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.
236 ALEx DAmm
2. Using All Necessary Material (D.2)
A second feature of mark’s work is revealing. Usually, mark does
not ignore useful material in Luke. He makes, however, one striking
oversight. it is to be noted that in vv. 41-42, to help underline the con-
trast between the rich donors and the poor widow, mark uses sophisti-
cated and ornate parallelism. mark has also inserted numerous further
touches which sharpen the contrast between the ignoble giving by the
rich and the noble giving by the widow. To adapt Luke for this purpose
is plausible. But for mark to ignore ready-made Lukan material that
could help him achieve these very aims appears less plausible. in his
closing verse (12,44), mark would have seen that Luke contrasts
the wealthy and the widow by using the emphatic adjectives ou-toi (“for
these ones . . .”) versus au[th (“but she . . .”). it is odd, then, that mark
preserves only au[th. Why not use ou-toi when it underlines his essential
contrast and is already in his source (and textually sound)? This might
be just one oversight, but mark has no good reason for it in light of all
the other changes that he makes to Luke 38.
in all, mark makes a peculiar combination of editorial changes.
On the one hand, he adds numerous, conspicuous expressions to the
relatively plain style of Luke, and he works hard to do so. yet on the
other hand, mark simultaneously obfuscates and overlooks an obvious
expression in Luke that would have served his purpose of contrasting
rich and poor.
V. Luke’s Use of mark: The Farrer Hypothesis
and the Two-Document Hypothesis
if we assume as valid the Farrer Hypothesis (FH) and the Two-
Document Hypothesis (2DH), then why does Luke adapt mark’s
chreia? it is to be noted that Luke’s chreia is relatively brief. Hence,
livelihood’ even though the main verb has intervened”. Luke advances “her liveli-
hood” to a position immediately after “everything”, and then writes “which she had”
plus the verb (e;balen); hence, as Johnson translates it, “all the life (bios) that she
had” (Gospel of Luke, 316), or “everything, the livelihood which she had, she gave”
(cf. similarly FiTZmyEr, Luke X-XIV, 1322). Luke’s improvement must be to advance
“her livelihood” so that it accompanies “all” or “everything” (i.e., pa,nta) as an object
phrase. Admittedly i am uncertain about the extent to which Luke’s alleged relative
clarity would be understood as such by ancient Greek speakers.
38
The term is textually sound in Luke. Strikingly, the later text of mark in
Codex Bezae has underlined the contrast between rich and poor by inserting ou-toi.
This fact begs the question why mark himself would not have added the word.