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The Dishonest Steward (Luke 16.1–8a) and Luke's Special Parable Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Douglas M. Parrott
Douglas M. Parrott
Affiliation:
Riverside, California, USA
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Extract

By anybody's reckoning, the Parable of the Dishonest Steward in Luke 16.1–8a is a problem. Here Jesus seems to be holding up a criminal act as an example to be emulated. A steward is accused of not doing his job properly, and is dismissed by his master. Before he is actually deprived of his job, he considers what to do about his dilemma. He does not wish to do manual labour or to beg, so he lowers the debts of each of his master's debtors with the hope that they will care for him when he must leave. The master thereupon commends him for his cleverness (16.8a).

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 499 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 I assume that all of vv. 8b-12 reflect early Christian efforts to interpret the parable, and that vss. 10–12 are not randomly placed here because of catchword connections. I do not see any way to tell whether Luke associated himself in a special way with one of the verses, as some have suggested (particularly in regard to v. 9). It seems likely that Luke received these verses with the parable (otherwise, how does one account for two such different interpretations?), and that his contribution was the addition of the proverb from Q in 16.13.

2 ‘The Story of the Dishonest Manager (Lk 16.1–13)’, TS 25 (1964) 28–9. Fitzmyer takes vs. 8b to be an independent logion of Jesus.

3 The following is but a sample: Crossan, John Dominic, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973) 119–20Google Scholar; Danker, Frederick W., Jesus and the New Age: A Commentary on Saint Luke's Gospel (completely revised and expanded; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988) 280Google Scholar; Dibelius, Martin, From Tradition to Gospel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965) 248Google Scholar; Fitzmyer, , ‘Dishonest Manager’, 37Google Scholar; Hunter, Archibald M., The Parables Then and Now (London: SCM, 1971) 99–100Google Scholar; Jeremias, Joachim, The Parables of Jesus (2nd rev. ed.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972) 45, 181–2Google Scholar; Marshall, I. Howard, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Exeter: Paternoster, 1978) 620Google Scholar; Scholz, Günter, Gleichnisaussage und Existenzstruktur: Das Gleichnis der neueren Hermeneutik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der christlichen Existenzstruktur in den Gleichnissen des lukanischen Sonderguts (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 23, Theologie, Bd. 214; Frankfurt am Main/Bern/New York: Peter Lang, 1983) 277Google Scholar; Stein, Robert H., The Method and Message of Jesus' Teachings (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978) 56Google Scholar; Topel, L. John, ‘On the Injustice of the Unjust Steward: Lk 16.1–13’, CBQ 37 (1975) 216–27 (‘the earliest stage’ – 226).Google Scholar

4 Parables, 46, n. 86. See also the note on μαμωνς in Black's, MatthewAn Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1967) 139–40.Google Scholar

5 Proposed as the original meaning by Williams, Francis E. in ‘Is Almsgiving the Point of the Unjust Steward?’ (JBL 83 [1964], 293–7)Google Scholar. For the pre-critical period, see Calvin, (Calvin's Commentaries: A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew and Luke, vol. 2 [ed. Torrance, David W., Torrance, Thomas F.; Edinburgh: Saint Andrew, 1972] 111–12).Google Scholar

6 It is this distinction that Herbert Preisker overlooked in his ‘Lukas 16,1–7’ (TLZ 74 [1949], 86–91).Google Scholar In his allegorical interpretation, he saw the rich master representing God and the steward representing those who were obsessed with riches.

7 Jeremias supports this by noting that the term κύριος is used some 17 times in Luke referring to Jesus (Parables, 45 n. 82). But it is also used in various other parables referring to masters (e.g., 12.42–47; 13.8; 14.21–23), and in 14.23 the term is used in its absolute form, of a master in a parable.

