[georgespencer]

> I don't think Luke misunderstood what Mark reported Jesus as saying. I think he omitted 'right' because it wasn't central to the point. That seems the simplest explanation, and I don't see anything in your comment that provides a more compelling alternative.

Do you really believe that to be the simplest explanation considering the authorship of Luke, its position in the canon, the unusually heavily fragmented and interpolated nature of the papyri our translations come from, the additional 20 yrs of oral tradition it went through from Matthew, the fact that it frequently contains content which is not only uncorroborated in the other gospels (red flag) but also directly contradictory to them?

I’m trying to think of a single secular scholar working today who would treat Luke — glossy, editorialised, written to persuade a later audience of different things to earlier gospels, still being revised well into the second century — as being accurate on the details in this regard. Do you know of any?

> I don't particularly care if there are some Christians who erroneously think that the golden rule originated with Christ or that it's unique to Christianity.

I can appreciate that you don’t like the answer to the questions, but when you ask “Who has suggested the golden rule is a novel aspect of Christ’s teachings” and “If people haven’t read the Bible are their views on its teachings worth paying attention to?” it seems really truculent to criticise the answering itself. Pick a lane dude.

> If you reread the thread, you'll note that I never actually claimed that Christianity contains "novel ideas". (I think it probably does, but I'm no expert on the subject and will not try to defend that position here.) Maybe this misconception is what is leading to you introducing lots of irrelevant material.

Ah I get it now! When I wrote my original comment to say that there’s nothing novel in Christ’s teachings and you replied to say that Christ’s morality is “much more radical” than I had outlined, and that "turn the other cheek" is different to the maxim of reciprocity, you were… agreeing with me? Got it ;)

[foldr]

To me, it seems like a very simple explanation that 'right' got omitted in Luke because it's not central to the point being made. One does not have to believe that Luke had no agenda of his own, or that Luke's sources were complete and fully accurate, to believe this explanation. Of course, it may not be literally 'Luke' who is responsible for the omission; the point is just that it seems to be a simple editorial change that occurred at some point in the history of the text(s) because it had no material effect on the sense of what Jesus is saying. You've not actually pointed to any evidence that casts doubt on this simple explanation.

All this is a bit of a tangent though. Even without taking Luke into consideration, Wink's interpretation is outlandish when you read the passage in context. If we're going to talk about agendas and ulterior motives, it seems to me that Wink himself is the one who is most amply furnished with those. He was trying to paint Jesus as an advocate of his particular approach to nonviolent resistance. And in doing so, he arrived at an interpretation of the text that (to my very limited knowledge) has no precedent, even among theologians who lived in societies that were culturally much closer to 1st century Palestine than ours.

>it seems really truculent to criticise the answering itself.

The point of my question was to determine whether anyone had seriously made the claim that the golden rule originated with Christ. So much has been said about Christianity by so many people that you can attribute almost any wild claim about it to some random idiot or ignoramus. But it seems highly unlikely that anyone would make this claim who has even read the Bible passages where Jesus commends the golden rule.

>Ah I get it now! When I wrote my original comment to say that there’s nothing novel in Christ’s teachings and you replied to say that Christ’s morality is “much more radical” than I had outlined, and that "turn the other cheek" is different to the maxim of reciprocity, you were… agreeing with me? Got it ;)

No, I was saying that Christ's morality is more radical than just the golden rule (i.e. it is more extreme and more difficult to adhere to). I did not say that it was novel. I have no very strong opinion on the extent to which it is novel. As an aside, it's not clear to me that the novelty of Christ's ethical maxims is even a central tenet of Christianity. Focusing on the novelty of Christ's teachings makes more sense if you are a non-Christian who is evaluating his intellectual contribution as an ethical teacher, rather than a Christian who sees him as the saviour, the son of God, etc. etc.

[georgespencer]

What you seem to be purporting as a 'simple' (and previously: 'the simplest') explanation seems to me to be complex in comparison to other possible explanations.

I summarise your argument as: "The autograph author of Luke omitted the word 'right' from their account of the Sermon on the Plain because it was not central to the point Jesus was making. Whilst I do not believe that the message of Jesus is substantially altered between the Sermon on the Mount (which includes the word) and the Sermon on Plain (which omits it), anyone who uses the inclusion of this word or other details present in SM and omitted from SP to argue for that the message had a narrower social focus than Luke's editorialised version is wrong."

