

Here I differ with a number of commentators, including Trilling, “Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte,” 263; Hasler, “Die königliche Hochzeit,” 29; Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 12; Martens, “‘Produce Fruit Worthy of Repentance,’” 163; Hoppe, “Tischgespräche,” 115–17; Schottroff, “Von der Schwierigkeit,” 593; Ingipay Migbisiegbe, “Loyalty to Jesus,” 474. Some critics simply assume that Q is the common source without examining the problem in detail; so, e.g., Pérez Fernández, “Rabbinic Texts,” 95–120. Weren (“From Q to Matthew 22:1–14,” 678–79) suggests that Matthew’s version of the Great Supper results from his combination of two separate parables, the first certainly from Q and the second possibly so. 75

76 This is the position adopted by Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 333–35 (with a helpful chart on p. 334); similarly, Beare, “The Parable of the Guests at the Banquet,” 1 (arguing against B. W. Bacon and T. W. Manson, who think that the parable is taken from Q); Smit, Fellowship, 159.

On the question of the exact meaning of the aorist passive verb ho¯moio¯the¯ (literally, “was made like”) in Matt 22:2, see the various possibilities considered by Münch, Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 139–40: e.g., divine passive, previous stage in the coming of the kingdom, gnomic aorist, a Semitism reflecting the Hebrew stative perfect. The interpretation of the aorist as a “timeless descriptive aorist” is defended by 77

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Nalpathilchira, “Everything Is Ready,” 125–27; in effect, this comes down to a gnomic aorist or a Semitic stative perfect. 78 For this commonly held view, see, e.g., Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 63–66; Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 342–49; more succinctly, Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 90–91. For a lengthy but unconvincing attempt to deny Matthew’s heavy allegorizing (motivated by a theological desire to have the Matthean form go back to the historical Jesus), see Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 317–21. The usual allegorical interpretation is also denied by Schottroff, “Verheissung,” 479–85; but the reason in this instance is Schottroff’s desire to find a sociological message in the text. 79 This point is often missed by commentators who assimilate this parable too closely to that of the Evil Tenants. In Matthew’s version of the Great Supper, Jesus is the son completely ready to celebrate his wedding feast; in other words, he is presented “in his postresurrection state, with his Father inviting Jews to a ‘messianic banquet’” (so Martens, “‘Produce Fruit Worthy of Repentance,’” 164). If this is correct, then in Matthew’s version of the parable, the slaves sent out would be the Christian missionaries of the early church, replicating the fate of the rejected and martyred prophets of ancient Israel; cf. Münch, Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 203–5. For a comparison of Matthew’s redactional insertion of a king into the primitive parable with the tendency of later rabbis to assimilate parables to the literary form of the king-mashal (where the main character is a king who represents God), see Olson, “Matthew 22:1–14,” 435–36 (borrowing from the work of David Stern, Parables in Midrash [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1991] 4–45).

So rightly Trilling, “Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte,” 254–55; see also Beare, “The Parable of the Guests at the Banquet,” 4–5. For a detailed study of the many theological and literary connections between Matthew’s version of the Great Supper and his parables of the Two Sons (21:28–32) and the Evil Tenants (21:33–46), see Olmstead, Matthew’s Trilogy of Parables, 98–159. 80

The difference between the two parables on this point is that violence and murder occur in response to the first delegation as well as to the second in the parable of the Evil Tenants (Matt 21:35–36), and not all the slaves are murdered. The murder of all the slaves in the second delegation (no violence is done to the first delegation) is proper to the parable of the Great Supper. 81

Rengstorf (“Die Stadt,” 106–29) tries to avoid a reference to the First Jewish War and the destruction of Jerusalem by dismissing the theme of sending the troops and burning the city as a topos known elsewhere in the literature of the ancient Mediterranean world. Topos or not, this sudden and illogical interruption of the otherwise intelligible flow of the parable’s narrative totally disrupts the story line. Granted the surrounding narratives, parables, and prophecies coming at the end of Matthew’s presentation of Jesus’ public ministry (Matthew 21–25), the theme of a king sending an army to destroy his enemies and burn their city cannot help but 82



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point to the Jewish War and the destruction of Jerusalem; so, rightly, Selbie, “The Parable of the Marriage Feast,” 267; see also Haenchen, “Das Gleichnis vom grossen Mahl,” 138–39; Hahn, “Das Gleichnis,” 56; Eichholz, Gleichnisse der Evangelien, 138–39; Theobald, “‘. . . und er schickte seine Heere aus,’” 305–9. Theobald places Matthew’s version of the parable within the wider context of what he calls “the blood texts” of the trilogy of parables in Matt 21:28–22:14, as well as the “blood texts” of Matt 23:29–32 and 27:25. Schottroff (“Verheissung,” 483) leaves the question of the reference to the destruction of Jerusalem open, but this stance seems to be dictated by the larger agenda of her sociological interpretation. 83 Obviously, the city that is implied in the king’s command (epi tas diexodous to¯n hodo¯n refers to where the city streets end and the roads outside a city begin) is different from the hostile city the king has destroyed.

That the story of the guest who lacks a proper wedding garment is not an original part of the parable of the Great Supper is the common opinion among commentators; see, e.g., Merriman (“Matthew xxii. 1–14,” 61), who points out the difference between the presence of “slaves” (douloi) throughout Matthew’s version of the Great Supper (22:3,4,6,8,10) and the sudden appearance of “servants” (diakonoi) in Matt 22:13. Trilling (“Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte,” 257) thinks that Matthew created 22:11–14 as an add-on to the parable of the Great Supper rather than combining two different parables that already existed independently in the tradition. I consider his view the more probable position, contra Hasler, “Die königliche Hochzeit,” 28 (which betrays an uncritical use of later rabbinic parallels from the Palestinian Talmud as “sources” of the Synoptic parable of the Great Supper; a similar problem occurs in Pérez Fernández, “Rabbinic Texts,” 95–120; cf. Eichholz, Gleichnisse der Evangelien, 135). Via (“The Relationship,” 178–79) likewise holds that the Guest without a Wedding Garment already existed in the tradition on the grounds that, if Matthew had created it out of whole cloth, he would have made the connection to the Great Supper smoother. Since, at the very least, I judge that the distinct parable of the Guest without a Wedding Garment is not an original part of the parable of the Great Supper, I do not take up a minor problem that has exercised various exegetes (many of whom uncritically attribute the saying to the historical Jesus), namely, the exact meaning of the famous dictum in Matt 22:14: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” For various opinions, which often reveal the underlying theological concerns that occupy the commentators, but which lie outside the question of the original content and meaning of both the Great Supper and the Guest without the Wedding Garment, see, e.g., Musurillo, “‘Many Are Called,’” 583–89; Sutcliffe, “Many Are Called,” 131; Dawson, “The Gate Crasher,” 304–6; Meyer, “Many (= All) Are Called,” 89–97 (Meyer provides a useful summary of other authors’ opinions). Klein (“Botschaft für viele,” 427–37) has the saving grace of openly admitting that he is involved in a hermeneutical reflection. One of the most intriguing (not to say fanciful) solutions of the problem posed by the verse is that the man thrown out of the feast represents Judas Iscariot (so Cripps, “A Note,” 30); this solution, while appealing to the use of the vocative hetaire in Matt 22:12 and 26:50 (addressed here 84

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to Judas), ignores the allegorical time line that the overall Matthean composition of 22:1–14 creates. In the end, v 14 does not quite fit either vv 1–10 or vv 11–13; see Münch, Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 255, 285; cf. Story, “All Is Now Ready,” 75; Schottroff, “Verheissung,” 481. On this theme in various Jewish sources, especially the possibly pre-Matthean Apocryphon of Ezekiel, see Bauckham, “The Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast,” 471–88. 85

See, e.g., Donfried, “The Allegory of the Ten Virgins”; Donfried favors composition by Matthew. 86

87 For an attempt to reconstruct the pre-Lucan story in a skeletal outline—one that takes seriously the amount of Lucan redaction in 14:16–24—see Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 64–73. In my opinion, his attempt at a reconstruction is marred by his supposing, without any argument beyond appealing to previous authors, that Thomas’ version is independent of Luke (p. 67, with n. 18). 88 For a salutary reminder that Luke as well as Matthew has reworked the tradition he received, see Hahn, “Das Gleichnis,” 60, 68, 70. It is well to keep this in mind, since exegetes tend to suppose that Luke stands very close not only to his immediate source but also to the original parable spoken by Jesus; see, e.g., Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 13. Indeed, in his earlier essay, “Die Einladung,” Vögtle offers a reconstruction of the original Greek text of the parable that supposedly lay behind the two Synoptic versions (p. 190). As he freely admits, the first part of his reconstruction, reaching up to the point where the host in his anger gives orders to his servant to go out to the roads to invite anyone found there, is almost word-for-word Luke 14:16–21a. As shall become clear, I detect Luke’s redactional hand in this section of the parable more than does Vögtle. For the view that Luke as well as Matthew employs allegory in his retelling of the parable, see Story, “All Is Now Ready,” 77.

Gathercole (The Gospel of Thomas. Introduction and Commentary, 454) thinks that both the Lucan and the Thomasine versions of the parable show traces of allegory; in contrast, Sterling (“‘Where Two or Three Are Gathered,’” 106) holds that there is “an absence of an allegorical understanding of the parable” in the Thomasine version. 89

This is not to say that every crippled or blind person in 1st-century Palestine was necessarily marginalized in a social or economic sense. To be sure, a rich person could become blind or maimed. But most Palestinian Jews at the time (or any other time) would not have been rich or even “well off” in any meaningful sense. For most Palestinian Jews who maintained themselves by being farmers, artisans, traders, or day laborers, a serious physical injury would pose a sizable threat to their economic well-being. It is not for nothing that in his two lists of 14:13 + 21 (which create 90



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an inclusio), Luke begins each time with “the poor” and then continues with the “crippled and blind and lame.” 91 Smit (Fellowship, 165–66) suggests a slightly different allegorical understanding of the two groups at the end of the Lucan form of the parable: both refer to the Gentile mission, the doubling of the invitation indicating that the mission to the Gentiles remains ongoing.

One can see why I speak of a “modicum of salvation-historical allegory” in Luke’s version, and not a full-blown allegory where every point in the parable has an exact correspondence in salvation history or the early history of the church. Neither in Luke’s nor in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ public ministry do we hear that all Jews rejected Jesus’ message and that all were accordingly punished or excluded. That would make nonsense of the inner circle of the Twelve, the larger circle of disciples and sedentary supporters, and even the at-times-enthusiastic-and-at-timesfickle crowds. In addition, in Luke’s presentation in both his Gospel and the Acts, some Pharisees, rulers, scribes, and rich people show themselves well disposed to Jesus. Indeed, in Acts, we hear of both Pharisees and Jewish priests who join the early Christians in Jerusalem (see, e.g., Acts 15:1,5; 6:7). Hence one must not try to make the narrative in the parable map onto salvation history in general or the history of the early church in particular with a perfect one-to-one correspondence. This holds true even of the more highly allegorized version of the parable in Matthew: the total rejection of the invitation (to salvation) by all the original guests and their subsequent destruction does not reflect what is narrated in Matthew’s Gospel and what seems to be the early history of his strongly Jewish-Christian church. 92

93 On this, see Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 13–14. A full study of Luke’s redactional composition of the larger context can be found in Gerhard Hotze, Jesus als Gast (FB 111; Würzburg: Echter, 2007) 214–60; cf. Hoppe, “Tischgespräche,” 115– 30; Heil, The Meal Scenes, 106–11. For emphasis on the Hellenistic cultural background of Luke’s redactional composition in Luke 14, see the whole monograph of Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, especially pp. 1–21, 145–81.

In the addition to the treatment of Lucan parables like the Good Samaritan and the Rich Fool in previous chapters of this volume, see Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 65 (with n. 10). As Braun notes, anthro¯pos tis is “unique to Luke’s writings in the NT,” with seven out of nine occurrences being in parables (10:30; 12:16; 14:16; 15:11; 16:1,19; 19:12), while one occurrence is in a chreia (14:2) and one in a miracle story (Acts 9:33). “Alternately and almost as often Luke uses ane¯r tis, also unique to Luke in the NT.” 94

On the phrase “the kingdom of God” in the teaching of Jesus, see A Marginal Jew, 2. 237–506, especially 237–43, 289–91, 398–99, and 450–54. On the function of the exclamation of the guest in Luke 14:15, see Mary Marshall, “‘Blessed Is 95

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­Anyone Who Will Eat Bread in the Kingdom of God.’ A Brief Study of Luke 14.15 in Its Context,” Feasts and Festivals (Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 53; ed. Christopher Tuckett; Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2009) 97–106, esp. 105–6. So Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 14; on the different opinions concerning this point, see Beare, “The Parable of the Guests at the Banquet,” 4 (with n. 5). 96

Beare (“The Parable of the Guests at the Banquet,” 2) thinks that Luke is “perhaps . . . responsible for the framing of the words in which the invited guests beg off at the last moment (vv. 18–20),” though he allows that it is equally possible that Matthew has compressed the longer excuses into his concise report. 97

It is telling that Jacques Dupont, in his analysis of Lucan redactional traits in 14:15–24, states that it is in vv 18–20 that Luke’s redactional activity “attains its maximum density” (Les Béatitudes. Tome II. La Bonne Nouvelle [Paris: Gabalda, 1969] 264, with detailed analysis of Lucan words and phrases on pp. 265–66); similarly, Siegfried Schulz (Q. Die Spruchquelle der Evangelisten [Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972] 395) considers Luke 14:18–20 to bear a strong Lucan stamp; he lists the Lucan redactional traits in n. 139. On Lucan redaction in vv 18–20, see also Joachim Jeremias, Die Sprache des Lukasevangeliums. Redaktion und Tradition im Nicht-Markusstoff des dritten Evangeliums (MeyerK Sonderband; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980) 239–40 (e.g., the use of the typically Lucan heteros in vv 19–20; the careful symmetry of the three items, seen also in Luke 20:10–12); Mauro Pesce, “Ricostruzione dell’archetipo letterario comune a Mt. 22,1–10 e Lc. 14,15–24,” La parabola degli invitati al banchetto. Dagli evangelisti a Gesù (Testi e ricerche di Scienze religiose 14; Brescia: Paideia, 1978) 167–236, especially 207. 98

99 On this, see Carey, “Excuses, Excuses,” 179–87. For similar patterns of repetitions, see, e.g., Luke 9:57–61 (three would-be followers of Jesus); 14:25–35 (the cost of being a disciple).

On this, see Hoppe, “Tischgespräche,” 126–27; Hoppe concludes (p. 127 n. 63 and p. 129) that these overarching Lucan perspectives make plausible the hypothesis of a thoroughgoing redactional formulation of the excuses in 14:18–20; cf. Hoppe, “Das Gastmahlgleichnis,” 288–90. 100

On this point, see Hahn, “Das Gleichnis,” 55; cf. Eichholz, Gleichnisse der Evangelien, 130 (in dialogue with the opinion of Jülicher); Schottroff, “Von der Schwierigkeit,” 595. 101

See Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 19–25. Vögtle (pp. 43–46) is probably also correct that the solemn “I say to you” statement concluding Luke’s version of the parable (14:24) is likewise a Lucan creation, serving a parenetic function similar to Matthew’s redactional addition of the Guest without a Wedding Garment: those 102



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who are admitted late to the community of salvation (namely, the Gentiles) must not grow complacent or smug; they are still vulnerable to the fate that befell the originally invited guests. On this point in Matthew’s version, see Lemcio, “The Parables of the Great Supper and the Wedding Feast,” 19; cf. the various allegorical interpretations of the Guest without the Wedding Garment listed by Sim, “The Man,” 165. Sim’s view (pp. 167–76) that the guest without the wedding garment represents not only the wicked invitees of 22:10 (a point generally conceded) but also those who decline the invitation in 22:3–6 (i.e., the Jewish leaders, who in turn represent the Jewish opponents of the Matthean community) does violence to the natural flow of the composite story formed by the two conjoined parables. 103 While he duly notes both the difficulty of deciding the issue and the variety of views among commentators, Braun (Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 71) draws this conclusion about the excuses of the guests in Luke: “An original narration of the excuses [in the pre-Lucan tradition] cannot be recovered. Luke’s version hence must be considered a rather free composition, though possibly riding on traditional motifs.” A similar view seems to be indicated by the almost blank spaces assigned to the hypothetical Q 14:18–20 in Kloppenborg et al., The Critical Edition of Q, 436–39. As we shall see later, this makes the theory of the independence of Thomas’ version extremely difficult to maintain—a problem that Braun does not seem to sense.

For a full (though obviously dated) survey of the range of meanings of paraiteomai in ancient Greek, see Henri Estienne (Henricus Stephanus), Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (9 vols.; first published in 1572; newly edited by Ambroise Didot in 1865; reprinted in Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1954) vol. 7, cols. 265–69; more briefly in LSJ, 1310–11. 104

105 The examples from the LXX include 1 Kgdms 20:6 (bis),28; Esth 4:8; 7:7; 2 Macc 2:31; 3 Macc 6:27; 4 Macc 11:2. Interestingly, most of the occurrences are found in the later books of the LXX. A similar range of meanings is found in the NT: Mark 1x (15:6, “to request”); Luke 3x (14:18 [bis]–19, in the special sense of “to excuse from an invitation to a meal previously accepted”); Acts 1x (25:11, “to avoid”); 1 Tim 2x (4:7, “to avoid”; 5:11, “to refuse,” “to reject”); 2 Tim 1x (2:23, “to avoid,” “to reject”); Titus 1x (3:10, “to avoid,” “to shun”); Hebrews 3x (12:19, “to entreat”; 12:25 (bis) “to refuse,” “to disregard”). Again, most of the attestations are in the later books of the NT.

Some commentators see this meaning in Acts 25:11: “I do not seek to be excused [or: excuse myself] from the obligation of dying” (so Max Zerwick-Mary Grosvenor, Grammatical Analysis [5th rev. ed.; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1996] 441), but Bauer, sub voce, assigns it the simple meaning of “I am not trying to escape death,” which reflects the basic meaning of “to avoid.” The revised NT of the NAB translates the phrase as “I do not seek to escape the death penalty”; similarly, the RSV and the NRSV. 106

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In Polybius, the text refers to a king who, upon entering a city, declines an invitation from the ruling officials of the city. As for Josephus, Ant. 7.8.2 §175 has the sense of “to decline an invitation,” but not after one has already accepted it; Ant. 12.4.7 §197 refers to asking to be excused from the task of going to King Ptolemy in Egypt to celebrate the birth of his son. Other examples of paraiteomai in writers from around the turn of the era include (i) in Philo: De Migratione 14 §76 (to excuse oneself from detailed argumentation); Flacc. 5 §26 and §31 (to be excused from taking a journey); (ii) in Josephus: J.W. 4.9.2 §496 (to be excused from writing things already known; cf. 2 Macc 2:31); Ant. 5.8.6 §294 (to renounce a pledge to marry, or to annul or dissolve a marriage already contracted); 7.11.4 §273 (to decline an invitation to stay with a person); 11.6.1 §191 (to refuse to come to a banquet); 16.2.5 §62 (to take leave of a person); 16.8.3 §243 (to dismiss people from positions of rank or friendship); 16.11.6 §389 (to allow a person to escape or be released); 20.4.3 §147 (to divorce); (iii) in Plutarch, Apophthegms of Kings and Generals (Roman section, Gaius Caesar) 3, 206 A (to divorce one’s wife); (iv) in Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Philosophers 6 §2 (to be excused from speaking in public); (v) examples in the Oxyrhynchus papyri include similar meanings (to decline, to ask to be excused, to put aside). 107

108 The case of Samson at his wedding feast with a Gentile woman in Ant. 5.8.6 §294 comes close, but the sense of paraiteitai here seems best translated as “renounce,” “reject,” or perhaps “annul” the marriage (cf. the attested meaning of “to divorce a spouse”), especially since Samson already counts as the woman’s ane¯r.

Another partial parallel can be found in a letter of recommendation preserved in the Greek papyri (P.Oxy. 292.6): parakalo¯ se echein . . . auton synestamenon (“I entreat you to consider him recommended”). Here, though, neither wording nor context is exactly parallel to Luke 14:19. 109

On Latinisms in Luke–Acts, see Herbert McLachlan, St. Luke. The Man and His Work (Manchester: Manchester University; London: Longmans, Green, 1920) 47–50; Corrado Marucci, “Influssi latini sul greco del Nuovo Testamento,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 6 (1993) 3–30, esp. 7; cf. J. S. Ward, “Roman Greek: Latinisms in the Greek of Flavius Josephus,” Classical Quarterly 57 (2007) 632–49. Marucci lists eche me pare˛ˉ te¯menon in Luke 14:18–19 as one of the Greek phrases in the NT that, according to most commentators, translates Latin phraseology; similarly, Septimus Buss, Roman Law and History in the New Testament (London: Rivingtons, 1901) 471. As is to be expected, however, scholars who agree on the overall issue will disagree on the individual case. For instance, McLachlan (p. 49), while admitting that some scholars see the phrase as a Latinism, seems less sanguine himself. More confident is Marucci, who, in his list of Latin phrases found in Greek form in the NT, counts twenty-one occurrences in Luke–Acts (including textual variants). The only other NT author with a significant number of Latinisms is Mark. Marucci thinks that the NT distinguishes itself from other comparable Greek corpora of literature in the Hellenistic era (e.g., Polybius, Philo, Josephus, Plutarch, and the Egyptian pa110



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pyri) by possessing a relatively high number of loan words and phrases from Latin. In all these comparisons, however, there is the methodological problem of deciding what counts as Latin influence in Greek vocabulary or syntax. For example, while Marucci (pp. 25, 29) thinks that true and proper Latinisms are rare in Josephus’ works, Ward (p. 646–47) concludes that the Greek of Josephus shows the heavy influence of Latin vocabulary and syntax.—As far as Luke’s Greek style is concerned, the influence of the LXX is beyond dispute, not only for Luke’s style but also for his theology; for one concrete example, see Gregory E. Sterling, “Luke as a Reader of the LXX,” Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Volume 3: The Gospel of Luke (Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 16; Library of NT Studies 376; ed. Thomas Hatina; London/New York: Clark, 2010) 161–79. 111 Note, by the way, Luke’s deft shift of meaning from the use of the reflexive sense of the infinitive in 14:18a (paraiteisthai, “to excuse oneself”) to the passive sense in the perfect passive participle in 14:18d–19 (pare˛ˉ te¯menon, “excused,” i.e., by the host), which corresponds to the Latin passive participle excusatum. One should bear in mind that the passive sense of pare˛ˉ te¯menon in 14:18d–19 presupposes that the object of the verb, if the verb were used in an active sense, would be the person invited, not the meal to which the person was invited. 112 Here I differ with Linnemann (“Überlegungen,” 247–52), who holds that the first two excuses (vv 18–19), which she claims are original to the parable, simply ask for extra time before the guests come to the supper, while the third excuse (v 20, which obviously does not ask for a delay of a few extra hours) is a secondary addition. Besides the fact that Linnemann must read into the first two excuses a pivotal idea (“just give me a few more hours”) that is not there (always a bad move when interpreting the parables), she also fails to consider (i) the unusual meaning of par­ aiteomai in vv 18–19, (ii) the typical “law of threes” in parables, and (iii) the climactic nature of the statement of the third guest, who does not ask to be excused. Behind all these problems is her basic desire to identify the original form of the parable— apart from minor additions—with the form found in Luke. Most commentators who discuss Linnemann’s proposal point out that she ignores the obviously definitive tone of all three refusals; so, e.g., Hahn, “Das Gleichnis,” 53–55, esp. n. 21 on p. 55. 113 On this, see Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 73–80; he points out how the mention of marriage, far from being out of place vis-à-vis the other two excuses that involve the buying of property (the verb agorazo¯ is used twice in vv 18–19), was, for Greco-Roman elites, another way to acquire property via a dowry. In a similar vein, Ebner (“Symposion,” 123–25) points out how all three excuses in the Lucan form of the parable emphasize the high status of the invitees, who do not work with their hands but rather buy property and engage in business. 114 On this pervasive theme in Luke–Acts, see, e.g., Luke Timothy Johnson, The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke–Acts (SBLDS 39; Missoula, MT: Scholars,

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1977); Christopher M. Hays, Luke’s Wealth Ethics. A Study in Their Coherence and Character (WUNT 2/275; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2010). 115 Here I disagree with the analysis of van Eck (“When Patrons Are Patrons,” p. 6 of the online text), who considers only Luke 14:15 + 24 to be additions to a primitive version of the parable “closest to the earliest Jesus tradition.” Van Eck needs this judgment in order to justify his particular social-science reading of the parable, which he attributes to Jesus himself.

For the view that the list of socially “incorrect” guests in Luke 14:13 + 21 results from Luke’s Christian reworking of a Cynic critique of Greco-Roman elitism and snobbery in issuing dinner invitations, see Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 54–61, 71 (where Braun states that “Luke’s reference to the poor, the injured, the lame and the blind [14.21] is a redactional specification of this general motif”). The only difference between the two lists in vv 13 and 21 is that the order of cho¯lous and typhlous in v 13 is reversed in v 21. 116

On this interpretation, see Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 88–97. 117

118 For views for and against Luke’s redactional hand in 14:24, see Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 72. Braun himself leans in the direction of accepting v 24 as present in Q, but he readily admits that the evidence is inconclusive. In my opinion, along with his acceptance of the Thomasine version as independent, a major flaw of Braun’s overall approach is his view that Luke is using Q as the source of this parable. 119 To be sure, both Matt 22:5 and Luke 14:18 contain the noun agron (“field” or “farm”), but the sense of the two verses is notably different. In Matthew, some of the invitees simply ignore the invitation and go off to their various pursuits (to one’s [already owned] farm or to one’s business), while the rest murder the messengers. In Luke instead, all the invitees (none of whom uses violence) make specific excuses; three concrete examples are then given. The first excuse deals with having bought a field (or farm) and having to go to inspect it. Thus, in Matthew, the field is not involved in making excuses, while in Luke it is. This does not get us very far when it comes to surmising the original form of the parable.

The sociological theme of honor and shame is emphasized by Braun in his interpretation of Luke’s version of the parable (Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 128–31). However, I think Braun goes too far when he speaks of a “conversion” on the part of the host. In addition, Braun’s dismissal of any salvation-historical or eschatological motif in Luke’s version fails to appreciate the polyvalence of parables in general and this parable in particular. 120

121 For one attempt to answer this question after carefully analyzing the texts of both Matthew and Luke, see Hoppe, “Das Gastmahlgleichnis,” 290–92.



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See A Marginal Jew, 2. 309–17 and 439–50.

123 On the regathering of the twelve tribes, symbolized by the circle of the twelve disciples formed by Jesus, see A Marginal Jew, 3. 148–63. 124

A Marginal Jew, 2. 314–15.

The problem with seeing the people originally invited as either the religious leaders of Judaism or the rich is that the apparent consequence of such an interpretation would be that Jesus would be turning to the religiously marginalized or the poor only after being rejected by the first group he invited. But, as Kilgallen suggests (Twenty Parables, 96), such an objection would be making the mistake of taking a structural element within the fictional narrative of the parable and turning it into a detailed allegory of Jesus’ ministry or of salvation history in general. 125

There is perhaps a further indication in this phrase of Thomas’ dependence on Matthew. The idea that all the people found by the slaves or servant are gathered into the feast fits perfectly with Matthew’s view of this present world and present church as a mixed bag of bad and good, a corpus permixtum as the commentators like to say. Such an idea does not sit all that well with the gnosticizing tendency of the Gospel of Thomas, where the emphasis is on the saving knowledge imparted to the enlightened solitary individual (the monachos). 126

Needless to say, individual parallels between Luke and CGT 64 are open to debate. For example, Sterling begins his list of agreements with the introductory Lucan clause, “he said to him” (14:16), which is said to parallel Thomas’ “Jesus said.” However, this is a questionable agreement, since “Jesus said” is the default beginning of most of the sayings in Thomas, while Matthew begins his version of the parable with “Jesus . . . said.” If one omits the rest of Matthew’s introductory phrase, he is technically closer to Thomas than Luke is. 127

A slight difference in the excuses is that Thomas makes clear that the servant went separately and spoke separately to each guest, who is apparently in a different place from the other guests. One could get the impression from Luke—though it is never said explicitly—that the guests who make their excuses are all situated in the one place to which the servant is sent. 128

In contrast to CGT 64, the standard Sahidic Coptic of Luke 14:18–19 uses the Greek loan verb paraiteomai in a perfectly intelligible construction, without making deipnon the direct object of the verb. Thus, however we explain the construction in CGT 64, it is not a case of scribal assimilation of Thomas to the standard Sahidic NT. It is perhaps telling that, in his attempt to retrovert the Coptic text of CGT 64 into its hypothetical Greek original, Plisch (The Gospel of Thomas, 156–57) uses the construction paraitoumai peri tou deipnou (“I offer my excuse [or: I ask to be excused] concerning the supper”). If that was the original Greek, one wonders how the Coptic translator wound up with tierparaitei + deipnon as the direct object. 129

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To be precise: Luke uses the present tense of the auxiliary verb dynamai (“to be able,” “can”) plus the aorist infinitive of the verb erchomai (“to come”), while Thomas uses the first future tense of the main verb ei (“to come”), into which he inserts the element š, which adds to the verb the sense of “to be able,” “can.” 130

A few Coptic verbs have a form known as the proclitic participle, but it does not occur in the case of the verbs bo¯k (“go”) or ei (“come”). 131

Haenchen (“Das Gleichnis vom grossen Mahl,” 149–50) rightly draws attention to the fact that CGT 64 leans more in the direction of Luke’s version of the parable, while agreeing on a few points with Matthew’s version; cf. Schottroff, “Von der Schwierigkeit,” 602–3. Haenchen thinks that Thomas has purposely dropped the statement that the host was angry at the guests who refused to come (a detail common to Matthew and Luke) because such an emotion would not befit a gnostic deity (so too Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste, 19 n. 17). 132

On p. 335, Hultgren (The Parables of Jesus) provides lists of scholars who either reject (n. 8) or accept (n. 9) Thomas’ independence of the Synoptics in logion 64. 133

134 The irony here is that, on the basic question of whether the parable originates in the ministry of the historical Jesus, it makes no great difference if a scholar (e.g., Sterling) prefers the opinion that CGT 64 represents an early and independent tradition. This opinion would simply bolster the position I take anyway: namely, that the parable satisfies the criterion of multiple attestation and so most likely comes from Jesus. 135 In addition to the standard commentaries on Matthew and Luke, see Eugene Stock, “The Pounds and the Talents,” ExpTim 22 (1910–11) 424–25; Robert Cand­ lish, “The Pounds and the Talents,” ExpTim 23 (1911–12) 136–37; W. McCulloch, “The Pounds and the Talents,” ExpTim 23 (1911–12) 382–83; J. G. Simpson, “The Parable of the Pounds,” ExpTim 37 (1925–26) 299–302; F. E. Brightman, “Six Notes. I. S. Luke XIX 21: aireis ho ouk ethe¯kas,” JTS 29 (1927–28) 158–65, esp. 158; John Mutch, “The Man with the One Talent,” ExpTim 42 (1930–31) 332–34; Paul Joüon, “La Parabole des Mines (Luc, 19, 13–27) et la Parabole des Talents (Matthieu, 25, 14–30),” RSR 29 (1939) 489–94; Jean Dauvillier, “La parabole des mines ou des talents et le §99 du Code de Hammurabi,” Mélanges dédiés à M. le Professeur Joseph Magnol (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1948) 153–65; André Feuillet, “La synthèse eschatologique de Saint Matthieu (XXIV–XXV),” RB 56 (1949) 340–65 and RB 57 (1950) 62–91, and in particular within the latter article, “Les talentes (Mt. XXV, 14–30) et les mines (Lc. XIX, 17–27),” 80–86; Werner Foerster, “Das Gleichnis von den anvertrauten Pfunden,” Verbum Dei Manet in Aeternum (Otto Schmitz Festschrift; ed. Werner Foerster; Witten: Luther, 1953) 37–56; Paul Tillich, “The Riddle of Inequality,” USQR 13 (1958) 3–9; Max Zerwick, “Die Parabel vom Thronanwärter,” Bib 40 (1959) 654–74; Heinrich Kahlefeld, Gleichnisse und Lehrstücke im Evangelium (2 vols.; 2d ed.; Frankfurt: Knecht, 1963) 1.



