Alex Damm, «Ancient Rhetoric as a Guide to Literary Dependence: The Widow’s Mite», Vol. 97 (2016) 222-243
This essay applies conventions of ancient rhetoric to the analysis of the literary sequence of Mark and Luke’s Gospels. With an eye on basic and more advanced rhetorical handbooks, I outline two significant rhetorical conventions for improving upon literary sources: clarity (perspecuitas) and propriety (aptum). When we ask whether the evangelist Mark has applied these principles to the adaptation of Luke's Gospel (following the Griesbach Hypothesis), or whether Luke has applied these principles to the adaptation of Mark (following the Two-Document and Farrer Hypotheses) in the pericope of the Widow's Mite, we find that the latter scenario is more plausible.
232 ALEx DAmm
of the rich making their donations, while the replacement of Luke’s di-
rect object (“their gifts” [ta. dw/ra auvtw/n]) with an explicit term for
“money” (calco,n) is an arguably concrete, vivid addition. mark, more-
over, retains Luke’s term “rich [people]” but delays it to his next sen-
tence. This brings us to mark’s second change. He takes Luke’s object
phrase “rich people” (plousi,ouj) and makes it the subject of an entirely
new sentence in 12,41b: “And many rich people were putting in many
things” (kai. polloi. plou,sioi e;ballon polla,). That mark highlights
the image of the rich is evident given his insertion of alliteration once
again (polloi. plou,sioi . . . polla,). Third, mark takes this new sentence
and creates an artistic parallel, to which marcus draws our attention.
in 12,42 (cf. Luke 21,2) mark takes Luke’s sentence, “he [Jesus]
saw a poor woman putting in [to the Treasury] two very small coins”
(ei=den de, tina ch,ran penicra.n ba,llousan evkei/ lepta. du,o), and embel-
lishes it: “a poor woman, having come, was putting in [to the Treasury]
two very small coins” (kai. evlqou/sa mi,a ch,ra ptwch. e;balen lepta. du,o).
A handful of changes in the Greek here combine to make a more vivid
sentence. recasting the woman as subject and using imperfect verbs
to describe her donation (evlqou/sa . . . e;balen), observes marcus, make
the scene longer and more vivid. And to this end, mark’s substitution
of ptwch, (“beggar”) for Luke’s penicra,n (“poor”, “needy”) underscores
her deep poverty. marcus, moreover, shows how mark creates parallel-
ism in vv. 41-42 by artistically contrasting words and tenses to heighten
the contrast between the actions of the rich and the poor:
[v. 41b] kai. polloi. plou,sioi e;ballon polla,\
[v. 42] kai. evlqou/sa mi,a ch,ra ptwch. e;balen lepta. du,o. . . .
[v. 41b] And many rich people were putting in [imperfect] many things;
[v. 42] And, having come, one poor woman threw in [aorist] two very
small coins 27.
To this end, mark adapts Luke in two further places. The first con-
cerns Luke’s statement in 21,3: “truly i say to you that this poor widow
was putting more than all” (avlhqw/j le,gw u`mi/n o[ti h` ch,ra au[th h`
ptwch. plei/on pa,ntwn e;balen). mark extends this sentence to read:
“Truly [avmh,n] i say to you that this poor widow was putting in more
than all of those who were contributing to the Temple Treasury” (tw/n
ballo,ntwn eivj to. gazofula,kion) (mark 12,43) 28. This addition further
27
mArCUS, Mark 8–16, 860.
28
mark also substitutes Luke’s avlhqw/j with the Semitic term avmh,n. it is hard
to tell whether one of the two terms is more emphatic than the other.