¹ These notes are set forth with a fourfold sense of indebtedness, to be acknowledged in inverse chronological order: (1) to Ernst Fuchs for making clear the normative and decisive significance of the parables for an understanding ofJesus; (2) toJoachim Jeremias for his epoch-making research on the parables; (3) to James Muilenburg for first bringing my attention to the importance of literary form; and (4) to Henry, J. Cadbury for his book The Style andLiterary Met hod of Luke (Cambridge, 1920), hereafter referred to by the abbreviation Cd. We live at a time of upheaval in gospel criticism, when it has become acceptable to question the ‘two-source’ hypothesis. This presents a challenge to the critic who wishes to produce results which are independent of any particular solution of the synoptic problem. Since frequent reference is made in these notes to the work of Cadbury, and since he presupposed the ‘two-source’ hypothesis in general and Luke's use of Mark in particular, it will be of importance to the reader to know that all references to his work, hereinafter made, are valid for the purposes of these notes not only on his presuppositions, but also on the supposition that if Luke did not copy Mark and/or ‘Q’, he did copy Matthew. In other words, the only major presupposition for these notes is that there exists some sort of direct literary relationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that the earliest of these gospels was not Luke. That Luke was not earliest, I believe, can be established beyond a reasonable doubt.Google Scholar

¹ Cd. p. 126.Google Scholar

² Die Gleichnisse Jesu (5th ed., Göttingen, 1958), p. 84: Eng. trans. (3rd ed.),Google ScholarThe Parables of Jesus (London, 1954), p. 77.Google Scholar [Jeremias refers the reader to Hawkins's statistical lists in Horac Synoptwae (Oxford, 1899). These statistics may be useful in some cases, as in this instance. But they must be used with great care and in every instance checked by a concordance.]Google Scholar

¹ E., DeW. Burton in Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in Xew Testament Greek (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1898), p. 80, notes that the optative with âv occurs in the New Testament only in Luke-Acts. But he believes that the text in v. 26 05 be doubtful.Google Scholar

¹ The point is no less sharp if Luke used Matthew. Sprūche und Reden Jesu (Leipzig, 1907), p. 14.Google Scholar Eng. Tr. The Sayings of Jesus (New York, 1908), p. 13.Google ScholarCf., Matt. x. 16.Google Scholar

² The unity in authorship of Luke-Acts is a methodological presupposition of this analysis, although our conclusions are not seriously affected by this since we have made so little use of this assumption.

³ An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (2nd ed., Oxford, 1954), p. 141.Google Scholar

⁴ The Poetry of Our Lord (Oxford, 1925), p. 69.Google Scholar

¹ Die Worte Jesu (2nd ed., 1930), p. 164.Google Scholar English trans., The Words of Jesus (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 20–31.Google Scholar Jeremias lists this as a Semitism along with sixteen additional Semitisms which he and others have noted in vv. 11–32.Google Scholar ‘Zum Gleichnis vom verlorenen Sohn, Luke xv. 11–32’, Theol. z. no. 3 (1949), 228–30.Google Scholar

² Whatever the relationship between Luke, xv. 4–6Google Scholar and Matt, . xviii. 12–54,Google Scholar there is no reason to attribute any of the form or content of Luke, xv. 4–6 to the evangelist Luke. Nor is there evidence of literary dependence. One must go back in time behind the literary activity of the evangelists to posit any connexion between these two alternate forms of what may well have been an original saying of Jesus. Nor is there any reason to think that Luke xv. 7 and 10 are Lucan additions. These words may be later additions to the sayings concerning the lost sheep and the lost coin, but there is no reason to think they were not already a part of the text Luke was copying.Google Scholar

¹ A formal distinction is to be made between sayings which begin with a rhetorical question and those in the form of stories. In both the hearer may be expected to visualize some sort of comparison, and thus both might be called ‘parables’. But for the purpose of this essay the term ‘parable’ is used to refer only to those developed sayings which could be called stories and which do not have the form of rhetorical question and answer. This is a pardonable inconsistency which should occasion the reader little trouble once his attention has been called to it. Luke uses the term ‘parable’ very loosely. Cf., Luke v. 36.Google Scholar