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149–70; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Law in the New Testament: The Parable of the Talents and Two Logia,” ZNW 56 (1965) 184–95; idem, “A Horrid Passage in Luke Explained (Lk 19:27),” ExpTim 97 (1985–86) 136–38; Friedrich Hauck, “okne¯ros,” TDNT 5 (1967) 166–67; Marcel Didier, “La parabole des talents et des mines,” De Jésus aux Evangiles. Tradition et Rédaction dans les Evangiles synoptiques. Volume II (BETL 25; Joseph Coppens Festschrift; ed. Ignace de la Potterie; Gembloux: Duculot, 1967) 248–71; Erhard Kamlah, “Kritik und Interpretation der Parabel von den anvertrauten Geldern,” KD 14 (1968) 28–38; Jacques Dupont, “La parabole des talents (Mat. 25:14–30) ou des mines (Luc 19:12–27),” RTP 19 (1969) 376–91; Peter Fiedler, “Die übergebenen Talente,” BibLeb 11 (1970) 259–73; Weiser, Die Knechtsgleichnisse der synoptischen Evangelien, 226–72; I. T. Holdcroft, “The Parable of the Pounds and Origen’s Doctrine of Grace,” JTS n.s. 24 (1973) 503–4; Lane C. McGaughy, “The Fear of Yahweh and the Mission of Judaism: A Postexilic Maxim and Its Early Christian Expansion in the Parable of the Talents,” JBL 94 (1975) 235–45; Francis D. Weinert, “The Parable of the Throne Claimant (Luke 19:12, 14–15a, 27) Reconsidered,” CBQ 39 (1977) 505–14; J. M. Ross, “Talents,” ExpTim 89 (1977–78) 307–9; Wilhelm Resenhöfft, “Jesu Gleichnis von den Talenten, ergänzt durch die Lukas-Fassung,” NTS 26 (1979–80) 318–31; David C. Steinmetz, “Matthew 25:14–30,” Int 34 (1980) 172–76; Jack T. Sanders, “The Parable of the Pounds and Lucan Anti-Semitism,” TS 42 (1981) 660–68; Roland Meynet, Initiation à la rhétorique biblique (Paris: Cerf, 1982) 85–131; Luke Timothy Johnson, “The Lukan Kingship Parable (Lk. 19:11–27),” NovT 24 (1982) 139– 59; Ignace de la Potterie, “La parabole du prétendant à la royauté (Lc 19, 11–28),” A cause de l’évangile (LD 123; Jacques Dupont Festschrift; Clamency: Publications de Saint-André/Cerf, 1985) 613–41; Armand Puig i Tàrrech, “La parabole des talents (Mt 25, 14–30) ou des mines (Lc 19, 11–28),” A cause de l’évangile, ibid., 165–93 (a longer version of this article was published in Revista Catalana de Teologia 10 [1985] 269–317); J. Naegele, “Translation of talanton ‘talent,’” BT 37 (1986) 441– 43; Martinus C. de Boer, “Ten Thousand Talents? Matthew’s Interpretation and Redaction of the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matt 18:23–35),” CBQ 50 (1988) 214–32; Kloppenborg, Q Parallels, 196–201; Christian Dietzfelbinger, “Das Gleichnis von den anvertrauten Geldern,” Berliner theologische Zeitschrift 6 (1989) 222– 33; Daniel Lys, “Contre le salut par les oeuvres dans la prédication des talents,” ETR 64 (1989) 331–40; Jean-Noël Aletti, “Parabole des mines et/ou parabole du roi (Lc 19, 11–28). Remarques sur l’écriture parabolique de Luc,” Les paraboles évangéliques. Perspectives nouvelles (LD 135; ed. Jean Delorme; Paris: Cerf, 1989) 309–32; Louis Panier, “La parabole des mines. Lecture sémiotique (Lc 19, 11–27),” Les paraboles évangéliques. Perspectives nouvelles, ibid., 333–47; David Flusser, “Aesop’s Miser and the Parable of the Talents,” Parable and Story in Judaism and Christianity (Studies in Judaism and Christianity; New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1989) 9–25; Daniel J. Harrington, “Polemical Parables in Matthew 24–25,” USQR 44 (1990–91) 287–98; Frédéric Manns, “La parabole des talents: Wirkungsgeschichte et racines juives,” RevScRel 65 (1991) 343–62; Vittorio Fusco, “‘Point of View’ and ‘Implicit Reader’ in Two Eschatological Texts (Lk 19,11–28; Acts 1,6–8),” The Four Gospels 1992. Volume II (BETL 100; Frans Neirynck Festschrift; ed. F. Van

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Segbroeck et al.; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 1992) 1677–96; Robert T. Fortna, “Reading Jesus’ Parable of the Talents through Underclass Eyes,” Forum 8 no. 3/4 (1992) 211–28; Lambrecht, Out of the Treasure, 217–44; Richard L. Rohrbaugh, “A Peasant Reading of the Parable of the Talents/Pounds. A Text of Terror?,” BTB 23 (1993) 32–39; William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994) 150–68; Joel R. Wohlgemut, “Entrusted Money (Matthew 25:14–28),” Jesus and His Parables (ed. V. George Shillington; Edinburgh: Clark, 1997) 103–20; François Martin, “Parabole des talents,” Sémiotique et bible 84 (1996) 14–24; Leslie Brisman, “A Parable of Talent,” Religion and the Arts 1 (1996) 74–99; John B. Carpenter, “The Parable of the Talents in Missionary Perspective: A Call for an Economic Spirituality,” Missiology 25 (1997) 165–81; John Paul Heil, “Matthew 25:14–30: Parable Comparing Servants Who Are Given Talents by Their Lord,” Warren Carter and John Paul Heil, Matthew’s Parables. Audience-Oriented Perspectives (CBQMS 30; Washington, DC: CBA, 1998) 196–200; Jennifer A. Glancy, “Slaves and Slavery in the Matthean Parables,” JBL 119 (2000) 67–90; Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 271–91; Richard T. France, “On Being Ready (Matthew 25:1–46),” The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables (ed. Richard N. Longen­ecker; Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000) 177–95; John J. Pilch, “The Parable of the Talents,” The Bible Today 39 (2001) 366–70; Adelbert Denaux, “The Parable of the Talents/Pounds (Q 19, 12–27). A Reconstruction of the Q Text,” The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus (BETL 158; ed. Andreas Lindemann; Leuven: Leuven University/Peeters, 2001) 429–60; idem, “The Parable of the King-Judge (Lk 19, 12–28) and Its Relation to the Entry Story (Lk 19, 29– 44),” ZNW 93 (2002) 35–57; Michael S. Northcott, “The Parable of the Talents and the Economy of the Gift,” Theology 107 (2004) 241–49; Münch, Die Gleichnisse Jesu im Matthäusevangelium, esp. 136–37 and 244–46; Hubert Frankemölle, “Das Gleichnis von den Zentnern/Talenten (Mt 25,14–30),” Orientierung 69 (2005) 10– 12; Ben Chenoweth, “Identifying the Talents. Contextual Clues for the Interpretation of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30),” TynBul 56 (2005) 61–72; idem, “The Vulnerability of the Literalist: A Critique of William R. Herzog II’s Interpretation of the Parable of the Talents,” Pacifica 21 (2008) 175–91; Markus Locker, “Reading and Re-reading Matthew’s Parable of the Talents in Context,” BZ 49 (2005) 161–73; Brian Schultz, “Jesus as Archelaus in the Parable of the Pounds (Lk. 19:11–27),” NovT 49 (2007) 105–27; Elizabeth V. Dowling, Taking Away the Pound: Women, Theology and the Parable of the Pounds in the Gospel of Luke (Library of NT Studies 324; London/New York: Clark, 2007); Michael Fricke, “Wer ist der Held des Gleichnisses? Kontextuelle Lesarten des Gleichnisses von den Talenten,” BK 63 (2008) 76–80; George O. Folarin, “The Parable of the Talents in the African Context: An Inculturation Hermeneutics Approach,” Asia Journal of Theology 22 (2008) 94–106; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 519–43; C. I. David Joy, “Matthew 25:14–30: A Subaltern-cultural Reading,” Bangalore Theological Forum 40 (2008) 131–42; Richard Q. Ford, “Jesus’ Parable of the Talents and the 2008 Olympics,” The Fourth R 21 (2008) 13–15, 18–19, 24; Luise Schottroff, “The Kingdom of God Is Not Like You Were Made to Believe: Reading Parables in the Context of Germany



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and Western Europe,” The Bible and the Hermeneutics of Liberation (SBL Semeia Studies 59; ed. Alejandro F. Botta and Pablo R. Andiñach; Atlanta: SBL, 2009) 169– 79; Ernest van Eck, “Do Not Question My Honour: A Social-Scientific Reading of the Parable of the Minas (Lk 19:12b-24, 27),” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 67 (2011) 11 pages (online); Adam F. Braun, “Reframing the Parable of the Pounds in Lukan Narrative and Economic Context: Luke 19:11–28,” CurTM 39 (2012) 442–48; Peter Yaw Oppong-Kumi, Matthean Sets of Parables (WUNT 2/340; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2013). The metaphorical use of the word “talent” to mean an aptitude or ability is attested in the English language for the first time in the 15th century. 136

137 It is almost hopeless to give an exact monetary equivalent of the ancient “talent” in present-day American dollars. To begin with, the talent was originally not a monetary unit but a measure of weight; see Marvin A. Powell, “Weights and Measures,” AYBD, 6. 897–908, esp. 907. The exact measure varied according to time and place in the ancient world, and scholars disagree on numerical estimates; BAGD, sub voce, gives an estimate of roughly 58 to 80 pounds. From a unit of weight it became derivatively a unit of money. Naturally, the value of a monetary talanton would likewise vary, but it was always very high. The variability of the value was only increased by the fact that the metal used was at times gold, silver, or copper. The value also varied according to place; for example, the silver talent of Athens was worth less than that of Aegina, with the Syrian talent being worth much less than either Greek talent. By the turn of the era, the weight value of a talent would have been somewhere around 93.7 pounds (see Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 274–75 n. 8). The monetary value of one talent would have been around six thousand denarii, the denarius in turn being the daily wage of a day laborer or an ordinary soldier. If we suppose, with Hultgren, that a day laborer would have worked some three hundred days a year, the value of one talent would have approached twenty years of wages. Accordingly, five talents would have equaled about thirty thousand denarii or the wages of one hundred years; two talents, twelve thousand denarii or the wages of forty years. While other commentators give more conservative estimates, all agree that the sums involved are immense. It is customary to dismiss the numbers of talents both in this parable and in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt 18:23–35) as wildly hyperbolic. For an intriguing defense of the view that the ten thousand talents mentioned in the Unmerciful Servant (Matt 18:24) is a realistic sum within the high-stakes financial management of the budget of a kingdom, see Laurent Larroque, La Parabole du serviteur impitoyable en son contexte (Mt 18, 21–35) (AnBib 187; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2010). However, a great deal must be read into the parable to make Larroque’s interpretation work; whether, for instance, the view that the doulos in 18:24 is a high court official who is not a slave jibes with the prathe¯nai of Matt 18:25 (which, taken by itself, means simply “to be sold”—not “be  sold into slavery”—and would therefore seem to indicate that the doulos is already a slave) is doubtful.

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One point in favor of adopting the word “mina” when speaking of Luke’s version of the parable is that it is the word commonly used by German and French commentators. 138

139 While many translations and commentators use the more generic word “servants” to translate the Greek douloi, I agree with those scholars (e.g., Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, 473–76) who think that the parable is speaking more precisely of slaves. On this point, Derrett’s tendency (“Law in the New Testament,” 184–95, esp. 185) to engage in sweeping generalizations that claim to cover legal situations throughout the ancient Near East for over a millennium keeps him from commenting accurately on the legal situation under Roman rule at the turn of the era; he is perhaps unduly influenced by the questionable claims of Dauvillier (“La parabole,” 153–65), who engages in an uncritical exegesis of the Matthean and Lucan texts. At the same time, one must heed Hultgren’s warnings not to equate slavery in the ancient Roman period with slavery in the American South before the Civil War. For a careful treatment of the problem of douloi in Matthew’s Gospel, see Glancy, “Slaves and Slavery,” 67–90, esp. 70 n. 14 and 72; cf. Mary Ann Beavis, “Ancient Slavery as an Interpretive Context for the New Testament Servant Parables with Special Reference to the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–8),” JBL 111 (1992) 37–54, esp. 37–38 and 40. Glancy thinks that the parable of the Talents speaks of “managerial slaves,” a special subgroup “whose competent or exceptional discharge of managerial responsibilities brings them an enlarged role in the management of the master’s household” (p. 72). Glancy (pp. 85, 88) rightly criticizes Derrett, Scott (Hear Then the Parable, 217–35), and others who cling to the translation of douloi in this parable as “servants.”

Some commentators claim that the Matthean form of the parable presents the master as leaving the three slaves in doubt about his intentions when he gives them the talents. Granted that (i) even a single talent is a huge amount of money, (ii) the Matthean master is obviously a businessman, (iii) the third slave could hardly be ignorant of what his two colleagues do with their talents, and (iv) the third slave openly confesses that he knows the demanding, grasping nature of his owner, who expects financial gain when and where no one else would, it defies logic to imagine that the third slave would not know what his master intended when he handed him a talent as he went on a lengthy journey. As Glancy (“Slaves and Slavery,” 72) makes clear, these slaves are presented by Matthew as “managerial slaves.” What else was a managerial slave supposed to do with a large amount of money entrusted to him by his demanding businessman-owner? 140

I emphasize that at this point of the analysis I am simply isolating the bare minimum of the material that Matthew and Luke share. The many questions surrounding the interchange between the third slave and his master will be considered when the redactional contributions of Matthew and Luke are weighed. 141

142 That the parables of the Talents and of the Minas were originally two different parables is a theory with a long history and one that is defended by some scholars



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even today; see, e.g., Candlish, “The Pounds and the Talents,” 137; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 523–25; Schultz, “Jesus as Archelaus,” 105–27. As can be seen, then, Dupont’s claim (“La parabole des talents,” 377) that this opinion is basically abandoned today is not accurate. However, the defenders of the position of two parables are not always clear as to whether there were originally two substantially different parables or instead a single parable that Jesus taught in different ways at different times, adapting the message of the parable to different audiences. The latter seems to be the view of Joüon, “La Parabole des Mines,” 489–94. Contrary to Johnson’s view (as expressed in “The Lukan Kingship Parable,” 139–59, and in his Luke commentary, The Gospel of Luke, 288–95) I think that, within Luke 19:12–27, the apportioning of material and the ordering of events toward a climax justify considering the Throne Claimant a subplot in the Lucan version of the parable, and not the main story, which remains rather the slaves entrusted with money. Even the departure of the nobleman to seek royal status and his return fit in with the main story since they explain the reason for his absence (unexplained in Matthew’s version) and create the presumably lengthy interval necessary for the slaves to trade and make tremendous profits (or fail to). The long, dramatic confrontation of the king with the third slave—the largest single segment of the whole parable (vv 20–26)—argues conclusively for the preponderance of the story of the slaves entrusted with money. This appreciation of the thrust of the entire parable toward final reckoning (and especially the judgment of the third slave) helps determine the proper interpretation of the Lucan parable taken as a whole. 143

For various views on the Throne Claimant motif (along with abundant bibliography on previous treatments of the issue), see Zerwick, “Die Parabel vom Thron­ anwärter,” 654–74; Didier, “La parabole des talents,” 248–71; Weinert, “The Parable of the Throne Claimant,” 505–14; Meynet, Initiation, 85–131; Johnson, “The Lukan Kingship Parable,” 139–59; de la Potterie, “La parabole du prétendant,” 613–41; Puig i Tàrrech, “La parabole des talents,” 165–93; Aletti, “Parabole des mines,” 309–32; Fusco, “‘Point of View,’” 1677–96; Denaux, “The Parable of the King-Judge,” 35–57; Schultz, “Jesus as Archelaus,” 105–27. Authors like Meynet, Johnson, and de la Potterie deserve credit for emphasizing how the Lucan parable in its present form must be interpreted within the larger literary and theological context of Luke’s Gospel, and indeed of Luke–Acts. In the end, though, their emphasis on the Throne Claimant motif prevents them from seeing that, even in the Lucan version, the substance, thrust, and dénouement of the parable focus on the story of the slaves entrusted with money and the slaves’ relationship with their master, and not on the relationship of the king with his rebellious subjects (which really takes up only two verses). The attempts of Johnson and de la Potterie to understand Jesus’ parable not as a correction of people’s expectation of an imminent appearance of the kingdom of God but rather as an affirmation and interpretation of it wind up distorting the sense of both the parable and the larger context. In particular, de la Potterie’s desire to see Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (or more exactly, his approach to Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives) as his “royal enthronement” imports into the 144

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scene terminology that is not there. To be sure, Luke alone among the Synoptists introduces the word “king” (basileus) into the disciples’ acclamation of Jesus (Luke 19:38). Yet at the same time Luke removes the word “kingdom” (basileia), found in his Marcan source (11:10). This is an odd move if Luke wishes to connect Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem with the immediate appearance of “the kingdom of God” (he¯ basileia tou theou), which is the object of the people’s expectation in Luke 19:11 (in reply to which Jesus speaks the parable of the Minas). Needless to say, the word “enthronement” or anything like it is absent from Luke 19:28–40. Perhaps more to the point, though, it is difficult to see how Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem in Luke 19:28–40 can be equated with the “immediate appearance” of the kingdom of God, when the events of death and resurrection still lie roughly a week away, to say nothing of the ascension, more than forty days away, according at least to Acts 1. Then, too, the other events in the parable—most notably the activity of the servants and their respective reward and punishment, placed alongside the punishment of the king’s rebellious subjects—can be fit into the interpretation of Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem as the imminent appearance of the kingdom only with great ingenuity. The logic of this approach would seem to demand that the immense productive activity of the disciples (the trading with the minas) must be fit into the time between Jesus’ going away in passion-and-death and his return at the resurrection. But that is the time of Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, and in general the disciples’ disbelief (resolved only by Jesus’ resurrection appearances). To avoid this problem, de la Potterie claims that the parable presents Jesus’ enthronement as a continual process of “coming” to his disciples during the time of the church. Thus, the judgment scene in the parable likewise occurs in the time of the church, with the placing of the servants over cities representing the disciples’ sharing in the governance of Christian communities. In my opinion, this escape hatch of an explanation stretches one’s allegorical imagination to the breaking point; the parable speaks of a single, definitive return of the king (19:15: kai egeneto en to˛ˉ epanelthein auton) that triggers a single, definitive judgment on all. If one rejects de la Potterie’s interpretation, what is a more credible approach? One must indeed read the parable of the Minas within Luke’s overall literary and theological project, but such a project involves a particular vision of various stages of salvation history that include Jesus’ death-resurrection-ascension (seen as one great “being taken up”), his consequent enthronement in heaven, the time of the church marked by the missionary activity of the apostles, the coming of the Son of Man in glory, and the final reward and punishment of faithful disciples and recalcitrant opponents respectively. In Luke’s redaction of the parable, the going away of the nobleman “into a distant country” and his acquisition of kingly status symbolize Jesus’ death-resurrection-ascension as well as his session at the right hand of God (which makes him “both Lord and Messiah,” Acts 2:36); the trading of the servants symbolizes the time of the church, with various missionaries seeing various results (or lack thereof); and the return of the king to hold an accounting symbolizes the final judgment. At the final judgment, Luke makes a distinction among the faithful disciples who have labored long and successfully (reward), the lazy disciples who have proven ineffective (rebuke and minor punishment), and those who have rejected the kingship of Christ (primarily the Jerusalem authorities, but no doubt



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other opponents depicted in Acts). The horrific punishment of the king’s opponents in Luke 19:27 is not first of all the destruction of Jerusalem, which Luke sees as only a partial realization and prophetic foreshadowing of the last day, but rather the definitive judgment on all those who have opposed Jesus’ reign as kyrios. One should remember that, while Luke carefully distinguishes the destruction of Jerusalem from the final judgment, he still connects the two as related stages of salvation history in Luke 21:1–36. In sum, Luke has taken the inchoate allegory of the traditional parable and developed it into a much more detailed allegory of the stages of salvation history—though, as in all the allegorical parables of the Synoptics, details are not to be pressed beyond the redactors’ intentions. 145 The parallel accounts in the Jewish War and the Antiquities are almost exactly the same.

The complicated historical question over how many wills Herod the Great drew up and which one was in force at his death need not detain us here. 146

Here I disagree with Zerwick (“Die Parabel vom Thronanwärter,” 654–74) and Weinert (“The Parable of the Throne Claimant,” 505–14), who hold that there was originally a separate parable of the Throne Claimant that was actually told by the historical Jesus. Both authors agree that Jesus was consciously using the historical figure of Archelaus as the source for the character of the king in the parable. Apart from all the problems involved in creating a whole parable out of basically just two verses (Luke 19:14 + 27, with vv 12 + 15a fleshing out the story, though they function perfectly well as parts of the parable of the Minas), both authors have the burden of explaining how the Galilean crowd traveling with Jesus on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover (provided we suppose that Luke’s redactional setting of the parable of the Minas is the historical setting of the originally separate parable of the Throne Claimant) would have known about and therefore would have caught the reference to the details of Archelaus’ career. The difficulty here is that Archelaus had never ruled over Galilee; he was ethnarch for some ten years (4 b.c.–a.d. 6) over Idumea, Judea, and Samaria. Royal rule in Galilee passed directly from King Herod the Great to another son, the tetrarch Herod Antipas (whose reign was basically peaceful). Zerwick is reduced to assuring us that, some thirty-five years after the events alluded to in the parable, the Galilean followers of Jesus would have recognized the reference because their fathers would have told them about these events quite often.—Even more unlikely is the suggestion made by Schultz (“Jesus as Archelaus,” 112–27) in an article that fails to engage in a detailed comparison and contrast with Matthew’s parable of the Talents. Indeed, Schultz’s approach suffers from an internal self-contradiction. He paradoxically ignores an important aspect of Luke’s redactional setting while at the same time defending that very setting as the original geographical and historical setting of the full parable of the Minas/Throne Claimant (i.e., the parable just as it stands in Luke 19:12–27). Schultz explains Jesus’ allusion to Archelaus in the parable by appealing to various royal structures in the neighborhood of Jericho. For instance, when Jesus and his entourage left Jericho 147

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and headed north on the ascent to Jerusalem, they would have seen a city Archelaus built for and named after himself, located some twelve kilometers north of Jericho. Or, if one prefers an alternate scenario, the sight of the great palace built by Herod the Great and rebuilt by Archelaus might have served as the mental trigger for the parable. This palace could likewise have been seen by Jesus and those with him as they exited Jericho on their way to Jerusalem. The problem with all this speculation (and the article is filled with rhetorical questions and phrases like “one can easily imagine . . .”) is that it insists that Jesus and his entourage had already left Jericho and were traveling on the road from Jericho up to Jerusalem, enabling them to see a site connected with Archelaus. This whole approach ignores the actual setting of the parable in Luke 19. In Luke 19:1–10, Jesus has summoned Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree in which he had been perched in order to see Jesus, Zacchaeus has pledged to give generously to the poor in reparation for his past sins, and Jesus has responded with a double affirmation (vv 9–10): “Today salvation has become an event [egeneto] in this house, for he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost.” Then immediately, at the beginning of v 11, Luke states “Now while they [the crowd? the disciples? the Pharisees?] were hearing these things [namely, what Jesus had just said], he proceeded to tell a parable. . . .” In other words, Jesus speaks the parable of the Minas not after leaving Jericho and on the road to Jerusalem (where he would supposedly have seen one or another set of buildings reminding him of Archelaus), but rather right under the sycamore in Jericho or, possibly, in Zacchaeus’ house in Jericho. The whole elaborate archaeological scenario constructed by Schultz collapses under the weight of Luke’s redactional setting—the very thing Schultz had sought to champion as historical. It is odd that some commentators (e.g., Weinert, “The Parable of the Throne Claimant,” 506–7; Schultz, “Jesus as Archelaus,” 111–12) object to the idea that Luke or any early Christian author would have dared to use such a disreputable and brutal figure as Archelaus to develop an allegorical story about Jesus’ kingship. But one need only consider (i) how all sorts of disturbing and violent images are applied directly to Jesus in the NT (e.g., a thief in the night, a conquering warrior, a king who slaughters guests invited to the wedding of his son [and in addition burns their city], a judge-king who sends the wicked into eternal hellfire) and (ii) how in comparison the oblique reference to Archelaus is only a slight part of a larger allegory contained within a parable to realize that this is hardly a weighty objection. On the other hand, the use of Archelaus as a stand-in for Jesus in the Lucan parable hardly proves that such a “shocking” comparison must go back to Jesus (contra Seccombe, “Incongruity,” 170–71); anyone who entertains the possibility that the parable of the Good Samaritan might be a purely Lucan composition will not find shocking elements in parables a sure sign of composition by the historical Jesus. 148

This list does not include isolated definite articles and isolated cases of the conjunctions kai and alla. But the succession of two words in the same order is counted (e.g., kai ho). Notice how most of the word-for-word agreement is concentrated in the master’s confrontation with the third slave. 149



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In this computation of the total wordage, (1) the count includes only the parable proper, not the introductory material (hence, not Luke 19:11 or “he therefore said” [eipen oun] at the beginning of v 12); (2) every Greek word is counted, including abbreviated words like ar’ and ep’; (3) counts may vary among exegetes because of differing decisions concerning text criticism; e.g., I have counted Luke 19:25 and the de in Matt 25:22, while other critics might choose to omit them. 150

151 It may be indicative of the satirical tone of the secular wisdom on this subject that we find similar sentiments expressed in pagan Latin literature by the likes of Martial, Terence, and Juvenal. For instance, in his Epigrams, Book 5.81, Martial comments: “Semper pauper eris, si pauper es, Aemiliane; dantur opes nullis nunc nisi divitibus [you will always be poor, if you are poor, Aemilianus; these days, riches are given to no one except the rich].” In the same vein, see Terence, Phormio, Act I, lines 40–42; more distantly, Juvenal, Satires, 3.21–33.

Here I disagree with Denaux (“The Parable of the Talents/Pounds,” 429–60), who provides one of the best detailed, step-by-step attempts to reconstruct the hypothetical Q text of the parable. Denaux is admirable in his honesty; he presents arguments for and against all the different sides in the debate, with the result that one realizes how easily, when faced with Denaux’s reconstruction, one could have chosen a different reading for almost any given verse. The grave uncertainty that attends in particular any reconstruction of the first part of the parable makes one doubtful about the whole project—all the more so when one compares Denaux’s reconstruction with those of other Q scholars, e.g., Robinson et al. (eds.), The Critical Edition of Q, 524–57; Ivan Havener and Athanasius Polag, Q. The Sayings of Jesus (Good News Studies 19; Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1987) 146. Some commentators who espouse a Q source suggest intermediate stages of development between Q and the final forms we have in Matthew and Luke; see, e.g., Puig i Tàrrech, “La parabole des talents,” 172–73. 152

Here I agree with Weiser, Die Knechtsgleichnisse, 227–55; Wohlgemut, “Entrusted Money,” 105. It is interesting to notice how many exegetes will opt for some form of the Q hypothesis but then hedge their bets; see, e.g., McGaughy, “The Fear of Yahweh,” 235–38. 153

See Harrington, “Polemical Parables in Matthew 24–25,” 287–98; Carter and Heil, Matthew’s Parables, esp. pp. 196–200. For a consideration of Matthew’s redactional composition of sets of parables, see Oppong-Kumi, Matthean Sets of Parables; within his treatment of the eschatological discourse (chaps. 24–25), he focuses on the parable of the Ten Virgins, but for the parable of the Talents, see pp. 312, 322. 154

Besides the major sets of triads in chaps. 5–7, 10, 13, 18, and 24–25, Davies and Allison supply a lengthy list of smaller groups of threes; see The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 1. 86–88. 155

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For an introductory treatment of the question of the literary structure(s) in Matthew’s Gospel, see Davies and Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 1. 58–72; cf. David R. Bauer, The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel (JSNTSup 31; Sheffield, UK: Almond, 1988). 156

For convenience’ sake, I retain the traditional translation of the Greek adjective okne¯ros as “lazy.” Actually, the sense is more nuanced. Hauck (“okne¯ros,” 166–67) says that it is used of a person who is hesitating, anxious, negligent, or slothful, depending on his precise external situation or internal psychological state. In any event, it describes a person “who for various reasons or difficulties does not have the resolution to act” (p. 166). In this case, it is the slave’s fear of his master that has reduced him not to total inactivity (he did bury and dig up the talent), but rather to lack of daring and initiative that results from a fear of risk and possible loss. Hence he fails to meet the challenge of the situation in which he is placed. 157

As we have already seen, it is this “center of gravity” in the overarching story of the Minas that prevents us from accepting the view that the motif of the Throne Claimant is the major or dominant narrative within the parable. 158

159 The question of whether the master should be seen as a symbol of socioeconomic oppression in an unjust society has been raised repeatedly by socially conscious interpreters since the early 1990s. Prominent among such critics are Fortna (“Reading Jesus’ Parable,” 211–28), Rohrbaugh (“A Peasant Reading,” 32–39), and Herzog (Parables as Subversive Speech, 150–68). Other scholars who have developed this line of interpretation in one direction or another (e.g., postcolonial criticism, liberation theology, and/or feminist hermeneutics) include Folarin (“The Parable of the Talents in the African Context,” 94–106), Fricke (“Wer ist der Held,” 76–80), Pilch (“The Parable of the Talents,” 366–70), Ford (“Jesus’ Parable of the Talents,” 13–24), Schottroff (“The Kingdom of God,” 170–71), Joy (“Matthew 25:14–30,” 131–42), Braun (“Reframing the Parable,” 442–48), and Dowling (Taking Away the Pound, 1–68, 69–96, 210–15). Fundamental to most of these approaches (some of which are just warmed-over Rohrbaugh) is the inversion of the presumed optic of Matthew and Luke (the master represents God or Christ at the last judgment, the slaves are Christian disciples or leaders, the first two slaves are rightly rewarded for their zealous doing of God’s will, and the third slave is rightly punished for his failure to carry out God’s will) to recapture what is claimed to be the original message of Jesus (the master represents oppressive socioeconomic systems in general and capitalism in particular, the first two slaves are quislings who cooperate with the system and therefore in their own oppression, and the third slave is the courageous protestor, rebel, or whistle-blower who dares to denounce and unmask the unjust system by refusing to cooperate with it, even though this rebellion exposes him to punishment). In Fortna’s view, for instance, the present form of the parable in Matthew or Luke is either banal or pointless. It runs counter to what we know was the true teaching of the historical Jesus, which was concerned not with religion or morality but chiefly with economic issues (“Reading Jesus’ Parable,” 215). Obviously,



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what is operative in such an approach is not only a specific Marxist/liberationist hermeneutic of the Gospels but also a particular vision of the historical Jesus—a vision that, in most of these articles, is presumed rather than proved. One of the best-known proponents of this approach is Rohrbaugh, whose 1993 essay is often cited by subsequent critics who follow this line of interpretation. Rohrbaugh appeals to what anthropologists have taught us about peasant economics, especially within ancient Mediterranean culture, a culture that modern Western exegetes have difficulty understanding because of the presuppositions of Western capitalism. He admits that we cannot be sure of the original historical setting or audience of the parable. From suggesting that the audience may have included Galilean peasants, Rohrbaugh quickly moves to focusing on this hypothetical audience of peasants. To peasants, the rich were inherently evil; they exploited the poor peasants by their exchange economy that multiplied wealth for the rich but siphoned off whatever surplus the peasants might produce in their economy of limited goods. Hence, in the parable, the third “servant” (Rohrbaugh does not translate doulos as “slave,” a translation that would have weakened his whole approach) is wicked only in the eyes of those who share the elitist mentality of the rich master. To a peasant audience, the servant has done the honorable thing by preserving what was entrusted to him without participating in the oppressive capitalist system accepted by the master and the first two servants. Rohrbaugh supports his interpretation by appealing to a passage in the 4th-century Church Father Eusebius, who offers a brief paraphrase of a different version of the parable that he claims is found in the Jewish-Christian Gospel of the Nazoreans (or Nazarenes). Rohrbaugh asserts that the chiastic structure in the version of the Gospel of the Nazoreans presents the third servant, the one who kept the money intact, as the one whom the master receives with joy. Going one step further into unlikely hypotheses, Rohrbaugh suggests that the version of the parable in the Gospel of the Nazoreans has preserved the more original form of the parable and that the canonical traditions adulterated the story early on. In the end, Rohrbaugh offers the possibility that Jesus may have intended the parable to be ambiguous: the elites in Jesus’ audience would have interpreted the parable as good news for the rich and bad news for the peasants, while the peasants in his audience would have taken the opposite tack. It is fairly clear that Rohrbaugh considers the peasants’ interpretation to be the correct one, but he ends on a coy note of studied uncertainty. What is to be said of such an approach? While the intentions of its champions are admirable, good intentions do not necessarily guarantee correct exegesis. (1) It is telling that most of the authors cited do not engage in a detailed analysis of both the Matthean and Lucan texts by way of form, tradition, source, and redaction criticism. Many exegetical decisions are simply announced rather than argued or demonstrated (e.g., that Matthew’s version of the parable is more original than Luke’s). A hypothetical original version of the parable in the mouth of Jesus is explained without any hypothetical text being produced (see, e.g., Fricke, “Wer ist der Held,” 78–79). Appeal is sometimes made not to an original text but an “originating structure” (so, e.g., Pilch, “The Parable of the Talents,” 367). The problem here is that frequently some details of the Gospel narratives and even of the wording are selectively retained, more often from Matthew but sometimes from Luke. (2) Surprisingly, in

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the whole process, the essentially metaphorical world of parabolic narrative is often ignored in favor of a literalistic reading of the hypothetical original, as though the story were speaking directly about social and economic conditions (on this, see Chenoweth, “The Vulnerability of the Literalist,” 176–77, 182–83, against Herzog). But who then would need a parable to offer such criticism? (3) Indeed, why, amid all the nonmetaphorical, direct, and blunt criticism that he aims at certain social practices (e.g., divorce, oath-taking, overstrict sabbath observance) does Jesus never criticize the most glaring socioeconomic oppression and injustice of his day, namely, slavery? The objectionable practices of overaggressive capitalism pale when compared to the ghastly realities of slavery in the Greco-Roman world. Yet in both parable and praxis, Jesus seems not to be troubled by the institution, which he apparently takes for granted. It may be for this reason that some commentators prefer to translate douloi in our parable as “servants” rather than “slaves,” despite the fact that “slaves” is by far the more likely translation (see the articles of Beavis and Glancy cited earlier). One may question whether the whole Marxist/liberation theology approach makes sense of the story if the douloi are understood to be the slaves of the master and not hired servants. For example, Herzog’s explanation depends upon the third servant being a powerful “retainer” of an aristocrat; this retainer, according to Herzog, has shared in oppressing poor peasants and now, as an honest “whistle-blower,” risks exposing himself to the ire of the peasants he formerly oppressed as he is thrown out of the master’s household to become a day laborer. Needless to say, this does not work when doulos is understood as “slave.” Actually, not all peasants in Galilee were extremely and equally poor; some more affluent peasants might have owned a slave or two and therefore would not have automatically sided with the supposedly heroic third slave who opposes his master. (On the whole problem of using “peasant” as a homogenized, one-size-fits-all category for NT studies, see Sharon Lea Mattila, “Jesus and the ‘Middle Peasants’? Problematizing a Social-Scientific Concept,” CBQ 72 [2010] 291–313.) This point weakens the approach of Fortna, who does at least recognize that douloi in this parable means “slaves.” Perhaps this is why he suggests the highly unlikely idea that Jesus’ original parable lacked any reckoning scene (i.e., Matt 25:19–28). This is a counsel of despair. (4) That the third slave is a hero who courageously rejects the oppressive structures of capitalism by hiding the entrusted money in the ground (or in a cloth) collides with the clear statement that the slave hid the money out of fear (Matt 25:25 || Luke 19:21), not out of bold opposition to his master. On this, see Wohlgemut, “Entrusted Money,” 115–16. (5) The appeal to the supposed third version of our parable in the Gospel of the Nazoreans suffers from a number of liabilities. No complete text of this Gospel has come down to us; basically, we are dependent on quotations and paraphrases in early Christian authors. From what we have of the Gospel of the Nazoreans, the work seems to have been some sort of targumlike translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Aramaic (see the comment of Philipp Vielhauer in New Testament Apocrypha. I. Gospels and Related Writings [rev. ed.; ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher; English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson; Cambridge, UK: James Clarke; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1991] 159; cf. A Marginal Jew, 1. 115–16). But even if we do not wish to use



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the analogy of a targum, Nazoreans shows definite knowledge of and dependence on Matthew. Compounding the problem, the version of the parable in Nazoreans seems to mesh elements from the parable of the Talents/Minas with details of the (Lucan) parable of the Prodigal Son; cf. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 2. 1232. Worse still, in the case of the Talents/Minas, Eusebius does not quote the text of the Gospel of the Nazoreans in his Theophaneia (of which we have only fragments of the original Greek, with the whole text preserved in a slavish Syriac translation), but gives us merely a brief paraphrase (see PG 24, cols. 685, 688). In addition, it is by no means clear that there is the kind of chiastic structure in the narrative that Rohrbaugh claims. As Wohlgemut (“Entrusted Money,” 113–14) notes, Rohrbaugh’s chiastic reading conflates two different reactions of the master that Eusebius distinguishes: the threat uttered against one slave and “the word spoken against” another slave. In sum, the Gospel of the Nazoreans, dependent on the canonical Matthew, of late and uncertain provenance, paraphrased rather than quoted, is of no use in deciding the primitive form of the parable lying behind the Matthean and Lucan versions (contra Fortna, “Reading Jesus’ Parable,” 25–26). Indeed, even the Jesus Seminar (The Parables of Jesus. Red Letter Edition, 55) judges that the version in the Gospel of the Nazoreans “is almost certainly secondary”; see also van Eck, “Do Not Question My Honour,” 1–2. (6) In the end, one must distinguish between historicalcritical exegesis and various forms of advocacy hermeneutics (Marxist, liberationist, feminist) that seek to make ancient texts speak to present-day concerns, whether or not our present-day concerns ever appeared on the mental horizons of the ancient writers. Whatever the hermeneutical validity of such approaches for the present, they usually wind up doing violence either to the Gospel texts or to a sober and credible reconstruction of the message of the historical Jesus. To be fair, in the case of the Talents/Minas, at least most critics readily admit that the evangelists intend the parable to speak of God’s final judgment on Christian moral endeavor (or alternately, on the confrontation of Jesus with the Jerusalem authorities, his rejection by them, and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem). They locate their own gospel of social consciousness in the mouth of the historical Jesus, not in the “distorting” theology of the evangelists. By contrast, Dowling stands out as a commentator who tries to read the canonical form of Luke’s parable as a social critique of the abuse of power exercised against the oppressed, notably (within the larger context of the whole of Luke’s Gospel) women. What Dowling in fact demonstrates is that, in the postmodern academy, a skillful interpreter who has adopted a particular modern hermeneutic (e.g., liberation theology, postcolonial theory, and/ or feminism) can make a text say whatever the interpreter wants it to say. This tells us nothing about the 1st-century message of certain 1st-century teachers, be they Matthew, Luke, or Jesus. As Matthean commentators often note, Matthew has a tendency to multiply adjectives vis-à-vis his source. This is clearly the case here, since Luke has only “good slave” (agathe doule) in 19:17, although Luke is not averse to the use of the adjective “faithful” (pistos) elsewhere in his Gospel. 160

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Those who engage in a social-science interpretation of the parable and see in the story a critique of capitalism naturally take the third slave’s description of the master to be accurate. But do the actions of the master in the story bear out such a judgment? In the case of the first two slaves, the master does not take back from them the money he entrusted to them or the money they have earned; rather, he rewards them handsomely with much greater power over his goods (see Martin, “Parabole des talents,” 19). This does not quite square with the third slave’s portrait. Hence one might take the master’s statement in Matt 25:26 || Luke 19:22 as either an ironic question or an ironic affirmation, granting the slave’s point of view for the sake of argument. 161

162 In v 14, the master is said to hand over ta hyparchonta autou (“his property” or “his possessions”), prior to Matthew specifying the property as five, two, and one talent. Besides hyparchonta, there are a number of word-links between the two stories. For instance, upon his return, the master in Matt 24:47 will put (kataste¯sei) his faithful and prudent slave (pistos doulos kai phronimos) in charge of “all his possessions” (pasin tois hyparchousin autou). Besides hyparchonta, notice in the parable of the Talents the use of kyrios (in the sense of the master of a slave), doule agathe kai piste (“good and faithful slave”), and kataste¯so¯ (“I will set in charge”), all in a single verse (25:21). Just as Matthew apparently used material from the Marcan parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard to compose his version of the M parable of the Great Supper, so too it seems that he used material from this Q parable to compose his version of the M parable of the slaves entrusted with money.

