In my first post, I gave reasons to reject as inconclusive three of the four arguments Fleddermann gives for thinking the form of the saying on faith with sycamine in Luke 17.6 is more primitive than the form with mountain in Mark 11.23.Luke 17.5: The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
I still have to deal with what I identified as the main argument: Fleddermann’s claim that Mark heightens the miraculous by changing the sycamine into a mountain, and Allison’s related claim that, “No good explanation can be given for the change from ‘mountain’ to ‘sycamine’.” As it stands, Fledermann’s claim is just a statement of what he thinks happened. The implied argument he is making is that it is not just that it is likely that Mark would have heightened the miraculous, but that it is unlikely that Luke would have lessened the scale of the miraculous by changing the mountain into a sycamine.
Is this true? Luke presumably knew Mark 11.23, with the mountain being cast into the sea, and preferred not to use it. He has, in fact, omitted the entire story of the Cursing of the Fig Tree from Mark 11.12-14, 20-25[26] from his own narrative. Instead, he has the Parable of Barren the Fig Tree in Luke 13.6-9. Many Lukan commentators, going at least as far back as J.M. Creed in 1930, have considered the parable to be a substitute for the Cursing of the Fig Tree. M.D. Goulder straightforwardly says Luke rewrote the incident as a parable (Luke, 561).
If Luke omitted a miracle story and replaced it with a parable (whether he composed the parable himself or not), this casts some doubt on the theory that he would necessarily have been concerned to heighten, or at least not lessen, the miraculous in his gospel. All four of Fleddermann’s arguments are inconclusive.
There remains Allison’s claim that no good explanation can be given for the change from mountain to mulberry tree. It is on that point, however, that I think the theory of Luke’s knowledge of Matthew has an advantage, because it can offer an explanation for the origin of the unusual and striking image of a tree being uprooted and planted in the sea.
In the NRSV, Matthew’s version of the Cursing of the Fig Tree looks like this:
The words I have placed in brackets have no equivalent in the Greek. In its context in Matthew, the fig tree must be the one Jesus has just cursed and about which the disciples asked, so the translators are quite right to provide the back reference. However, what Jesus says in the Greek is this:Matt 21.18 In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. 20 When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” 21 Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do [what has been done] to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. 22 Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”
Taken by itself and not in its Matthean context, Jesus seems to be saying that, if you have faith and do not doubt, the thing that you will do to the fig tree you will not do only to the fig tree, but also to this mountain, if you asked it, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea.’ This would seem to imply that you will not only cause the mountain to be lifted up and thrown into the sea, but also the fig tree, if you asked it (providing that you have faith).Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐὰν ἔχητε πίστιν καὶ μὴ διακριθῆτε, οὐ μόνον τὸ τῆς συκῆς ποιήσετε, ἀλλὰ κἂν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ εἴπητε· Ἄρθητι καὶ βλήθητι εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, γενήσεται·
Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.
This seems to be how Luke took it. I am not, of course, claiming that Luke was unable to understand what Matthew meant, but that he engaged in a bit of creative (or perhaps overly literal) interpretation because he liked the striking image of a tree thrown into the sea and wanted to use it. (Again, the fact that he omitted the Cursing of the Fig Tree and included The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree in his gospel suggests that his goal was something other than heightening the miraculous).
Instead of the words “lifted up”and “thrown”, Luke substitutes the graphic verbs “uprooted” and “planted,” which are appropriate to plants and which, conveniently, he could find paired in Matt 15.13 (to which Luke has no parallel, or, rather, no other parallel):
There is still the problem of how a fig tree, or syke, became a black mulberry, or sycamine. All the synoptics use the word syke, but Luke alone has the sycamine (in Luke 17.6), a larger tree, and the sycamore (the tree Zacchaeus climbs to see Jesus in Luke 19.4), which is larger still. A number of Lukan commentators think that Luke actually intended the sycamore in Luke 17.6, because the Hebrew word for the sycamore is translated as sycamine in the LXX (Fitzmyer, Luke, v2, 1143; Marshall, Luke, 644). In any event, both trees are larger than the syke or fig.Matt 15.13: He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.”
Goulder argued, “Luke makes the change because the sycamine is bigger ... and its removal thus more impressive,” (Luke, 642), but I don’t think that’s quite it. It’s not the removal of the large sycamine that’s impressive (the removal of a mountain would have been more impressive), it’s the contrast between the small mustard seed and the large tree, which Luke has omitted from his version of the Parable of the Mustard Seed in Luke 13.18-20 (compare Mark 4.30-34 and Matt 13.31-35) and used here in Luke 17.6, prompted by the mention of the size of the mustard seed in Matt 17.20.
To recap, the theory of Luke’s use of Matthew can give a strong account of the change from mountain to sycamine/mulberry tree. Luke has read Matt 17.20, and it brought to mind three other Matthean texts. The doublet at Matt 21.21 provided the image of the tree being cast into the sea, though the actual words planted and uprooted came from Matt 15.3, and the mention of the size of the mustard seed has brought to mind the image of the comparison of the small mustard seed with the large tree in the Parable of the Mustard Seed (other than the Parable of the Mustard Seed itself in Mark and Matthew, Luke 17.6 is the only place in the synoptics where the size of a mustard seed is set against the size of a large tree).Matt 17.20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Luke 17.6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
Best,
Ken