Jesus, Archelaus, and the Parable of the Minas

[Tenorikuma]

Hey everyone. Long time no post.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had ideas on why the (partially interpolated) Parable of the Minas (Pounds) in Luke would borrow details from Josephus regarding Archelaus and his trip to Rome. On the face of it, the parable seems intended as an analogy about Christ's future return and the rewards his servants will receive for staying faithful in his absence. Did taking the unnecessary step of equating Jesus with Archelaus serve any obvious purpose in early Christian beliefs?

The mainstream academic sources I've looked at so far admit it's a problem for Jesus to be compared with a cruel ruler like Archelaus. Could it be a modern bias that understands Archelaus's butchery as unbecoming of the Christ? Did early Christians look forward to having Jesus kick ass and slaughter unrepentant Jews?

[Peter Kirby]

Interesting.

I already believe that canonical Luke-Acts used Josephus but can you lay down the evidence for me in this case?

[Tenorikuma]

Okay. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with the parable (Luke 19.11–28) in which a ruler gives ten minas to his slaves before leaving on a journey to receive a kingdom. On his return, he rewards his faithful slaves with cities in the new kingdom. Two verses, however, stick out like a sore thumb from the others:

19.14: Now, his subjects hated him, and they sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to rule over us!’

19.27: “However, these enemies of mine who did not want me to rule over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me!’”

They have nothing to do with the rest of the parable, which is about how the slaves put the master's minas to work during his absence.

It is widely agreed that this motif is based on the life of Archelaus. According to Josephus (War 2:14-94; Ant. 17:219-339), Archelaus went to Rome to be crowned king after Herod the Great's death. An independent delegation of Jews also went to Rome to petition Caesar *not* to make him their king. Archelaus prevailed and took revenge on his political adversaries back in Jerusalem by slaughtering numerous Jews around the temple during Passover. Eventually, he was removed from power by Caesar and exiled for acts such as this one.

Now, according to BeDuhn's reconstruction of the Evangelion, these verses are both unattested and were probably not in it. BeDuhn's position is that they were a later interpolation into canonical Luke, which I see no reason to dispute.

The Archelaus connection is also absent from Matthew's version, the Parable of the Talents. (The original source of the parable is another matter.)

It seems that an early redactor felt the Lucan parable already resembled the story about Archelaus a bit, and added additional detail from Josephus to make the connection explicit. The question is "why?" I can't think of anything.

[Peter Kirby]

Very cool. And the fact that they may be absent in the source of canonical Luke-Acts is just another confirmation of what I already had reason to suspect on other grounds. Thank you for this.

The why question is hard to understand indeed. A very good question too. Thanks for raising it.

It occurs to me that it could be pseudo-prophetic?

Perhaps the author wants Jesus to look like he anticipated God's use of the Romans to punish the Jews for their disbelief in Jesus. In this regard Archelaus is an early archetype of such, but the fuller realization of this is found in the First Jewish War and Bar Kochba war. We can find such a belief in play in 1 Thess 2:14-16, where the author seems to view the crushing of the Jewish revolt as divine punishment for the Jewish rejection of the prophets (particularly of Jesus, whom they killed), implying that the Romans were the agents of divine justice.

Interestingly I looked up a few articles on Jstor and everybody seems nonplussed (except for one guy arguing that it is so confusing that it must go back to a historical Jesus because the church could not have created it...), so this is my own stab in the dark here.

Similar redaction performed in Luke can be found in the synoptic 'little apocalypse', here:

Luke 24
For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; 24 they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

So yeah, the received Gospel of Luke seems to view the Jews and Jerusalem as justly trampled on by the Gentiles in an act of divine wrath.

[Tenorikuma]

Thanks for the suggestion, Peter. That's the best I've heard so far. It means the interpolator wasn't really concerned about keeping the original parable coherent, but that's not so surprising.

[ficino]

Yes, very interesting. But can't an inerrantist just say that Luke remembers and uses the actual events? Or better, that Jesus knew of the actual career of Archelaus and alluded to it? After all, Jesus is making the a fortiori argument that if an unjust king knows how to reward his useful servants, how much the more does God know this.

The inerrantist might add that Luke/Acts predate Josephus by several decades. He might also throw in the observation that Richard Carrier holds that Luke borrows from Josephus, but that Carrier is a "crank exegesis."

[Peter Kirby]

Yes, very interesting. But can't an inerrantist just say that Luke remembers and uses the actual events? Or better, that Jesus knew of the actual career of Archelaus and alluded to it? After all, Jesus is making the a fortiori argument that if an unjust king knows how to reward his useful servants, how much the more does God know this.

The inerrantist might add that Luke/Acts predate Josephus by several decades. He might also throw in the observation that Richard Carrier holds that Luke borrows from Josephus, but that Carrier is a "crank exegesis."

Yeah, someone could do that. If I thought Acts was written in the 60s AD and Luke even earlier, it wouldn't be far-fetched. Even if not, it's possible.

[Charles Wilson]

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had ideas on why the (partially interpolated) Parable of the Minas (Pounds) in Luke would borrow details from Josephus regarding Archelaus and his trip to Rome.

Yeah, I had an idea or 2 about it, about 300 pages worth. ISBN 1491228385. The death of Herod and the Temple Slaughter take up about half of the NT, that's all.
"What have I been screaming about for around 10 years now...?"

Doesn't matter. Nothing matters, except mebbe stamp collecting. Bowling. Maybe I'll repaint the living room again. S'nice out. Maybe I'll go for a walk.

CW

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Yeah, I had an idea or 2 about it, about 300 pages worth. ISBN 1491228385.

Great thing Charles

Are there others here with us beside me which haven't written a book?

[Peter Kirby]

Yeah, I had an idea or 2 about it, about 300 pages worth. ISBN 1491228385.

Great thing Charles

Are there others here with us beside me which haven't written a book?

I haven't but maybe I should.