See, e.g., Matt 10:9 (“do not acquire gold or silver or copper [coins] in your belts”) as compared to Mark 6:8 (“he charged them not to take anything for [their] journey except a staff: neither bread nor bag nor copper [coins] in [their] belt”) in the missionary discourse. 163

In Luke’s version, lambano¯ occurs twice, referring each time to the action of the king, never to the action of a slave; the verb is typical of Matthew: 53x in Matthew, 20x in Mark, 21x in Luke. 164

Often cited texts include m. B. Mes . 3:10–12; b. B. Mes . 42a–b. These and ˙ “wrapping up” money ˙ that a man deposother rabbinic texts distinguish between (i) its with his neighbor for safekeeping and (ii) burying the money in the ground for safekeeping. The first method leaves the guardian legally liable if the money is lost; the second method exempts the guardian from legal liability. Other rabbinic texts, some as late as the 10th century and less relevant to the subject at hand, are cited by Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 759–60 n. 228. Unlike Snodgrass, some commentators fail to notice that many of these texts do not treat the topic at the heart of our parable: a subordinate is entrusted with money by a superior for the precise purpose of investing or trading with it and thus making more money. Inherent in such a scenario is consciously engaging in an endeavor that necessarily involves risk—the very thing that the laws concerning the deposit of goods for safekeeping seek to avoid. 165



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However, Matthew seems to have inherited “weeping and gnashing of teeth” from Q, since it occurs once in a Lucan parallel (Luke 13:28 || Matt 8:12). 166

Quite possibly Luke intends the acclamation of Jesus as King by his disciples on the Mount of Olives (more precisely, “at the descent [or: slope] of the Mount of Olives” in Luke 19:37) to point forward to the story in Acts of the ascension of Jesus to heaven from the Mount of Olives (as well as his subsequent session as royal Davidic Messiah at the right hand of God, as in Acts 2:33–36). But, contrary to the claim of de la Potterie (“La parabole du prétendant,” 633), this hardly justifies labeling the disciples’ acclamation in Luke 19:37–38 a “royal enthronement.” Perhaps one should also note that Luke does not mention the Mount of Olives (or Mt. Olivet) in the scene of the ascension proper (Acts 1:6–11) but rather in the following verse, which narrates the apostles’ return to Jerusalem (1:12). 167

For arguments in favor of seeing Luke 19:11 as a redactional composition through which the evangelist offers a key to the interpretation of the parable, see Denaux, “The Parable of the King-Judge,” 46–49. Denaux identifies nine Lucan characteristics in this one verse; cf. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, 2. 1233–34. In agreement with Denaux on Lucan composition of 19:11 is de la Potterie, “La parabole du prétendant,” 622–26; de la Potterie sees in the verse an astonishing accumulation of Lucan traits. 168

169 Many translations render politai in Luke 19:14 as “citizens” or “fellow citizens” (so RSV, NRSV, NAB revised NT). However, in some political contexts, politai can mean “subjects.” Granted that our story deals with a nobleman who is about to become king, “subjects” might be the better translation in 19:14 (see 1 Clem. 55:1; possibly Ant. 12.4.2 §162).

170 Possibly the specific terms for commerce used here (pragmateuomai, “to trade”; diapragmateuomai, “to gain by trade”; and prosergazomai, “to make more,” “to earn in addition”), all of which appear only in Luke’s Gospel within the NT, and which are arranged in ascending order of commercial achievement, may reflect Luke the cosmopolitan.

However, some Greek manuscripts (especially in the Byzantine tradition) change “the other” to “another” by omitting the definite article; this is apparently an attempt to create an easier reading in light of Luke’s initial reference to ten slaves. The principle of the lectio difficilior argues for “the other,” as does the attestation of early and weighty MSS like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Bezae. 171

As we have seen earlier, those who champion a Marxist/liberationist interpretation of the parable see the master not just as a demanding and grasping businessman but as a criminal, a thief, and/or a capitalist oppressor of the poor. This is advocacy hermeneutics, not historical-critical exegesis. 172

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For the development of this idea in Matthew’s Gospel, see Nathan Eubank, Wages of Cross-Bearing and Debt of Sin (BZNW 196; Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2013). 173

174 On the beatitudes, see A Marginal Jew, 2. 317–36; on sayings that stress the cost of discipleship, see A Marginal Jew, 3. 55–73.

On the saying about the Twelve judging the twelve tribes of Israel, see A Marginal Jew, 3. 135–39. 175

176 See, e.g., Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 61–62; Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 112.

German exegetes have traditionally highlighted the dialectical relationship between Gabe (gift) and Aufgabe (assignment, duty, responsibility) that is embedded in the message of both Jesus and various NT authors. 177

C o ncl u s i o n t o V o l u m e F i v e

From Unfashionable Theses to Contrarian Conclusions: Farewell to a Firm Foundation It has been a long and dusty road from the seven unfashionable theses that I proposed at the beginning of this volume. As we come to the end of our circuitous path through the parables, I would claim that our step-by-step analysis has both confirmed those initial seven propositions—propositions supported by only brief arguments in Chapter 37—and increased the number of contrarian positions that we can now confidently affirm. Leaving behind the perfect biblical number seven, let me review and add to those preliminary theses, now expanded to fifteen conclusions. (1) Confusion over what one means when one speaks of the “parables of Jesus” (the title of endless books) is widespread in both scholarly and popular writings on the subject. Not surprisingly, then, book-length commentaries on Jesus’ parables vary widely on the basic question of how many parables there are to be treated. This should come as no shock to anyone who is acquainted with the multiple etymological roots and the still more multiple meanings of the Hebrew noun ma¯ša¯l (proverb, parable, riddle, taunt-song, and much more) and, to a lesser degree, the Greek noun usually employed to translate it in the LXX, parabole¯ (whence our English word “parable”). One purpose of this volume was to shed some light on this verbal and conceptual muddle. (2) When it comes to the sayings of the Synoptic Jesus, some clarity can be achieved by distinguishing various kinds of metaphorical speech according to their length and complexity. (Let me emphasize that these definitions are tools that I have found useful in organizing and understanding the corpus of Jesus’ figurative sayings; they do not constitute a Diktat to be imposed on all future writers.) A single sentence containing a metaphor might well qualify as a ma¯ša¯l in Hebrew and a parabole¯ in Greek, but hardly as a parable in the

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English usage of modern biblical scholarship. Distinct from a single metaphor is the similitude, which is a metaphor stretched out to create a fuller, more detailed picture and complicated comparison. Distinct from both a metaphorical sentence and a similitude is what this volume classifies as a Synoptic parable. In the nomenclature I adopt, what distinguishes a parable of Jesus from a similitude is that a parable is a genuine narrative, though in some cases just a mini-story or thumbnail sketch of a narrative—but always with at least an implicit beginning, middle, and end. One justification for this admittedly modern exegetical distinction is a simple fact. While the Greek word parabole¯ is used in various ways in the Synoptics (as it was in the LXX), “narrative parable” is by far the most common and consistent meaning. Hence, as a heuristic tool, this is the meaning of “parable” employed in our inventory and exegesis of the parables attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. For our purposes, then, “parable” means “narrative parable.” Simply as a matter of fact, this meaning has proved useful in our survey of the Synoptic sayings of Jesus, but no claim is made that “ministory” constitutes a normative or universal definition of parable that must be applied to other bodies of literature. (3) Once we focus on Jesus’ use of narrative parables, a genre unique to Jesus within the NT, we are confronted with a surprising insight. Jesus’ parables place him more in the prophetic tradition of Israel than in its wisdom tradition. The sapiential books of the OT do not contain narrative parables like the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard or the Wheat and the Weeds, but the historical and prophetic books do. They range from Nathan’s brief narrative that rebukes an adulterous David (a parable not labeled a ma¯ša¯l) to the elaborate historical allegory of the prophet Ezekiel, which he explicitly designates a ma¯ša¯l (parabole¯ in the LXX). Balaam’s metaphorical prophecies of Israel’s triumphant future in the Book of Numbers (also labeled a ma¯ša¯l) spread this usage to the Pentateuch. Thus, as the eschatological prophet who speaks narrative parables to challenge the people of Israel and their leaders, Jesus stands in the long line of OT prophets. His short stories, employing figurative language that “teases the mind into active thought” (so Dodd) and calls for decision and action on the part of his hearers, place him alongside Nathan and Ezekiel rather than the wisdom teacher Ben Sira. (4) Hence, as in his itinerant career as an oral rather than literary prophet, as in his widespread miracle-working activity à la Elijah, and as in his choice of the inner circle of the Twelve as a symbol of the regathering of the twelve tribes of Israel, so too in his use of narrative parables, Jesus seems to have consciously reached back to the classical past of Israel rather than simply to have aligned himself with the apocalyptic authors and visionaries



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of his own time, as seen in the Enoch literature and the other apocalyptic writings preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls. To be sure, Jesus’ parables stand in service of his overall eschatological message to Israel, but they are quite distant from the “parables”—that is, symbolic, allegorical apocalyptic visions—contained in works like 1 Enoch. The parables of Jesus thus embody his typical dialectic of reaching back to Israel’s origins and “golden past” even as he stretches forward to the future consummation of Israel’s history, a consummation that both restores and transcends all that was best in that golden past. In short, Jesus the teller of parables is not Jesus the sage but Jesus the prophet. That is not to say that Jesus could not use sapiential motifs in his parables. The Lucan parable of the Rich Fool—whether or not it comes from the historical Jesus—reminds us that great prophets like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were quite capable of using wisdom traditions in articulating their messages of imminent condemnation and future restoration.1 Jesus the prophet, who also forges clever proverbs and aphorisms, reflects classical prophecy in this as well. (5) All of this reminds us that Jesus’ parables are not a one-size-fits-all commodity. The Synoptic parables speak of everyday agricultural activity as well as larger-than-life dramas in eastern royal courts. They describe the real, regularly recurring events involved in farming (the Sower, the Mustard Seed, the Seed Growing by Itself), and they also create great fiction (the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan). To speak of parables as simply and solely “fictions” betrays a typical academic attempt to bring a sprawling, bewildering phenomenon under the control of neat categories—as well as tacitly privileging certain parables over others. To be fair to the postmoderns, some parables do subvert traditional views and destabilize our supposedly ordered world (e.g., the Good Samaritan, the Workers in the Vineyard). Yet other parables reaffirm and inculcate the received wisdom of Israel, the Rich Fool being a notable case. While some of the parables are meant to move the audience to ponder, puzzle, and finally choose (e.g., the Dishonest Steward), others cannot be said to subvert the basic faith and hopes of Israelites who knew their prophetic and sapiential traditions (e.g., the Rich Man and Lazarus). Those who facilely equate Jesus’ parables with subversive speech tout court should notice that the parables that tend most to overturn traditional expectations—the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Workers in the Vineyard—belong to the special L and M traditions, not to the Marcan and Q parables. This does not mean per se that the subversive parables are Christian creations rather than products of the historical Jesus. Yet the solid arguments that can be mustered for the Good Samaritan being a Lucan composition from start to finish—as well as the strong Lucan tone

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in parables like the Prodigal Son and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector— should at least give one pause. To repeat: when it comes to the parables of Jesus, one size, as well as one literary description, does not fit all. (6) In the past few decades, a number of North American scholars have maintained two key propositions about the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (= CGT): (i) CGT contains Synoptic-like sayings of Jesus that are independent of, earlier than, and/or more authentic than the sayings of the Synoptic Gospels; (ii) consequently, the parables in CGT that are parallel to Synoptic parables are valuable tools for reconstructing the earliest form of Jesus’ authentic parables. These two propositions have been repeatedly called into question by our detailed analysis of individual sayings and parables. After testing nonparabolic sayings selected from various literary genres and from every Synoptic source, and then doing the same thing for various parables, we found that in every example tested, dependence on one or more Synoptic Gospel—be it direct or indirect—was the more likely hypothesis. CGT probably reflects the conflating and harmonizing tendencies that we see in the use of the Synoptic material in other 2d-century Christian writings. I do not pretend that my probes have resolved all doubts about the possible independence of every single Synoptic-like logion in CGT. What these probes have done is to shift the burden of proof in the debate. If a scholar wishes to claim that a particular Synoptic-like logion in Thomas is early and independent, I am open to listening to his or her arguments and being convinced. But, after dealing with the literature on Thomas for some time, I have yet to hear a convincing case made for the independence of any Synoptic-like saying in CGT. When the probes in Chapter 38 are put together with the general preliminary considerations presented in Volume One of A Marginal Jew, I think that the burden of proof lies on the side of any scholar affirming CGT’s independence for a particular saying. The relevance of this position for our study of Jesus’ parables is simply this: more likely than not, CGT does not supply independent multiple attestation of any Synoptic parable. This decision leads naturally to my next conclusion, the most contrarian conclusion of all, and the one that has been substantiated by our survey of the Synoptic parables. (7) Only a few of the Synoptic parables can be attributed to the historical Jesus with fair probability. Here is where the unfashionable nature of our whole project becomes clear. Contrary to claims of generations of parable researchers, reaching back to Jülicher, Jeremias, and Dodd, and reaching down to various members of the Jesus Seminar, the parables do not provide the most secure road or easiest way into the teaching of the historical Jesus. This is not to deny that Jesus taught in parables; there is sufficient



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multiple attestation for that basic fact, supported as well by the criterion of coherence. What all too often lacks the support of multiple attestation—or any other criterion of historicity—is that Jesus taught this or that particular parable. Let me be clear on this point: I do not claim that I can prove in most cases that Jesus did not speak this or that parable. Proving a negative in ancient history is usually nigh impossible. Rather, my contention is that many of the parables necessarily lie in the literary limbo of non liquet. I would, however, venture a still more contrarian position: at least some of the Synoptic parables can be shown to be, most probably, the creations of early Christian bearers of the tradition or even of the evangelists themselves. To provide a striking example, I have laid out the case for the Good Samaritan being a pure creation of Luke. I dare say, similar arguments could be made for parables like the Prodigal Son and the Wheat and the Weeds being products of early Christian tradition, if not of the evangelists. The very fact that such arguments can be mounted in all seriousness means that the presumption that the Synoptic parables are mostly if not entirely creations of Jesus himself must give way to the testing of individual cases. When multiple attestation, embarrassment, or discontinuity work in only a small number of cases, and the other criteria are totally inapplicable in many other cases, non liquet is the only honest though frustrating conclusion that a serious researcher can reach. (8) This approach rejects an ever-popular escape hatch devised to get around the fact that many parables cannot satisfy any of the criteria of historicity. Again and again one hears appeals to the unique voice, the inimitable tone and artistry, the supreme literary genius that demonstrate that this or that parable (or the parables in aggregate) come from the historical Jesus. Two replies may be made to this “esthetic” argument. (i) This argument is hopelessly subjective, wildly romantic, and in the end untestable. Many critics have heard the unique, artistic voice of Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Along with a few other critics, I hear instead the unique, artistic voice of Luke. The debate cannot be resolved by testing for hearing impairment. Indeed, one may well ask whether behind this esthetic argument lies a covert theological claim about the uniqueness of Jesus. (ii) This observation leads into the second reply to the esthetic argument, namely, that it ignores the whole process of oral and written transmission of the parables. The assertion that in the Synoptic Gospels we possess parables that actually come from the historical Jesus and accurately preserve his teaching presupposes that when Jesus originally spoke parable X, there were “earwitnesses” who not only heard but also remembered parable X, both

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before and after Jesus’ crucifixion. Through multiple “performances”—with all the variations that involved—these earwitnesses repeated this parable to other early Christians, who in turn became bearers of this particular parable tradition until it became a unit in a written Gospel. The question therefore arises: are we to think that the original disciples of Jesus and their subsequent students were so dense that they could receive from Jesus a large series of masterful parables, repeat and develop these parables, and finally enshrine these parables in a Gospel, without ever learning from the master teacher of parables how to compose a good parable? To put the question ironically, was Jesus such a bad mentor and his disciples such bad apprentices that he could spend years teaching them memorable parables without, by that very fact, also teaching them how to construct memorable parables? Or put another way: if we allow that the disciples of Jesus and later on the disciples of those disciples learned, developed, and passed on Jesus’ own parables, why do we not allow that these tradents might have also created similar verbal works of art in imitation of their master? Are we to think that all the disciples were indeed as stupid as Mark makes them out to be? In truth, if Jesus of Nazareth was a powerful and effective teacher, it stands to reason that in teaching his disciples, he would have, willy-nilly, also taught them how to teach—including how to teach by constructing striking parables. This, by the way, helps explain why such parables are found in the Synoptic tradition but not, say, in the Pauline letters. The historical Jesus did have a great talent for constructing parables, and he quite naturally passed on not only his parables but also his skill in formulating parables to his immediate disciples and through them to the bearers of the Synoptic tradition. Alas, Paul and his successors lacked such a tutor. Hence we must be open in principle to the possibility that Synoptic parables come partly from the historical Jesus and partly from his disciples and even their disciples. To be sure, in the NT, narrative parables are unique to the Synoptic Jesus. That does not prove that they are therefore unique to the historical Jesus. In addition, if the historical Jesus did at times use parables to shock and subvert, that lesson in particular would likely have impressed itself on the memory of the disciples when they tried their hand at parable-making. The historical Jesus did not have a monopoly on subversive speech in the 1st century. In sum, given this process of a creative, ongoing tradition of parables from Jesus through the earliest disciples and later tradents down to the evangelists, the esthetic argument that most if not all of the parables must be creations of Jesus alone will not work. The problem is, as we have seen, neither will most of the criteria of historicity. Allowing for the rare exception (e.g., the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard), we are left with the criterion



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of multiple attestation of independent sources. Once CGT is put aside, only a few parables can meet that criterion. (9) It was to substantiate this last claim that we embarked on an inventory of all the narrative parables in the Synoptic Gospels. A simple inspection of all the parables grouped according to sources quickly made clear that the vast majority of the parables appear in only one independent source. In other words, it is of no use to point out that the Sower or the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard appears in Mark, Matthew, and Luke if—as is the case— Matthew and Luke are simply redacting Mark’s version. Given the small number of parables that our inventory listed in more than one source, we immediately got the sinking feeling that the number of parables that would prove viable candidates for the accolade of coming from the historical Jesus would be few and far between. We were not disappointed in our modest expectations. Indeed, my dealings with the Synoptic parables have prompted me to formulate a new beatitude, one suitable for any aspect of the quest for the historical Jesus: blessed are those with modest expectations, for they shall not be disappointed. (10) But the lack of multiple attestation of independent sources was not the only result of our inventory that bade us be modest. Once we listed the parables according to their Synoptic sources, an intriguing phenomenon appeared. Mark contains only four or five narrative parables. Surprisingly, given that it is almost entirely a collection of sayings of Jesus, the Q tradition contains only five (counting the parable of the Mustard Seed, a Mark–Q overlap). This reduced number takes into account what was only a suspicion when we first drew up our inventory in Chapter 39, a suspicion subsequently confirmed in Chapter 40: the parables of the Great Supper and of the Talents/Minas belong not to Q, but to separate M and L traditions. Hence, for all the great value often attributed to Q as the presumed earliest and most reliable source of Jesus’ sayings, Q contains just about the same number of parables as Mark—and many fewer than the special M and L sources.2 (11) Indeed, the M source presents us with eleven parables, if we include the Great Supper and the Talents. Synoptic parables are thus hardly limited to or most abundant in the “first-generation” sources of Mark and Q. As a matter of fact, the M source contains more parables than Mark and Q combined. Moreover, some of the M parables (e.g., the Unmerciful Servant, the Workers in the Vineyard) have developed into stories of considerable length, with a good number of M parables (e.g., the Wheat and the Weeds) evincing specifically Matthean vocabulary and theology. (12) What is true of the M source is even truer of L. Depending on how we count (Do we accept the Two Debtors as a parable? Do we count the Tower

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Builder and the Warring King separately?), we could assign sixteen parables to the special Lucan source. Compare that to the four or five parables proper to Mark and roughly the same number to Q. What is more, it is in the special L tradition that we find the longest narrative parables within the Synoptic corpus: the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the Minas (alias the Pounds). Similar to what we saw in the M material, the uniquely Lucan parables are marked by characteristically Lucan vocabulary and theology. In short, we see a noticeable development as we move from Mark and Q (first-generation sources, most likely prior to or around a.d. 70), through Matthew (ca. a.d. 80–90), to Luke (probably a little later than Matthew). As time goes on, the number of parables specific to a given Gospel increases and some parables notably lengthen. In addition, in the L source, parables are often enlivened by touches of human psychology, drama, and interior monologue. To be sure, this striking line of development does not prove that the special M and L parables do not come from Jesus. But at the very least, they reinforce a healthy wariness about presupposing without further ado that most and perhaps all the parables have their origin in Jesus. Our detailed examination of the Good Samaritan, which led to the conclusion that it is probably a creation of Luke from start to finish, pushed our methodological doubt even further in the direction of Descartes, if not Hume. (13) At first glance, the results of our inventory might have led us into thoroughgoing skepticism about whether any Synoptic parable can be assigned, at least in its origins, to the historical Jesus. However, a testing of the most promising candidates gleaned from the inventory proved that such a radical position—like most radical positions—went too far. We identified four parables that, upon further testing, proved to be credible candidates for the critical judgment of “coming from the historical Jesus.” In the case of the Mustard Seed (Mark–Q overlap), the Great Supper (Matthew and Luke), and the Talents/Minas (again, Matthew and Luke), the basic argument for historicity, as might be expected, was the multiple attestation of independent sources. The odd man out was the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, where a form and redaction-critical analysis provided us with a primitive version of the parable that met the criteria of embarrassment and/or discontinuity. In each case, after the major argument had been made, the criterion of coherence added its supporting voice. (14) We have, then, at least four cases where a Synoptic parable can be claimed to come from the historical Jesus. Therefore, total skepticism about Jesus speaking a particular parable and that parable’s preservation in the early Christian tradition is not warranted. Granted this, we might ask: could



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some other parables in our inventory have originated with the historical Jesus? Actually, I suspect that some of the other parables listed in the inventory do come from Jesus. The problem is, I see no way of substantiating what is simply a suspicion. I come back to one of the basic postulates of my whole treatment of parables: they do not get a free pass. If every other Gospel saying we have examined in the first four volumes of A Marginal Jew had to pass the test of meeting this or that criterion of historicity, so too must each parable. While I would be glad to admit more parables to the happy band of the precious few that have been judged authentic, I do not see a way to do so honestly. To cite a favorite dictum of Jacob Neusner: what you cannot show you do not know. Either a parable can pass the test of the criteria, or it must be assigned to the OT Sheol (not Christian hell) of non liquet. It should be stressed: this judgment is not the same thing as being judged inauthentic, like the Good Samaritan. If some other scholar can find a legitimate way to move more parables over to the “authentic” column in our list, I would be delighted. But to give up the demand of meeting criteria for the sake of warm feelings toward the Synoptic parables is to open up the entire quest for the historical Jesus to rampant subjectivism and wish fulfillment. This has happened all too often in the past, and so I prefer to defend the ungainly but necessary bulwark of the criteria, even if it leaves us with precious few parables that can be judged authentic. In a way, criteria exercise the indispensable but annoying role of parents: they say no to what we want. (15) When we come to the question of what our four authentic parables meant in the mouth of the historical Jesus, it becomes clear why our treatment of the parables has been delayed to so late a place in the overall project of A Marginal Jew. Those who take the optimistic view of Jeremias or Dodd that most if not all of the parables come from Jesus would naturally prefer to place the parables early on in the process of questing for the historical Jesus. For such critics, the parables are “a particularly firm historical foundation” (so Jeremias), with no other part of the Gospel record having “a clearer ring of authenticity from the highly individual mind of Jesus” (so Dodd). Accordingly, the parables function as the privileged path into an understanding of Jesus’ preaching, reflecting as they do “with peculiar clarity the character of the good news” (so Jeremias).3 If instead we decide that only a few scattered parables from different sources can be judged authentic, the parable tradition as a whole cannot bear such a crushing burden or play such a pivotal role. Even when we succeed in locating the authentic parables of the historical Jesus, these few parables, detached from their artificial redactional

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contexts and read in isolation, can be made to mean almost anything—witness the endless clever interpretations of existentialist, structuralist, Marxist/ liberationist, and feminist scholars. Only when the critic who detaches the parables from their redactional contexts can properly place them in the larger context of the teaching and activity of the historical Jesus can he or she hope to gain some sense of their original message. This presumes, of course, that a fairly reliable picture of Jesus’ words and deeds has already been put together apart from most of the parables, so that one is not involved in a vicious circle of presupposing what is to be proved. All too often commentators on parables will argue for a particular interpretation of a parable on the ground that it fits into the larger framework of Jesus’ preaching—but without first constructing that larger framework, which is simply presumed.4 A Marginal Jew has purposefully taken the opposite approach. An overall sketch of Jesus’ teaching and actions has been slowly put together, step by step, without, for the most part, calling upon the parables for contributions. Only when this larger, mostly parable-free context had been put in place did A Marginal Jew then turn to the parables. In this way, isolated metaphorical stories that in themselves might be open to an almost limitless number of different and conflicting interpretations could find greater determinacy and clarity within the ministry of a 1st-century Palestinian Jew whose intent had already been largely understood apart from the parables. The Jesus we have found throughout A Marginal Jew presented himself to his fellow Palestinian Jews as the eschatological prophet in the mold of Elijah, sent to Israel at the climax of its history to begin the regathering of the whole people, a people prepared for the coming of God’s definitive kingdom by a radical doing of his will according to the Torah as interpreted by Jesus. To be sure, this overall portrait that supplies a stable context of interpretation still allows the metaphorical language of the parables to operate on various levels at the same time, opening up a range of meanings. But such a portrait of the historical Jesus makes many interpretations of the parables launched in the last two centuries highly unlikely or downright ludicrous: e.g., a vague humanist catechism about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, an existentialist analysis of the structures of human life and death, a Nietzschean proclamation of the death of God, a Cynic’s rejection of polite morality as lived in a hidebound community, an ironic postmodern questioning of our ability to know truth, a gnostic revelation of the divine within oneself, a critique of oppressive economic and political systems in favor of some other this-worldly system, or a call to take up arms and revolt against Herodian or Roman rulers. In some cases, at least, these hermeneutical démarches are poignant examples of the quest not for the



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historical Jesus but for acceptance or relevance within a modern university that has little time for theology or religious studies. We are reminded once again that instant, facile relevance is the enemy of sober history. In contrast, being placed near the end of our long journey toward an intellectually serious reconstruction of the historical Jesus, the parables we have deemed authentic make perfect sense within the context of the preaching and activity of this particular 1st-century eschatological prophet and miracle worker from Jewish Palestine. The parable of the Mustard Seed points to the small, unimpressive beginnings of the kingdom in Jesus’ ministry, even though it is a kingdom already powerfully at work—for those with eyes to see—in his preaching and healing. But the full glory and power of this kingdom will be apparent to all only in the future, as the twelve tribes of Israel are regathered and God’s rule is no longer partial, hidden, or apparently absent. The contrast between beginning and end almost defies belief, but the grand climax of the kingdom is already present and guaranteed in its small beginnings. However, not every member of God’s chosen people is responding positively to Jesus’ eschatological summons. In particular, the rich, the powerful, and the professionally pious all too often prove deaf or hostile, while the socially and/or religiously marginalized flock to the preacher who promises the kingdom to the poor, the hungry, the rejected, and the sinful. The reconstituted Israel of the last days will involve a great reversal, as the insiders become the outsiders and vice versa. Implicit in this message, dramatized in the parable of the Great Supper, is a startling claim: Jesus dares to make an individual’s response to him and his message the determining factor as to whether he or she will be admitted to the eschatological banquet, which is imminent.5 No excuse for ignoring or putting off Jesus’ call will be valid on the last day. Already we hear in this parable the element of struggle in Jesus’ ministry, his facing rejection in the present moment, and the grave consequences that he foresees for those who heedlessly spurn his invitation to the kingdom. For, as the parable of the Talents/Minas inculcates, Jesus’ offer of the kingdom, of belonging to the Israel of the end time, is a free gift, but a gift that contains within itself a challenge and demand. Those who accept Jesus’ message must act upon the acceptance they voice. They must change their lives by living according to the radical ha˘la¯kâ proposed by Jesus. In short, they must strenuously do God’s will as proclaimed by Jesus, even though at the present moment the God of Israel may seem strangely distant or absent. Soon he will bring in his kingdom in all its fullness, and by that very act he will call every Israelite to account. How one fares at that final ­accounting,

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whether one is admitted to membership in the Israel of the last days, depends on how one responds to and lives out the challenge of Jesus in the present moment. Those who receive the gift of Jesus’ good news and then do nothing with it can expect nothing in the end. The element of possible hostility and even violent opposition to Jesus’ mission to Israel, detectable already in some of these parables, reaches its climax in the parable of the Evil Tenants of the Vineyard. Most likely delivered as Jesus confronted the Jerusalem authorities in his final Passover pilgrimage, this parable delivers a prophetic indictment, not unlike the indictments hurled at the temple authorities by the prophet Jeremiah, with similar results. The time of Jesus’ ministry is quickly drawing to a close. As the last prophet sent to a sinful Jerusalem, he resolutely faces the same prospect of rejection and even death, and thus he perhaps intentionally alludes to the fate of his mentor, John the Baptist. Quite possibly this is the last parable Jesus spoke, at least within our small collection of authentic parables. It serves as a final warning to the ultimate insiders in the temple precincts: they are in dire danger of playing out the role of their forebears, who in this holy city murdered the prophets God had sent them. If disaster overtook the ancient rulers of Jerusalem in retribution for their bloody deeds, what will be the fate of the authorities Jesus confronts if they choose the same path in dealing with the eschatological prophet? What will happen to them when the kingdom fully comes—and it will come, despite or even through the violent end that Jesus may face as the last of Israel’s prophets, killed in Jerusalem. The dark, disturbing intimations of this parable, suggesting that Jesus senses the fate he may soon face during this particular journey to Jerusalem, suggesting too that this personal fate is somehow tied up with the fate of Israel, Jerusalem, and its rulers, and suggesting, strangely and metaphorically, that he is not just another prophet, but that as the final prophet he is also the son sent by the owner of the vineyard that is Israel—all these intimations, which leave so much unsaid in the shocking, violent end of the parable, move us to ask: who or what, finally, did Jesus take himself to be? What implicit or explicit claims about himself arise not just from this parable but from all the converging lines of his various words and deeds that we have traced throughout these five volumes? It is to this pivotal question of how Jesus the Jew directly or indirectly described and defined himself to his fellow Jews (and how some of his fellow Jews in turn may have described him) that we will turn in Volume Six. But for now, we must be content with the inverse insight we have attained in Volume Five. The parables of Jesus, however large they loom in



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the Synoptic Gospels taken as they stand, do not loom so large in a critical reconstruction of the historical Jesus. This is not to deny that parables must figure in such a reconstruction. But compared to the prominent role of eschatological prophet as mentored by John the Baptist, compared to the central preaching of the kingdom of God both present and future—a kingdom proclaimed in (nonparabolic) words and enacted in deeds—compared to the activity of an Elijah-like miracle worker, compared to the calling and formation of disciples and especially the Twelve, compared to the startling interpretations of the Torah for the end time—compared to all this, the authentic parables, few and far between, shrink in importance. They have a role to play in our quest for the historical Jesus, to be sure. But it is a secondary and modest one. There is a certain irony here. In light of the outsized role attributed to parables by most modern questers, the results of Volume Five have led us to experience a surprising eschatological reversal in scholarship. The historical Jesus might well be pleased.

