The great feast or wedding feast.

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Ben C. Smith
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The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

I have never been able to shake the impression that the parable of the great feast in Luke 14.15-24 and Thomas 64 is more primitive or original than the similar parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22.1-14. In what follows, the green text is what I take to be the more original form of the parable, while the blue text is what I take to be additions to the parable which muddle it up considerably:

Matthew 22.1-14
Luke 14.15-24
Thomas 64
1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.15 When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” 16 Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.Jesus said, "A man had received visitors. And when he had prepared the dinner, he sent his servant to invite guests.
3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. 4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ 5 “But they paid no attention and went off, one to his field, another to his business.17 At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ 19 “Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ 20 “Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’He went to the first one and said to him, "My master invites you.' He said, 'I have claims against some merchants. They are coming to me this evening. I must go and give them my orders. I ask to be excused from the dinner.' He went to another and said, 'My master has invited you.' He said to him, 'I have just bought a house and am required for the day. I shall not have any spare time.' He went to another and said to him, 'My master invites you.' He said to him, 'My friend is going to get married, and I am to prepare the banquet. I shall not be able to come. I ask to be excused from the dinner.' He went to another and said to him, 'My master invites you.' He said to him, 'I have just bought a farm, and I am on my way to collect the rent. I shall not be able to come. I ask to be excused.'
6 [A] The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 [B] The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.--
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.21 “The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ 22 “‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’ 23 “Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. 24 I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”The servant returned and said to his master, 'Those whom you invited to the dinner have asked to be excused.' The master said to his servant, 'Go outside to the streets and bring back those whom you happen to meet, so that they may dine.' Businessmen and merchants will not enter the places of My Father."
11 [C] “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. 13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”--

If you read only the green text from each gospel (the Lucan and Thomasine versions in their entirety and the Matthean version stripped of the two sections in blue), the parable makes a lot of sense. A feast is held, the invitees are summoned, they make excuses, and others are then invited in their stead.

Those blue sections in Matthew, however, are highly problematic.

First (A), the notion of the slaying of the servants in verse 6 appears to derive from the parable of the tenants from the previous chapter:

Matthew 21.38-41: 38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

Second (B), the king actually wages war against the murderers and razes their city, and then goes back to the little matter of issuing alternate wedding invitations; the feast is apparently still there, waiting, even after the war! (This motif, I suspect, is an infiltration from the fall of Jerusalem.)

Third (C), one of the wedding guests (only one??) happens to have arrived without the proper attire and is summarily given the maximum penalty, despite having been literally dragged in off the streets. How many people would be wearing wedding attire in such an impromptu situation?

It is possible, I imagine, that Matthew composed this mess all on his own, and Luke and/or Thomas saw the trouble spots and avoided them. But it certainly looks to me as if the likelihood is that the parable was once fairly straightforward (the green text) and accumulated thematic additions (the blue text) which sullied things a bit. If we ignore these additions, I can see Luke and/or Thomas changing a wedding feast into just a feast just as easily as I can see Matthew changing an ordinary feast into a wedding feast; I think that duel may be a draw. But, once the additions are taken into account, it looks to me as if the Lucan/Thomasine version is the more original.

Thoughts?

Ben.

PS: Here are a few parallels from other texts:

Matthew 8.11-12: 11 “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew 19.30: 30 “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

Matthew 20.16: 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Mark 10.31: 31 “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Luke 13.28-30: 28 “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. 30 Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

Thomas 23: Jesus said, "I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand, and they shall stand as a single one."

Barnabas 4.14: 14 Moreover understand this also, my brothers. When ye see that after so many signs and wonders wrought in Israel, even then they were abandoned, let us give heed, lest haply we be found, as the scripture saith, many are called but few are chosen.

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Bernard Muller
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Bernard Muller »

I think the author of gThomas may use the trick of primitiveness in order to make his rendition of the sayings & parables corresponding to the ones in the gospels looking more ancient & not elaborated.
I go through that in http://historical-jesus.info/thomas.html
if the Lucan/Thomasine version is the more original
The Lucan version might look more original because closer to the wording of the Q version. And Thomas might have followed gLuke (or Q) rather than gMatthew in that instance.