8 Parables, 45–6,182; Jeremias is followed by Hunter (Parables, 99–100).

9 See also Fletcher, Donald R., ‘The Riddle of the Unjust Steward: Is Irony the Key?’, JBL 82 (1963) 15–30.Google Scholar

10 Parables, 45. Marshall cites Luke 5.14 to show that Luke is willing to admit a third person narrative changing into a first person one (Luke, 619). (But the cases are different, since in 5.14 the transition is quite smooth, whereas here it would be very abrupt.) Marshall, however, nonetheless concludes that ‘the master’ in v. 8a is not Jesus, but the master in the parable (Luke, 619–20). The same conclusion has been reached by Fitzmyer (‘Dishonest Manager’, 27–8; The Gospel according to Luke: Introduction, Translation and Notes [2 vols.; Anchor Bible; Garden City: Doubleday, 1981–5] 1096)Google Scholar; Tolbert, Mary Ann (Perspectives on Parables: An Approach to Multiple Interpretations [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979] 84)Google Scholar; Donahue, John (The Gospel in Parable [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988] 163)Google Scholar, Scholz (Gleichnisaussage, 275), among others. There is general agreement that 16.8a is necessary to the logic and movement of the narrative. (See also the following note.)

11 History of the Synoptic Tradition (rev. ed.; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), 176Google Scholar. In the second German edition of History (1931) (translated in the English edition), Bultmann held that all of v. 8 was originally secondary (including v. 8a) (175), but in his 1962 Supplement (included in History) he writes that it seems probable to him that v. 8a was part of the original parable (417).

12 ‘Fresh Light on St Luke XVI:1. The Parable of the Unjust Steward’, NTS 7 (1961) 198–219Google Scholar. His position has been adopted in Caird, G. B., The Gospel of St Luke (Penguin Books, 1963) 186–8Google Scholar; and Marshall, , Luke, 614–17.Google Scholar

13 ‘Dishonest Manager’, 23–42. Related to Fitzmyer's position is that of Paul Gächter in ‘The Parable of the Dishonest Steward after Oriental Conceptions’, CBQ 12 (1950) 121–31.Google Scholar

14 Fitzmyer refers to a story in Josephus about a loan from a Near Eastern bank in the first half of the first century CE, in which the bank required the agent (apparently a broker) for the borrower to accept a loan instrument that lumped the interest charge with the principal. But this is not an illustration from Palestine. He also mentions as possible evidence two Murabba'at cave texts, but their dating would be late first or early second century CE (‘Dishonest Manager’ 35–6 n. 25). Derrett was able to provide examples of principal and interest being combined into one debt instrument from first and second century BCE Egyptian papyri in ‘“Take Thy Bond … And Write Fifty” (Luke XVI.6): The Nature of the Bond’ (JTS 13 [1972] 438–40). But, again, this is not Jewish evidence from first-century CE Palestine.

15 Fitzmyer holds that the term refers to the activity that brought about the dismissal, but recognizes that there is nothing explicitly criminal in the charge that is made (Luke, 1097–8).

16 In Parables, 110.

17 It has sometimes been objected to this point that written record-keeping was not practised in the Middle East during the period of Jesus, but the parable states that some records were kept (16.6).

18 ‘A Master's Praise: Luke 16,1–8a’, Biblica 64 (1983) 177.Google Scholar

19 Sometimes arguments are related to the question of original meaning, but the methods and the conclusions show that the balance is on the side of hermeneutics.

20 Crossan, John Dominic, ‘The Servant Parables of Jesus’, Semeia 1 (1974) 33Google Scholar; Tolbert, , Perspectives, 88 (‘The steward … makes a complicated decision to secure his own happiness and well-being at the expense of traditional ethics, and in so doing he displays a wide stewardship of injustice, for which he is rightly commended.’)Google Scholar

21 Scott, , ‘Master's Praise’Google Scholar (The conclusion the original audience would have come to, Scott holds, is that the ‘Kingdom is for the vulnerable; for masters and stewards who do not get even’ [188]); Herzog, William, ‘Apocalypse Then and Now: Apocalyptic and the Historical Jesus Reconsidered’, Pacific Theological Review 18 (1984) 24–5Google Scholar. Herzog appears to be influenced by Derrett's, ‘Fresh Light’, 216–17.Google Scholar

22 Funk, Robert, Parables and Presence: Forms of the New Testament Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 43Google Scholar. He finds in this parable the same idea of reversal of fortune that he sees elsewhere in the narrative parables (‘This reversal is related to expectations as informed by the received or everyday world. Further, this reversal is a perpetual state of affairs in the kingdom: whatever man comes to expect as owed to him is perpetually refused, but to him who expects nothing, the kingdom arrives as a gift’ [51]).