NOTES TO THE CONCLUSION 1 For example, the Book of Amos does at times evince points of similarity with vocabulary and literary forms also found in the sapiential literature of the OT, but this hardly proves heavy influence of wisdom traditions on Amos; on this point, see John L. McLaughlin, “Is Amos (Still) among the Wise?,” JBL 133 (2014) 281–303.

For the sake of brevity in this short conclusion, I use the designations “M source” and “L source” in a wide, undifferentiated sense: namely, all the material not found in Mark or Q but present in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke respectively. Hence, at this point in our summary, no distinction is attempted between tradition and redaction in the M or L material. 2

These citations are from Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 13; and Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 13 (both on the first page of each author’s first chapter). 3

4 In my view, this is one of the weaknesses of the approach of Snodgrass (Stories with Intent), who seems to presuppose a portrait of the historical Jesus somewhat along the lines of Joachim Jeremias, perhaps with touches of Günther Bornkamm and Ernst Käsemann. This might, of course, be a correct portrait; but, reading Snodgrass (and many other books on the parables of Jesus), one is left asking: Where did this portrait that serves as the touchstone of coherence or plausibility come from?

This statement should not be read as a an attempt to smuggle some sort of implicit christology into the quest for the historical Jesus. Similar claims that ­acceptance 5

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or rejection of the prophetic message would determine the fate of Israel were made by any number of biblical prophets, including Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah. Need we be surprised that a heightened form of the same claim would be made by the person who considered himself the final prophet sent to Israel before the definitive coming of the kingdom of God?

Appendix

An Introductory Bibliography on the Parables Of Jesus The topic of the parables of Jesus has filled whole volumes of bibliographies; see, e.g., Warren S. Kissinger, The Parables of Jesus. A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (ATLA Bibliography Series 4; Metuchen, NJ/London: Scarecrow/ATLA, 1979). General bibliographies that include more recent publications can be found in the works of Bernard Brandon Scott, Arland J. Hultgren, Klyne R. Snodgrass, and Ruben Zimmermann (see the following). The books and articles listed here in chronological order are meant to be just a sampling of important works of past and present, representing a wide range of approaches and methodologies in regard to both parables in general and specific pericopes. The focus is placed on works of the last few decades, though older classics are included. For ease of inspection of the material, the information is grouped by paragraphs divided by decades: Adolf Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (2 vols.; Freiburg: Mohr, 1888, 1889 [reprint published by Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1910; reprinted as one volume by Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963]). Paul Fiebig, Altjüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1904); idem, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu im Lichte der rabbinischen Gleichnisse des neutestamentlichen Zeitalters (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1912); Otto Eissfeldt, Der Maschal im Alten Testament (BZAW 24; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1913). Asher Feldman, The Parables and Similes of the Rabbis: Agricultural and Pastoral (2d ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1927). Arthur Temple Cadoux, The Parables of Jesus. Their Art and Use (New York: Macmillan, 1931); C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet, 1935 [original edition]; London: Collins [Fontana], 1961 [revised edition]). Maxime Hermaniuk, La parabole évangélique. Enquête exégétique et critique (Louvain: Biblioteca Alfonsiana, 1947).

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A. S. Herbert, “The Parable (Ma¯ša¯l) in the Old Testament,” SJT 7 (1954) 180–96; Matthew Black, “The Parables as Allegory,” BJRL 42 (1959–60) 273–87. A. M. Hunter, Interpreting the Parables (London: SCM, 1960); Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (London: SCM, 1963 [English translation of 6th German edition, 1962; 1st English edition, 1954]); Amos N. Wilder, “The Parable,” Early Christian Rhetoric. The Language of the Gospel (New York: Harper & Row, 1964; reissued edition: Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1971) 79–96; idem, Jesus’ Parables and the War of Myths (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982); Robert W. Funk, “The Parable as Metaphor,” Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) 132–62; idem, Parables and Presence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982); idem, Funk on Parables. Collected Essays (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2006); Eta Linnemann, Parables of Jesus. Introduction and Exposition (London: SPCK, 1966); Dan Otto Via, Jr., The Parables. Their Literary and Existential Dimension (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967); Friedrich Hauck, “parabole¯,” TDNT 5 (1967) 744–61; Raymond Brown, “Parable and Allegory Reconsidered,” New Testament Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968) 321–33; Michael D. Goulder, “Characteristics of the Parables in the Several Gospels,” JTS n.s. 19 (1968) 51–69, esp. 58–62; Jack Dean Kingsbury, The Parables of Jesus in Matthew 13. A Study in Redaction-Criticism (London, SPCK, 1969). J. Duncan M. Derrett, Law in the New Testament (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1970); Aloysius M. Ambrozic, The Hidden Kingdom. A Redaction-Critical Study of the References to the Kingdom of God in Mark’s Gospel (CBQMS 2; Washington, DC: CBA, 1972); William R. Schoedel, “Parables in the Gospel of Thomas: Oral Tradition or Gnostic Exegesis?,” CTM 43 (1972) 548–60; John Dominic Crossan, In Parables. The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1973); idem, Cliffs of Fall. Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus (New York: Seabury, 1980); idem, In Fragments (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983); Karl Paul Donfried, “The Allegory of the Ten Virgins (Matt 25:1–13) as a Summary of Matthean Theology,” JBL 93 (1974) 415–28; Gerhard Sellin, “Lukas als Gleichniserzähler: die Erzählung vom barmherzigen Samariter (Lk 10:25– 37),” ZNW 65 (1974) 166–89; idem, “Lukas als Gleichniserzähler: die Erzählung vom barmherzigen Samariter (Lk 10:25–37),” ZNW 66 (1975) 19–60; Charles Edwin Carlston, The Parables of the Triple Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); J. C. Little, “Parable Research in the Twentieth Century,” ExpTim 87 (1975–76) 356–60; 88 (1977) 40–44, 71–75; Kenneth Ewing Bailey, Poet and Peasant. A Literary-Cultural Approach to the



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Parables in Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976); idem, Through Peasant Eyes. More Lucan Parables, Their Culture and Style (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980); idem, Finding the Lost. Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992); Michel Hubaut, La parabole des vignerons homicides (CahRB 16; Paris: Gabalda, 1976); Norman Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); Madeleine Boucher, The Mysterious Parable (CBQMS 6; Washington, DC: CBA, 1977); eadem, The Parables (NT Message 7; Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1981); Robert M. Johnston, Parabolic Interpretations Attributed to Tannaim (Ph.D. dissertation; Hartford, CT: Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1977); Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977); idem, “Listening to the Parables of Jesus,” The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. An Anthology of His Work (ed. Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart; Boston: Beacon, 1978) 239–45; Ingo Broer, “Die Gleichnisexegese und die neuere Literaturwissenschaft. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zur Exegese von Mt 20,1–16,” BN 5 (1978) 13–27; Rudolf Pesch and Reinhard Kratz, So liest man synoptisch. Anleitung und Kommentar zum Studium der synoptischen Evangelien. 4: Gleichnisse und Bildreden aus der dreifachen Überlieferung. 5: Gleichnisse und Bildreden aus der zweifachen Überlieferung (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1978); Hans-Josef Klauck, Allegorie und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten (NTAbh 13; Münster: Aschendorff, 1978; 2d ed. with appendix, 1986); Hans Weder, Die Gleichnisse Jesu als Metaphern (FRLANT 120; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978; 4th ed., 1990); The Entrevernes Group, Signs and Parables: Semiotics and Gospel Texts (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1978); Warren S. Kissinger, The Parables of Jesus. A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (ATLA Bibliography Series 4; Metuchen, NJ/London: Scarecrow/ATLA, 1979); Mary Ann Tolbert, Perspectives on the Parables (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). Philip Barton Payne, “The Authenticity of the Parable of the Sower and Its Interpretation,” Gospel Perspectives. Volume I (ed. R. T. France and David Wenham; Sheffield: JSOT, 1980) 163–207; idem, “The Authenticity of the Parables of Jesus,” Gospel Perspectives. Volume II (ed. R. T. France and David Wenham; Sheffield: JSOT, 1981) 329–44; Rudolf Laufen, Die Doppelüberlieferungen der Logienquelle und des Markusevangeliums (BBB 54; Bonn: Hanstein, 1980); David Flusser, Die rabbinischen Gleichnisse und der Gleichniserzähler Jesus. 1: Das Wesen der Gleichnisse (Judaica et Christiana 4; Bern: Lang, 1981); Pheme Perkins, Hearing the Parables of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1981); Jan Lambrecht, Once More Astonished: The Parables of Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1981); idem, Out of the Treasure: The Parables in the Gospel of Matthew (Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs

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10; Louvain: Peeters; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992); Wolfgang Harnisch, Gleichnisse Jesu. Positionen der Auslegung von Adolf Jülicher bis zur Form­ geschichte (Wege der Forschung 366; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch­ gesellschaft, 1982); idem, Die neutestamentliche Gleichnisforschung im Horizont von Hermeneutik und Literaturwissenschaft (Wege der Forschung 575; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982); idem, Die Gleich­ niserzählungen Jesu. Eine hermeneutische Einführung (3d ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995); James Breech, The Silence of Jesus. The Authentic Voice of the Historical Man (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); Timothy Polk, “Paradigms, Parables, and Me˘s˘a¯lîm: On Reading the Ma¯ša¯l in Scripture,” CBQ 45 (1983) 564–83; Klyne R. Snodgrass, The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (WUNT 27; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1983); idem, “The Gospel of Thomas: A Secondary Gospel,” Second Century 7 (1990) 19–38; idem, “Recent Research on the Parable of the Wicked Tenants: An Assessment,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 8 (1998) 187–216; idem, Stories with Intent. A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2008); idem, “Key Questions on the Parables of Jesus,” RevExp 109 (2012) 173–85; D. A. Carson, “The OMOIOΣ Word-Group as Introduction to Some Matthean Parables,” NTS 31 (1985) 277–82; John Drury, The Parables in the Gospels (New York: Crossroad, 1985); Bernard Brandon Scott, “Essaying the Rock. The Authenticity of the Jesus Parable Tradition,” Foundations & Facets Forum 2/1 (1986) 3–53; idem, Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989); idem, ReImagine the World. An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2001); Ron Cameron, “Parable and Interpretation in the Gospel of Thomas,” Foundations & Facets Forum 2/2 (1986) 3–39; Herman Hendrickx, The Parables of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986); Georg Baudler, Jesus im Spiegel seiner Gleichnisse (Stuttgart: Calwer; Munich: Kösel, 1986); Joel Marcus, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (SBLDS 90; Atlanta: Scholars, 1986); Clemens Thoma and Simon Lauer, Die Gleichnisse der Rabbinen (Judaica et Christiana 10, 16, 18; Bern: Lang, 1986); Frederick Houk Borsch, Many Things in Parables. Extravagant Stories of New Community (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); John R. Donahue, The Gospel in Parable (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); Peter Dschulnigg, Rabbinische Gleichnisse und das Neue Testament (Judaica et Christiana 12; Bern: Lang, 1988); Kurt Erlemann, Das Bild Gottes in den synoptischen Gleichnissen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1988); Robert W. Funk, Bernard Brandon Scott, and James R. Butts, The Parables of Jesus. Red Letter Edition (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1988); Christopher M. Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” NovT 30 (1988) 132–57; Birger Gerhardsson, “The Narrative Meshalim in



Appendix

381

the Synoptic Gospels. A Comparison with the Narrative Meshalim in the Old Testament,” NTS 34 (1988) 339–63; idem, “The Narrative Meshalim in the Old Testament Books and in the Synoptic Gospels,” To Touch the Text (Joseph A. Fitzmyer Festschrift; ed. Maurya P. Horgan and Paul J. Kobelski; New York: Crossroad, 1989) 289–304; idem, “Illuminating the Kingdom. Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels,” Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (ed. Henry Wansbrough; JSNTSup 64; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1991) 266–309; idem, “The Earthly Jesus in the Synoptic Parables,” Christology, Controversy, and Community (David R. Catchpole Festschrift; ed. David G. Horrell and Christopher M. Tuckett; Leiden: Brill, 2000) 49–62; Jean Delorme (ed.), Les paraboles évangéliques. Perspectives nouvelles (LD 135; Paris: Cerf, 1989); Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod (eds.), Parable and Story in Judaism and Christianity (New York: Paulist, 1989); Brad H. Young, Jesus and His Jewish Parables (New York: Paulist, 1989); idem, The Parables. Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1998). Mary Ann Beavis, “Parable and Fable,” CBQ 52 (1990) 473–98; eadem, “‘Like Yeast That a Woman Took’: Feminist Interpretations of the Parables,” RevExp 109 (2012) 219–31; Harvey K. McArthur and Robert M. Johnston, They Also Taught in Parables. Rabbinic Parables from the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990); Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1990); idem, “Interpreting the Parables of Jesus: Where Are We and Where Do We Go from Here?,” CBQ 53 (1991) 50–78; idem, “The Parables of Jesus: Current Trends and Needs in Research,” Studying the Historical Jesus. Evaluations of the State of the Current Research (NTTS 19; ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1994) 231–54; Eckhard Rau, Reden in Vollmacht. Hintergrund, Form, und Anliegen der Gleichnisse Jesu (FRLANT 149; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990); Claus Westermann, The Parables of Jesus in the Light of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Werner Georg Kümmel, “Jesusforschung seit 1981: IV. Gleichnisse,” TRu 56 (1991) 27–53; Jürgen Roloff, “Das Kirchenverständnis des Matthäus im Spiegel seiner Gleichnisse,” NTS 38 (1992) 337– 56; idem, Jesu Gleichnisse im Matthäusevangelium (Biblisch-theologische Studien 73; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005); Philip Sellew, “Interior Monologue as a Narrative Device in the Parables of Luke,” JBL 111 (1992) 239–53; Stephen J. Patterson, “The Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Tradition. A Forschungsbericht and Critique,” Foundations & Facets Forum 8/1–2 (1992) 45–97; idem, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1993); idem, The Gospel of Thomas and ­Christian

382

Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

Origins (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 84; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013); Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (eds.), Studying the Historical Jesus. Evaluations of the State of Current Research (NTTS 19; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1994); William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech. Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994); idem, “Sowing Discord: The Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1–9),” RevExp 109 (2012) 187–98; Charles W. Hedrick, Parables as Poetic Fictions. The Creative Voice of Jesus (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994); idem, Many Things in Parables. Jesus and His Modern Critics (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2004); Stevan L. Davies, Jesus the Healer. Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (New York: Continuum, 1995), esp. chapter 6, “The Function of Jesus’ Parables,” 120–36; Ivor Harold Jones, The Matthean Parables. A Literary and Historical Commentary (NovTSup 80; Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1995); James H. Charlesworth and Walter P. Weaver, Earthing Christologies. From Jesus’ Parables to Jesus the Parable (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1995); Anton Vögtle, Gott und seine Gäste. Das Schicksal des Gleichnisses Jesu vom grossen Gastmahl (Biblisch-Theologische Studien 29; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1996); V. George Shillington (ed.), Jesus and His Parables (Edinburgh: Clark, 1997); Hermann-Josef Meurer, Die Gleichnisse Jesu als Metaphern. Paul Ricoeurs Hermeneutik der Gleichniserzählung Jesu im Horizont des Symbols “Gottesherrschaft/Reich Gottes” (BBB 111; Bodenheim: Philo, 1997); Karl-Martin Beyse, “ma¯šal I; ma¯ša¯l,” TDOT 9 (1998) 64–67; Heinrich Gross, “ma¯šal II, etc.,” TDOT 9 (1998) 68–71; Warren Carter and John Paul Heil, Matthew’s Parables. Audience Oriented Perspectives (CBQMS 30; Washington: CBA, 1998); Jeffrey T. Tucker, Example Stories. Perspectives on Four Parables in the Gospel of Luke (JSNTSup 162; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1998); Ulrich Mell, Die Zeit der Gottesherrschaft. Zur Allegorie und zum Gleichnis von Markus 4:1–9 (BWANT 8/4; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998); idem (ed.), Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999. Beiträge zum Dialog mit Adolf Jülicher (BZNW 103; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999); idem, “Die Publikationsgeschichte von Adolf Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 1–3; idem, “Der barmherzige Samaritaner und Gottes Gerechtigkeit. Eine Auslegung von Lk 10,30–35 in Anknüpfung an Adolf Jülicher,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 113–48; Karl Erlemann, “Adolf Jülicher in der Gleichnisforschung des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 5–37; Stefan Alkier, “Die ‘Gleichnisreden Jesu’ als ‘Meisterwerke volkstümlicher Beredtsamkeit.’ Beobachtungen zur Aristoteles-Rezeption Adolf Jülichers,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899– 1999, 39–74; François Vouga, “Zur form- und redaktionsgeschichtlichen



Appendix

383

Definition der Gattungen: Gleichnis, Parabel/Fabel, Beispielerzählung,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 75–95; Hans Weder, “Verstehen durch Metaphern. Überlegungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Methodik bildhafter religiöser Sprach im Anschluss an Adolf Jülicher,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 97–112; Silke Petersen, “Adolf Jülicher und die Parabeln des Thomasevangeliums,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 179–207; Ingo Baldermann, “Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Didaktik der Hoffnung,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 209–21; Peter Lampe, “Die Gleichnisverkündigung Jesu von Nazareth im Lichte konstruktivistischer Wissenssoziologie,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 223–36; Eckart Reinmuth, “Erzählen und Begreifen. Ein Beitrag zum neutestamentlichen Verständnis eines theologischen Missverständnisses,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899– 1999, 237–56; Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, “Adolf Jülicher als Zeitgenosse. Eine biographische Skizze,” Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 1899–1999, 257–86. Greg W. Forbes, The God of Old. The Role of the Lukan Parables in the Purpose of Luke’s Gospel (JSNTSup 198; Sheffield: Academic Press, 2000); Stanley E. Porter, The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research (JSNTSup 191; Sheffield: Academic Press, 2000); Dieter Massa, Verstehensbedingungen von Gleichnissen: Prozesse und Voraussetzungen der Rezeption aus kognitiver Sicht (Tübingen/Basel: Francke, 2000); David Buttrick, Speaking Parables (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2000); Richard N. Longenecker (ed.), The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables (Grand Rapids: Eerd­ mans, 2000); Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus. A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000); idem, “The Message of Jesus II: Parables,” Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (4 vols.; ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011) 3. 2549–71; Morna D. Hooker, “Mark’s Parables of the Kingdom (Mark 4:1–34),” The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables (ed. Richard N. Longenecker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 79–101; David B. Gowler, What Are They Saying about the Parables? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2000); Jacobus Liebenberg, The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus. Parable, Aphorism, and Metaphor in the Sayings Material Common to the Synoptic Tradition and the Gospel of Thomas (BZNW 102; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2001); Nicholas Perrin, Thomas and Tatian. The Relationship between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron (Academia Biblica 5; Leiden/Boston/ Cologne: Brill; Atlanta: SBL, 2002); idem, Thomas, the Other Gospel (Louisville/London: Westminster/John Knox, 2007); Wesley G. Olmstead, Matthew’s Trilogy of Parables. The Nation, the Nations and the Reader in Matthew 21:28–22:14 (SNTSMS 127; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2003); Barbara E. Reid, “Violent Endings in Matthew’s Parables and Chris-

384

Probing the Authenticity of the Parables

tian Nonviolence,” CBQ 66 (2004) 237–55; Klaus Berger, Formen und Gattungen im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Francke, 2005); John Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard. Ideology, Economics, and Agrarian Conflict in Jewish Palestine (WUNT 195; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2006); Michael Bird, “Who Comes from the East and the West? Luke 13.28–29/Matt 8.11–12 and the Historical Jesus,” NTS 52 (2006) 441–57; Jeremy Schipper, “Did David Overinterpret Nathan’s Parable in 2 Samuel 12:1–6?,” JBL 126 (2007) 383–91; idem, Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Cambridge University, 2009); Robert Doran, “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector,” CBQ 69 (2007) 259–70; Charles L. Quarles, “The Use of the Gospel of Thomas in the Research on the Historical Jesus of John Dominic Crossan,” CBQ 69 (2007) 517–36; Ruben Zimmermann et al. (eds.), Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu (Gütersloh; Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007); Ruben Zimmermann with Gabi Kern (eds.), Hermeneutik der Gleichnisse Jesu (WUNT 231; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2008); Garwood P. Anderson, “Seeking and Saving What Might Have Been Lost: Luke’s Restoration of an Enigmatic Parable Tradition,” CBQ 70 (2008) 729–49; John J. Kilgallen, Twenty Parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (Subsidia Biblica 32; Rome: Biblical Institute, 2008); idem, “‘Mysteries’ in Luke 8, 10,” Biblical Exegesis in Progress (AnBib 176; ed. Jean-Noël Aletti and Jean-Louis Ska; Rome: Biblical Institute, 2009) 335–70; Fabian E. Udoh, “The Tale of an Unright­ eous Slave (Luke 16:1–8 [13]),” JBL 128 (2009) 311–35; Ryan S. Schellenberg, “Kingdom as Contaminant? The Role of Repertoire in the Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven,” CBQ 71 (2009) 527–43; Roberto Di Paolo, “Capire i misteri del regno dei cieli. Analisi retorica di Matteo 13,” Liber Annuus 59 (2009) 59–109; Rohun Park, “Revisiting the Parable of the Prodigal Son for Decolonization: Luke’s Reconfiguration of Oikos in 15:11–32,” Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009) 507–20; Katrine Brix, “Erste Annäherung einer Hermeneutik des ma¯ša¯l in alttestamentlichen Schriften mit Überlegungen zur Rezeption dieses Begriffes in den neutestamentlichen Evangelien,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 13 (2009) 127–41; Joshua Garroway, “The Invasion of a Mustard Seed: A Reading of Mark 5.1–20,” JSNT 32 (2009) 57–75; V. George Shillington, “Reading Jesus’ Parables in Light of His Crucifixion,” A Wandering Galilean (Seán Freyne Festschrift; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 132; ed. Zuleika Rodgers et al.; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009) 505–24; Stephen I. Wright, “Debtors, Laborers and Virgins: The Voice of Jesus and the Voice of Matthew in Three Parables,” Jesus and Paul (James D. G. Dunn Festschrift; Library of NT Studies 414; ed. B. J. Oropeza, C. K. Robertson, and Douglas C. Mohrmann; London/New York: Clark, 2009) 13–23; Ruben Zimmermann,



Appendix

385

“Die ­Ethico-Ästhetik der Gleichnisse Jesu. Ethik durch literarische Ästhetik am Beispiel der Parabeln im Matthäus-Evangelium,” Jenseits von Indikativ und Imperativ. Band I (WUNT 238; ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Horn and Ruben Zimmermann; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2009) 235–65; Michael Wolter, “Jesus as a Teller of Parables: On Jesus’ Self-Interpretation in His Parables,” Jesus Research: An International Perspective: The First Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Prague 2005 (ed. James H. Charlesworth with Petr Pokorný; Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2009) 123–39; Rudolf Hoppe, “How Did Jesus Understand His Death? The Parables in Eschatological Prospect,” ibid., 154–69; J. Lyle Story, “All Is Now Ready: An Exegesis of ‘The Great Banquet’ (Luke 14:15–24) and ‘The Marriage Feast’ (Matthew 22:1–14),” American Theological Inquiry 2 (2009) 67–79; Luise Schottroff, “The Kingdom of God Is Not Like You Were Made to Believe: Reading Parables in the Context of Germany and Western Europe,” The Bible and the Hermeneutics of Liberation (SBL Semeia Studies 59; ed. Alejandro F. Botta and Pablo R. Andiñach; Atlanta: SBL, 2009) 169–79; Miguel Pérez Fernández, “Rabbinic Texts in the Exegesis of the New Testament,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 7 (2004) 95–120; Markus Lau, “Entlang des Weges gesät—doch nicht vergebens! Eine Notiz zu Mk 4, 4 im Licht von Mk 10, 46,” BN 142 (2009) 99–103. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, “Audience Inclusion and Exclusion as Rhetorical Technique in the Gospel of Mark,” JBL 129 (2010) 717–35; Greg W. Forbes, “The Parables,” The Content and Setting of the Gospel Tradition (ed. Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs; Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2010) 354–72; Laurent Larroque, La Parabole du serviteur impitoyable en son contexte (Mt 18, 21–35) (AnBib 187; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2010); Alan Appelbaum, The Rabbis’ King-Parables. Midrash from the Third-Century Roman Empire (Judaism in Context 7; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010); James Metzger, “Disability and the Marginalisation of God in the Parable of the Snubbed Host (Luke 14.15–24),” Bible and Critical Theory 6 (2010) 23 pages (online); Ulrich Mell, “Die neutestamentliche Gleichnisforschung 100 Jahre nach Adolf Jülicher,” TRu 76 (2011) 37–81; Claudio Gianotto, “The Lucan Parable of the Good Samaritan and Its Interpretations in Christian Antiquity,” The Quest for a Common Humanity (Numen Book Series 134; ed. Katell Berthelot and Matthias Morgenstern; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011) 125–38; Ernest van Eck, “Do Not Question My Honour: A Social-Scientific Reading of the Parable of the Minas (Lk 19:12b24, 27),” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 67 (2011) 14 pages (online); Charles W. Hedrick, “The Parables and the Synoptic Problem,” New Studies in the Synoptic Problem (Christopher M. Tuckett ­Festschrift;

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BETL 239; ed. Paul Foster et al.; Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2011) 321–45; J. Albert Harrill, “The Psychology of Slaves in the Gospel Parables,” BZ 55 (2011) 63–74; Sun-Jong Kim, “Lecture de la parabole du fils retrouvé à la lumière du Jubilé,” NovT 53 (2011) 211–21; Céline Rohmer, “Aux frontières du discours en paraboles,” Bib 92 (2011) 597–609; eadem, “L’effetvaleur dans un discours en paraboles. Une lecture de Matthieu 13,” ETR 86 (2011) 101–11; David Seccombe, “Incongruity in the Gospel Parables,” TynBul 62 (2011) 161–72; R. Steven Notley and Ze’ev Safrai, Parables of the Sages. Jewish Wisdom from Jesus to Rav Ashi (Jerusalem: Carta, 2011); John K. Goodrich, “Voluntary Debt Remission and the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–13),” JBL 131 (2012) 547–66; Peter S. Hawkins, “A Man Had Two Sons. The Question of Forgiveness in Luke 15,” Ancient Forgiveness. Classical, Judaic, and Christian (ed. Charles L. Griswold and David Konstan; New York: Cambridge University, 2012) 158–75; Nissim Amzallag and Mikhal Avriel, “The Cryptic Meaning of the Isaiah 14 Ma¯ša¯l,” JBL 131 (2012) 643–62; Adam F. Braun, “Reframing the Parable of the Pounds in Lukan Narrative and Economic Context: Luke 19:11–28,” CurTM 39 (2012) 442–48; Jonathan A. Kruschwitz,“2 Samuel 12:1–15: How (Not) to Read a Parable,” RevExp 109 (2012) 253–59; Joseph Nalpathilchira, “Everything Is Ready: Come to the Marriage Banquet.” The Parable of the Invitation to the Royal Marriage Banquet (Matt 22, 1–14) in the Context of Matthew’s Gospel (AnBib 196; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2012); Armand Puig i Tàrrech, “Interpreting the Parables of Jesus. A Test Case: The Parable of the Lost Sheep,” Gospel Images of Jesus Christ in Church Tradition and in Biblical Scholarship (WUNT 288; ed. Christos Karakolis, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, and Sviatoslav Rogalsky; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2012) 253–89; idem, “The Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard: The Narrative Outline and Its Socio-Historical Plausibility,” BN 158 (2013) 85–112; idem, “Metaphorics, First Context and Jesus Tradition in the Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard,” BN 159 (2013) 75–120; Nathan Eubank, “What Does Matthew Say about Divine Recompense? On the Misuse of the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (20.1–16),” JSNT 35 (2013) 242–62; Peter Yaw Oppong-Kumi, Matthean Sets of Parables (WUNT 2/340; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 2013); Elian Cuvillier, “Discerner les signa temporum ou la ‘contemporanéité’ évangélique: Mt 16,1–4 et Mt 24–25,” Théophilyon 18 (2013) 9–25, esp. 19–21; David W. Kim, “Where Does It Fit? The Unknown Parables in the Gospel of Thomas,” Bib 94 (2013) 585–95.

R

H M

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Major Roads Other Roads Cities of the Decapolis

Leo ntes

Tyre

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U l a t h a

e

Ladder of Tyre

P a n e a s Caesarea Philippi (Paneas)

n

Fortresses

Chorazin Caper naum Cana Magdala

t. l Mm e r Ca

Nain Plain of Esdrealon Agrippina

Mt.Ebal

Sychar

Mt.Gerizim

Arbela

Archelais

Hyrcania

Engaddi

Machaer us A r n on

Areopolis

A

Masada

Callirrhoe

Malatha

Charachmoba

A

Bersabe

E A

Medeba

N

M

Esbus Qumran

E A Herodium Hebron

Betharamphtha (Livias, Julias)

La ke A sph al ti ti s (D ead Se a)

D

Philadelphia

P E R E A

A

Gophna

Bethsura

U

Gadara

Ephraim

Jericho Emmaus? Cyprus Bethan y Jer usalem

Agrippias Gaza

Jabbok

Phasaelis

Bethlehem

J U

Gerasa Amathus

E

Arimathea?

Azotus

D E C A P O L I S

Alexandrium

Antipatris

(Nicopolis)

Jorda n

S A M A R I A (Samaria)

Jamnia Emmaus

D

k Abila mu Ya r Gadara

Pella Salim Aenon

Lydda

Dion?

Hippos

T

S h a ro n

Narbata

Sebaste

o f P l a i n

Joppa

I

Sea of Galilee

Scythopolis

Caesarea

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B

Dora Crocodilion

Marisa

Mt. Tabor

a

l

t

B a t a n e a a G Bethsaida–Julias Raphana

Tiberias

Sepphoris Gabae Nazareth

Mediterranean

Apollonia

GALILEE

u

i

n

o h

Gischala

P Ptolemais

Ascalon

A

t.

A.D. 6–44

Sea

I

er

Y

m

Sarepta S

Political Boundaries

on

PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF JESUS

20 miles

0 0

387

20 km

THE GALILEE OF JESUS’ MINISTRY Tyre

Caesarea Philippi

A Mediterr anean Sea a

I

i

Ladder of Tyre

c

Lake Semechonitis

e

E

o h

I

Y

Sycaminum

L

Jotapata

M

A

Chorazin Caper naum Tabgha

Bethsaida–Julias

Gennesaret Magdala

Cana

t. C

Tiberias

Gergesa

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Sea of Galilee

m

G

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el

S

Sepphoris Nazareth

Gabae K n

uk

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m

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S

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Mt. Tabor

Dora

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THE FAMILY OF HEROD THE GREAT Herod the Great had ten wives. Only the wives and descendants of direct interest to students of the NT are listed here. b. = born d. = died r. = reigned m. = married K. = King E. = Ethnarch T. = Tetrarch

389

King Herod the Great b. ca. 73 b.c. d. 4 b.c.

MARIAMME I (Hasmonean) d. 29 b.c. Aristobulus IV d. 7 b.c.; m. Bernice I Herod (of Chalcis) Herod Agrippa I Herodias m. Bernice II r. tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias as K. m. (1) Herod r. Chalcis a.d. 41–48 (K.) from a.d. 37—tetrarchy of Antipas (misnamed Philip)* d. a.d. 48 added a.d. 40—Judea and Samaria added (2) Herod Antipas a.d. 41–44 d. a.d. 44 MARIAMME II m.

Herod (misnamed Philip) m. Herodias Salome III m. Philip MALTHACE (Samaritan) Archelaus r. 4 b.c.–a.d. 6 (E.)

CLEOPATRA (of Jerusalem)

Herod Antipas m. (1) Daughter of Aretas IV (Nabatean K.) (2) Herodias r. 4 b.c.–a.d. 39 (T.)

Philip m. Salome III r. 4 b.c.–a.d. 34 (T.) d. a.d. 34 *Mark’s Gospel confuses Herod, the son of Mariamme II, with Philip; this has led some NT scholars to speak (wrongly) of “Herod Philip” as Herodias’ f irst husband.