I presume a few stipulations: SM and SP are two accounts of the same sermon or sayings, written for two totally different audiences, and likely reliant on Q. The SP is an 'epitome' or summary rather than an attempt at an exhaustive recreation of the contents of the document. The inclusion of the word in Matthew's account lends credibility to the fact that Jesus was believed to have said it and that the Q document included it, and the omission of the word from Luke's account does not diminish the likelihood that he said it. These are unremarkable points.

My position is as follows: the simplest explanation for the omission of the word is a transcription error or a later redaction by someone other than the autograph author of Luke, the argument you are having with Winks (via me) is a microcosm of the scholarly consensus around Luke (Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher with a narrow social focus who debated interpretations of local Jewish law in detail, and seemed OK with violence, not -- as Luke would have us believe -- a man who believed himself to be God, knowingly founding a new religion and espoused a message of pacifism) which is at odds with your view, and the position you hold (that we can look to Luke for a more accurate reflection of the thrust of Christ's teachings) is circular (Luke's interpretation of Christ's teachings is both the most widely pervading interpretation and the least compelling from a historical and sociological perspective).

A bit more detail:

The simplest explanation for the omission of the word is unintentional omission. Very common by Bible scribes and nearly always human error.

Until the middle ages, when we see a kind of 'Cambrian explosion' of manuscripts (95% of all extant manuscripts are from after the 9th Century), scribes were barely literate. There are 5600 surviving Greek manuscripts, with in excess of 200,000 differences between them. Many of them are fragments, so goodness knows what the number would be if we had each codex and scroll in full. (This all changed when reasonably educated monks started doing the work.) There are more differences between the manuscripts than there are words in the gospels.

Scribes would often miss out a word, or even an entire line as they laboured to transcribe a document (often in a language they lacked proficiency in). These omissions are more common with words which do not change the meaning of the text (like δεξιὰν, which is the word you're inexplicably fixated on), and unfortunately because of the nature of the formalisation of the gospel canon and its means of transmission being oral history for a very long time, there are likely thousands of words missing from all extant manuscripts which creates the misleading impression that they were never included to begin with. Some we can infer, and some were inferred by later scribes.

It's also possible, and I would argue more probable than the prevailing text of Luke being accurate in its omission, that a later scribe simply omitted the word. P75 is the only extant papyrus to contain the verses we're discussing, but the scribe omitted personal pronouns (as well as Luke's hilarious interpolation of Christ's agony at Gethsemane -- whoosh! Gone! -- and John's parable of the adulteress. Recent graphological analysis dates P75 to the fourth century, which makes it far younger than originally thought.

Similarly P45 (which picks up one verse after the verse we're discussing) is riddled by such omissions. EC Colwell's withering assessment is that it omits "adverbs, adjectives, nouns, participles, verbs, personal pronouns—without any compensating habit of addition. [The scribe] frequently omits phrases and clauses. He prefers the simple to the compound word. In short, he favours brevity. He shortens the text in at least fifty places in singular readings alone. But he does not drop syllables or letters."

So the two most significant early papyri for the of Luke, and the _only_ early papyrus which includes the actual verse we are discussing, both make a habit of omitting words and verses. So if we're to believe that SM and SP are two reflections of the same event, likely sourced from the same documents (Q for Matthew, and Q and Matthew for Luke), we have to pick: do we take Matthew's far more expansive and detailed word for it, with multiple early and later corroborations of the text (24 total, including one which is certainly second century and a handful which straddle second/third century), or do we consider Luke's summary 911 total, of which all are third century or later, and most are heavily fragmented) to be accurate, in spite of the paucity of manuscripts with which to cross reference?

[georgespencer]

When you consider the original Greek, it's not an especially contentious proposition. There are many omissions in the gospels where the word considered to be 'omitted' (e.g. an adjective) would radically alter not only the meaning of the sentence, but also necessitate a different form of the noun than appears in the manuscript. (The inverse is also a helpful way of detecting omitted words: when a declension is used which is only required if a specific form of a word was also supposed to be present.)