Cordially, Bernard
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Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ben C. Smith wrote:First (A), the notion of the slaying of the servants in verse 6 appears to derive from the parable of the tenants from the previous chapter:
Mmh
Luke 14.15-24
15 When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” 16 Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.
The whole thing looks a bit like a midrash on Mark's parable
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Bernard Muller wrote:I think the author of gThomas may use the trick of primitiveness in order to make his rendition of the sayings & parables corresponding to the ones in the gospels looking more ancient & not elaborated.
I go through that in http://historical-jesus.info/thomas.html
if the Lucan/Thomasine version is the more original
The Lucan version might look more original because closer to the wording of the Q version. And Thomas might have followed gLuke (or Q) rather than gMatthew in that instance.
Neither the Mark-Q theory (Two-Source) nor the Mark-Luke theory (Matthean Posteriority) ought to have any difficulty in seeing the blue text in Matthew as Matthean additions to Luke or Q. But I would like to see what the Mark-Matthew theory (Farrer) or the Matthew-Luke theory (Greisbach) or the Matthew-Mark theory (Augustinian) would have to say about this.
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:First (A), the notion of the slaying of the servants in verse 6 appears to derive from the parable of the tenants from the previous chapter:
Mmh
Luke 14.15-24
15 When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” 16 Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.
The whole thing looks a bit like a midrash on Mark's parable
It rather does, with the addition of the aphorism about the first being last.
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Nathan
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Nathan »

Ben C. Smith wrote:Third (C), one of the wedding guests (only one??) happens to have arrived without the proper attire and is summarily given the maximum penalty, despite having been literally dragged in off the streets. How many people would be wearing wedding attire in such an impromptu situation?
FWIW Ecclesiastes Rabbah includes a variant of the parable aligned most closely with Matthew's rendition, and it too features your section C from Matthew but with some obvious differences. It begins with the familiar "A king ... made a banquet to which he invited guests," continuing with:
He said to them, "Go, wash yourselves with oil, wash your garments, and prepare yourselves for the banquet," but he fixed no time when they were to come to it. The wise among them walked about by the entrance of the king's palace, saying, "Does the king's palace lack anything?" The foolish among them paid no regard or attention to the king's command. They said, "We will in due course notice when the king's banquet is to take place, because can there be a banquet without labor [to prepare it] and company?" So the plasterer went to his plaster, the potter to his clay, the smith to his charcoal, the washer to his laundry. Suddenly the king ordered, "Let them all come to the banquet." They hurried the guests, so that some came in their splendid attire and others came in their dirty garments. The king was pleased with the wise ones who had obeyed his command, and also because they had shown honor to the king's palace. He was angry with the fools who had neglected his command and disgraced his palace. The king said, "Let those who have prepared themselves for the banquet come and eat of the king's meal, but those who have not prepared themselves shall not partake of it." You might suppose that the latter were simply to depart; but the king continued, "No, [they shall not depart]; but the former shall recline and eat and drink, while these shall remain standing, be punished, and look on and be grieved." Similarly in the hereafter, as Isaiah declares, "Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry."
It's interesting that the parable's protagonist is a king as in Matthew, but the feast is not a wedding celebration as in Luke and Thomas.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Nathan wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:Third (C), one of the wedding guests (only one??) happens to have arrived without the proper attire and is summarily given the maximum penalty, despite having been literally dragged in off the streets. How many people would be wearing wedding attire in such an impromptu situation?
FWIW Ecclesiastes Rabbah includes a variant of the parable aligned most closely with Matthew's rendition, and it too features your section C from Matthew but with some obvious differences. It begins with the familiar "A king ... made a banquet to which he invited guests," continuing with:
He said to them, "Go, wash yourselves with oil, wash your garments, and prepare yourselves for the banquet," but he fixed no time when they were to come to it. The wise among them walked about by the entrance of the king's palace, saying, "Does the king's palace lack anything?" The foolish among them paid no regard or attention to the king's command. They said, "We will in due course notice when the king's banquet is to take place, because can there be a banquet without labor [to prepare it] and company?" So the plasterer went to his plaster, the potter to his clay, the smith to his charcoal, the washer to his laundry. Suddenly the king ordered, "Let them all come to the banquet." They hurried the guests, so that some came in their splendid attire and others came in their dirty garments. The king was pleased with the wise ones who had obeyed his command, and also because they had shown honor to the king's palace. He was angry with the fools who had neglected his command and disgraced his palace. The king said, "Let those who have prepared themselves for the banquet come and eat of the king's meal, but those who have not prepared themselves shall not partake of it." You might suppose that the latter were simply to depart; but the king continued, "No, [they shall not depart]; but the former shall recline and eat and drink, while these shall remain standing, be punished, and look on and be grieved." Similarly in the hereafter, as Isaiah declares, "Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry."
It's interesting that the parable's protagonist is a king as in Matthew, but the feast is not a wedding celebration as in Luke and Thomas.
Oh, very nice. You are right: there is a parallel to my C. But this version is no muddled mess like Matthew's; this version sets up the fact that it is a test of obedience (that is, it is not idle stragglers on the street who get pulled in, but rather people who have had advance warning of the event, but not of the time).
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Another possibly parallel story might be recorded in the Apocryphon of Ezekiel as quoted in Epiphanius, Panarion 64.70.5-17 (translation slightly formatted from that of Frank Williams):