THE REGNAL YEARS OF THE ROMAN PRINCIPES (EMPERORS) Compared with the dates of the Prefects/Procurators of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea OCTAVIAN (AUGUSTUS) 31 b.c. (battle of Actium) 27 b.c. (assumes title of Augustus) a.d. 14 (dies)

[Prefects] a.d.

{

Coponius M. Ambivius Annius Rufus

{

Valerius Gratus Pontius Pilate Marcellus

15–26 26–36 36–37

GAIUS (CALIGULA) 37–41

Marullus

37–41 (?)

CLAUDIUS 41–54

[Reign of Agrippa I over the restored kingdom of the Jews, 41–44]

TIBERIUS 14–37

{ NERO 54–68

GALBA, OTHO, VITELLIUS (all in 69) VESPASIAN 69–79

{

390

6–9 9–12 (?) 12–15 (?)

[Procurators] C. Cuspius Fadus Tiberius Julius Alexander Ventidius Cumanus

44–46 46–48 48–52

M. Antonius Felix Porcius Festus Lucceius Albinus Gessius Florus

52–60 (?) 60–62 (?) 62–64 64–66

Jewish Revolt

66–70

List of Abbreviations

1. Abbreviations of the Names of Biblical Books (with the Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books) Gen Exod Lev Num Deut Josh Judg 1-2 Sam 1-2 Kgs Isa Jer Ezek Hos Joel Amos Obad Jonah Mic

Nah Hab Zeph Hag Zech Mal Ps (pl.: Pss) Job Prov Ruth Cant Eccl (or Qoh) Lam Esth Dan Ezra Neh 1-2 Chr

1-2-3-4 Kgdms Add Esth Bar Bel 1-2 Esdr 4 Ezra Jdt Ep Jer 1-2-3-4 Macc Pr Azar Pr Man Sir Sus Tob Wis Matt Mark Luke

John Acts Rom 1-2 Cor Gal Eph Phil Col 1-2 Thess 1-2 Tim Titus Phlm Heb Jas 1-2 Pet 1-2-3 John Jude Rev

2. Abbreviations of the Names of Pseudepigraphical and Early Patristic Books Adam and Eve Books of Adam and Eve 2-3 Apoc. Bar. Syriac, Greek Apocalypse of Baruch Apoc. Mos. Apocalypse of Moses As. Mos. Assumption of Moses 1-2-3 Enoch Ethiopic, Slavonic, Hebrew Enoch Ep. Arist Epistle of Aristeas Jub. Jubilees

391

392

List of Abbreviations

Mart. Isa. Martyrdom of Isaiah Odes Sol. Odes of Solomon Pss. Sol. Psalms of Solomon Sib. Or. Sibylline Oracles T. 12 Patr. Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs T. Levi Testament of Levi T. Benj. Testament of Benjamin, etc. Acts Pil. Acts of Pilate Apoc. Pet. Apocalypse of Peter Gos. Eb. Gospel of the Ebionites Gos. Eg. Gospel of the Egyptians Gos. Heb. Gospel of the Hebrews Gos. Naass. Gospel of the Naassenes Gos. Pet. Gospel of Peter Gos. Thom. Gospel of Thomas Prot. Jas. Protevangelium of James Barn. Barnabas 1-2 Clem. 1-2 Clement Did. Didache Diogn. Diognetus Herm. Hermas, Man. Mandate Sim. Similitude Vis. Vision Ign. Eph. Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians Magn. Ignatius, Letter to the Magnesians Phld. Ignatius, Letter to the Philadelphians Pol. Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp Rom. Ignatius, Letter to the Romans Smyrn. Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrneans Trall. Ignatius, Letter to the Trallians Mart. Pol. Martyrdom of Polycarp Pol. Phil. Polycarp to the Philippians Bib. Ant. Ps.-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 3. Abbreviations of Names of Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Texts CD Cairo (Genizah text of the) Damascus (Document) Ḥev Naḥal Ḥever texts Mas Masada texts Mird Khirbet Mird texts Mur Wadi Murabbaʿat texts p Pesher (commentary) Q Qumran



List of Abbreviations

393

1Q, 2Q, 3Q, etc. Numbered caves of Qumran, yielding written material; followed by abbreviation of biblical or apocryphal book QL Qumran literature 1QapGen Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 1QH Hôdāyôt (Thanksgiving Hymns) from Qumran Cave 1 1QIsaa, b First or second copy of Isaiah from Qumran Cave 1 1QpHab Pesher on Habakkuk from Qumran Cave 1 1QM Milḥāmāh (War Scroll) 1QS Serek hayyaḥad (Rule of the Community, Manual of Discipline) 1QSa Appendix A (Rule of the Congregation) to 1QS 1QSb Appendix B (Blessings) to 1QS 3Q15 Copper Scroll from Qumran Cave 3 4QEn fragments of 1 Enoch 4QFlor Florilegium (or Eschatological Midrashim) from Qumran Cave 4 4QMess ar Aramaic “Messianic” text from Qumran Cave 4 4QMMT fragments of the so-called Halakic Letter 4QpNah Pesher on Nahum from Qumran Cave 4 4QpPs fragments of a Pesher on various Psalms 4QPrNab Prayer of Nabonidus from Qumran Cave 4 4QTestim Testimonia text from Qumran Cave 4 4QTLev ara fragments of the so-called Aramaic Testament of Levi 4QPhyl Phylacteries from Qumran Cave 4 11QMelch Melchizedek text from Qumran Cave 11 4QVisSam The Vision of Samuel 4Q246 Aramaic Apocalypse 4Q521 Messianic Apocalpyse 11QTemple The Temple Scroll 11QtgJob Targum of Job from Qumran Cave 11 4. Targums Tg. Onq. Targum Onqelos Tg. Neb. Targum of the Prophets Tg. Ket. Targum of the Writings Frg. Tg. Fragmentary Targum Sam. Tg. Samaritan Targum Tg. Isa. Targum of Isaiah Pal. Tgs. Palestinian Targums Tg. Neof. Targum Neofiti Tg. Ps.-J. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Tg. Yer. I Targum Yerušalmi I* Tg. Yer. II Targum Yerušalmi II* Yem. Tg. Yemenite Targum Tg. Esth. I, II First or Second Targum of Esther * optional title

394

List of Abbreviations 5. Abbreviations of Orders and Tractates in Mishnaic and Related Literature

To distinguish the same-named tractates in the Mishna, Tosepta, Babylonian Talmud, and Jerusalem Talmud, I use italicized m., t., b., or y. before the title of the tractate. Thus m. Peʾa 8:2; b. Šabb. 31a; y. Mak. 2.31d; t. Peʾa 1.4 (Zuck. 18 [ = page number of Zuckermandel’s edition of the Tosepta]). ʾAbot ʾAbot ʿArak. ʿArakin ʿAbod. Zar. ʿAboda Zara B. Bat. Baba Batra Bek. Bekorot Ber. Berakot Beṣa Beṣa ( = Yom Ṭob) Bik. Bikkurim B. Meṣ. Baba Meṣiʿa B. Qam. Baba Qamma Dem. Demai ʿErub. ʿErubin ʿEd. ʿEduyyot Giṭ. Giṭṭin Ḥag. Ḥagiga Ḥal. Ḥalla Hor. Horayot Ḥul. Ḥullin Kelim Kelim Ker. Keritot Ketub. Ketubot Kil. Kilʾayim Maʿaś. Maʿaśerot Mak. Makkot Makš. Makširin ( = Mašqin) Meg. Megilla Meʿil. Meʿila Menaḥ. Menaḥot Mid. Middot Miqw. Miqwaʾot Moʿed Moʿed Moʿed Qat. Moʿed Qaṭan Maʿaś. Š. Maʿaśer Šeni Našim Našim Nazir Nazir Ned. Nedarim Neg. Negaʿim Nez. Neziqin



List of Abbreviations

395

Nid. Niddah Ohol. Oholot ʿOr. ʿOrla Para Para Peʾa Peʾa Pesaḥ. Pesaḥim Qinnim Qinnim Qidd. Qiddušin Qod. Qodašin Roš. Haš. Roš Haššana Sanh. Sanhedrin Šabb. Šabbat Šeb. Šebiʿit Šebu. Šebuʿot Šeqal. Šeqalim Soṭa Soṭa Sukk. Sukka Taʿan. Taʿanit Tamid Tamid Tem. Temura Ter. Terumot Ṭohar. Ṭoharot Ṭ. Yom Ṭebul Yom ʿUq. ʿUqṣin Yad. Yadayim Yebam. Yebamot Yoma Yoma ( = Kippurim) Zabim Zabim Zebaḥ Zebaḥim Zer. Z eraʿim

6. Abbreviations of Other Rabbinic Works ʾAbot R. Nat. ʾAbot de Rabbi Nathan ʾAg. Ber. ʾAggadat Berešit Bab. Babylonian Bar. Baraita Der. Er. Rab. Derek Ereṣ Rabba Der. Er. Zuṭ. Derek Ereṣ Zuṭa Gem. Gemara Kalla Kalla Mek. Mekilta Midr. Midraš; cited with usual abbreviation for biblical book; but Midr. Qoh. = Midraš Qohelet

396

List of Abbreviations

Pal. Palestinian Pesiq. R. Pesiqta Rabbati Pesiq. Rab. Kah. Pesiqta de Rab Kahana Pirqe R. El. Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer Rab. Rabbah (following abbreviation for biblical book: Gen. Rab. [with periods] = Genesis Rabbah) Ṣem. Ṣemaḥot Sipra Sipra Sipre Sipre Sop. Soperim S. ʿOlam Rab. Seder ʿOlam Rabbah Talm. Talmud Yal. Yalquṭ 7. Abbreviations of Nag Hammadi Tractates Acts Pet. 12 Apost. Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles Allogenes Allogenes Ap. Jas. Apocryphon of James Ap. John Apocryphon of John Apoc. Adam Apocalypse of Adam 1 Apoc. Jas. First Apocalypse of James 2 Apoc. Jas. Second Apocalypse of James Apoc. Paul Apocalypse of Paul Apoc. Pet. Apocalypse of Peter Asclepius Asclepius 21–29 Auth. Teach. Authoritative Teaching Dial. Sav. Dialogue of the Savior Disc. 8–9 Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth Ep. Pet. Phil. Letter of Peter to Philip Eugnostos Eugnostos the Blessed Exeg. Soul Exegesis on the Soul Gos. Eg. Gospel of the Egyptians Gos. Phil. Gospel of Philip Gos. Thom. Gospel of Thomas Gos. Truth Gospel of Truth Great Pow. Concept of our Great Power Hyp. Arch. Hypostasis of the Archons Hypsiph. Hypsiphrone Interp. Know. Interpretation of Knowledge Marsanes Marsanes Melch. Melchizedek Norea Thought of Norea On Bap. A On Baptism A On Bap. B On Baptism B



List of Abbreviations

397

On Bap. C On Baptism C On Euch. A On the Eucharist A On Euch. B On the Eucharist B Orig. World On the Origin of the World Paraph. Shem Paraphrase of Shem Pr. Paul Prayer of the Apostle Paul Pr. Thanks. Prayer of Thanksgiving Sent. Sextus Sentences of Sextus Soph. Jes. Chr. Sophia of Jesus Christ Steles Seth Three Steles of Seth Teach. Silv. Teachings of Silvanus Testim. Truth Testimony of Truth Thom. Cont. Book of Thomas the Contender Thund. Thunder, Perfect Mind Treat. Res. Treatise on Resurrection Treat. Seth Second Treatise of the Great Seth Tri. Trac. Tripartite Tractate Trim. Prot. Trimorphic Protennoia Val. Exp. A Valentinian Exposition Zost. Zostrianos 8. Works of Josephus Ag. Ap. Against Apion Ant. Jewish Antiquities J.W. The Jewish War 9. Abbreviations of Commonly Used Periodicals, Reference Works, and Serials (Titles not found in this list are written out in full. Titles of periodicals and books are italicized, but titles of series are set in roman characters, as are acronyms of authors’ names when they are used as sigla.) Short, one-word titles not on this list are not abbreviated. AAS Acta apostolicae sedis AASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research AcOr Acta orientalia ACW Ancient Christian Writers AfO Archiv für Orientforschung AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchistentums AH F. Rosenthal, An Aramaic Handbook AJA American Journal of Archaeology AJBA Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology AJP American Journal of Philology AJSL American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature

398

List of Abbreviations

AJT American Journal of Theology ALBO Analecta lovaniensia biblica et orientalia ALGHJ Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums AnBib Analecta biblica ANEP J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near East in Pictures ANESTP J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near East Supplementary Texts and Pictures ANET J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Ang Angelicum AnOr Analecta orientalia ANQ Andover Newton Quarterly ANTF Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament AOS American Oriental Series AP J. Marouzeau (ed.), L’Année philologique APOT R. H. Charles (ed.), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament Arch Archaeology ARW Archiv für Religionswissenschaft ASNU Acta seminarii neotestamentici upsaliensis ASOR American Schools of Oriental Research ASS Acta sanctae sedis AsSeign Assemblées du Seigneur ASSR Archives de sciences sociales des religions ASTI Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute ATAbh Alttestamentliche Abhandlungen ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments AtBib H. Grollenberg, Atlas of the Bible ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch ATR Anglican Theological Review Aug Augustinianum AusBR Australian Biblical Review AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies AYB Anchor Yale Bible AYBD Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary AYBRL Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library BA Biblical Archaeologist BAC Biblioteca de autores cristianos BAGD W. Bauer, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, and F. W. Danker, Greek-English Lexicon of the NT BAR Biblical Archaelogist Reader BARev Biblical Archaeology Review BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge BBET Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie



List of Abbreviations

399

BCSR Bulletin of the Council on the Study of Religion BDB F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament BDF F. Blass, A. Debrunner, and R. W. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the NT BDR F. Blass, A. Debrunner, and F. Rehkopf, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch BeO Bibbia e oriente BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium BEvT Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie BFCT Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie BGBE Beiträge zur Geschichte der biblischen Exegese BHEAT Bulletin d’histoire et d’exégèse de l’Ancien Testament BHH B. Reicke and L. Rost (eds.), Biblisch-Historisches Handwörterbuch BHK R. Kittel, Biblia hebraica BHS Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia BHT Beiträge zur historischen Theologie Bib Biblica BibB Biblische Beiträge BibBh Bible bhashyam BibLeb Bibel und Leben BibOr Biblica et orientalia BibS(F) Biblische Studien (Freiburg, 1895–) BibS(N) Biblische Studien (Neukirchen, 1951–) BIES Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society ( = Yediot) BIFAO Bulletin de l’institut français d’archéologie orientale Bijdr Bijdragen BIOSCS Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies BJPES Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester BK Bibel und Kirche BKAT Biblischer Kommentar: Altes Testament BLit Bibel und Liturgie BN Biblische Notizen BO Bibliotheca orientalis BR Biblical Research BSac Bibliotheca Sacra BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental (and African) Studies BT The Bible Translator BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin BTS Bible et terre sainte BurH Buried History BVC Bible et vie chrétienne BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament ByF Biblia y Fe BZ Biblische Zeitschrift

400

List of Abbreviations

BZAW Beihefte zur ZAW BZNW Beihefte zur ZNW BZRGG Beihefte zur ZRGG CAH Cambridge Ancient History CahEv Cahiers évangile CahRB Cahiers de la Revue biblique Cah Théol Cahiers théologiques CAT Commentaire de l’Ancien Testament CB Cultura bíblica CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly—Monograph Series CC Corpus christianorum CCath Corpus catholicorum CH Church History CHR Catholic Historical Review CIG Corpus inscriptionum graecarum CII Corpus inscriptionum iudaicarum CIL Corpus inscriptionum latinarum CIS Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum CJ Classical Journal CJT Canadian Journal of Theology CNT Commentaire du Nouveau Testament ConB Coniectanea biblica ConBNT Coniectanea biblica, New Testament ConBOT Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament ConNT Coniectanea neotestamentica CP Classical Philology CQ Church Quarterly CQR Church Quarterly Review CRAIBL Comptes rendus de l’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum CTJ Calvin Theological Journal CTM Concordia Theological Monthly CTQ Concordia Theological Quarterly CurTM Currents in Theology and Mission DACL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie DBSup Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert DRev Downside Review DS Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum DTC Dictionnaire de théologie catholique EBib Études bibliques EDB L. F. Hartman (ed.), Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible EHAT Exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament



List of Abbreviations

401

EKKNT Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament EKL Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon EncJud Encyclopedia Judaica (1971) EnchBib Enchiridion biblicum ErIsr Eretz Israel ErJb Eranos Jahrbuch EstBib Estudios bíblicos EstEcl Estudios eclesiásticos EstTeol Estudios teológicos ETL Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses ETR Études théologiques et religieuses EvK Evangelische Kommentare EvQ Evangelical Quarterly EvT Evangelische Theologie EWNT H. Balz and G. Schneider (eds.), Exegetisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament ExpTim Expository Times FB Forschung zur Bibel FBBS Facet Books, Biblical Series FC Fathers of the Church FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments GAT Grundrisse zum Alten Testament GCS Griechische christliche Schriftsteller GKB Gesenius-Kautzsch-Bergsträsser, Hebräische Grammatik GKC Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, tr. A. E. Cowley GNT Grundrisse zum Neuen Testament GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Greg Gregorianum GTA Göttinger theologische Arbeiten GTJ Grace Theological Journal HALAT W. Baumgartner et al., Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament HDR Harvard Dissertations in Religion HeyJ Heythrop Journal HibJ Hibbert Journal HKAT Handkommentar zum Alten Testament HKNT Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament HNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament HNTC Harper’s NT Commentaries HR History of Religions HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs HSS Harvard Semitic Studies HTKNT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament

402

List of Abbreviations

HTR Harvard Theological Review HTS Harvard Theological Studies HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual HUT Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie IB Interpreter’s Bible IBS Irish Biblical Studies ICC International Critical Commentary IDB G. A. Buttrick (ed.), Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible IDBSup Supplementary volume to IDB IEJ Israel Exploration Journal Int Interpretation IOS Israel Oriental Studies ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly JA Journal asiatique JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum JAL Jewish Apocryphal Literature JANESCU Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JAS Journal of Asian Studies JB A. Jones (ed.), Jerusalem Bible JBC R. E. Brown et al. (eds.), The Jerome Biblical Commentary JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JBR Journal of Bible and Religion JDS Judean Desert Studies JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JEOL Jaarbericht . . . ex oriente lux JES Journal of Ecumenical Studies JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society JHNES Johns Hopkins Near Eastern Studies JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JMES Journal of Middle Eastern Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JPOS Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society JPSV Jewish Publication Society Version JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JQRMS Jewish Quarterly Review Monograph Series JR Journal of Religion JRelS Journal of Religious Studies JRH Journal of Religious History JRS Journal of Roman Studies JRT Journal of Religious Thought JSHRZ Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Periods



List of Abbreviations

403

JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament—Supplement Series JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament—Supplement Series JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JSSR Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion JTC Journal for Theology and the Church JTS Journal of Theological Studies Judaica Judaica: Beiträge zum Verständnis . . . KAT E. Sellin (ed.), Kommentar zum A. T. KB L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros KD Kerygma und Dogma KJV King James Version KlT Kleine Texte LB Linguistica biblica LCC Library of Christian Classics LCL Loeb Classical Library LCQ Lutheran Church Quarterly LD Lectio divina LLAVT E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae Veteris Testamenti LPGL G. W. H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon LQ Lutheran Quarterly LR Lutherische Rundschau LS Louvain Studies LSJ Liddell-Scott-Jones, Greek-English Lexicon LTK Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche LTP Laval théologique et philosophique LumVie Lumière et vie LW Lutheran World McCQ McCormick Quarterly MDB Le monde de la Bible MDOG Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft MeyerK H. A. W. Meyer, Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament MGWJ Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums MM J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament MNTC Moffatt NT Commentary MPAIBL Mémoires présentés à l’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres MScRel Mélanges de science religieuse MTZ Münchener theologische Zeitschrift Mus Muséon MUSJ Mélanges de l’université Saint-Joseph NAB New American Bible NCB New Century Bible NCCHS R. D. Fuller et al. (eds.), New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture

404

List of Abbreviations

NCE M. R. P. McGuire et al. (eds.), New Catholic Encyclopedia NEB New English Bible Neot Neotestamentica NFT New Frontiers in Theology NHS Nag Hammadi Studies NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament NIV New International Version NJBC New Jerome Biblical Commentary NJV New Jewish Version NKZ Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift NovT Novum Testamentum NovTSup Novum Testamentum, Supplements NRT La nouvelle revue théologique NTA New Testament Abstracts NTAbh Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen NTD Das Neue Testament Deutsch NTF Neutestamentliche Forschungen NTS New Testament Studies NTTS New Testament Tools and Studies Numen Numen: International Review for the History of Religions OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis OIP Oriental Institute Publications OLP Orientalia lovaniensia periodica OLZ Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Or Orientalia (Rome) OrAnt Oriens antiquus OrChr Oriens christianus OrSyr L’Orient syrien OTA Old Testament Abstracts OTL Old Testament Library OTP J. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha PAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research PCB M. Black and H. H. Rowley (eds.), Peake’s Commentary on the Bible PEFQS Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly PG J. Migne, Patrologia graeca PGM K. Preisendanz (ed.), Papyri graecae magicae Phil Philologus PJ Palästina-Jahrbuch PL J. Migne, Patrologia latina PO Patrologia orientalis PSB Princeton Seminary Bulletin PSTJ Perkins School of Theology Journal PTMS Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series



List of Abbreviations

405

PVTG Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti graece PW Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der klassichen Altertumswissenschaft PWSup Supplements to PW QD Quaestiones disputatae QDAP Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum RANE Records of the Ancient Near East RArch Revue archéologique RB Revue biblique RCB Revista de cultura bíblica RE Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche REA Revue des études anciennes RechBib Recherches bibliques REJ Revue des études juives RelS Religious Studies RelSoc Religion and Society RelSRev Religious Studies Review RES Répertoire d’épigraphie sémitique ResQ Restoration Quarterly RevExp Review and Expositor RevistB Revista bíblica RevQ Revue de Qumran RevScRel Revue des sciences religieuses RevSem Revue sémitique RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique RHPR Revue d’historie et de philosophie religieuses RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions RIDA Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité RivB Rivista biblica RNT Regensburger Neues Testament RQ Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte RR Review of Religion RRef La revue reformée RSO Rivista degli studi orientali RSPT Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques RSR Recherches de science religieuse RSV Revised Standard Version RTL Revue théologique de Louvain RTP Revue de théologie et de philosophie RUO Revue de l’université d’Ottawa RV Revised Version SacEr Sacris erudiri SANT Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament

406

List of Abbreviations

SB Sources bibliques SBA Studies in Biblical Archaeology SBAW Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften SBB Stuttgarter biblische Beiträge SBFLA Studii biblici franciscani liber annuus SBJ La sainte bible de Jérusalem SBLASP Society of Biblical Literature Abstracts and Seminar Papers SBLDS SBL Dissertation Series SBLMasS SBL Masoretic Studies SBLMS SBL Monograph Series SBLSBS SBL Sources for Biblical Study SBLSCS SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies SBLTT SBL Texts and Translations SBM Stuttgarter biblische Monographien SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien SBT Studies in Biblical Theology SC Sources chrétiennes ScEccl Sciences ecclésiastiques ScEs Science et esprit SCHNT Studia ad corpus hellenisticum Novi Testamenti SCR Studies in Comparative Religion Scr Scripture ScrB Scripture Bulletin ScrHier Scripta hierosolymitana SD Studies and Documents SE Studia Evangelica I, II, III, etc. ( = TU 73 [1959], 87 [1964], 88 [1964], 102 [1968], 103 [1968], 112 [1973]) Sem Semitica SHT Studies in Historical Theology SJ Studia judaica SJLA Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity SJT Scottish Journal of Theology SMSR Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni SNT Studien zum Neuen Testament SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series SO Symbolae osloenses SOTSMS Society for Old Testament Study Monograph Series SP J. Coppens et al. (eds.), Sacra pagina SPap Studia papyrologica SPAW Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften SPB Studia postbiblica SPC Studiorum paulinorum congressus internationalis catholicus 1961 (2 vols.) SR Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses SSS Semitic Study Series ST Studia theologica



List of Abbreviations

407

STANT Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Str-B [H. Strack and] P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament StudNeot Studia neotestamentica StudOr Studia orientalia SUNT Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments SVTP Studia in Veteris Testamenti pseudepigrapha SymBU Symbolae biblicae upsalienses TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association TBei Theologische Beiträge TBl Theologische Blätter TBü Theologische Bücherei TBT The Bible Today TCGNT B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament TD Theology Digest TDNT G. Kittel and G. Friedrich (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament TDOT G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament TextsS Texts and Studies TF Theologische Forschung TGl Theologie und Glaube THKNT Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament ThStud Theologische Studien TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung TP Theologie und Philosophie TPQ Theologisch-Praktische Quartalschrift TQ Theologische Quartalschrift TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie TRev Theologische Revue TRu Theologische Rundschau TS Theological Studies TSK Theologische Studien und Kritiken TToday Theology Today TTZ Trierer theologische Zeitschrift TU Texte und Untersuchungen TWAT G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament TWNT G. Kittel and G. Friedrich (eds.), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament TynBul Tyndale Bulletin TZ Theologische Zeitschrift UBSGNT United Bible Societies Greek New Testament UNT Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament USQR Union Seminary Quarterly Review VC Vigiliae christianae

408

List of Abbreviations

VCaro Verbum caro VD Verbum domini VE Vox evangelica VF Verkündigung und Forschung VKGNT K. Aland (ed.), Vollständige Konkordanz zum griechischen Neuen Testament VP Vivre et penser ( = RB 1941–44) VS Verbum salutis VSpir Vie spirituelle VT Vetus Testamentum VTSup Vetus Testamentum, Supplements WDB Westminster Dictionary of the Bible WHAB Westminster Historical Atlas of the Bible WHJP World History of the Jewish People WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament WO Die Welt des Orients WTJ Westminster Theological Journal WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament WVDOG Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der deutschen Orientgesellschaft WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes WZKSO Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZDMG Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft ZDPV Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins ZHT Zeitschrift für historische Theologie ZKG Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte ZKT Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie ZMR Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft ZRGG Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche ZWT Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie 10. Miscellaneous Abbreviations ET English Translation LXX The Septuagint MT Masoretic Text NT New Testament OT Old Testament par(r). parallel(s) in the Gospels Vg The Vulgate VL Vetus Latina (Old Latin) Œ two pericopes (often in the Q document) that are basically parallel, though possibly with some differences in wording

Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index

Old Testament with the Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical Books Genesis 1:25, 26, 28, 221n32 2:20, 221n32 3:14, 221n32 6:7, 221n32 8:19, 221n32 9:20, 169n97 22:2, 322n42 37:18–28, 323n43 50:5, 221n32 Exodus 11:5, 221n32 Leviticus 19:18b, 3, 204 25:13, 221n32 Numbers 23:7, 18, 39 24:3, 15, 20–23, 39 Deuteronomy 6:4–5, 3 23:1, 222n36 28:30, 39, 169n97 Judges 9:7–15, 63n16 9:8–15, 37 2 Samuel 10:2–5, 322n41 12:1–4, 63n16, 63n17 12:1–12, 37 12:1–14, 66n28 14:5–7, 63n16 14:5–8, 37

1 Kings 20:38–42, 66n28 20:39–42, 38, 64n19 21:3, 323n43 2 Kings 6:20–23, 223n42 14:9, 63n16 14:9–10, 37 Isaiah 1:8, 321n40 3:12–14, 321n40 5:1–2, 115 5:1–6, 63n16 5:1–7, 38, 66n28, 86, 321n40 5:2, 116, 118, 119, 124, 167n88, 169n97 5:4, 324n45 8:14, 252–53 8:14–15, 119, 168n95 22:13, 70n42 24–27, 66n27 27:2, 321n40 28:16, 252–53, 326n47, 329n59 28:23–29, 63n16 42:1, 168n92 52:13–53:12, 13 61:2, 98 Jeremiah 7:24–28, 250 9:22, 70n42 12:10, 321n40 51:26a, 326n49 Ezekiel 15:1–8, 38, 63n16

409

16:1–43, 63n16 16:2–3, 64n22 17:1–21, 64n22, 65n22 17:2, 39, 65n23 17:3–4, 22–23, 234, 235 17:3–10, 63n16 17:22–23, 315n21 17:22–24, 315n20 17:23, 316n24 19, 23, 24, 63n16 19:2–9, 10–14, 63n16 19:10, 321n40 23:1–19, 63n16 24:1–14, 39 24:3–14, 63n16 31:3, 315n18 31:3–6, 234–35 31:5–6, 315n21 31:6, 234 Hosea 12:8–11, 70n42 Joel 4:13 (3:13), 213n4 Amos 5:11, 169n97 Micah 7:6, 105, 161n55 Zephaniah 1:1–16, 333n68 Zechariah, 66n27 4:7, 326n47 Psalms 21:19, 161n56 37, 70n42 39, 70n42

410

Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index

Psalms (cont.) 49, 65n25, 70n42 73, 70n42 80:8–16, 321n40 103:12, 234, 236, 315n21, 316n23 117 LXX (118 MT), 193, 247, 324–25n46 117:22 LXX (118:22 MT), 118, 119, 172n111, 325n47, 326n49 117:22, 24 LXX (118:22, 24 MT), 329n59 117:22–23 LXX (118:22–23 MT), 87, 117–18, 123, 240, 245, 247–48, 252–53, 318n32 117:23 LXX (118:23 MT), 326n48 Job 7:7, 221n32 31:24–32, 70n42 Proverbs 1:1, 36 1:6, 36 3:9–10, 70n42 3:28, 221n32 9:1–6, 13–18, 63n16 10:1, 36 11:5, 220n32 25:1, 36 Ruth 2:3, 220n32 Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 2:1–26; 4:8; 5:10–19; 6:2, 70n42 Esther 4:8; 7:7, 341n105 Daniel 2:9 (LXX), 220–21n32 2:34–35, 119, 168n95 2:44–45, 119, 168n95 4:10, 11, 12, 21 (LXX), 315n21 4:10–12, 234, 235 4:12 (Theo), 315n21 4:12, 21 (LXX), 315n21

4:21 (Theo), 315n21 7:13, 25n20 12:3, 127 Nehemiah 3:34 (MT), 326n47 9:26–37, 250 2 Chronicles 28:8–15, 207, 223– 24n42 36:13–21, 250 1 Kingdoms 20:6 (bis), 28, 341n105 2 Kingdoms 1:6, 220n32 3 Kingdoms 20:3, 323n43 Baruch 1:19–20, 250 4 Ezra 3:10–12, 326n47 4:13–21, 39 5:41–53, 39 2 Maccabees 2:31, 341n105, 342n107 4:36, 221n32 6:13, 221n32 9:7, 21, 221n32 10:4, 221n32 3 Maccabees 6:27, 341n105 4 Maccabees 4:11, 227n47 11:2, 341n105 Sirach 5:1–10, 70n42 11:18–19, 43, 132, 133, 135, 181n142, 181n143, 182n145 29:11, 43 32:8, 322n41 50:27, 36 50:27–29, 59n12 51:3, 43 Tobit 6:17, 221n32 Wisdom 2:10–3:9, 13 3:7, 127 5:1–5, 13 15:7–12, 70n42

New Testament Matthew 2:23, 153n29 3:7–10, 68n32, 258, 286 3:10, 68n32 3:11–12, 232 3:12, 68n32 3:17, 168n92 4:1–11, 129, 286 4:13, 153n29 5:3, 103, 159n49, 160n51 5:8, 13, 27–30, 48, 156n40 5:10, 160n51 5:10–20, 156n40 5:14a, 60–61n14 5:15, 60–61n14, 63n15 5:15–16, 61n14 5:25–26, 58n6, 214n6 6:1, 156n40 6:22–23, 258 6:24, 60n14, 258 6:26, 236 7:9–10, 218n21 7:13–14, 216n11 7:15–27, 292 7:16–20, 21, 292 7:24, 155n37, 156n40 7:24 + 26, 242 7:24–27, 193–94, 211n3 8:11–12, 234, 271–72 8:12, 262, 295, 361n166 8:20, 236 9:16–17, 107–8 9:26, 139 10:1, 5–15, 232 10:5–42, 100–101 10:5b-6, 205 10:9, 360n163 10:10, 11, 13, 106 10:16, 155n37 10:16a, 101, 154n33 10:16b, 100, 101, 138, 154n33, 154n35, 155n38, 155–56n39, 156n40 10:17–18, 101



Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index 10:23, 156n40 10:26, 97, 100, 151 10:32–39, 292 10:34, 160n53 10:34–36, 104, 160n53, 160–61n54 10:36, 105, 161n55 10:37–38, 105–6 10:39, 308 11:4–6, 258 11:16–17, 61n14, 214n6 11:16–19, 258 12:18, 168n92 12:28, 239 12:29, 50, 61n14, 232 12:43–45, 214n6 12:44, 186n167 12:46–50, 109 12:47, 163n67 12:49–50, 111 13:1–52, 135 13:3, 211n3 13:3–8, 192–93 13:8, 170n102 13:10, 182n146 13:12, 287, 305 13:24, 265 13:24, 27, 31, 44, 165n75 13:24, 31, 33, 44, 45, 47, 52, 260 13:24–30, 86, 124, 125, 126, 174n115, 194–96, 260 13:24–30, 36–43, 47–50, 261 13:25, 127, 129–30, 178n132, 178n133 13:26, 127 13:26–29, 126 13:26–30, 174n113 13:28–29, 175n119 13:29, 180n140 13:30, 127, 130–31 13:30d, 176n123 13:31, 113 13:31–32, 111, 192–94, 231–40 13:32, 114, 234, 315n21, 316n23