¹ Taylor, R. O. P., in The Groundwork of the Gospels (Oxford, 1946),Google Scholar has conveniently collected the most important texts from the Greek Rhetores (translated by Nicklin, T.), pp. 82–90.Google Scholar These texts are prefaced by an important introduction to the Chreia, pp. 75–81.Google Scholar The Greek texts are accessible in the Teubner series, collected by Spengel, under the title Rhetores Graeci. Chreiai themselves may be conveniently found in (1) Lucian's life of Demonax, 12−67; (2) Plutarch's life of Marcus Cato, VII−IX; (3) Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers: Socrates II, 30b–37; Aristippus, II, 127–30; Plato III;Google ScholarXenocrates, IV, 8–10;Google ScholarDiogenes, VI, 32–69;Google ScholarAntisthenes, VI, 3–9;Google ScholarCrates, VI, 89–91;Google ScholarMetrocles, VI, 95;Google ScholarZeno, VII, 17–26;Google ScholarAriston, VI, 163;Google ScholarCleanthes, VII, 171–4;Google ScholarSphaerus, VII, 177;Google ScholarChrysippus, 182–3;Google ScholarHeraditus, IX, 12;Google ScholarXenophanes, IX, 20;Google ScholarZeno, of Elea, 27–39;Google ScholarProtagoras, IX, 56;Google ScholarAnaxarchus, IX, 58–60;Google ScholarPyrrho, IX, 64–9;Google ScholarTimon, IX, 113–15;Google Scholar (4) Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates iii, 13. mportant bibliographical references will be found in Martin Dibelius's discussion of the Chreia in his Die Formgeschwhte des Evangeliums (3rd ed., Tübingen, 1959), pp. 150–64;Google Scholar English trans. of 2nd ed., with same discussion of Chreia as in 3rd ed. From Tradition to Gospel (New York, 1935), pp. 152–64.Google ScholarRobert, Grant treats the Chreia in The Earliest Lives of Jesus (New York, 1961), pp. 17–18, 99–101.Google Scholar

¹ The use of Chreiai in the schools of rhetoric was so widespread, and had such a firmly fixed place in the educational system of the empire in the first century that Quintilian, though writing in Latin, refers to the composition of Chreiai as a rudimentary activity for pupils who are preparing for the schools of rhetoric (The Institutio Oratorio of Quintilian, Book I, ix, 3–6).Google Scholar Quintilian's dates are c. A.D. 35−100. He implies that this discipline was included among the first essentials of general education. Although writing about the situation in Rome, Quintilian describes a situation which also prevailed at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Cf. the second century A.D. inscribed ‘school texts’ Ostraka published and discussed by Grafton, Milne in the J. Hellenic Stud. XXVIII (1908), 121–32.Google Scholar An excellent example of the way in which the copying of Chreiai was made a part of the schoolboy's written exercises is provided by a papyrus notebook (dated third and fourth centuries–but assumed to be representative of educational practice in the Graeco-Roman period from at least the time of Quintilian), in which the Chreiai are preceded by written exercise in syllabification and followed by the copying of moral maxims. SeePapyrus Bouriant N. 1-to be conveniently found as N. 29 in Erich, Ziebarth'sAus der Antiken Schule (Bonn, 1910),Google Scholar in the Hans Lietzmann Kleine Texte series. Cf. also in Ziebarth's collection, the third-century wooden tablet on one side of which is declined a Chreia concerning Pythagoras, published originally in the J. Hellenw Stud. xxix (1909), 11. The point is not that as public orators they would be called upon to create Chreioi, but rather, having written Chreiai themselves, they would better understand the principles governing their composition, and thus be better prepared to make the most effective use of those collections of Chresai of philosophers and famous men, whose example and words would carry weight in the minds of their hearers. To have invented such Chreiai would have defeated the speaker's purpose, since it was essential that his hearers acknowledge the authenticity of the Chreiai he used. For all Chreiai contain the words or refer to the actions of known historical persons. It follows, therefore, that just as Chreiai concerning Jesus are not to be regarded as having been invented by the evangelists while writing their gospels, neither are we to think of them as having been created by early Christian preachers. But rather we should imagine these early preachers drawing upon previously prepared collections of Chreiai, in which sayings or actions of Jesus have been provided historical settings and against the background of which the respective sayings or actions are to be understood and interpreted. Precisely how some of the early Christian communities might have managed to provide themselves with such collections of Chreiai will be touched on later in this essay.Google Scholar

¹ Plummer, , The Gospel According to St Luke, ICC (New York, 1914), p. 390.Google ScholarKnox, , The Sources of the Synoptic Gospels (Cambridge, 1957), II, 96–7.Google Scholar The thread of teaching which J. D. M. Derrett is able to trace through the whole of oh. 16 is least apparent in vu. 16−18, ‘Dives and Lazarus and the Preceding Sayings’, N.T.S. VII (07 1961), 364–80.Google Scholar

