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 Amente,
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 Amente, 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 Amente as it is done in Amente
to this pauper and not as it is done to this rich man in Amente.”
(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)