13:33, 42, 76n56, 193–94 13:36–43, 124 13:36–50, 292 13:37–43, 86, 126, 127 13:37a-39, 176n122 13:39, 131, 178n133 13:40, 176n122 13:42, 50, 295 13:43a, 176n123 13:44, 194–95, 294 13:45, 312n6 13:45–46, 194–96 13:45–50, 260 13:47–48, 194–96 13:47–50, 188n171, 243 13:51–52, 79n61 13:57, 97, 98 13:58, 154n32 14:22–33, 94 15:10–20, 156n40 15:11, 102, 157–58n43 16:12, 139 16:13–20, 131 16:17, 179n139 16:17–19, 180n139 16:24–25, 105 16:27, 293 17:2, 127 17:5, 168n92 17:20, 313n11 18:6–9, 23–35, 292 18:12, 185n161 18:12–14, 193–94, 218n21 18:15–20, 136 18:21–22, 136 18:23, 260 18:23–35, 42, 136, 194–96, 260, 349n137 19:9, 93, 328n54 19:28, 308 20:1, 260 20:1–16, 44, 194–96, 260 21–25, 336–37n82 21:28–22:14, 337n82 21:28–32, 168n93, 194–96, 226n46, 336n80

411

21:33–34, 170n101 21:33–39, 260 21:33–43, 115, 117, 185n161, 240–53 21:33–44, 192–93 21:33–46, 336n80 21:34, 120, 260 21:34–36, 265 21:35–36, 336n81 21:37, 168n92 21:41, 246 21:43, 323n44 21:44, 168n95 22:1–10, 180n141, 193–94, 195–96, 260, 335n74 22:1–14, 168n93, 334n73, 338n84 22:2, 53, 265, 271, 335n77 22:2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11–12, 276 22:2–10, 42, 259 22:2–14, 253–74 22:3, 259, 260 22:3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 337n84 22:3–6, 10, 341n102 22:4, 255, 333n66, 333n67 22:4, 8, 259, 274 22:5, 344n119 22:5–6, 261 22:6–7, 11–14, 263, 334n69 22:7, 259, 271 22:9–10, 259, 271, 275 22:11–14, 194–96, 261–62, 337n84 22:12, 337n84 22:13, 295, 333n64, 337n84 22:14, 337n84 23:6, 276 23:25–28, 156n40 23:29–32, 337n82 23:34, 262 24:10–13, 261 24:18, 40, 165n75 24:32, 63n15 24:32–33, 211n2

412

Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index

Matthew (cont.) 24:37–44, 288 24:43–44, 213n5, 214n6 24:45, 155n37, 156n40, 242 24:45–51, 144, 193–94, 288, 292, 293 24:47, 360n162 24:48, 186n167 24:51, 295 25:1, 260 25:1–13, 194–95, 213n5, 215n10, 262, 288 25:1–13, 31–46, 261, 292 25:2, 4, 8, 9, 155n37, 156n40 25:10, 276 25:14, 301–2 25:14–30, 42, 193–94, 260, 278–306 25:14a, 299–300 25:16, 18, 20, 24, 294 25:19, 298 25:19–28, 358n159 25:21, 360n162 25:21, 23, 295 25:22, 355n150 25:25, 358n159 25:25b, 287 25:26, 360n161 25:28, 295, 296 25:29, 286, 287, 295, 320n38 25:30, 262, 286, 295, 304 25:31–46, 194–96, 214–15n8 25:45–25:30, 293–94 26:50, 337–38n84 27:25, 337n82 27:35, 161n56 28:16–20, 155n36 Mark 1:7–8, 232 1:9, 24, 153n29 1:11, 322n42, 327n53 1:44, 26n27 2:5, 140 2:19a, 271

2:21–22, 107 3:23, 63n15 3:27, 50, 61n14, 77n56, 232 3:31–35, 109 3:32, 110 4:1–9, 70n41 4:1–34, 135 4:3, 211 4:3–8, 42, 85, 192–93 4:4, 212n3 4:5, 212n3 4:7, 170n102 4:8, 212n3 4:10, 182n146 4:10–12, 182n146 4:13–20, 70n41 4:14–20, 85, 87 4:22, 96–97 4:25, 287, 305 4:26–27, 212n3 4:26–29, 43, 174n113, 192–93 4:29, 212n4 4:30–32, 42, 111, 192– 94, 231–40 4:31–32, 165n73 4:32, 234 4:32b, 315n21 5:35–40, 175n119 5:43, 139 6:1–6, 152n27 6:4, 97, 98, 100 6:4–13, 232 6:5, 100 6:7–13, 164n70 6:8, 360n163 6:27, 322n41 6:45–52, 94 7:1–23, 3 7:15, 102, 157n43, 158n43 7:17, 63n15 8:21, 139 8:31–33, 139 8:34–35, 105 8:35, 308 9:7, 322n42, 327n53 10:11–12, 93, 328n54 10:29–30, 105 11–12, 247 11:10, 352n144

11:27, 182n147, 325n47 12:1, 118, 167n88, 184n161, 321n40, 325n47, 327n53 12:1, 5, 6, 9, 10–11, 167n88 12:1–8, 249, 252, 258, 260, 271, 273 12:1–9, 328n53 12:1–11, 42, 86, 115, 116–17, 136, 192–93, 240–53, 320n37, 323n43 12:1–12, 244–49 12:2, 119 12:2–5, 245, 265 12:4, 322n41 12:5, 327n53 12:5–9, 319–20n36 12:6, 117, 143, 144, 187n168, 322n42, 329n56 12:7, 323n43 12:8, 252 12:9, 318n31 12:9 + 10–11, 252, 327n52 12:10, 252, 325n47 12:10–11, 245, 247, 253, 323–24n45, 326n49 12:10b-11, 318n32, 326n48 12:28–34, 137, 201, 203, 219n26, 220n29 12:38–39, 171n103 12:38–40, 276 12:39, 276 13:9, 101 13:9–13, 100 13:24–27, 213n5 13:28, 63n15 13:28–29, 60n14, 211n2 13:32–37, 58n6, 213n5 13:33–37, 192–93, 213n5 13:34, 184n161, 293 13:34–35, 213n5 13:34–37, 136 14:22–24, 199



Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index 14:69–71, 141 15:6, 341n105 15:24, 161n56 15:42–47, 252 Luke 1:24, 51–53, 59–63, 229n48 1:26–33, 297 2:1, 285 2:4, 39, 51, 153n29 3:1–2, 285 3:7–9, 68n32, 258, 286 3:15–18, 232 4:1–13, 286 4:16–30, 98 4:19, 98 4:23, 63n15, 100 4:24, 97, 98, 152n27, 153n30, 153n31 5:20, 140 5:36, 63n15 5:36–39, 107–8 5:39, 162n64, 163n65 6:20, 159n49, 164n70 6:20b, 103, 158n45 6:21–23, 258 6:39, 63n15 6:47 + 49, 242 6:47–49, 193–94 7:22–23, 258 7:31–32, 214n6 7:31–35, 258 7:32, 61n14 7:41, 184n161 7:41–43, 136, 196–99 8:4–18, 135 8:5, 212n3, 236 8:5–8, 192–93 8:9, 182n146 8:17, 96, 151n20 8:18b, 287, 305 8:19–21, 110 8:51–53, 175n119 9–19, 92 9:1, 2–5, 232 9:22, 139 9:23–24, 105 9:51–19:28, 297 9:51–55, 207 9:51–56, 57, 297 9:52–53, 206 9:57, 140

9:57–61, 340n99 9:58, 236 10:1, 38, 297 10:1–12, 164n70, 232 10:3, 101 10:17, 219n25 10:25, 183n153, 201 10:25–28, 203, 219n25 10:25–37, 202, 204, 207, 219n27, 220n29, 264 10:29–37, 196–99, 207, 266 10:30, 227n47, 339n94 10:30–36, 221n32 10:30–37, 85, 137, 204, 242 10:31–35, 266 11:1–8, 264 11:5–8, 197–99 11:11–12, 218n21 11:15, 140 11:20, 239 11:21–22, 50, 61n14, 232 11:24, 186n167 11:24–26, 214n6 11:27–28, 139 11:34–35, 258 12:1, 4, 139, 183n154 12:2, 97 12:13, 140, 183n154 12:13–14, 184n157 12:13–15, 133–35, 138, 141, 142, 145 12:13–21, 132, 264 12:14, 140, 163n65 12:15, 139 12:16, 143, 185n165, 339n94 12:16–20, 182n145, 185n163, 186n166 12:16–21, 43, 133, 134–35, 137–38, 142, 143, 144, 145, 197–99 12:17, 118, 186n166 12:17–19, 181n143 12:22–31, 97 12:33, 163n65 12:35–38, 192–93, 213n5

413

12:36–38, 213n5 12:39–40, 213n5, 214n6 12:41, 136 12:41–46, 144 12:42, 155n37, 242 12:42–46, 186n166, 193–94 12:42–48, 136 12:45, 186n167 12:51, 161n56 12:51–53, 104, 160n53, 160–61n54 12:53, 105 12:58–59, 58n6, 213n5, 214n6 13:1, 140 13:1, 31, 285 13:1–9, 264 13:3–52, 53 13:6–9, 137, 197–99 13:18–19, 111, 192–94 13:18a, 113 13:19, 234 13:20–21, 76n56, 193–94 13:22, 33, 297 13:23, 140 13:24–25, 216n11 13:28, 361n166 13:28–29, 234, 271–72 13:28–30, 258 14:2, 339n94 14:7, 63n15 14:7–11, 216n11 14:12, 275 14:12, 16, 17, 24, 276 14:13, 269 14:13 + 21, 338n90, 344n116 14:15, 136, 140, 339n95 14:15 + 24, 344n115 14:15–16, 264 14:15–24, 333n68, 333n73, 335n74, 340n98 14:16, 53, 271, 339n94, 345n127 14:16–17, 259 14:16–21a, 338n88

414

Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index

Luke (cont.) 14:16–24, 136, 180n141, 193–94, 253–73, 275, 338n87 14:17, 259, 265, 274, 276, 333nn66–67 14:18, 255, 333n64, 344n119 14:18–19, 341n105, 343n113, 345n129 14:18–20, 340nn97–98, 343n112 14:18–21, 265–68 14:18b, 19, 343n111 14:19, 342n109 14:19–20, 340n98 14:20, 277 14:21, 259, 269, 278 14:21–23, 265–66, 271 14:23, 259, 278 14:24, 264, 340– 41n102, 344n118 14:25–33, 264 14:25–35, 340n99 14:26–27, 105–6 14:28–32, 197–99, 216n11 15:1–3, 8–10, 11–32, 264 15:1–10, 243 15:2, 136, 137 15:3–7, 136 15:4–7, 193–94, 218n21 15:8–10, 137, 197–99 15:11, 339n94 15:11–32, 42, 137, 186n166, 197–99 15:12–13, 22–24, 31–32, 327n52 15:13, 15–16, 167n87 15:17–19, 144 16:1, 143 16:1, 19, 339n94 16:1–8, 186n166, 197– 99, 209, 243, 305 16:1–9, 80n62, 228n48 16:3, 118 16:3–4, 144 16:8, 155n37 16:9–13, 209, 243, 305 16:13, 258 16:19, 143

16:19–31, 137, 197–99 16:29 + 31, 243 16:31, 321n38 17:6, 313n11 17:7–10, 197–99 17:10, 144 17:11, 227n47, 297 17:11–19, 206, 207 17:18, 201 17:19, 206 17:33, 308 18:1, 243 18:1–8, 137, 197–99 18:1–8, 9–14, 264 18:2, 184n161 18:2–5, 186n166 18:4–5, 144 18:6 + 7, 243 18:8, 243 18:9, 244 18:9–14, 137, 197–99 18:10, 184n161 18:10–14a, 228n48 18:11–12, 144 18:14b, 244 18:18b, 219n25 18:29–30, 105 18:31, 35, 297 19:1, 11, 28, 297 19:1–10, 11, 354n147 19:9–10, 297 19:11, 136, 298, 300, 352n144, 361n168 19:11, 12, 355n150 19:11–27, 42, 278–306 19:12, 339n94 19:12, 14, 15a, 27, 283 19:12–13a, 300 19:12–27, 69n39, 193– 94, 286, 351n143, 353n147 19:12b, 15a, 301 19:13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 302 19:13, 15–26, 300 19:13b, 293 19:14, 361n169 19:14, 17, 19, 24, 26, 27, 299 19:14 + 27, 300–302, 353n147 19:15, 221n32, 352n144

19:17, 294, 295, 359n160 19:20b, 287 19:21, 358n159 19:22, 360n161 19:22, 24, 295 19:25, 355n150 19:26, 286, 287, 295, 320n38 19:27, 286, 304, 353n144 19:28, 300 19:28–40, 352n144 19:37–38, 361n167 19:38, 297, 352n144 19:41–44, 301 20:9, 124, 169n97, 185n161 20:9–16, 186n166 20:9–18, 115, 118, 192–93, 240–53 20:10, 120, 124, 170n102, 170n103 20:10–12, 265, 340n98 20:13, 121 20:18, 168n95 21:1–36, 301, 353n144 21:5, 140 21:29, 63n15 21:29–31, 211n2 22:19–20, 199 22:28–30, 285 22:30, 308 22:58–60, 141 23:2–3, 42–43, 285 23:6–12, 285 23:29, 139 John 1:26–27, 33, 311n3 4:42, 223n40 4:43–45, 153n29 4:44, 97, 99 10:6, 63n15 12:20–26, 223n40 12:25, 308 16:25 (bis), 63n15 16:29, 63n15 19:24, 161n56 19:38–42, 252 Acts 1:6, 178n130, 285 1:6–8, 221n35



Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index 1:6–11, 361n167 1:8, 205 1:12, 297, 361n167 2:22–24, 32–36, 251 2:23–24, 13 2:29–32, 251 2:33–36, 361n167 2:34–36, 301 2:36, 352n144 3:13–15, 13, 251 4:5, 221n32 4:10, 13, 251 4:11, 252 5:30, 251 5:30–31, 13 6:7, 339n92 7:56, 25n20 8:2–25, 206 8:4–25, 205, 223n40 8:12–13, 206 8:26–40, 205, 221– 22n36, 223n40 9:31, 222n38 9:33, 220n32, 339n94 10, 152n28 10:1–11:18, 223n40, 285 10:34–43, 98 10:35, 98 10:36–42, 301 10:37, 222n38 11:19–25, 205 11:19–26, 223n40 13:4–12, 285 13:25, 311n3 13:27–30, 13, 251 13:29, 251 13:31, 222n38 13:42–48, 264 13:44–52, 206 15:1, 5, 339n92 15:1–35, 223n40 16:19–40, 285 16:23, 221n32 18:1–11, 206, 264 18:12–17, 285 19:8–10, 206, 264 20:25, 178n130 21:24, 171n103 22:22–30, 285 23:12–28:30, 285 23:24, 221n32

25:11, 341n105, 341n106 27:41, 220n32 28:17–28, 206 28:23–28, 264 Romans 3:24–26, 13 4:25, 13, 251 9:33, 252–53 11:25, 155n37 12:16, 155n37 15:24, 28, 222n37 16:19, 101 1 Corinthians 1:18–31, 13 4:10, 98, 152n26, 155n37 7, 93 10:15, 155n37 11:23–26, 199 12:23, 98, 152n26 15:3–5, 13, 251 15:4, 251 15:39, 221n32 2 Corinthians 6:2, 98 9:10 (bis), 212n3 11:19, 155n37 Ephesians 2:20, 252–53 Philippians 2:6–11, 251 2:15, 101 4:18, 98 1 Timothy 4:7, 341n105 5:11, 341n105 2 Timothy 2:23, 341n105 Titus 3:10, 341n105 Hebrews 9:9, 63n15 11:19, 63n15 11:38, 106 12:11, 170n102 12:19, 341n105 12:25 (bis), 341n105 James 1:2, 220n32 4:13–5, 181n142 1 Peter 2:6–8, 252–53

415

2 Peter 2:22, 63n15 Revelation 1:13, 25n20 2:2, 170n102 14:15–16, 213n4 18:13, 221n32 22:18, 221n32 Pseudepigrapha 1 Enoch 10:4, 333n64 37–71, 39, 215n8 94:7–11, 70n42 97:8–10, 70n42, 181n142 99:9, 333n64 Church Fathers 1 Clement 5:7, 222n37 55:1, 361n169 Epistle of Barnabas 6:2–4, 329n59 Eusebius, Theophania, 359n159 Hermas Mandate 11:18 (= 43:18), 65n26 Ignatius Letter to Polycarp 2:2, 155n38 Letter to the Ephesians 19:1–3, 155n38 20.1–2, 25n21 Letter to the Philadelphians 3:1, 155n38 Letter to the Romans 2:2, 222n37 Letter to the Smyrneans 1:1, 155n38 Polycarp Letter to the Philippians 2:3, 103, 160n51 Nag Hammadi texts Apocryphon of James 6:22–7:1, 172n109 Coptic Gospel of Thomas 5, 151n20, 151n24 9, 192–93, 211–12n3

416

Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Index

Coptic Gospel (cont.) 13, 131, 142, 179– 80n139 14, 102, 157–58n43 16, 104, 105 20, 111, 113, 114, 129, 164n69, 192–94, 231 21, 192–93, 212n4, 214n6 26, 151n24 29, 143 30, 149n9, 187n170 31, 151n24, 153n31, 153–54n32 33, 151n24 39, 100, 138, 154n33, 155n38, 156n40 47, 108, 151n24, 162n64 50, 141 54, 103, 129, 159n49, 160n50 55, 106 57, 125–31, 169n100, 173–74n113, 174n115, 175n117, 175n118, 175n120, 176n121, 176– 77n124, 177n126, 177n127, 180n140 61, 141 63, 132, 133, 134–35, 138, 142–43, 145, 169n100, 186n166 64, 169n100, 180n141, 193–94, 253–54, 268, 273–75, 277–78, 345n127, 345n129, 346n132, 346n134 65, 120, 187n168, 192– 93, 273, 318n33, 328n54 65–66, 115, 116, 119, 151n24, 157n43, 172n111, 240 72, 132, 133–35, 138, 140, 141, 142, 145, 182n151

77, 141, 149n9 79, 183n152 81, 143 85, 143 96, 193–94 99, 109, 110, 151n24, 163–64n68 100, 151n24, 187n170 103, 214n6 104, 151n24 106, 141 107, 187n169, 193–94 110, 143 114, 129, 164n68 Papyri, Oxyrhynchus 1, 71, 153n32 1.23–30, 149n9 1.30–35, 97, 99, 152n25, 153n31 292.6, 342n109 654, 71, 178n131 654.27–31, 96, 151n20 655, 71, 97, 100, 101, 154n33, 155n38, 156n40 Dead Sea Scrolls and related texts 4QMMT, 227n47 Rabbinic literature Mishna m. Nazir 1:5, 313n11 7:1, 227n47 m. Baba Mesiʿa ˙ 3:10–12, 360n165 m. Toharot ˙ 313n11 8:8, m. Niddah 5:2, 313n11 Jerusalem Talmud y. Peʾa 7:4, 313n9 Babylonian Talmud b. Berakot 31a, 313n11

b. Baba Mesiʿa ˙ 42a-b, 360n165 Targum of Isaiah, 320n37 Targum of the Psalms, 325n46 Judeo-Hellenistic works Joseph and Aseneth 27:3 + 29:1, 227n47 27:8, 323n43 Josephus Jewish Antiquities 5.8.6 §294, 342n107, 342n108 7.8.2 §175, 267, 342n107 7.11.4 §273, 342n107 11.6.1 §191, 342n107 12.4.2 §162, 361n169 12.4.7 §197, 267, 342n107 16.2.5 §62, 342n107 16.8.3 §243, 342n107 16.11.6 §389, 342n107 17.8.1–17.13.5 §188– 355, 283 20.4.3 §147, 342n107 Jewish War 1.11.3–4 §281–285, 284 1.18.1–2 §347–353, 284 2.1.1–2.7.3 §1–113, 283 4.9.2 §496, 342n107 7.5.2 §115, 294 Philo of Alexandria Flaccus 5 §26, 31, 342n107 On the Migration of Abraham (De migratione Abrahami) 14 §76, 342n107

Author Index

Aalen, Sverre, 330n60, 333n64 Achtemeier, Paul J., 329n58 Ahearne-Kroll, Stephen P., 385 Aichele, George, 23n8 Aland, Kurt, 168n95 Aletti, Jean-Noël, 24n13, 347n135, 351n144 Alkier, Stefan, 382 Allison, Dale C., Jr., 25n22, 27n28, 28n30, 156n40, 161n54, 161n60, 162n62, 173n113, 174n115, 175n117, 178n132, 179n136, 355n155, 356n156 Ambrozic, Aloysius M., 378 Amzallag, Nissim, 386 Anderson, Garwood P., 384 Andiñach, Pablo R., 349n135, 385 Appelbaum, Alan, 76n55, 81n65, 385 Attridge, Harold W., 71n44, 154n33, 178n131 Aune, David E., 60n14, 77n57, 88n11 Avriel, Mikhal, 386 Baarda, Tjitze, 184n157 Baasland, Ernst, 28n29 Back, Sven-Olav, 24n13 Bacon, B. W., 335n76 Bailey, Kenneth Ewing, 378 Bailey, Mark L., 165n73, 311n1 Balch, David L., 155n38 Baldermann, Ingo, 383 Bale, Alan, 221n35 Ballard, Paul H., 330n60 Barc, Bernard, 70–71n44 Barrett, C. K., 152n28, 222n37 Barth, Gerhard, 215n9 Bartsch, Hans-Werner, 310n1

Bauckham, Richard, 70n42, 77–78n57, 219n23, 219n28, 225n45, 226n47, 331n60, 338n85 Bauer, David R., 341n106, 356n156 Baum, Armin D., 77n57 Baumgartner, Walter, 59n9 Beare, Francis W., 215n10, 329n60, 335n76, 336n80, 340n97 Beavis, Mary Ann, 350n139, 358n159, 381 Beck, Simon, 57n4 Becker, Eve-Marie, 320n36 Becker, Jürgen, 18, 28n28, 29nn32–33, 29n35 Beentjes, Pancratius C., 59n12 Berder, Michel, 324n46, 325n47 Berger, Klaus, 156n39, 384 Berman, Joshua, 63n17 Berthelot, Katell, 385 Beyse, Karl-Martin, 59n9, 382 Bienert, David C., 332n60 Bieringer, Reimund, 224n43 Bird, Michael F., 226n46, 384 Black, Matthew, 174n114, 378 Blenkinsopp, Joseph, 66n28 Blickenstaff, Marianne, 332n60 Blomberg, Craig L., 311n1 Bloom, Harold, 88n6 Blount, Justine Ariel, 71n44 Böcher, Otto, 330n60 Boissard, Edmond, 329n60 Borgman, Paul, 216n12 Boring, M. Eugene, 28n29, 156n39 Bornkamm, Günther, 21n2, 62n14, 215n9, 375n4 Borsch, Frederick Houk, 380

417

418

Author Index

Botta, Alejandro F., 349n135, 385 Boucher, Madeleine, 88n5, 379 Bovon, François, 162n64, 216n12 Bowen, Clayton R., 310n1 Boyarin, Daniel, 64n18 Boys-Stones, G. R., 88n11 Bratcher, Robert G., 324n46, 325n47, 326n49 Braun, Adam F., 349n135, 356n159, 386 Braun, Willi, 331n60, 338n87, 339n93, 339n94, 341n103, 343n113, 344n116, 344n117, 344n118, 344n120 Breech, James, 380 Brightman, F. E., 346n135 Brisman, Leslie, 348n135 Brittan, Simon, 88n11 Brix, Katrine, 59n10, 64n20, 64n21, 384 Broadhead, Edwin K., 72n45 Broer, Ingo, 379 Brooke, A. E., 172n109 Brown, Raymond E., 26n26, 378 Bultmann, Rudolf, 62n14, 152n25, 152n27, 224n43, 272 Bunyan, John, 83, 87n4 Burge, Gary M., 332n60 Burke, Trevor J., 226n46 Buss, Septimus, 342n110 Busse, Ulrich, 152n27 Buttrick, David, 383 Butts, James R., 75n54, 225n46, 380 Cadoux, Arthur Temple, 377 Cahill, Michael, 324n46, 325n47, 326n49 Callon, Callie, 226n46 Cameron, Ron, 380 Candlish, Robert, 346n135, 351n142 Carey, W. Gregory, 331n60, 340n99 Carlston, Charles E., 88n11, 378 Carpenter, John B., 348n135 Carson, D. A., 380 Carter, Warren, 331n60, 348n135, 355n154, 382 Casalegno, Alberto, 310n1, 314n13 Charlesworth, James H., 75n54, 329n55, 382, 385 Chenoweth, Ben, 348n135, 358n159 Chesterton, G. K., 158n44 Chilton, Bruce, 25n22, 325n46, 381, 382 Clark, Kenneth W., 310n1, 313n12 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 87–88n4 Collins, Adela Yarbro, 317n31, 323n45, 325n47

Collmer, Robert G., 88n4 Colpe, Carsten, 156n39 Conzelmann, Hans, 216n12 Cook, John Granger, 25n17 Copeland, Rita, 87n2 Cotter, Wendy J., 311n1, 313n13 Crenshaw, James L., 330n60 Crick, Bernard, 88n8 Cripps, K. R. J., 329n60, 337n84 Crook, Zeba Antonin, 164–65n71, 311n1 Crossan, John Dominic, 31, 35, 40, 52, 60n14, 67n29, 115, 159–60n50, 172n111, 218n23, 238, 310n1, 311n2, 316n24, 318n33, 322n41, 324n45, 332n60, 378 Crum, W. E., 165n76, 166n77 Culpepper, R. Alan, 35 Cunningham, Phillip J., 22n7 Cuvillier, Elian, 386 Dahl, Nils A., 310n1, 311n2, 314n13, 314n17 Dauvillier, Jean, 346n135, 350n139 Davies, Stevan L., 382 Davies, W. D., 156n40, 161n54, 161n60, 162n62, 173n113, 174n115, 175n117, 178n132, 179n136, 355n155, 356n156 Davison, Peter, 88n7 Dawson, W. Selwyn, 330n60, 337n84 de Boer, Martinus C., 347n135 DeConick, April D., 45, 95, 96, 150n14, 150n15, 151n21, 156n39, 163n68, 171– 72n109, 176–77n124, 177n127, 179n135, 184n157, 184n158, 187n170, 187n171, 188n172 Dehandschutter, Boudewijn, 152n24 de la Potterie, Ignace, 347n135, 351– 52n144, 361n167, 361n168 Delitzsch, Franz, 324n46, 325n47, 326n49 Delobel, Joël, 149n10 Delorme, Jean, 149n10, 318n33, 347n135, 381 Denaux, Adelbert, 348n135, 351n144, 355n152, 361n168 Dennert, Brian C., 228n48 Derrett, J. Duncan M., 330–32n60, 333– 34n68, 347n135, 350n139, 378 Dibelius, Martin, 62n14 Didier, Marcel, 347n135, 351n144 Didot, Ambroise, 341n104 Di Lella, Alexander A., 181n143 Dillon, Richard J., 330n60 Di Paolo, Roberto, 384



Author Index

Dodd, C. H., 6, 26n26, 31, 32, 35, 48, 57n3, 61n14, 68n32, 69n34, 75n54, 88n10, 232, 309, 312n7, 316n26, 329n58, 336n78, 371, 375n3, 377 Donahue, John R., 75n54, 186n166, 217n17, 218n23, 380 Donfried, Karl Paul, 215n10, 338n86, 378 Doran, Robert, 384 Dormeyer, Detlev, 330n60 Dowling, Elizabeth V., 332n60, 348n135, 356n159, 359n159 Drury, John, 181n142, 217n17, 218n23, 225n46, 380 Dschulnigg, Peter, 380 Dunan-Page, Anne, 88n4 Dunn, James D. G., 77n57 Dupont, Jacques, 310n1, 311n2, 314n13, 314n17, 340n98, 347n135, 351n142 Ebner, Martin, 332n60, 343n113 Eichholz, Georg, 330n60, 334n72, 337n82, 337n84, 340n101 Eissfeldt, Otto, 64n21, 377 Erlemann, Kurt, 380, 382 Ernst, Josef, 216n12 Esler, Philip F., 219n23, 225n45 Estienne, Henri, 341n104 Eubank, Nathan, 362n173, 386 Evans, Craig A., 21n3, 25n22, 220n29, 220n31, 223–24n42, 315n21, 316n22, 317n31, 318n33, 320n37, 323n44, 323n45, 325n46, 326n49, 381, 382 Feldman, Asher, 377 Fergenson, Laraine, 88n6 Feuillet, André, 346n135 Fiebig, Paul, 377 Fiedler, Peter, 347n135 Fieger, Michael, 45, 73n47, 95, 147, 150n14, 175n118, 177n124, 179n135, 186n166 Fitzmyer, Joseph A., 25n17, 25n19, 80n62, 96, 152n27, 152n28, 160n53, 160–61n54, 162n64, 178n131, 222n36, 222n37, 359n159, 361n168 Fleddermann, Harry T., 165n71, 311n1, 311n2 Flesher, Paul V. M., 325n46 Flusser, David, 347n135, 379 Foerster, Werner, 346n135 Folarin, George O., 348n135, 356n159 Forbes, Greg W., 74n54, 383, 385 Ford, Richard Q., 348n135, 356n159 Forrest, James F., 88n4

419

Fortna, Robert T., 348n135, 356–59n159 Foster, Paul, 60n14, 386 France, Richard T., 348n135 Frankemölle, Hubert, 173n113, 348n135 Frey, Jörg, 47, 71n44, 72n45, 72n46, 97, 149n8, 150n16, 151n23, 151n24, 180n141 Fricke, Michael, 348n135, 356–57n159 Friedrichsen, Timothy A., 228–29n48, 311n1, 311n2 Frutiger, Simone, 310n1 Funk, Robert W., 31, 48, 67n29, 69n40, 75n54, 219n23, 225n46, 238, 310n1, 314n13, 314–15n17, 315n19, 318n33, 378, 380 Fusco, Vittorio, 347n135, 351n144 Garroway, Joshua, 384 Garsky, Albrecht, 160n53 Gathercole, Simon, 47, 71n44, 72–73n47, 73n49, 74n52, 97, 149n6, 149n8, 150n17, 150n19, 151–52n24, 154n32, 154n33, 156n41, 160n50, 161n57, 163n65, 164n68, 165n75, 166n79, 171n105, 172n112, 179n136, 179n139, 183n156, 184n160, 185n163, 212n3, 338n89 Gerhardsson, Birger, 51, 58n6, 59n13, 63nn15–16, 64n19, 68n33, 79n61, 200, 213n5, 217n18, 219n23, 380–81 Gianotto, Claudio, 385 Giesler, Michael, 324n46 Glancy, Jennifer A., 348n135, 350n139, 350n140, 358n159 Glombitza, Otto, 330n60, 334n71 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 219n23 Goodacre, Mark, 47, 71n44, 73n47, 150n11, 164n68, 175n118, 178n131, 183n152 Goodrich, John K., 386 Goodwin, William Watson, 183n153 Goulder, Michael D., 173n113, 217n16, 217n17, 217n18, 378 Gowler, David B., 181n143, 383 Gradl, Hans-Georg, 216n12 Greeven, Heinrich, 156n39 Griswold, Charles L., 386 Gross, Heinrich, 59n9 Grosvenor, Mary, 341n106 Guillemont, A., 179n135 Gulick, Charles Burton, 183n153 Gundry, Robert H., 156n40, 173n113, 215n9, 317n31, 321n40 Gurtner, Daniel M., 215n9

420

Author Index

Haacker, Klaus, 330n60 Haenchen, Ernst, 222n36, 330n60, 337n82, 346n132 Hagner, Donald A., 155–56n39 Hahn, Ferdinand, 330n60, 337n82, 338n88, 340n101, 343n112 Harding, Mark, 74n54, 385 Hare, Douglas R. A., 329n55 Harnisch, Wolfgang, 380 Harrill, J. Albert, 386 Harrington, Daniel J., 215n9, 347n135, 355n154 Hartin, Patrick J., 70n41 Hasler, Victor, 330n60, 335n75, 337n84 Hatina, Thomas, 220n29, 343n110 Hauck, Friedrich, 59n9, 347n135, 356n157 Havener, Ivan, 355n152 Hawkins, Peter S., 386 Hays, Christopher M., 344n114 Head, Peter M., 169n95 Hedrick, Charles W., 60n14, 382, 385–86 Heidegger, Martin, 237 Heil, Christoph, 160n53 Heil, John Paul, 331n60, 339n93, 348n135, 355n154, 382 Heininger, Bernhard, 181n142, 181n143, 182n145, 185n161, 185n163 Held, Heinz Joachim, 215n9 Hendel, Ronald, 22–23n8 Hengel, Martin, 25n17, 70n42, 322n41 Herbert, A. S., 378 Hermaniuk, Maxime, 377 Hertzsch, Klaus-Peter, 310n1, 314n13 Herzog, William R. II, 348n135, 356– 58n159, 382 Hezser, Catherine, 76n55 Hilhorst, Anthony, 332n60 Hills, Julian V., 331n60 Hirth, Volkmar, 311n1 Hoffmann, Paul, 335n74 Holdcroft, I. T., 347n135 Holmås, Geir Otto, 216n12 Holmén, Tom, 21n3, 25n22, 72n45, 78n57, 383 Hooker, Morna D., 383 Hoover, Roy W., 67n29 Hoppe, Rudolf, 75n54, 331n60, 335n75, 339n93, 340n100, 344n121, 385 Horgan, Maurya P., 63n15, 381 Horman, John, 172n112 Horn, Friedrich Wilhelm, 385 Horner, G., 185n165 Horrell, David G., 381