Matthew:

> ῥαπίζει εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα σου

> rhapizei eis tēn dexian siagona sou

> shall strike on the right cheek of you

Luke:

> τύπτοντί σε ἐπὶ τὴν σιαγόνα

> typtonti se epi tēn siagona

> striking you on the cheek

If you change Luke to:

> τύπτοντί σε ἐπὶ τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα

We're simply changing "tēn siagona" ("the cheek") to "tēn dexian siagona" ("the right cheek"), which is how it appears in Matthew. The entire way which Luke rewrites SP is in general interesting. Here's Matthew:

> ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν μὴ ἀντιστῆναι τῷ πονηρῷ· ἀλλ’ ὅστις σε ῥαπίζει εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα σου, στρέψον αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην·

> I however say to you, not to resist the evil person. Instead, whoever you shall strike on the right cheek of you, turn to him also the other;

and

> καὶ τῷ θέλοντί σοι κριθῆναι καὶ τὸν χιτῶνά σου λαβεῖν, ἄφες αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον·

> and to the one willing you to sue and the tunic of you to take, yield to him also the cloak.

Luke combines these into one more elegant verse:

> τῷ τύπτοντί σε ἐπὶ τὴν σιαγόνα πάρεχε καὶ τὴν ἄλλην, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ αἴροντός σου τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα μὴ κωλύσῃς.

> To the one striking you on the cheek, offer also the other; and from the one taking away your cloak, also the tunic do not withhold.

But, as Winks and others point out, we start to see him corrupting native praxis and idioms in the manner of a foreigner ill acquainted with the region. "Living on a wing and a prayer" would become "existing on a prayer and a wing" to Luke.

It's certainly plausible that Luke did not understand the cultural significance of the word. He was, after all, a man from a different part of the world, writing a generation after the fact, having by his own admission not witnessed any of the events. The bet you're making is analogous to betting that a Frenchman transcribing and interpreting a speech made by a German politician from 100 years previously is going to be a nuanced understanding of the cultural mores.

Finally, you've tried to dodge the issue of Luke's authorial intent, but it's important. Luke wrote for a Gentile audience. Matthew for Jews. Mark for Romans.

It seems like you might be aware that Luke deliberately smoothed some of the sharp edges of the earlier gospels (to the point of being totally brazen in places. As Guignebert wrote, "A hagiographer of [Luke's] type never bothers much about common sense in inventing the circumstance he requires."), but Luke frequently displays a lack of understanding of the society about which he writes. He frequently summarises a lot of Jewish tradition when Matthew goes deep on detail, or omits important context altogether.

A good example is his treatment of the Pharisees. Whilst Mark and Matthew share meaningful discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees over the traditions of oral law, Luke skips it altogether, either because he doesn't understand or doesn't see the relevance. But to scholars reading Mark and understanding the various early creeds of Christianity, it's plain that Luke and John are the final couple of kids in a big game of telephone. Luke is not fearful of Judaism as Matthew and Mark were, so his gospel contains some of the stern criticisms and pointed remarks of Mark and Matthew, whilst also praising them or ignoring them at points which are divergent with the other accounts. To Jesus, and anyone writing about the life of Jesus in the region, the Pharisees were an authoritative shadow hanging over everything. Not understanding that, or ignoring that in order to reframe Jesus's teachings, certainly makes Luke an easier and more universally applicable read. But it makes it further from Christ's message, not closer to it. It's never more apparent than in the beatitudes. Matthew says "Blessed are the poor in spirit," but Luke redacts and rephrases to "Blessed are you who are poor."

The writers of the gospels had to overcome the significant incongruity of Jesus the human apocalyptic preacher, making no claims of divinity, believing that the end times were just around the corner (Mark), and the fact that the world did not end, and Jesus was executed. This is why we have the prophecy-fulfilling claptrap of Matthew and Luke: it's all apologetics written years later, and largely at odds with the explicit mission of the earliest and most historically accurate gospel: to ensure adherence to the old law.

It's almost unequivocal that Luke's gospel is a better reflection of the message of Jesus as we know it today. That's because Luke to some extent invented that message. But for anyone thinking about the gospels, it's very tough to ignore the author's serious lack of understanding of the context and times about which he writes, and it makes claims that we can ignore the meaning contained within the expansive and detailed passages Luke rewrites fanciful in the extreme.

[georgespencer]

Finally, on the novelty of Christ's teachings: a frequent claim of the gospels is that what Jesus taught was divinely inspired (Jesus himself claims this in John 7), and the reaction of those who hear him is often of a people persuaded by his ideas.

Anyone considering Christianity's claims is of course interested in the novelty of its ideas. If Christianity were at least the first time we saw a self-evidently great idea being preached and adopted by the masses, it would lend some credence to the idea that Jesus was divinely inspired. In the absence f his saying anything novel, we have the tawdry claims of miracles and abiogenesis. Lots of frills, but zero substance.