5 “For the dead shall arise, and they that are in the graves shall be raised up,” says the prophet. But since I do not want to omit what the prophet Ezekiel says about resurrection in his own apocryphon, I shall give it here. 6 To give a symbolic description of the just judgment in which the soul and the body share, Ezekiel says, A king had made soldiers of everyone in his kingdom and had no civilians but two, one lame and one blind, and each <of these> lived by himself in his own home. 7 When the king gave a marriage feast for his son he invited everyone in his kingdom, but despised the two civilians, the lame man and the blind man. They were annoyed however, and thought of an injury to do the king.

8 Now the king had a garden. The blind man addressed the lame man from a distance and said, “How much did we have to eat with the crowds who were invited to the celebration? Come on, let’s get back at him for what he did to us!”

“How?” asked the other.

9 And the blind man said “Let’s go into the garden and ruin the plants there.”

But the lame man said, “And how can I, when I’m lame and can’t [even] crawl?”

And the blind man said, “Can I do anything myself, when I can’t see where I’m going? But let’s figure something out.”

10 The lame man plucked the grass nearby him, braided a rope, threw it at the blind man, and said, “Grab it, and come here to me by the rope.” He did as he was told, and when he got there, the lame man said, “Here, you be my feet and carry me, and I’ll be your eyes and guide you from on top, to the right and to the left.”

11 By so doing they got into the garden, and whether they did it any damage or not, their tracks were there to be seen in the garden afterwards. 12 And the merry-makers who entered the garden on leaving the wedding were surprised to see the tracks in the garden. They told the king and said, “All are soldiers in your kingdom and no one is a civilian. Then why are there civilians’ tracks in the garden?”

13 The king was surprised—as the parable in the apocryphon says, obviously speaking to men in a riddle. God is not unaware of anything. But the story says, The king sent for the lame man and the blind man and asked the blind man, “Didn’t you go into the garden?” but the blind man answered, “Oh, Sir! You see my handicap, you know I can<‘t> see where I’m going!” 14 Then he went to the lame man and asked him, “Did you go into my garden?” But he replied, “Sir, do you want to make me miserable over my handicap?” And then judgment was stymied.

15 What did the righteous judge do? Seeing how the two had been put together he put the lame man on the blind man and examined them both under the lash, and they couldn’t deny the charge. 16 They incriminated each other, the lame man by saying to the blind man, “Didn’t you pick me up and carry me?” and the blind man by saying to the lame man, “Weren’t you my eyes?” 17 Thus the body is linked with the soul and the soul with the body, for the exposure of their joint work, and there is a full judgment of both, the soul and the body; <they are jointly responsible> for the things they have done, whether good or evil.

The motif of a king hosting a wedding feast for his son may have been common enough.
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Charles Wilson
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by Charles Wilson »

Hello Ben --

I believe that this is from the Jannaeus Wing of the House of Eleazar. More if you want.

Best,

CW
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Re: The great feast or wedding feast.

Post by andrewcriddle »

See Talmud Sanhedrin
Antoninus said to Rabbi: The body and the soul of a human may free themselves on the day of judgment by Heaven. How so? The body may say: The soul has sinned; for since she has departed I lie in the grave like a stone. And the soul may say: The body has sinned; for since I am separated from it, I fly in the air like a bird. And he answered: I will give you a parable to which this is similar: A human king, who had an excellent garden which contained very fine figs, appointed two watchmen for it--one of whom was blind, and the other had no feet. He who was without feet said to the one who was blind: I see in the garden fine figs. Take me on your shoulders, and I shall get them, and we shall consume them. He did so, and while on his shoulders he took them off, and both consumed them. And when the owner of the garden came and did not find the figs, and questioned them what became of them, the blind one answered: Have I, then, eyes to see them, that you should suspect my taking them? And the lame one answered: Have I, then, feet to go there? The owner then put the lame one on the shoulders of the one who was blind, and punished them together. So also
the Holy One, blessed be He--He puts the soul in the body and punishes them together. As it reads [Ps. 1. 4]: "He will call to the heavens above, and to the earth beneath, to judge his people." "To the heavens above" means the soul, and, "to the earth beneath" means the body.
Andrew Criddle
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