Hotze, Gerhard, 339n93 Hubaut, Michel, 379 Hultgren, Arland J., 22n3, 35, 58n6, 60n14, 69n39, 81n68, 88n10, 88n11, 165n73, 165n74, 165n76, 167n86, 180n141, 188n171, 214n7, 214n8, 216n11, 217n20, 312–13n9, 335n76, 336n78, 346n133, 348n135, 349n137, 350n139, 377, 383 Hunter, A. M., 310n1, 378 Hunter, J. Paul, 88n4 Hunzinger, Claus-Hunno, 313n13 Hurtado, Larry, 71n44, 78n58 Hylen, Susan E., 60n14 Iber, Gerhard, 62n14 Ingipay Migbisiegbe, Guillaume, 332n60, 335n75 Ireland, Dennis J., 228n48 Iverson, Kelly R., 318n31 Janssens, Yvonne, 155n38 Jensen, Morten H., 318n33 Jeremias, Joachim, 6, 21n2, 31, 35, 48, 52, 60n14, 69n38, 75n54, 88n10, 173n113, 176n122, 178n130, 178n132, 179n136, 210n1, 213n5, 214n7, 215n8, 216n11, 218n23, 237, 272, 309, 312n6, 371, 316n26, 318n33, 319n36, 323n45, 324n46, 326n49, 328–29n55, 333n64, 336n78, 340n98, 362n176, 375n3, 375n4 Jeska, Joachim, 332n60 Johnson, Barbara A., 88n4 Johnson, Luke Timothy, 171n103, 343– 44n114, 347n135, 351n143, 351n144 Johnson, Sherman E., 329n60 Johnson, Steven R., 163n65 Johnston, Robert M., 60n14, 76n55, 312n6, 379, 381 Jones, Ivor Harold, 382 Joüon, Paul, 346n135, 351n142 Joy, C. I. David, 348n135, 356n159 Jülicher, Adolf, 6, 31, 35, 48, 62n14, 64n22, 75n54, 84–85, 173n113, 200, 209, 233, 377 Kahlefeld, Heinrich, 346n135 Kaiser, Jochen-Christoph, 383 Kalimi, Isaac, 223n42 Kamlah, Erhard, 347n135 Karakolis, Christos, 386 Käsemann, Ernst, 21n2, 237, 375n4 Kazen, Thomas, 219n23, 225n45, 226n47 Keith, Chris, 27n28



Author Index

Kern, Gabi, 21n3, 65n23, 76n55, 384 Kertelge, Karl, 173n113 Kilgallen, John J., 332n60, 345n125, 384 Kim, David W., 59n8, 386 Kim, Sun-Jong, 386 Kingsbury, Jack Dean, 130–31, 173n113, 176n122, 178n133, 179n138, 310n1, 311n2, 378 Kirk, Alan, 78n57 Kissinger, Warren S., 21n3, 377, 379 Klauck, Hans-Josef, 88n11, 324n45, 379 Klein, Hans, 331n60, 337n84 Klemm, Hans Gunther, 218n23 Kloppenborg, John S., 73n47, 160n53, 166n81, 167n86, 168n92, 171n105, 241, 317n31, 319n35, 319n36, 335n74, 341n103, 347n135, 384 Knowles, Michael P., 219n23 Kobelski, Paul J., 63n15, 381 Koehler, Ludwig, 59n9 Koester, Helmut, 72n46, 149n6, 176n124 Kogler, Franz, 164n69, 311n1, 311n2, 312n9, 313n13, 314n17, 316n24 Köhler, Wolf-Dietrich, 149n6, 155n38 Konradt, Matthias, 215n9 Konstan, David, 386 Kowalski, Beate, 168n94, 316n23 Kratz, Reinhard, 330n60, 379 Kraus, Hans-Joachim, 324n46 Kronegger, Marlies, 87n3 Kruschwitz, Jonathan A., 386 Kümmel, Werner Georg, 381 Kuss, Otto, 310n1, 314n13 Lamarche, Paul, 317n31 Lambdin, Thomas O., 184n158 Lambrecht, Jan, 35, 220n29, 330–31n60, 379 Lampe, Peter, 383 Lane, Nathan, 220n31 Lanfer, Peter T., 315–16n22 Larroque, Laurent, 349n137, 385 Lau, Markus, 385 Lauer, Simon, 76n55, 380 Laufen, Rudolf, 154n34, 164n69, 310n1, 311n2, 314n13, 379 Layton, Bentley, 71n44, 179n135, 184n158 Le Donne, Anthony, 27n28 Leenhardt, Franz J., 218n23 Lemcio, Eugene E., 330n60, 334n68, 341n102 Levey, Samson H., 325n46 Levine, Amy-Jill, 227n47

421

Lewis, Agnes Smith, 329n60, 332n62 Lewis, Nicola Denzey, 71n44, 73n47 Liebenberg, Jacobus, 74n50, 175n120, 176n121, 177n124, 177n127, 178n129, 178n134, 311n1, 313n12, 314n17, 316n24, 383 Lindemann, Andreas, 348n135 Linnemann, Eta, 329n60, 334n70, 343n112, 378 Little, J. C., 378 Locker, Markus, 348n135 Loewe, William P., 24n13 Longenecker, Bruce W., 219n23, 220n29, 331–32n60, 383 Longenecker, Richard N., 348n135 Lupieri, Edmondo, 228n48 Luz, Ulrich, 156n40, 161n60, 173n113, 175n121, 176n122, 177n125, 178n132, 215n9 Lys, Daniel, 347n135 Malina, Bruce J., 318n33 Manns, Frédéric, 347n135 Manson, T. W., 35, 335n76 Marcus, Joel, 317n31, 318n33, 319n36, 322n41, 323n44, 326n49, 380 Mark, Martin, 324n46, 326n47, 326n48, 326n49 Marshall, I. Howard, 161n54 Marshall, Mary, 339–40n95 Martens, Allan W., 331n60, 335n75, 336n79 Martin, François, 348n135, 360n161 Martin, James, 22n7 Marucci, Corrado, 342–43n110 Marulli, Luca, 174n113 Massa, Dieter, 383 Massaux, Edouard, 148–49n6 Matthews, Albert J., 310n1, 313n12 Mattila, Sharon Lea, 358n159 Mazamisa, Llewellyn Welile, 218n23 McArthur, Harvey K., 60n14, 76n55, 310n1, 311n2, 312n6, 314n13, 314n17, 315n21, 316n24, 381 McCarter, P. Kyle, 66n28 McCulloch, W., 346n135 McDonald, James I. H., 219n23 McGaughy, Lane C., 347n135, 355n153 McGregor, Leslie John, 65n23 McKelvey, R. J., 326n49 McKnight, Scot, 24n13 McLachlan, Herbert, 342n110 McLaughlin, John L., 375n1

422

Author Index

Meier, John P., 19–20, 21n1, 23n9, 24n14, 25n16, 25n19, 25n23, 25n24, 26n26, 29n34, 31, 33, 40, 45, 49, 61–62n14, 66n27, 68n32, 148n5, 155n36, 155n38, 215n8, 215n9, 311n3 Mell, Ulrich, 317n31, 319n36, 321n40, 322n41, 323n45, 326n49, 328n53, 382, 385 Merriman, E. H., 329n60, 337n84 Merz, Annette, 28nn29–30 Metzger, Bruce M., 163n66, 163n67, 168–69n95, 217n15 Metzger, James, 332n60, 385 Meurer, Hermann-Josef, 382 Meyer, Ben F., 330n60, 337n84 Meyer, Marvin, 96, 171n109, 179n135 Meynet, Roland, 347n135, 351n144 Miscall, Peter, 23n8 Mohrmann, Douglas C., 384 Monselewski, Werner, 218n23 Moore, Stephen D., 23n8 Morlan, David, 226n46 Mournet, Terence C., 77n57 Müller, Christoph Gregor, 331n60 Münch, Christian, 331n60, 336n79, 338n84, 348n135 Mussner, Franz, 310n1, 314n13 Musurillo, Herbert, 329n60, 337n84 Mutch, John, 346n135 Naegele, J., 347n135 Nalpathilchira, Joseph, 332n60, 336n77, 386 Neusner, Jacob, 27n27, 184n157, 371 Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm, 386 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 220n30 Nobbs, Alanna, 74n54, 385 Nolland, John, 215n9 Nordsieck, Reinhard, 45, 95, 149n8, 150n14, 150n15, 151n21, 156n39, 162n61, 169n100, 172n112, 175n120, 176n121, 177n127, 184n158 Northcott, Michael S., 348n135 Notley, R. Steven, 386 Olmstead, Wesley G., 331n60, 336n80, 383 Olson, Daniel C., 331n60, 336n79 Oppong-Kumi, Peter Yaw, 349n135, 355n154, 386 Oropeza, B. J., 384 Orwell, George, 83–84, 86 Osborne, William R., 315n20

Paglia, Camille, 23n8 Palmer, Humphrey, 330n60, 333n68 Panier, Louis, 347n135 Park, Rohun, 384 Patterson, Stephen J., 72n45, 73n47, 151n22, 152n25, 156n39, 157n43, 159n47, 160n53, 162n61, 162n64, 163n68, 164n69, 166n83, 170–71n103, 172n111, 174n115, 184n160, 185n165, 381 Payne, Philip B., 69n38, 379 Pennacchio, Maria Cristina, 331n60 Pennington, Jonathan T., 315n21 Pérez Fernández, Miguel, 331n60, 335n75, 337n84, 385 Perkins, Pheme, 379 Perpich, Sandra Wackman, 218n23 Perrin, Nicholas, 71n44, 72n45, 72n46, 149n8, 166n79, 179n139, 188n173, 383 Perrin, Norman, 48, 75n54, 80n63, 379 Perrone, Lorenzo, 331n60 Pesce, Mauro, 340n98 Pesch, Rudolf, 317n31, 318n33, 323n43, 323n45, 330n60, 379 Petersen, Silke, 383 Petzer, J. H., 70n41 Phillips, Thomas E., 216n12, 217n14 Pilch, John J., 348n135, 356–57n159 Plato, 174n114 Plisch, Uwe-Karsten, 45, 73n47, 95, 96, 150n14, 154n35, 156n39, 157n42, 161– 62n61, 169n100, 171n108, 171–72n109, 172n110, 175n119, 176n124, 177n126, 178n130, 179n135, 184n158, 186n166, 187n170, 187n171, 211n3, 345n129 Pokorný, Petr, 75n54, 385 Polag, Athanasius, 355n152 Polk, Timothy, 380 Pooley, Roger, 88n4 Popkes, Enno Edzard, 71n44, 72n45, 149n8, 151n24, 165n72, 180n141 Porter, Stanley E., 22n3, 72n45, 78n57, 383 Powell, Mark Allan, 215n9 Powell, Marvin A., 349n137 Puech, Emile, 332n60 Puig i Tàrrech, Armand, 347n135, 355n152, 386 Quarles, Charles L., 47, 72n47, 115, 159n49, 159–60n50, 166n82, 166n84, 171n104, 318n33, 384 Quecke, Hans, 185n165



Author Index

Radl, Walter, 217n14 Rastoin, Marc, 226n46 Rau, Eckhard, 381 Reagan, Charles E., 379 Redman, Judith C. S., 78n57 Reid, Barbara E., 383–84 Reinmuth, Eckart, 323n43, 383 Rengstorf, Karl H., 329n60, 336n82 Resenhöfft, Wilhelm, 347n135 Reyburn, William D., 324n46, 325n47, 326n49 Riches, John, 215n9 Ricoeur, Paul, 237, 379 Riley, Gregory J., 162–63n65, 183n156 Rindge, Matthew S., 181n142, 181n143 Robertson, C. K., 384 Robinson, James M., 70–71n44, 72n46, 160n53, 335n74, 355n152 Rodgers, Zuleika, 384 Rogalsky, Sviatoslav, 386 Rohmer, Céline, 386 Rohrbaugh, Richard L., 318n33, 348n135, 356–59n159 Roloff, Jürgen, 381 Ross, J. M., 347n135 Roukema, Riemer, 219n23 Runesson, Anders, 320n36 Safrai, Ze’ev, 386 Sanders, E. P., 29n34, 167n84, 237 Sanders, Jack T., 347n135 Sanders, James A., 330n60 Schaefer, Konrad, 324n46, 325n47 Scheffler, Eben, 224n42 Schellenberg, Ryan S., 164n69, 165n75, 311n1, 313n13, 384 Schipper, Jeremy, 63n16, 63n17, 64n19, 66n28, 384 Schlier, Heinrich, 330n60 Schmid, Konrad, 66n27 Schneemelcher, Wilhelm, 358n159 Schneider, Gerhard, 152n28 Schoedel, William R., 378 Schottroff, Luise, 330n60, 331n60, 335n75, 336n78, 337n82, 338n84, 340n101, 346n132, 348–49n135, 356n159, 385 Schrage, Wolfgang, 45, 73n47, 95, 150n14, 157n42, 158n43, 161n58, 175n118, 177n127, 179n135, 211n3 Schröter, Jens, 71n44, 72n45, 149n8, 151n24, 181n141 Schüle, Andreas, 65n23, 67–68n31

423

Schultz, Brian, 348n135, 351n142, 351n144, 353–54n147, 354n148 Schulz, Siegfried, 340n98 Schürmann, Heinz, 162n64 Schweizer, Eduard, 215n10 Scott, Bernard Brandon, 31, 35, 52–53, 66n28, 69n37, 75n54, 80n63, 81n66, 88n10, 188n171, 210n1, 213–14n5, 214n7, 215–16n10, 218n23, 219n24, 220n29, 225n45, 225n46, 350n139, 377, 380 Seccombe, David, 69n38, 214n7, 354n148, 386 Selbie, William B., 329n60, 337n82 Sellew, Philip, 186n166, 187n168, 223n41, 381 Sellin, Gerhard, 80n64, 200, 201, 217n16, 217n17, 218n22, 219n25, 219n26, 220n29, 220n30, 220–21n32, 378 Selwyn, Edward Gordon, 329n58 Senior, Donald, 215n9 Sevrin, Jean-Marie, 149n10, 318n33 Shauf, Scott, 222n36 Shedinger, Robert F., 166n79 Shillington, V. George, 331n60, 348n135, 384 Siegert, Folker, 179n137 Sim, David C., 79n60, 330n60, 333n64, 341n102 Simon, Maurice, 155n38 Simpson, J. G., 346n135 Skehan, Patrick W., 181n143 Skinner, Christopher W., 72n45 Smit, Peter-Ben, 332n60, 335n76, 339n91 Smith, D. Moody, 26n26 Smyth, Herbert Weir, 183n153 Sneed, Mark, 182n144 Snodgrass, Klyne R., 21n2, 31, 35, 48, 55–56, 59n7, 60–62n14, 63n15, 65n26, 69n38, 74n54, 81n72, 88n10, 131, 166n81, 167n86, 168n91, 169n95, 173n113, 180n140, 180n141, 181n142, 210n1, 213n5, 214n7, 214–15n8, 216n11, 217–18n20, 218n23, 228n48, 311n5, 312n9, 317n31, 331n60, 334n70, 334–35n73, 336n78, 351n142, 360n165, 375n3, 377, 380 Souletie, Jean-Louis, 24n13 Sparks, H. F. D., 217n16, 221n32 Sprinkle, Preston M., 219n23, 225n45 Stanton, Vincent Henry, 217n16, 220–21n32 Stec, David M., 325n46 Steck, Odil Hannes, 328n55

424

Author Index

Steinmetz, David C., 347n135 Sterling, Gregory E., 180n140, 332n60, 338n89, 343n110, 345n127, 346n134 Stern, David, 64n18, 322n41, 336n79 Stewart, David, 379 Stock, Eugene, 346n135 Story, J. Lyle, 332n60, 338n84, 338n88, 385 Struck, Peter T., 87n2 Sutcliffe, Edmund F., 330n60, 337n84 Swartley, Willard M., 331n60, 333n68 Tambling, Jeremy, 88n11 Theissen, Gerd, 18–19, 28–29nn29–31, 29n34, 62n14, 241 Theobald, Michael, 332n60, 337n82 Theophrastus, 313n12 Thoma, Clemens, 76n55, 322n41, 380, 381 Thompson, Richard P., 217n14 Tigchelaar, Eibert, 332n60 Tillich, Paul, 346n135 Tolbert, Mary Ann, 379 Trilling, Wolfgang, 329n60, 334n69, 335n75, 336n80, 337n84 Tucker, Jeffrey T., 62n14, 161n59, 382 Tuckett, Christopher M., 47, 72n46, 73n49, 150n17, 160n52, 164n69, 212n3, 340n95, 380, 381 Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 87n3 Udoh, Fabian E., 384 Uro, Risto, 179–80n139 Van Belle, Gilbert, 224n43 Van Cangh, Jean-Marie, 224n43 van Eck, Ernest, 332n60, 344n115, 349n135, 359n159, 385 Van Segbroeck, F., 347–48n135 Verheyden, Joseph, 224n43, 331n60, 333n64 Vermes, Geza, 26–27n26 Via, Dan O., Jr., 330n60, 337n84, 378 Vielhauer, Philipp, 62n14, 358n159 Vine, Victor E., 330n60 Vögtle, Anton, 266, 330n60, 334n72, 335n75, 338n88, 339n93, 340n96, 340– 41n102, 346n132, 382 von Gemünden, Petra, 173n113, 174n116, 175–76n121, 176n122, 178n132 Vouga, François, 382–83

Wainwright, Elaine, 330n60 Walker, William O., Jr., 217n14 Walsh, Richard, 23n8 Walters, Patricia, 228n48 Wansbrough, Henry, 68n33, 77n57, 213n5, 381 Ward, J. S., 342–43n110 Weaver, Walter P., 382 Weder, Hans, 88n11, 379, 383 Weinert, Francis D., 347n135, 351n144, 353n147, 354n148 Weiser, Alfons, 152–53n28, 330n60, 355n153 Weiser, Arthur, 324n46, 326n49 Wendling, Emil, 152n25 Weren, W. J. C., 331n60, 335n75 Westermann, Claus, 381 White, K. D., 69n38 Whitman, Jon, 87n2 Wilder, Amos N., 378 Willis, John T., 330n60 Willitts, Joel, 226n46 Wilson, Brittany E., 222n36 Wilson, R. McL., 358n159 Winter, Dagmar, 28–29nn29–31 Witherington, Ben III, 40, 67n29 Witulski, Thomas, 332n60 Wohlgemut, Joel R., 348n135, 355n153, 358n159, 359n159 Wolter, Michael, 74–75n54, 385 Wright, N. T., 65n26, 67n29, 69n40, 70n42 Wright, Stephen I., 384 Wyschogrod, Michael, 322n41, 381 Young, Brad H., 76n55, 381 Zacharias, H. Daniel, 220n31, 315n21, 316n22 Zeller, Dieter, 156n39 Zeller, Otto, 185n165 Zerwick, Max, 182n151, 313n10, 341n106, 346n135, 351n144, 353n147 Ziegler, Joseph, 161n55 Zimmermann, Ruben, 21n3, 35, 59n8, 65n23, 76n55, 165n72, 377, 384, 385 Zmijewski, Josef, 152n28, 222n36 Zohary, Michael, 179n136

Subject Index

Abraham, 321n38, 322n42 agape¯tos, 122, 168nn91–92 Agrapha, 35 agricultural activity in parables, 365 Ahab (biblical king), 38, 323n43 akeraios (“innocent”), 100–101 akrogo¯niaion (“cornerstone”), 252–53 allegory artificial exegesis of, 85 broad definition of, 82 Ezekiel’s use of, 39 not limited to original intention, 84 Orwell’s Animal Farm as, 83–84 as string of metaphors, 82–83 allegory in narrative parables, 39 conveying secret messages to followers, 70n42 Evil Tenants of the Vineyard parable, 86–87 as meant to obfuscate and mystify, 64n22 Sower parable, 85–86 Wheat and the Weeds parable, 86 Amaziah (king), 37 Amos, 365 Animal Farm (Orwell), 83–84 anthro¯pe/“man,” 140–41, 182n151 anthro¯pos tis/“a certain man” “certain rich man,” 143, 185n162, 185n164 parables introduced by, 142–43, 201 as reliable sign of Lucan redaction, 264, 275, 301, 339n94 similar phraseology in Mark, Matthew, 184–85n161, 218n22, 258

similar phraseology in Q, 218n21 use of tis, 183n153, 219n25 Antioch, 223n40 Antipas. See Herod Antipas aorist tense in Evil Tenants of the Vineyard parable, 244–47, 249 Great Supper parable, 258–59, 265 in Mustard Seed parable, 112–13 past act in, 249 “prophetic aorist,” 326n50 regarding Zacchaeus, 297 “timeless descriptive aorist,” 335–36n77 in Wheat and Weeds parable, 174n114, 177n125, 265 “aphoristic” and “narrative” meshalim, 58n6 Apologists, the, 91 Apostolic Fathers, the, 91 Aramaic language, 17, 19 in early church, 320n37 Archelaus, 69n39, 283–84, 299–300, 353n147, 354n148 ariston (“meal”), 275–76, 333n65 Assassin parable, 187n171 assimilation, argument for, 129, 157n43, 163n68, 212n3 circular reasoning, 157n43 assimilation by scribes theory. See Sahidic text, proposed assimilation to atimos, 98–99 “audience response” criticism, 57n5 Augustine of Hippo, 85 Augustus (Caesar), 284, 299, 301 axios (“worthy”), 106, 161–62n61

425

426

Subject Index

back formation, 264–65 Balaam, 39, 364 Barren Fig Tree parable in L, 197 Lucan introduction to, 137, 243 tis opening, 142 variation on traditional theme, 44 “beasts of the field” imagery, 236 beatitudes, 103, 158n45, 308, 369 becoming clever as snakes saying, 100–101 begging the question in defining parables, 41–44 Beispielerzählung, 62n14 “beloved son,” 322n42 Ben Sira book of as mo¯šel, 36 wisdom saying parallel to Rich Fool, 43, 132–33, 181nn142–143 wisdom tradition of, 181–82n144 Bild/Bildwort, 62n14 binding of a strong man similitude, 61n14, 232 “birds of heaven” imagery, 233–36 blind people, 338–39n90 boundaries, crossing of (theme in Luke–Acts), 198, 201, 207 brothers of Jesus, 110 Buber, Martin, 18, 19 Budding Fig Tree, 60n14, 63n15, 211n2 burden of proof, shifting of, 46–47, 56, 80n63, 146, 366 Burglar saying, 213n5, 214n6 burial as part of Passion Narrative, 251–52 Caiaphas, Joseph, 12–13 Capernaum, 153n29 Carroll, Lewis, 9 categorizing the parables, 210n1 cedar symbolism in OT, 234–35, 315n18 CGT. See Coptic Gospel of Thomas (CGT) Children in the Marketplace saying, 58n6, 61n14, 214n6 Choosing Places at Table saying, 216n11 christology and historical Jesus, 77n57, 375–76n5 versus historicity quest, 9–10, 22n7 See also theology circular reasoning, 237–38 coherence, criterion of, 16, 55, 241, 319n34 Colossians, 16 command of love, double, 203

comparative short stories in Latter Prophets, 38 by Synoptic Jesus, 37 concern for poor, oppressed, marginalized, 198 conflating tendencies in 2d-century patristic works, 46, 160nn50–51 contextual plausibility, appropriateness, and distinctiveness, 18 “contextual plausibility” argument, 241 Coptic Gospel of Thomas (CGT), 71–72n44, 148n3 avoidance of apocalyptic eschatology, 126–27 becoming clever as snakes saying, 100 borrowing from Mark, Mark-Q overlap, M and L, 95, 138, 195 burden of proof regarding independence, 46–47, 73n47, 146–47 choice of test cases, 45–46 claims of independence from Synoptic material, 6, 22n5, 44–48, 188n173, 341n103 concerns of redactor, 328n54 conflation of Synoptics in, 91, 110–11, 119–20, 139–40 dating of, 102 dependence on Matthew, 106–7 discovery of, 44 eliminates God’s speech to rich man, 144 Evil Tenants parable step by step, 119–23 exhibiting broad use of Synoptic sources, 94 following Luke’s shortening of Mark, 93, 110 following Matthew’s redactional changes, 102–3 forms of Synoptic influence on, 95 in framework of 2d-century compositions, 90–91 Great Supper parable, 273–78 Greek fragments of, 100, 148n3 hidden sayings and meanings in, 92, 115, 122–24 imitation of Luke’s redactions, 99–100, 268 importance of, 46, 146 independence of as key question, 45–46 influence of Paul on, 151n24 Jesus addressing the Father, 182n150 Jesus’ rejection of “teacher” title, 141–42



Subject Index

“Jesus said” introductions, 139 “kingdom of God” phrase, 159n47, 159n49 language(s) of, 149n8, 150n16 leaning toward Luke, 153n30 length of monologue in, 144 logion 5 following Luke’s redaction of Mark, 96–97 logion 9 (Sower), 211–12n3 logion 31, 97–100 logion 39, 101 logion 63 dependence on Luke, 132, 134, 142–45 logion 65 dependence on Luke, 120 logion 72 dependence on Luke, 132–34, 138–42, 145 mention of Matthew in, 131 meshing of Mark–Q overlaps, 111–12 meshing of Matthew and Luke, 157– 58n43 meshing of Synoptic versions, 99–100, 103–8, 114–15, 278 Mustard Seed parable step-by-step, 113–14 negative attitude to Judaism, 115 old wine/new wine, order of, 162n64 “O man” opening, 140 ordering and clustering of sayings, 91–92 parallels to whole Marcan parables, 192 postulates for independence of, 115–16 proposed influence on Luke, 162–63n65 purging of Jewish Scripture, history of Israel, 94, 273 redactions for plausibility, 119–21 redactions to abbreviate, 119, 175n118 relation to Synoptics, 90–96, 273–74 replicating multiple Matthean redactions, 102–3 Rich Fool parable in Luke, 131–35 showing familiarity with Matthew’s Gospel, 131 speakers who introduce sayings, 139–40 See also gnostic tendencies proposed for CGT; test cases Coptic texts compared to Greek papyri fragments, 150n16 Coptic as “agglutinative” language, 119 as information source on historical ­Jesus, 12 transliteration of, 157n42

427

Cornelius (centurion), 98, 205 cornerstone Jesus as, 252–53 murdered son as, 247–48 original meaning in Psalms, 326n49 crippled and blind people, 338–39n90 criteria of historicity alternate approaches to, 17–18 application of, 19–20, 56 primary, 12–17 secondary, 17 See also discontinuity, criterion of; embarrassment, criterion of crucifixion carrying one’s cross, 105–6 and criterion of embarrassment, 12–13 and criterion of multiple attestation, 16 Cynics, 372 cypress symbolism in OT, 234, 315n18 David (biblical king) cedar prophecy, 235 Jesus as heir to, 297 Nathan’s parable indicting, 37, 63n17, 364 “day of judgement,” 175n120 deconstructionism, attempts to interpret parables by, 43 Defendant on His Way to the Judge, 58n6 deipnon (“supper”), 275–77, 345n129 dektos (“acceptable”), 98–99 denarius compared to talent, 349n137 dendron (“tree”), 233, 313n12 Deuteromarkus, 316n24 deuteronomistic history, 250 Deutero-Pauline authors, 16 diakonoi (“servants”), 337n84 Diatessaron (Tatian), 46, 166n79 Didache, 46, 91 die¯ge¯ma (“narrative”), 39, 65n23 disciples number of, 364 as possible imitators of parables, 54, 320n37, 368 questions that introduce parables, 113 discontinuity, criterion of, 14–16 as argument for authenticity of parables, 48, 52–53 claimed for Leaven parable, 194 Dishonest Steward parable anthro¯ pos tis (“a certain man”) opening, 142

428

Subject Index

Dishonest Steward parable (cont.) as example story, 200 interpretations of, 228n48 introduction to, 182n149 in L, 197 as possible pre-Lucan text, 209 series of explanations following, 243–44, 305 disorder of presentation in CGT, 92 dispute stories, 203 divider, Jesus as, 134–35, 139, 141, 184n157 divorce, Jesus’ prohibition of, 15, 18, 328n54 Doorkeeper parable, 192 criterion of multiple attestation, 193, 213n5 not a genuine narrative, 193, 213–14n5 “do”/poieo¯ in the Good Samaritan, 203–4, 219n27 double conclusion to Evil Tenants parable, 116–18, 123, 167n88, 240, 244–45 “double discontinuity”/“double dissimilarity,” 15–16, 18 douloi (“slaves”), 281, 305, 337n84, 350n139, 357–58n159 dubious/secondary criteria of historicity, 17 dwelling/resting of birds under tree, 112–13, 232–36, 314n15 ears, let him who has hear, 122 egeneto (“became”), 297, 354n147 Egyptian empire, 234 eishe¯e¯te (“behold”), 211n3 election, 308 Elijah, Jesus as prophet like, 40, 364 embarrassment, criterion of, 12–14 claimed for Leaven parable, 194 crucifixion and, 12–13 and Dishonest Steward, 80n62 for Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, 210 encratite theology, 94, 115 “end stress” rule, 203, 282, 309 Enoch literature, 365 enthronement of Jesus, 351–52n144, 361n167 Ephesians, 16 Epiphanian view of brothers of Jesus, 78n57 eschatological banquet, 234, 260, 264, 271–72, 373 eschatology discourses in Matthew and Mark, 288 Jesus as Elijah-like prophet, 3, 33, 40–41, 372

Jesus last in line of martyred prophets, 13, 16, 58n5 and theme of reversal, 258 esthetic sensibility, argument from, 55, 80n64 esthetic tastes in parable research, 214n5 ethics of reciprocity, 308 ethnarch, 284 eucharist, 199 eunuchs, 222n36, 223n40 Eusebius, 77n57, 357n159, 359n159 “everyday events” as parable subjects, 42 Evil Tenants of the Vineyard parable, 8, 192 allegory obvious to knowledgeable Jews, 86–87 Aramaic-speaking disciples as possible source, 320n37 argument for authenticity, 251–53 argument from “contextual plausibility” or “local color,” 241 audience for, 316–17n26, 318n33 breaks in aorist tense, 244–45, 249 in CGT, 95, 115–16, 119–33, 328n54 CGT version step by step, 119–23 compared to other Synoptic parables, 249 conceivably referring to known events, 43 and criterion of embarrassment/discontinuity, 242–52 criterion of multiple attestation for, 192– 93, 210, 240–41, 252, 370 detailed allegory in, 237 double conclusion to, 116–18, 123, 167n88, 240, 244–45 fails criterion of coherence, 241 fails criterion of multiple attestation, 241 farmers equated to builders, 248 features borrowed from in Great Supper, 260 first conclusion, 246–47 fives stages of, 110–11, 116–19, 240, 245–46 future tense questions, 245, 246 hypothetical historical scenario for, 250–51 inner monologue in, 143, 144 lack of nimša¯l to, 244, 249 Luke’s pruning of, 93 Luke’s version step by step, 118–19 in Mark and CGT, 95, 328n54 Mark’s changes and additions to, 327–28n53 Mark’s version step by step, 116–17 and martyrdom of prophets, 250–51



Subject Index

Matthew’s version step by step, 117–18 meaning of “others” in, 323n44 meaning of “son,” 250–51 nimša¯l in, 242–44 no pretense of realistic narrative, 319– 20n36 possible allusion to John the Baptist, 374 possibly latest of known authentic parables, 374 primitive version may meet two criteria, 193 probable tradition history of, 249–50 problem of lack of burial, 251–52 psalm citation in, 245, 247–48, 325n47 questions about form and content of, 246–51 relation of double conclusion to, 244–50 second conclusion, 172n111, 247–49 setting of, 252, 329n57 socioeconomic interpretation of, 318– 19n33 and “stone-prophecy” tradition, 252 a story with plot line, 61n14 example stories/exemplary narrative, 41, 62n14, 200–201, 217–18n20 used as argument for historicity, 228– 29n48 excoriating of wealthy and powerful, 198 existential decision, pressing call to, 272 existentialism, 317n27, 372 expansion-plus-omission redactions, 105 eyewitness testimony, Gospel tradition as, 77n57 Ezekiel allegory explicitly called a ma¯ša¯l, 364 allegory meant to be understandable, 64–65n22 metaphorical narrative and grand allegory in, 38–39 in wisdom tradition, 365 fables as type of parable, 63n16 false blanket descriptions, 41–44 farming activity in parables, 365 feminism, 359n159 fictitious narratives, not all parables as, 42–43 fifteen conclusions of parable research, 363–75 Fish Net parable and CGT Wise Fisherman parable, 95, 188n171

429

including allegorical eschatological explanation, 243 in M, 194 Matthean theme(s) in, 195 as mini-story, 195 nimša¯l to, 249 flexibility of parables, 34 form criticism complicating parable count, 58n6 Former Prophets, narrative parables in, 37–38 “free-market economy” of religions, 14 Freud, Sigmund, 18, 19, 317n27 Friend at Midnight parable explanation at end of, 243 in L, 197 fruit (karpos/karpoi), 120, 212n3 Galilee, 222n38 relative stability of under Herod, 318n33 rulers over, 353n147 generosity of God, 308 Gentiles “God-fearers” among, 222n36 inclusion of, 198, 205, 234 Gleichnis, 62n14 gnosticism 2d to 4th century, 12, 90–91 and historical Jesus, 372 Jesus’ rejection of divider role, 141 knowing/not-knowing, 122 and syncretism, 187n171 gnostic tendencies proposed for CGT alternatives to, 187n171, 372 emphasis on individual, 114, 345n126 encratitism, 94, 115 in Evil Tenants parable, 115, 121–22, 124 Jesus rejecting divider role, 141, 183– 84n157 knowing a physician precluding healing, 154n32 in Mustard Seed parable, 165n76 omitting reference to host’s anger, 346n132 rejection of spiritual poverty, 159n49 in Rich Fool parable, 135 in Sower parable, 211n3 Good and Bad Servants parable, 144 Good Samaritan parable anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) opening, 142 defining who is a neighbor, 204 as example story, 62n14, 200