23 Via, Dan Otto Jr, The Parables: Their Literary and Existential Dimension (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967) 155–62.Google Scholar

24 Drury, John has recently examined the L parables by themselves in The Parables in the Gospels (New York: Crossroads, 1985) 111–24.Google Scholar

25 This is the same number counted by Jeremias (Parables, 247–8). He and I, however, each list one that the other lacks. He counts as an L parable, The Closed Door (13.24–30); but it is rightly considered part of Q by Kloppenborg, John S. (The Formation of Q [Studies in Antiquity and Christianity; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987] 223–7)Google Scholar. On the other hand, Jeremias does not take as a separate parable On Inviting the Poor to Table (14.12–14), which seems to me to be intended as a parable in its own right following 14.8–10.

Jan Lambrecht adds The Watchful Servants (12.35–38) to the list (Once More Astonished: The Parables of Jesus [New York: Crossroads, 1981] 19)Google Scholar. A number of scholars hold that it too belongs to Q, although Kloppenborg argues against it (Formation, 148, n. 202). If it is recognized that v. 37b introduces a foreign element, probably from Johannine sources (see John 13.4–5), what remains seems clearly from Q.

Günter Scholz includes, in addition to those I list, 5.39; 12.35–38; 12.47–48; 19.(11), 12,14–15, 27 (Gleichnisaussage, 201–311). All, except 12.35–38 (see previous paragraph), are additions to parables from either Mark or Q. Scholz has not distinguished between these (presumably) Lucan enhancements and independent parables.

The category ‘parable’ does not permit including Luke 13.1–5, although it could easily have been part of Luke's received collection.

26 Drury, , Parables, 142, 149, etc.Google Scholar

27 Bultmann, , History, 363.Google Scholar

28 Kloppenborg, , Formation, 64–80.Google Scholar

29 ‘Luke's method was to recast his material, paraphrasing in his own style’ (Cadbury, Henry J., The Making of Luke-Acts [2nd ed.; London: SPCK, 1968 (first pub. 1927)] 68).Google Scholar

30 This is all the more likely since all but one of the parables are in Luke's special ‘travel’ section which has no structure that might have necessitated the dis-ordering of a previously ordered collection. (On the lack of structure of the ‘travel’ section, see Fitzmyer, , Luke, 825Google Scholar, and Marshall, , Luke, 402.)Google Scholar

31 For discussions of the L material in general see Manson, William, The Gospel of Luke (Moffatt New Testament Commentary; New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1930) xviii–xxGoogle Scholar; Creed, John Martin, The Gospel According to Saint Luke (London: Macmillan, 1953 [first published, 1930]), lxvi–lxxGoogle Scholar; Fitzmyer, , Luke, 82–5.Google Scholar

32 See the paired stories of Simeon and Anna, the Prophetess (2.25–38), and the man with the lost sheep (from Q) and the woman with the lost coin (only in Luke) (15.4–10). Also note the two stories of healings in the synagogue on the sabbath – one of a man (from Mark) and the other of a woman (only in Luke) (6.6–11; 13.10–17). Further, it should be noted that ‘some women’ are paired with the Twelve as Jesus' followers on the journey that begins in 8.1–3. It may be that the reason for all this is to be found in Acts, where Luke is at pains to emphasize the interest of both men and women in the Christian movement (5.14; 8.2,12; 9.2; 17.12,34; 22.4).

33 Luke announces it early in the gospel: 1.52, in the Magnificat; 2.7, 11, in the birth narrative; 2.33, Simeon's blessing; 3.5, which is Luke's addition to the Isaiah passage introducing John the Baptist; 6.20–26, in Luke's version of the beatitudes.

