Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels)

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toejam
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Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels)

Post by toejam »

I'm currently researching what I can about this pericope. I've analyzed Matthew and Luke's alterations to Mark's version, the abbreviated scene in the Gospel of Thomas, the Papyrus Egerton 2 version of the story, and Marcion's version of it (partially quoted by Tertullian). Now I'm looking for other Early Church Father uses of it, whether they quote directly from a gospel or simply allude to knowledge of the story. I've found a reference in Justin Martyr. Does anyone know of any others? Irenaeus, perhaps?

I also recall stumbling across a website once in which one could search for biblical quotations in the Early Church Fathers. Does anyone recall what site I might be thinking of?

Thanks
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels

Post by Ben C. Smith »

toejam wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2017 8:52 pm I'm currently researching what I can about this pericope. I've analyzed Matthew and Luke's alterations to Mark's version, the abbreviated scene in the Gospel of Thomas, the Papyrus Egerton 2 version of the story, and Marcion's version of it (partially quoted by Tertullian). Now I'm looking for other Early Church Father uses of it, whether they quote directly from a gospel or simply allude to knowledge of the story. I've found a reference in Justin Martyr. Does anyone know of any others? Irenaeus, perhaps?
Presumably your Justin Martyr reference is 1 Apology 17.2. With the above parallels you have covered all the ones included in the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum for this passage, so good for you. :) The SQE does not even include Marcion as his own entity, incidentally.
I also recall stumbling across a website once in which one could search for biblical quotations in the Early Church Fathers. Does anyone recall what site I might be thinking of?
Peter's e-Catena is easy to use but limited in scope: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/e-catena.

Biblindex has a learning curve, but is far more comprehensive than the above: http://www.biblindex.info. All references in this resource are to various standard Greek and Latin texts (often with page numbers instead of chapters and sections!), not to English translations.
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toejam
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Re: Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels

Post by toejam »

Thanks. Those links are extremely helpful.
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Re: Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

toejam wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2017 8:52 pm I'm currently researching what I can about this pericope. I've analyzed Matthew and Luke's alterations to Mark's version, the abbreviated scene in the Gospel of Thomas, the Papyrus Egerton 2 version of the story, and Marcion's version of it (partially quoted by Tertullian). Now I'm looking for other Early Church Father uses of it, whether they quote directly from a gospel or simply allude to knowledge of the story. I've found a reference in Justin Martyr. Does anyone know of any others? Irenaeus, perhaps?
It would be nice if you would post your observations. That would save me a lot of work ;)
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toejam
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Re: Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels

Post by toejam »

^I'm working on it. Will definitely post it here when it's done.
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DCHindley
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Re: Early Church Father quotations or allusions to the 'Question of Paying Taxes' pericope? (Mark 12:13-17 and parallels

Post by DCHindley »

toejam wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2017 8:52 pm I'm currently researching what I can about this pericope. I've analyzed Matthew and Luke's alterations to Mark's version, the abbreviated scene in the Gospel of Thomas, the Papyrus Egerton 2 version of the story, and Marcion's version of it (partially quoted by Tertullian).

Now I'm looking for other Early Church Father uses of it, whether they quote directly from a gospel or simply allude to knowledge of the story. I've found a reference in Justin Martyr. Does anyone know of any others? Irenaeus, perhaps?
If you have access at the library, volume 9 of the Ante Nicene Fathers (mid 1800s, not the volume labeled 9 in online versions) includes a general index of biblical references in the books of the authors covered (roughly thru the 3rd century CE). The standard for inclusions in the index seems to have been pretty low. There was no effort to sort or categorize them as quotes, paraphrases or allusions. A lot of the allusions they index are so vague that their actual relationship to the biblical texts is questionable. The ends of the 9 individual volumes of translations (vols 1-8, and supplemental volume 10) also contain similar indices.

Unfortunately, church fathers were rather loosie goosie when it comes to wording their citations, so they never seem to be 100% pure quotes, and often the differences suggest they are conflations of more than one text. Also, the translators often swap the standard modern translation of their day (the AV aka KJV) for whatever was exactly said by the church father, no matter how wildly different it may be from the biblical texts. This is more prevalent in the Apostolic Fathers than the other authors translated, where more nuanced interpretation is possible.

If you can read Greek, you can download, for free, Unicode Greek texts of most (but not all) church fathers from the Ruslan Khazarzar (sp?) website mentioned in earlier posts. These are based on Migne's edition with some editorial corrections that may or may nor derive from the TLG database. They do not always reference book & chapters in the printed ETs, but reference the section numbers from whatever editions Migne republished in the mid 1800s.

FWIW, Irenaeus does not seem to refer to Mark 12. Nor does it seem to be referenced by the Apostolic Fathers. Justin Martyr comes close with Mark 12:25. Clement of Alexandria references Mark 12:17 in The Instructor 3.12. The English translation has the phrase "Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's" (including quotation marks), but this may be no more than a generic synoptic parallel. The text Clement had in mind could have been Matthew 22:21 or Luke 20:25.

Have fun with that.

DCH :goodmorning:
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