Luke 7:29-30 Jesus or Luke?

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Sun Apr 11 15:57:04 EDT 1999


There is some disagreement about Luke 7:29-30. Is this a comment by Luke 
or are these the words of Jesus? There are a list of competent scholars
on both sides of this issue.

Words of Jesus:

A. Plummer, F. Godet, H.A.W. Meyer, DeWette, and some more recent
Germans cited in Fitzmyer (Luke, AB p670) are R.A. Edwards,
G. Schneider, H. Schurmann.

Luke's comment:

H. Alford, I.H. Marshall, J. Fitzmyer, A.B. Bruce.

The most telling evidence in favor of the Luke's comment view is the
phrase KAI PAS hO LAOS in 7:29. When PAS + LAOS is used in the role of
AGENT in Luke/Acts it is imbedded in Luke's narrative, not in reported
speech (See Luke 18:43, 21:38, and Acts 3:9,11 etc.).  PAS + LAOS
is used in reported speech (e.g., Acts 4:10) but not in the role of
AGENT.

Well this is the most obvious evidence, but what about the TEXTURE of
Luke 7:18-35. Are their any patterns in this span of text that set Luke
7:29,30 apart from the background? I had time to look at only one issue
concerning TEXTURE and that was verb attribute distribution. I isolated
the verb characteristics and looked for breaks in the pattern that would
set apart Luke 7:29,30. I found several patterns that curiously jump
over LK 7:29,30. These patterns include verbs with the following
attributes: Singular, 1st Person, 2nd Person, Present Tense. These
patterns don't prove anything, but the do lend some support to the
notion of TEXTURE as an indicator of transitions in discourse structure.

Here are the results. The positon of LK 7:29,30 is marked by ****.

verb singular

Luke 7:19
Luke 7:20
Luke 7:21
Luke 7:22
Luke 7:23
Luke 7:24
Luke 7:26
Luke 7:27
Luke 7:28
****
Luke 7:31
Luke 7:32
Luke 7:33
Luke 7:34
Luke 7:35

verb first person

Luke 7:19
Luke 7:20
Luke 7:26
Luke 7:27
Luke 7:28
****
Luke 7:31
Luke 7:32

Verb 2nd person

Luke 7:19
Luke 7:20
Luke 7:22
Luke 7:24
Luke 7:25
Luke 7:26
****
Luke 7:32
Luke 7:33
Luke 7:34

verb present

Luke 7:19
Luke 7:20
Luke 7:21
Luke 7:22
Luke 7:23
Luke 7:24
Luke 7:25
Luke 7:26
Luke 7:27
Luke 7:28
****
Luke 7:31
Luke 7:32
Luke 7:33
Luke 7:34

verb future

Luke 7:27
****
Luke 7:31

verb perfect

Luke 7:25
Luke 7:27
****
Luke 7:33
Luke 7:34


--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062




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