Joseph A. Fitzmyer on the Egyptian Background to Luke 16:19-31

  

Years ago H. Gressmann (“Vom reichen Mann”) drew attention to an Egyptian folktale, copied in Demotic on the back of a Greek document dated in the seventh year of the emperor Claudius (a.d. 47), telling about the retribution in the afterlife for conditions in this: a reincarnated Egyptian Si-Osiris, born miraculously to Satme Khamuas, takes his father on a tour of Am^ente, the realm of the dead, to show him what happened to a rich man who had died, was honorably lamented, shrouded in fine linen, and sumptuously buried, and to a poor man who had also died, but who was carried out unmourned on a straw mat to a common necropolis of Memphis. The rich man was seen in torment with the axle of the hinge of the hall’s door fixed in his right eye socket; but in another hall Osiris, ruler of Am^ente, sat enthroned and near him was the poor man, robed in the rich man’s fine linen. Si-Osiris’ words to his father: “May it be done to you in Am^ente as it is done in Am^ente to this pauper and not as it is done to this rich man in Am^ente.” (See further F. L. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis [Oxford: Clarendon, 1900] 42–43.)

 

Gressmann then cited Luke 16:19–31 and seven other tales about retribution in the afterlife from rabbinic sources of later date, the earliest of which is found in two forms in the Palestinian Talmud (y. Sanh. 6.23c and y. Hag. 2.77d—scarcely before a.d. 400). Gressmann thought that Alexandrian Jews had brought the Egyptian folktale to Palestine, where it developed as the story of a poor Torah scholar and a rich toll-collector named Bar Maʿyan (see Note on 14:15). J. Jeremias (Parables, 183) claims that Jesus was familiar with this Palestinian tale and even alluded to it in the parable of the great dinner (14:15–24). That the story existed in Palestine in the time of Jesus is possible; indeed, K. Grobel (“ ‘… Whose Name was Neves’ ”) has exploited the Egyptian tale even more than Gressmann did, pointing out further parallels (not all of which are convincing). But there are distinctive elements in the first part of the story that are present neither in the Egyptian folktale nor in the story of Bar Maʿyan (the dogs, Abraham’s bosom, the dialogue between the rich man and Abraham). If the Lucan parable echoes such folktales, it has refashioned them, and there is no reason to think that this refashioning was not done by Jesus himself. (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV: Introduction, Translation, and Notes [AYB 28A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 1126-27, emphasis in bold added)

 

Robert Sungenis on the Lack of Clarity as to the Number of Biblical Verses Roman Catholicism Has Dogmatized the Interpretation Thereof

 

Well, there’s a debate about what the church has actually dogmatized as far as scripture verses are concerned because the church also dogmatizes theological principles that you know, you can’t find in black and white in some scriptures, you see, like the doctrine of the Assumption, for example, and there’s no scripture that says that Mary was assumed into heaven, so you get that, and some people say well the church has only dogmatized seven scriptures; other say thirty three; others say a hundred, you know, the problem is the church has never told us what scriptures they dogmatized; they’ve only cited the scriptures that they’ve used, so that question is really unanswerable until the church gives us a list just like they were going to make a list of the Traditions they never did that either and they will never will; they’re too smart for that (Robert Sungenis, “A Primer on Defeating Sola Scriptura - The Single Best Argument” beginning at the 33:29 mark)

  

Robert Alter on Isaiah 1:11

  

Why need I all your sacrifices? This is not a pitch for the abolition of sacrifice but rather an argument against a mechanistic notion of sacrifice, against the idea that sacrifice can put man in good standing with God regardless of human behavior. The point becomes entirely clear at the end of verse 15, when the prophet says that it is hands stained with blood stretched out in payer that are utterly abhorrent to God. Thus, the grain offering is “false” (or “futile”) because it is brought by people who have oppressed the poor and failed to defend widows and orphans. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:623)

 

Robert Alter on Song of Solomon 8:5

  

she who bore you. The vocalization of the Masoretic Text indicates a verb, “she bore you” (yeladetkha), but the conventions of parallelism would lead us to expect a poetic substitution for the noun “mother” in the preceding verset (thus the translation supposes yoladetkha), and this is in fact the vocalization reflected in the Septuagint and in one version of the Syriac. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:614; cf. the difference between MT Psa 110:3 and LXX Psa 109:3)

 

Robert Alter on Song of Solomon 5:16

  

His mouth is sweetest drink. The reversion to the mouth does not really violate the vertical movement of the poem downward because it is a kind of summary at the end: the beloved, having canvassed her lover’s beauty from head to foot, returns to the physical site of those kisses that epitomize physical intimacy with him and give her such gratification. Mamtaqim, “sweetest drink” (which in modern Hebrew means “candy”), is in biblical usage something sweet that is drunk, as its appearance in Nehemiah 8:10 makes clear. This links the phrase with the beginning of the first poem of the Song, in which the lover’s kisses are better than wine: the first thing she says about her lover in the whole sequence of poems is also what she says about him, summarizing what she feels, at the end of this poem. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:605)

 

Review of the Jacob Hansen/Allie Beth Stuckey Debate

 

Review of the Hansen/Stuckey Debate

Mary Jane Woodger on the "Salvation" of All Animals

Commenting on D&C 77:

  

Because of the Atonement, all animals will be heirs of salvation in their own spheres. The spirits of animals are eternal and in the likeness of their bodies. (Mary Jane Woodger, The Essential Doctrine and Covenants Companion: Key Insights to your Gospel Study [American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, Inc., 2012], 152)

 

 

Further Reading:

 

B. H. Roberts Foundation, Teachings on Animal Spirits (cf. Primary Sources)