¹ ‘Quintilian I. 9 and the “Chria” in Ancient Education’, by Colson, F. H. in the Classieal Rev. (11–12 1921), pp. 86–7;Google ScholarQuaestiones Progymnasmaticae, Georgius, Reichel (Leipzig, 1909).Google Scholar

¹ Note that Chreiai were written down in order that they might be committed to memory. The relationship between oral and written tradition is more complex than is usually imagined and deserves more thought than it is usually given. Our difficulties are further compounded when we must reckon with the problematical effects of translation upon the transmission of oral and/or written tradition. Cf., Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, Acta Seminaril Neotestamentici Upsaliensis XXII (Uppsala, 1961).Google Scholar

² We should not have needed the monumental work of Erwin Goodenough to teach us this. It should have been apparent to us as the only adequate irritant to account for the frenzy of orthodoxy and zealotism within conservative Jewish circles at this time. See volume I, The Archaeological Evidence from Palestine, in Jewish Symbols in the Greco–Roman Period. 8 vols., Bollingen Series xxxvii (New York, 1953 1958).Google Scholar See also the Schweich Lectures for 1942, Some Hellenistic Elements in Primitive Christianity, Wilfred, L. Knox, (Oxford, 1944); see especially pp. 30–1.Google Scholar Even more important are the two works by Saul, Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1942),Google Scholar and Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1950).Google ScholarDavid, Daube, in ‘Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric’, H.U.C.A. xxii (1949), 239–64Google Scholar and ‘Alexandrian Methods of Interpretation and the Rabb’ in Festschrft Hans Lewald (1953), pp. 27–44,Google Scholar offers convincing evidence of the influence of Hellenistic rhetoric on the rabbis. Cf., S. Stein, ‘The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the Pessah Iaggadah’, J. Jewish Stud. VIII (1957), 13–44;Google ScholarMorton, Smith, ‘Palestinianjudaism in the First Century’, Israel: Its Role in Civilization, ed. Mosche, Davis (New York, 1956), pp. 67–81;Google ScholarV., Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (translated from the Hebrew, 1959);Google ScholarBenoit, P., O.P., Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, II, Les Grottes des Murabba'at (Oxford, 1961), pp. 209–10.Google Scholar That the Greek language was in general use among the Jewish population of Palestine during the Roman period has now been put beyond reasonable doubt by the recent manuscript discoveries in the Judaean wilderness. For a balanced overall judgement cf., Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 5–21.Google Scholar

¹ Tacitus, writing at the end of the first century and in another part of the empire could say: ‘But now all of these rules of rhetoricians… are common property and there is scarcely a bystander in the throng but who, if not fully instructed, has at least been initiated into the rudiments of culture’ (Dialogue 19).Google Scholar

² Cf. especially nos. 3a, 9b, 10, 16b, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 in Paul, Fiebig'sDie Gleichnisreden Jesu (Tübingen, 1912).Google Scholar To what extent such parallel forms in rabbinic literature represent Hellenistic influence upon Jewish literary practice is difficult to decide. Daube rightly calls for a thorough inquiry into the debt of Talmudic jurisprudence to Hellenistic rhetoric (op. cit. p. 263).Google Scholar In the same way one can call for a full-scale investigation of the dependence of rabbinic literature in general upon Hellenistic rhetoric. Perhaps such an investigation would establish that the synoptic Chreia-forrns can be adequately explained solely in terms of a Jewish literary development which by the formative period of the gospel tradition was quite independent of the direct influence of Hellenistic rhetorical practice. As the careful reader will discern, the conclusions concerning the history of the composition and transmission of Certain literary units in Luke, to be found at the end of this study, are in no sense dependent upon the several problematical aspects of our discussion of Hellenistic Chreiai. These conclusions have been restricted solely to results reached through our form-critical and literary analysis. Our purpose in discussing the Hellenistic Chreia has not been to strengthen the results of our form- critical and literary analysis, but rather to stimulate the reader's interest in a literary form which has been largely neglected, to the detriment of synoptic criticism. See also Birger, Gerhardsson, op. cit. pp. 140ff.Google Scholar

¹ Matt, . xii. 1–8Google Scholar might also be noted, though it is in no sense a close parallel. That the phenomena of parallelism in Luke, xiii. 1–5, and xv. 1–10 is Jewish in origin seems likely since a similar kind of parallelism is found in rabbinic literature, though not in the form of a Chreia.Google ScholarCf., B. Talmud, 'Abodah Zarah 54b, foran example.Google Scholar