34 The proverb here is also used by Luke at the end of Not Seeking Honour at Table (14. 11). Apparently he wished to make sure the readers related the parable, which might at first have seemed like a lesson in etiquette, to the theme.

35 Drury finds the theme of repentance being developed throughout the central part of Luke (13.1–16.9) (Parables, 143).

36 This aspect of repentance is the other side of the coin of the first great commandment; namely, ‘the turning from’. In the OT, it usually means turning from the worship of other gods (TDNT 4 [1967] 986 [Würthwein])Google Scholar. With Jesus it is expanded to refer to whatever prevents one from establishing a relationship with God (TDNT 4 [1967] 1002–3 [Behm]).Google Scholar

37 John 4.9.

38 See discussion under devices, below (#4).

39 See discussion under devices, below (#4).

40 Soliloquies in synoptic parables are found only in Luke, with two exceptions: Matt 18.48/Luke 12.45 (in The Unfaithful Steward) and Mark 12.6/Matt 21.37/Luke 20.13 (in The Wicked Tenants). Also, with these exceptions, in Luke they are found only in the L parables (Bultmann, History, 191).

41 See Bultmann, , History, 178.Google Scholar

42 See Bultmann, , History, 192.Google Scholar

43 In The Foolish Rich Man, the question is addressed both to the character in the parable and (inevitably) to the audience. A version of the parable is found in the GosThom (Logion 63) without the question. The Unrighteous Judge might seem to conclude with a question, but the question appears to be part of the secondary interpretation. That is suggested by the introductory words (‘And the Lord said’).

44 See Bultmann, , History, 182.Google Scholar

45 Bultmann, (History, 185)Google Scholar and Jeremias, (Parables, 159)Google Scholar recognize the use of this argument in The Reluctant Friend at Midnight and The Unrighteous Judge. Jeremias seems to recognize its use also in The Lost Coin (Parables, 135–6).

46 In The Unrighteous Judge, an interpretation, based on a detail of the parable, is added, making the parable refer to the speedy vindication of the elect (18.6–8). The conclusion of v. 7 (καί μακροθυμε έπ' αύτος [normal translation – ‘and he is forbearing toward them’]) is difficult to understand in that context (the RSV translation is surely forced), but would have made sense as part of an earlier conclusion referring to the likelihood that God would respond to the repentant with forbearance.

47 Also noted by Preisker (‘Lukas 1,1–7’, 90).

48 See n. 8.

49 See also n. 10. and 11.

50 The Four Gospels; A New Translation (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1933) 157, 311 (note). Torrey based his translation on what he assumed to have been the original Aramaic. The translation was considered again as an attractive possibility by Phillips, J. B. in The Gospels Translated into Modern English (New York: Macmillan, 1952) 242–3Google Scholar, only to be dismissed in the end because he felt it could not be supported by the Greek.

Less attractive is the proposal of G. Schwarz that the original Aramaic of v. 8a, which he reconstructs, was mistranslated when it was taken over into Greek. His ‘correct’ translation is ‘Und der Herr fluchte dem betrügerischen Verwalter, weil er hinterlistig gehandelt hatte.’ He arrives at this by choosing for the retroversion of the crucial word έπήνεσεν the Aramaic verb and then choosing from its possible meanings (ordinarily it would be translated ‘bless’) a very unusual one (‘“… lobte den betrügerischen Verwalter”? [Lukas 16. 8a]’, BZ 18 [1974] 94–5)Google Scholar. The more likely original Aramaic verb is (‘praise’).

51 Torrey takes v. 8b as parenthetical – presumably seeing it as an editorial addition (Four Gospels, 157).

52 V. 9 would have found support from the fact that it reflected a detail of the parable. For another example of this method of interpreting a parable, which also seems secondary, see The Unrighteous Judge and n. 46 (above).

53 See note 47. Donahue has pointed to a number of the parallels between The Prodigal Son and His Brother and The Dishonest Steward; however, he accepts v. 8a at face value and therefore sees a basic agreement between the two parables (theme of acceptance) rather than a contrast. (He is led to suggest that The Dishonest Steward should be renamed The Parable of the Foolish Master.) (Gospel in Parable, 167–9).