The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Some questions about the Bethany/Anointing narratives in the Gospels.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
archibald
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Re: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Some questions about the Bethany/Anointing narratives in the Gospels.

Post by archibald »

Diogenes the Cynic wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:29 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 11:28 pm
Diogenes the Cynic wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2018 10:40 pm
  • Why does Luke change the anointing from the head to the feet? Is Luke uncomfortable with the anointing of the head because of its latently subversive political/regnal implications? Is he uncomfortable with a woman doing the anointing?
  • Why does Luke alone ignore the issue of the expense of the oil and change it into a lesson on slut shaming instead?
I find many of the differences in Luke's gospel can be explained by studying the themes in the opening chapters. The overarching theme is reversal. Jesus comes to exalt the lowly and debase the high.

Reading through that lense we find a ready explanation for the substitution of shepherds for royalty-hob-nobbing magi, Matthew's sermon on the mount being lowered to the plain; the poor in spirit become the literally poor versus the rich . . . are three examples.

We see the same here. Mark's and Matthew's versions flies in the face of Luke's theme. M and M have Jesus effectively saying "Stuff the poor for a moment, just think of me and my greatness for a few minutes."

So the scene is removed to a place and occasion where Jesus shows once again his exaltation of the sinner and the lowly.

The woman is anointing Jesus' feet, not his head. She is acting as the lowest servant, not someone with a fortune in her hand who has the honorable task of proleptically anointing the future king.

It's a theological narrative. The author evidently understood that what he was reading in Mark or Matthew was not some historical record but contrary theological tales so that he felt quite within his rights to change them into what he believed was a more fitting lesson and portrayal of Jesus. (Or else he knew he was a conspirator deliberately rewriting history.)

Thomas Brodie points out some striking echoes of 2 Kings 4:1-37: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42707092 Luke was creating a new tale from recent and old sources.
Thanks for the article, and I agree that Luke does have a more political view than matthew. Luke is talking about a literal reversal of the social order, not abstractions about rich and poor "in spirit." Do you see this as having been part of the original/Marcionite Gospel of Luke or as part of the post-Marcionite expanded version? I am assuming the redaction, of course, but so does Bart Ehrman, so it can't be that crazy.
'Striking echoes' in 2 Kings 4 my arse. Scraping the barrel for parallels more like. I'm tempted to start calling this sort of thing, 'barrellelism'. :)
Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Some questions about the Bethany/Anointing narratives in the Gospels.

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Diogenes the Cynic wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:15 am I honestly can't come up with a conclusion that I would bet money on, but my first intuition has always been that it remembers some kind of genuine historical spat that is now being apologized for, This assumes historicity for Jesus, of course, but my hypothesis is that Jesus did something or started living in such a way that caused one or more of his followers to became disillusioned. An Elijah Muhammed/Malcolm X moment. I can see an overnight sensation exorcist maybe getting a swelled head and living some of the good life, maybe, eating at rich people's houses, accepting fancy gifts, maybe even carousing with fallen women. I am not bound by any faith commitment to say or believe that a historical Jesus was necessarily an altruistic or virtuous individual and pretty much all known cult leaders use it for sex sooner or later.
With a historical critical approach we might easily interpret the Gospel of John in that sense.

300 denarii was a lot of cash, in particular for inhabitants of a little village outside of Jerusalem. I do not know it exactly, but I assume we would say that it would be today a sum of 20.000 – 30.000 US dollars.

Furthermore, from John's account we must assume that Mary was the ownerin of the spikenard perfume (John 12:5,7 “Why was this ointment not sold ..." „Leave her alone“). Such an assumption would be hardly possible in a traditional Jewish family in which woman's property was hold by the father, brother or husband. We should expect that Lazarus' family members were really rich people with the attitude of Gentiles (like the Herodians). It seems that Mary was able to buy the perfume from the pocket money, which she was allowed to own.

John 11:5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus :cheers:

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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Some questions about the Bethany/Anointing narratives in the Gospels.

Post by neilgodfrey »

Diogenes the Cynic wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:29 amDo you see this as having been part of the original/Marcionite Gospel of Luke or as part of the post-Marcionite expanded version? I am assuming the redaction, of course, but so does Bart Ehrman, so it can't be that crazy.
Could it be both? If Marcion is the one who originated what is generally labelled "salvation history" (God being the nonjudgmental and merciful one) I wonder if the redactor "Luke" worked with that theme but reshaped it to turn it against Marcionism. Hence in the sections not original to what might have been a Marcionite core we see the "salvation history" being presented as a set of reversals: free salvation for the poor and lowly but this is coupled with the fall of the high and mighty. The redactor couldn't help himself. Salvation, yes, but coupled with judgment, too.

I'm just making all of that up, of course. I have no idea. Just thoughts.
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