430

Subject Index

Good Samaritan parable (cont.) explanation at end of, 243 “half-dead” corpse and impurity, 227 interlocking structure of parts, 204 and Jesus’ views on Mosaic Law, 226– 27n47 in L, 196, 224n44 “law of threes” in, 266 lawyer’s question introducing, 138, 201–2 likely a creation of Luke, 51, 202 and link to 2 Chronicles, 223–24n42 Lucan introduction a rewriting of Mark, 137, 201, 203 Luke as composer of, 217n16 nimša¯l in, 242 Pauline theme in, 199 reflecting structure of Great Supper, 266 resistance to Luke’s authorship, 208 reversal of expectations in, 201 St. Augustine’s reading of, 85 a story with plot line, 61n14 surprise ending to, 44, 52 two-stage resolution, 266 unwarranted acceptance of authenticity, 225n45 vocabulary and style Lucan, 204–5 Gospel of the Nazoreans, 357–58n159 Gospels as information source on historical Jesus, 12 See also specific books Great Commission, 155n36 Great Journey Narrative of Luke, 198, 206– 7, 296–97, 301 Great Supper/Marriage Feast parable, 8, 180n141, 253–54 and 1 Enoch, 333n64 analyzing Lucan redactional traits, 263–69 analyzing Matthean redactional traits, 260–63 anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) opening, 142 in both M and L, 95 CGT version, 273–78 counted as one or two parables, 58n6 criterion of multiple attestation for, 49–50, 194–95, 210, 254, 260, 270, 278, 370 deriving skeletal outline from Matthew and Luke, 254–60, 262–63, 269–70 deriving voice of historical Jesus, 270–73 double invitation custom, 332–33n62

evaluating Q as source, 193–94, 258–59, 270 excuses indicating status of invitees, 343n113 as final call to Israel, 272–73 lacking a nimša¯l, 243 “law of threes” in, 266 Matthew’s addition of Guest without a Wedding Garment subplot, 196 proposed primitive form of, 269–73 reflecting structure of Good Samaritan, 266 son as postresurrection Jesus, 336n79 “suspended animation” of banquet, 256, 261 two-stage resolution, 266 use of plural “you,” 334n70 grouping of parables by source, 7 by theme, 7 Guest without a Wedding Garment parable added to Great Supper parable, 196, 256, 261–62, 337–38n84 including generic commentary, 243 in M, 194 Matthean theme(s) in, 195, 274 as Matthew’s creation, 196 halakic teaching of Jesus, 3, 31–32, 40, 49, 76n55, 307, 373 “half-dead,” 227n47 h  îdâ (“riddle”), 39, 65n25 ˙ healing/to heal, 153–54n32 Hebrew as spoken by Jesus, 320n37 verbs, 35 Hellenists, 205, 223n40 he¯mithane¯ (“half-dead”), 227n47 Herod Antipas, 284, 285, 300, 318n33, 322n41, 353n147 Herod the Great, 284, 389, 353n147 hina/šina purpose clause, 119, 170–71n103 historical-critical method as equal-opportunity offender, 230–31 historical Jesus, 9–10 audience for parables, 316–17n26 coming kingdom of God as inexorable, 307 and context for parables, 238 different from christology, 11 emphasis on patience, 176n121



Subject Index

engaging in halakic debates, 49 foreseeing death without vindication, 253 likely had little contact with Samaritans, 208 new covenant, reward, and punishment, 307–10 sources for, 12 summary of preaching, 308 versus Synoptic Jesus, 368 teaching in parables, 48–49, 190–91 See also criteria of historicity humanism, 372 hyperbole as rhetorical technique of Jesus, 42 hypocrisy theme in Matthew’s Gospel, 195 Ignatius of Antioch, 155n38 imitation of parables, 54 independent sources additions or omissions not proof of, 93–94 CGT parables with Synoptic parallel, 22n6 indeterminacy of parables, 52 Infancy Gospel of James, 91 Infancy Gospel of Thomas, 91 Infancy Narrative, 110 inner monologue, 198 interpretation as unavoidable, 23n9 Isaiah parables of meant to be understood, 64n18 song of the vineyard, 38, 324n45 and wisdom tradition, 365 “I say to you” statement, 340n102 “is like” formula of parables, 53 iso¯s (“perhaps”), 124 Jehoash (king), 37 Jeremiah, Jesus’ imitation of, 40, 365 Jericho, 353–54n147 Jerusalem destruction of by Nebuchadnezzar, 235 destruction of by Romans, 123, 261, 274, 301, 353n144 Jesus’ journey and ascent to, 297, 300–301 Jesus as martyred prophet and criterion of coherence, 16 in Q, 13 rather than as sage, 40, 364 Jesus’ own view of himself, 374

431

Jesus-portraits, range of, 31 Jesus Seminar begging the question on authentic parables, 69–70n40 categorizing of parables by confidence of authenticity, 75–76n54 on Good Samaritan parable, 208, 225n46 on Talents in Gospel of the Nazoreans, 359n159 Jewish apocalyptic tradition, 65n26 Jewish purity rules, 102 Jewish War, 261, 274, 336–37n82 Jezebel, 323n43 Johannine tradition (John’s Gospel) as independent of Synoptics, 26n26 similarity without literary dependence on Synoptics, 98–99 John the Baptist call to repentance in Q, 286, 288 and criterion of embarrassment, 12 Jesus’ allusion to in Evil Tenants, 374 as servant or son in Evil Tenants, 322n41 use of metaphors and similitudes, 68n32 Joseph, 323n43 Josephus historical Jesus, basic facts about, 11 as information source on historical Jesus, 11, 12, 16 story of Archelaus, 69n39, 283–84, 299 use of paraiteomai, 267 Jotham’s fable, 37 Judah, kings of, 235 Judah bar Simeon, 155n38 Judas Iscariot, 337–38n84 Judea direct Roman rule in, 284 evangelizing in, 205 and Pontius Pilate, 12 See also Archelaus justification by works, 307 Justin Martyr, 46, 91, 115, 160n51 king, Jesus as, 351–52n144, 361n167 kingdom absolute “the kingdom,” 129 disciples’ interpretation of, 178n130 entering or not entering, 163n68 “kingdom of God,” 68–69n33 as generic stock phrase, 321n39 in Great Supper parable, 264–65

432

Subject Index

“kingdom of God,” (cont.) likened to whole story, event, or process, 312n6 in Mark and Q, 129 in Matthew, 158n43 in Mustard Seed, 232–33 not referring to present world, 312n8 not used in CGT, 129 “organic unity” between Jesus’ ministry and, 314n13 timing of appearance of, 351–52n144 kingdom of God or of heaven, 158n43 “kingdom of heaven” and aorist tense, 174n114 CGT’s use of, 113, 129, 159n49, 178n131 Matthew’s use of, 53, 103, 112, 125, 129, 158n43, 159n47, 260, 265 “kingdom of the Father” in CGT, 125, 128–29, 141, 158n43, 159n49, 163n68, 177–78n129 as undivided, 141 kings, parables about, 42 kyrios, 248, 281, 292, 321n40, 324n45, 353n144, 360n162 L (material unique to Luke’s Gospel), 375n2 dating of, 198–99 differences from Mark and Matthew, 200 inner monologue in, 198 Jesus teaching in parables, 16 Pauline themes and wording in, 199 redactional traits applied to Great Supper, 263–69 typical Lucan redactional traits in, 264 L, parables in, 196–99 featuring nobles, affluent, 69n35 Good Samaritan as example of, 200–209 introductory anecdote-plus-parable style, 201, 202, 207 large number of, 194, 197 nimša¯l in, 243–44 old wine in new wineskins, 108 tis beginnings to, 201 See also Great Supper/Marriage Feast parable lachana (“pot herb”), 233, 313n12 “laconic sage,” Jesus as, 67n29 Last Supper, eucharistic words at, 199 Latter Prophets, narrative parables in, 38–40 “law of threes,” 327n53, 343n112 and Good Samaritan parable, 266 and Great Supper parable, 266, 343n112

in Matthew, 168n92, 289, 290 and Talents parable, 289 Leaven parable compared to strong man saying, 76–77n56 hyperbole in, 42 lacking a nimša¯l, 243 leaven as widespread symbol of corruption, 194 in Q, 193–94 as story in miniature, 61n14, 76n56 variation on traditional theme, 44 length of Jesus material, 166–67n84, 167n89 liberation theology, 358–59n159, 361n172 literary genius argument, 53 Little Children in the Field parable, 187n171 loan words from Latin, 342–43n110 “local color” argument, 241 Lost Coin parable appended explanation, 243 introduction to, 138 in L, 197 Lost Sheep parable, 187n169, 193–94 Luke’s Gospel abbreviating tendency, 110 abbreviations and additions to crucifixion narrative, 94 adding introductions to parables, 135–38 anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) parables, 142, 264, 275, 301, 339n94 combining Lost Coin and Lost Sheep, 137 connecting Jesus’ story with Roman history, 299 de-allegorization in, 217n19 dependence on Mark and Q, 50 dialogues between Jesus and outsiders, 138 Evil Tenants of the Vineyard parable, 118–19 first Jews, then Gentiles theme, 264 focus on Samaritans, 205–7 global theme of boundary crossing, 198 and Good Samaritan parable, 226n46 Great Journey narrative, 92 interest in poor and marginalized, 198, 256, 263–64, 268–69 interest in Samaritans, 205 likely authored Good Samaritan parable, 51, 217n16, 220n29 “lostness” trio of parables, 137 “minor agreement” with Matthew against Mark, 169n99 monologues in parables, 186n166



Subject Index

often abbreviates Marcan material, 314n14 and Prodigal Son parable, 226n46 proposed influence of Thomas on, 162– 63n65 repetitions, 265 reworking of Mark’s commandments of love, 201 speakers opening exchange with Jesus, 140 theme of Jesus’ kingship, 285 three-stage plot and two-stage resolution pattern, 266–67 typical redactional concerns, 96–97, 265–66 typical themes of, 263–64 See also Pharisee and the Tax Collector parable LXX. See Septuaguint (LXX) M (material unique to Matthew’s Gospel), 375n2 “both bad and good” theme, 261–62, 274 CGT parallels with, 195 nature of, 101 nimša¯l in, 243 nine narrative parables in, 194 parables heavily redacted, 196 parables not meeting historicity criteria, 195 redactional alterations to Great Supper, 260–63 Maimonides, 18, 19 Mammon, serving God and, 60n14 “man” openings, 139–41 many called, few chosen, 337n84 Mark–Q overlaps examples of, 232 Mustard Seed parable, 210 Mark’s Gospel added allegorical interpretation of Sower parable, 85–86 as backbone for Matthew and Luke, 79n59 double conclusions in, 167n88 Evil Tenants version step by step, 116–17 four or five narrative parables in, 194 Jesus teaching in parables, 16 material paralleled in CGT, 95 Mustard Seed parable step-by-step, 112 narrative parables in, 192–93 only one parable with nimša¯l, 244

433

parables featuring everyday village life, 69n35 proposed early alternate oral form of, 97 as source for Mustard Seed parable, 16 two commandments of love, 201 Marriage Feast parable. See Great Supper/ Marriage Feast parable Martial, 268, 355n151 martyrdom of Stephen, 205 Marx, Karl, 18, 19, 317n27 Marxism, 358–59n159, 361n172 Mary (Magdalene), 139 ma¯ša¯l/mashal, 363–64 in Book of Psalms, 65n25 connection with prophetic oracle, 39–41, 67n29 in Ezekiel, 39 as literary category, 35–36, 65n25 multiple meanings of, 59n13, 363 Nathan’s parable not labeled as, 364 OT wisdom books versus Former Prophets, 36–38 as parabole¯, 37, 39 and riddle-speech, 36 roots of, 35–36 special meaning of as narrative parable, 64n20 wise as serpents passage, 156n39 See also parabole¯ Matthew’s Gospel abbreviation of Marcan form of divorce prohibition, 93 addition of Peter walking on water, 94 allegorical interpretation of Wheat and Weeds parable, 86 avoiding revocation of Mosaic system, 102 dependence on Mark and Q, 50, 98 Evil Tenants of the Vineyard parable, 117–18 frequent but not invariable use of “is like,” 53 key themes in, 195–96 meshing of sources, 164n70 “minor agreement” with Luke against Mark, 169n99 missionary discourse, 100–101 M tradition versus redactional creation, 101 Mustard Seed parable step-by-step, 112–13 omissions and additions to Evil Tenants, 94

434

Subject Index

Matthew’s Gospel (cont.) parallel structures and wording, 261 polemics against authorities, 168n93 proclaiming gospel to Gentiles, 274 redactional creations, 101 showing distaste for Mark’s style and theology, 79n59 softening tone of Mark, 102 sources for, 100 meaning of parables given Jesus’ purpose in using parables, 33–34 restricted by contours of historical Jesus, 33 through text or through reader, 32 meaning of “talent,” 349n137 meriste¯s (“divider”), 141, 183n156 mešak (“perhaps”), 122, 124 “metaparable,” Sower as, 211n3 Metapher, 62n14 metaphor(s) definition of, 60n14 Luke’s doubling of, 108–9 and metaphorical world of parables, 32, 35 methodology, 8–12 importance of establishing, 26n27 primary criteria of historicity, 12–17 secondary criteria of historicity, 17 middle-Platonic mythology, 94, 187n171 mina/mna (unit of money), 279 Minas parable (Lucan version of Talents/ Pounds) minas, not talents, as original, 302–3 as part of Great Journey Narrative, 296–306 possible reference to Archelaus, 284 units of money in, 302–3 wording of, 292, 295 See also Talents/Pounds parable; Throne Claimant narrative mini-story style Fish Net/Wise Fisherman parable, 195 Mustard Seed parable, 232, 311n5 not a normative or universal definition, 364 Pearl parable, 195 Treasure Hidden in the Field parable, 195 Mishna, 233 missionary discourse of Matthew, 100–101, 106, 112, 156n40, 164n70, 232

M–L overlap, 254 M material versus M tradition, 101 in Oxyrhynchus papyri, 100 parables featuring nobles, affluent, 69n35 parables paralleled in CGT, 95 mna (unit of money), 279 money parables about, 42 “wrapping up” versus burying, 360n165 monologues, interior, 143–44, 186– 87nn166–168, 223n41 mother of Jesus, 110 Mount of Olives, 361n167 multiple attestation, criterion of, 16, 27n28, 241 attestation by multiple forms, 148n1 candidates for, 49–52 and Choosing Places at Table saying, 216n11 and Doorkeeper parable, 193, 213n5 and Evil Tenants parable, 192–93, 210, 240–41, 252, 370 and Great Supper parable, 194, 195, 210, 254, 270, 278, 370 importance of Thomas for, 51–52, 189, 369 for Jesus being buried, 252 for Jesus performing startling deeds, 49, 191 for Jesus teaching in parables, 16, 48–49, 366–67 M and L parables, 198 misapplication of, 26n27, 27n28, 187– 88n171 most important criterion for historicity, 56, 89–90 and Mustard Seed parable, 49, 192, 194, 210, 239, 370 and Narrow Gate/Closed Door metaphor, 216n11 and Seed Growing by Itself parable, 192 and Talents/Minas parable, 194, 195, 210, 280, 306–7, 370 Thomas cannot support claims of, 6, 47, 147–48 and Throne Claimant parable, 283 Mustard Seed parable, 8, 192 birds dwelling imagery, 233–36, 314n15 in CGT, 95, 111–15, 164n69, 231 CGT version step-by-step, 113–14



Subject Index double-question opener, 164–65n71 dwelling/resting of birds under (mustard) tree, 112–13, 232–36, 313n12, 313n13, 314n15 focus on contrast, not growth, 313–14n13 and historical Jesus, 239–40 hyperbole in, 42–43 lacking a nimša¯l, 243 larger context of, 237–38 likely species referred to, 312–13n9 Marcan version step-by-step, 112 in Mark and CGT, 95 in Mark and Q, 49, 95, 192 as Mark–Q overlap, 231–32 Matthean version step-by-step, 112–13 meets criterion of coherence, 239–40 as mini-story in three stages, 232 more than one theme in, 233, 313–14n13 multiple attestation criterion for, 49, 192, 194, 210, 239, 370 mustard seed as metaphor for smallness, 312–13nn9–11 as parable, not similitude, 311n5 in Q, 193–94 representing Jesus’ mission, 239 reversal in, 373 as story in miniature, 61n14 variation on traditional theme, 44

Naboth, 323n43 Nag Hammadi materials, 12, 44, 91, 130, 155n38, 169n100, 172 “narrative” and “aphoristic” meshalim, 58n6 narrative parables as distinguished from metaphor or similitude, 210–11n2 meant to be understood, 64n18 in OT, 37–40 role of audience in, 61n14 survey of by source, 191–99 narrativity, criterion of, 60n14 Narrow Gate/Closed Door saying, 216n11 Nathan, parable of, 37, 53, 63n17 as “juridical parable,” 66n28 meant to be understood, 64n18 not labeled as ma¯ša¯l, 364 Nazareth, 153n29 Nebuchadnezzar (king), 235–36 Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, 11, 24n11 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 22n4, 22n8, 220n30, 372

435

nimša¯l, 38, 61n14, 64n18 in Evil Tenants of the Vineyard parable, 242–44 in Good Samaritan parable, 242 in L parables, 243–44 in M parables, 243 parables lacking, 242–43 Widow and the Unjust Judge parable, 249 in Workers in the Vineyard parable, 249 non liquet verdict, 3, 8 and burden of proof, 80n63 and CGT dependence, 47, 147, 211–12n3 and L parables, 209, 210 many parables assigned status of, 5, 8, 367 and M parables, 196, 210 noyte (“god”), 145, 159n47, 187n170 oaths, Jesus’ prohibition of, 15, 18 Ockham’s razor and hypothetical alternate traditions, 170n103 O. Henry surprise endings, 44 oikodespote¯s (“head of a household”), 117, 167n90, 170n101, 278 Old Testament (OT) parables, 37–40 ophis (“snake”), 101 oral transmission of traditions, 17, 28n28 difficulty of defining features of, 161n57 influence of memory on, 50 prove nothing regarding source, 51 and Thomas, 105 and written sources, 78n58, 79n59, 81n67 Orwell, George, 83–84 Oxyrhynchus papyri, 47, 71n44, 96, 99–102 Papias, 77n57 Parabel, 62n14 parables attraction of, 30–31 contrasted with teaching on Law, 31 discovering “original” meaning of, 21n2 as distinct literary genre, 67n28 as distinguished from metaphors and similes, 60n14 few supported by criteria of authenticity, 48–57 flexible enough for multiple purposes, 34, 41 global acceptance that Jesus used, 190–91 historicity of, 5, 30–31 increasing numbers in later Gospels, 197, 210

436

Subject Index

parables (cont.) need for context regarding, 5 number of, 35–36, 58n6 organizing and labeling of, 191–92 previous scholarship on, 6 problem of restrictive definitions, 41–42 requirements for true parable of Jesus, 61n14 as specialized teaching tools, 34 special problem of, 4–8 “svelte” form not necessarily more original, 116 traditional titles for, 57n2 varying portraits of Jesus derived from, 31 See also grouping of parables; narrative parables parabole¯, 35, 37, 363–64 as “analogy” or “instruction,” 216n11 Budding Fig Tree as, 60n14 in Hermas, 65n26 as heuristic tool, 364 as lesson by comparison, 60n14 not all parables labeled as, 53 use of term in LXX, 37, 39, 363–64 use of term in NT, 37, 62–63n15, 364 See also ma¯ša¯l/mashal paradox, 282 of the cross, 13, 14 versus hyperbole, 44 in Matthew, 156n39 in Mustard Seed parable, 314n13 postmodernism and, 23n8 in Prodigal Son parable, 327n52 riddle speech and, 34 in Talents parable, 282 paraiteomai (“ask,” “decline”), 267–68, 277–78, 341n104, 342n107, 343n112, 345n129 paroimia as “proverb,” 63n15 parousia, 213n5 Passion Narrative plus resurrection proclamation, 251 Passion Narratives, 13–14 Jesus put to death on a cross, 16 patching old garment, 107–8 patris (“hometown”), 98, 99, 153n29 Paul and Pauline letters influence seen in Luke’s Gospel, 199 as information source for historical Jesus, 12 Jesus put to death on a cross, 16 on meaning of crucifixion, 13

no parables in, 368 turning from Jews to Gentiles, 206 Pearl parable in M and CGT, 95, 194 as mini-story, 195 no nimša¯l, 243 peasant economics, 357n159 peje (“said”), 172n110 peje is/“Jesus said,” 124 peje ouro¯me/“a man said,” 140 “perhaps,” 119, 121–22, 124, 171n105, 187n168 Peter Jesus’ “three words” to, 180n139 sermon to Cornelius, 98, 205, 223n40 petra/petro¯de¯s, 212n3 phanero¯the˛ˉ (“be revealed”), 96–97 Pharisee and the Tax Collector parable, 184n161 arguments for authenticity of, 228–29n48 as example story, 62n14, 200 Lucan introduction to, 137, 201 monologue in, 144 multi-part nimša¯l to, 244 Pauline theme in, 199 Pharisees future eschatology of, 44 hiding keys of knowledge, 154n33 hostile interchanges with Jesus, 136–37 some joining early Christians, 339n92 Philip conversion of Ethiopian eunuch by, 221n36, 223n40 mission to Samaria, 205 Philo, 19 phronimos (“clever”), 100, 101, 155n37 physicians heal yourself saying, 100 knowing excludes healing by, 154n32 pigs, 167n87 Pilate, Pontius, 12–13, 137 reason for executing Jesus, 40–41, 55, 67n30 Platonic-Hellenistic mythology, 187n171 plausibility, criterion of, 18 plausibility of effects, 18 plays on words, 65n23 plot line a requirement for parable, 61n14 poieo¯ (“do”), in the Good Samaritan, 203–4, 219n27 Polybius, 267



Subject Index

Polycarp, conflating tendencies of, 46, 91, 115 Poor Man and Ewe Lamb parable, 53 possessions and death, 181n142 postmodern analysis, 10–11, 22–23n8, 33, 317n27, 359n159, 365 postmodernist, Jesus as, 43, 365, 372 “post-Synoptic” source proposed for Thomas, 73–74n49 Pounds parable. See Talents/Pounds parable power of prayer/petition of marginalized, 198 prepared, to have or be, 259, 274, 333n63 presupposing what is to be proved, 372 proclitic participle, 346n131 Prodigal Son parable angry older son in, 327n52 anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) opening, 142 as creation of Luke, 226n46 elements of Greco-Roman comedy in, 226 imagined audience response to, 57–58n5 introduction to, 138 in L, 197 no nimša¯l, 243 Pauline theme in, 199 a story with plot line, 61n14 surprise ending to, 44, 327n52 “prophetic aorist,” 326n50 prophetic oracles and parables, 37–40 parables meant to be understood, 64n18 prophetic tradition CGT suppressing, 123 Jesus as Elijah-like prophet, 3, 33, 40–41, 372 Jesus foretelling final judgment, 215n8 Jesus foretelling Jerusalem’s destruction, 301 Jesus in mold of, 13, 364, 372–73 martyrdom, 250 Matthean theme of martyrdom of, 262 meaning of, 66n27 prophet in his hometown saying, 97–99 Protevangelium Jacobi, 91 “proverb” and “comparison,” 59n11 purity laws and Good Samaritan parable, 227 Jesus and, 230 what defiles a man, 102 Q, 258 hypothetical text of, 335n74

437

Jesus as martyred prophet, 13 Jesus teaching in parables, 16 Lucan introductions to parables from, 136 only seven narrative parables in, 193–94 parables featuring everyday village life, 69n35 possible inclusion of Gentiles, 272 as source for Great Supper parable, 344n118 as source for Mustard Seed parable, 16 Qumran sect and texts, 15, 25n18, 44, 227n47 rabbinic parables, 76n55 reader as creator of meaning, 32 “reader response” criticism, 57n5 “real Jesus,” 10–11 reciprocity, ethics of, 308 rejection and execution of Jesus, criterion of, 17, 54–55 resting/dwelling of birds under, 234–36, 314n15 resurrection in pre-Pauline formulas of faith, 251 retrojection of later views, 24n14 Return of the Unclean Spirit saying, 214n6 revelation from God, solving riddle through, 65n25 reversal of status, expectations, or values, 200–201, 229n48, 258, 264, 373 reward, Jesus’ promise of, 307–9 Rich Fool parable anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) beginning, 201 as example story, 62n14, 200 explanation at end of, 243 inner monologue in, 143 in L, 197 Lucan introduction to, 137–38 Luke and CGT comparison, 134–35 misinterpretations of, 44 only parable from Luke in CGT, 95, 134–35 as test case, 132–45 variation on traditional theme, 43–44, 70n42 Rich Man and Lazarus parable anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) opening, 142 as example story, 62n14, 200 in L, 197 Lucan introduction to, 137–38

438

Subject Index

Rich Man and Lazarus parable (cont.) no nimša¯l, 243 variation on traditional theme, 44 words of Abraham at end of, 243 “rich man” openings, 143 rich supporters of Jesus, 339n92 riddle-speech of parables contrasted with commands and prohibitions, 32 contrasted with halakic debates, 49 Evil Tenants, 124 in Ezekiel, 39, 65n22 within larger frame of meaning, 34 and limitations of interpretation, 4–8, 12 and ma¯ša¯l, 36, 65n25, 363 ritual impurity, 227n47 “rock”/petra, 212n3, 253 Rome as limit of the West, 222n37 Rorschach inkblots, parables as, 317n27 sage, Jesus as, 40, 67n29 Sahidic text, proposed assimilation to, 157–58n43 CGT 9, 211–12n3 CGT 14, 102–3, 157–58n43 CGT 16, 105 CGT 31, 153n31 CGT 47, 162n64 CGT 54, 159n49 CGT 55, 106–7 CGT 57, 129–30, 180n140 CGT 63, 143 CGT 64, 345n129 CGT 99, 163n68 salvation as an event, 297 “salvation geography,” 206 salvation-historical allegory, 263–64 Samaritan leper, 206 Samaritans, 205–7 accepted by Jewish Christians, 223n40, 228n47 as liminal people, 222–23n40, 228n47 sapiential literature. See wisdom traditions satan (adversary, enemy), 129 Scene of the Last Judgment, 194 Schneerson, Menachem, 18, 19 scholarship, Scripture, 190 scribal assimilation theory. See Sahidic text, proposed assimilation to scribes assimilation to Sahidic text of Gospels, 96, 157n43

conflation by, 151n24 harmonizing the Synoptics, 168n95 influence of memory on, 50, 78n57 proposed changes to CGT by, 96 secondary/dubious criteria of historicity, 17 secret messages, parables as, 70n42 Seed Growing by Itself parable, 43–44, 192 appearing only in Mark, 58n6, 192 possible CGT 21 parallel, 212–13n4 variation on traditional theme, 44 Septuaguint (LXX) ma¯ša¯l as parabole¯, 39 paraiteomai (“ask,” “decline”), 267 Sermon on the Mount, 103 Servant Placed over a Household, 193–94, 242 Servant’s Duty parable interior monologue in, 144 in L, 197 nimša¯l to, 243 “seven unfashionable theses,” 6, 56, 189 thesis one, 35–36 thesis two, 36–38 thesis three, 38–40 thesis four, 40–41 thesis five, 41–44 thesis six, 44–48, 90, 95 thesis seven, 48–57, 191 expanded to fifteen conclusions, 363–72 Shabbetai Tzvi, 19 sheep amidst wolves, 154n33 sheep and goats passage, 214–15n8 Shepherd of Hermas, 40, 65n26 silence, argument from, 55 simile, 35, 60n14 definition of, 60–61n14 similitude, 35, 60–61n14 differentiating between parables and, 213n5, 364 “single indirect parables,” 218n20 šîr (“song”), 38 sisters of Jesus, 111, 163n66 skepticism toward historicity quest, 10–11 slavery Jesus’ silence on issue of, 358n159 meaning of in ancient Rome, 350n139 “to be sold into,” 349n137 snakes and doves, 100, 155n38 socially “incorrect” guests, 344n116 social memory, 105 socioeconomic commentary in parables, 137, 356–59n159, 360n161



Subject Index

“solitary,” the, 141 Song of Songs, 156n39 “Son of Man” title, 14–15, 16, 25n20 Sower parable, 192 allegorical interpretation of as secondary addition, 85–86 CGT additions to, 211n3 CGT dependence on Synoptics, 192, 211–12n3 in Mark and CGT, 95 not introduced by “is like,” 53 realism of, 69n38 variation on traditional theme, 44 sowing, terms for, 130 Spinoza, Baruch, 18, 19 “split the wood” phrase, 149n9 Stephen’s use of “Son of Man” title, 25n20 stone prophecies, 252–53 stone/rock. See cornerstone story worlds created by parables, 31–32 “street theater” of Jesus, 33, 67n30 Streitgesprächen (dispute stories), 202 strong man overcome by stronger man saying, 50, 76–77n56 suffering righteous man theme, 13 suffering servant of Yahweh, 13 surprise endings, not all parables have, 43 survey of Synoptic parables by sources, 191–92 Marcan narrative parables, 192–93 narrative parables in L, 196–99 narrative parables in M, 194–96 narrative parables in Q, 193–94 symbolic visions or dreams, 39 Synoptic Gospels, parables in chronological order of, 197 function of nimša¯l, 249 narrative parables in, 35–36, 40–41 number of, 58n6 secondary oral traditions, 91 as self-contained short stories, 33, 37–41, 242, 249 survey of parables by sources, 191–99 Synoptic versus historical Jesus, 368 See also individual parables table manners, 216n11 Tacitus, 11, 16 talanton/“talent,” 279, 302, 349n137 Talents/Pounds parable, 8 analyzing Lucan redactional traits, 296–305

439

analyzing Matthean redactional traits, 288–96 anthro¯pos tis (“a certain man”) opening, 142–43 concluding proverb, 304–5 counted as one or two parables, 58n6 criterion of coherence, 307, 309 criterion of multiple attestation, 49–50, 194–95, 210, 280, 306–7, 370 deriving skeletal outline from Matthew and Luke, 281–83, 305–6 evaluating Q as source, 285–88 intended audience for, 136 and Jesus’ end-time proclamation, 308–9, 373–74 lacking a nimša¯l, 243 M and L versions, 95, 283, 286–88 Matthew’s placement of, 288–89 meaning of, 306–10 Nazoreans version, 359n159 possible allusion to Archelaus, 69n39, 283–84 proposed primitive form of, 295–96, 298, 301–6 punishment of slave as focal point, 291–92, 304 in Q, 193–94 talents versus minas as amount, 302–3 third servant as honorable, 357n159 Talmud, mustard seed metaphor in, 233 targums, 27n27, 325n46, 358–59n159 teacher, Jesus’ rejection of title, 141–42 Tekoa, woman of, 37, 63n17 temple, Jerusalem Jesus’ cleansing of, 17, 33 Jesus’ prediction of destruction, 17 Ten Virgins parable concluding generic commentary, 243 in M, 194 Matthean theme(s) in, 195, 215n10, 262 possible parallel in Luke, 213n5 tertium comparationis, 85 test cases, 45–48 Evil Tenants of the Vineyard, 115–31 Good Samaritan, 199–209 for independence of CGT, 45–46 Mustard Seed, 111–15 parallels in sayings that are not parables, 96–100 Rich Fool, 131–45 Wheat and the Weeds, 124–31 text as locus of meaning, 32

440

Subject Index

themes in Matthew fate of martyred prophets, 262 wedding banquet, 262 theology apologetics, 77n57 categories for parables, 210n1 “theological Jesus,” 11 See also christology Theophaneia (Eusebius), 359n159 theses. See “seven unfashionable theses” Throne Claimant narrative explanations for seeming incoherence, 283, 300, 302, 351n143, 351–52n144 and Great Journey Narrative, 301 in Luke only, 283 possible connection to Archelaus, 283–85, 299–300, 353n147 See also Minas parable (Lucan version of Talents/Pounds) Tower Builder and Warring King parable, 44, 197, 216n11, 243 tradents, 52 defined, 79n60 translation of Greek and Coptic texts, 174n114 transvaluation of all values, 204, 220n30 Treasure Hidden in the Field parable in M and CGT, 95, 194 as mini-story, 195 no nimša¯l, 243 tree imagery and symbolism, 315n20, 315n22 ax laid to root of tree, 68n32 Barren Fig Tree parable, 44, 137, 142, 197, 243 Budding Fig Tree, 60n14, 63n15, 211n2 cross as “a tree,” 16 dwelling/resting of birds under (mustard) tree, 112–13, 232–36, 313n12, 313n13, 314n15 good trees bearing good fruit, 292 in Old Testament, 234–36 See also dwelling/resting of birds under tree triads, use of by Matthew, 288–89 triple temptation of Jesus, 286, 288 “triple tradition,” 107–9 Tristan und Isolde (Wagner), 82 “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, 17, 33 Two Debtors parable or similitude, 184n161, 196, 201

explanation at end of, 243 introduction to, 136, 138 Two Sons parable in M, 194 Matthean theme(s) in, 195 nimša¯l in, 243 variation on traditional theme, 44 two-source theory of Synoptic relationships, 50 unfashionable theses. See “seven unfashionable theses” Unforgiving Servant parable as example, 62n14 a story with plot line, 61n14 Unmerciful Servant parable in M, 194 Matthean theme(s) in, 195 nimša¯l in, 243 value of talents in, 349n137 “unpapal conclave,” 11, 23–24n10 Vergleich, 62n14 viticulture in Jewish Palestine, 241 “voice” of Jesus, 187–88n171 voluntary fasting, Jesus’ prohibition of, 14, 15, 18 Wagner, Richard, 82 Warning about Going before the Judge saying, 214n6 Warring King parable appended explanation, 243 in L, 197 variation on traditional theme, 44 Watchful Doorkeeper parable, 182n147 Watchful Servant(s), 58n6, 213n5 weakness and power, 314n13 wedding banquet theme, 262 “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” 361n166 Wheat and the Weeds parable aorist tense in, 265 distinguishing wheat from weeds, 127–28 intelligibility of, 128, 177n127, 179n136 likely created by Matthew or tradent, 51 Matthean theme(s) in, 195, 215n10 “M material” versus “M tradition,” 173n113 in M/Matthew and CGT, 95, 125–26, 130, 194 original form of, 173–74n113



Subject Index

and Sower parable, 243 story line, 126–28 “wide umbrella-term,” 68n33 Widow and Unjust Judge parable, 184n161 in L, 197 Lucan introduction to, 137 multi-part nimša¯l, 243–44, 249 wine, old and new, 107–8, 162n64 wisdom traditions, 181–82n144 attempts to place parables within, 67n29, 67–68n31, 364 books of OT, 37–38 ma¯ša¯l, 36–38 Wise and Foolish Builders, 193–94, 242

441

Wise Fisherman parable, 95, 188n171, 211n3 Woman with an Empty Jar parable, 187n171 word-events, 33 Workers in the Vineyard parable in M, 194 nimša¯l to, 249 surprise ending to, 44 “worthy”/“worthy of me,” 106, 161–62n61 “writing prophets,” 38–40 Zacchaeus, 297, 354n147 Zedekiah (king), 235 zizanion weed, 130