Luke Chapter 12:13-23

To start, much of the rest of the chapter does not provide any truly clean breaks into manageable sections. This is itself interesting; does Luke present a more unified, unitary account of some of these teachings? One that doesn’t seem just to be a bunch of separate sayings strung together like beads of different stones?

We last saw Jesus telling the disciples not to worry about what to say when arrested and hauled before the magistrates. What was not said about this is that the episode is probably anachronistic. This more likely relates to a period after Jesus’ death, when the nascent movement was under some “pressure” from authorities. So this was one of those post-eventum “prophecies”. We discussed this at some length when this story occurred in both Mark and Matthew, so it didn’t seem worth repeating. However, it should be borne in mind. One thing that just occurred to me is that it may have been James who gave an admonition in this vein. He may not have, but it would have been appropriate during the time when he was the leader of the movement in Jerusalem. Even the concept of the sacred breath as expounded demonstrates a level of development that goes beyond the simple understanding and use of the term. However, all of this is looking backwards; rather, let us look forward to the rest of the

Text

13 Εἶπεν δέ τις ἐκ τοῦ ὄχλου αὐτῷ, Διδάσκαλε, εἰπὲ τῷ ἀδελφῷ μου μερίσασθαι μετ’ ἐμοῦ τὴν κληρονομίαν.

14 ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Ἄνθρωπε, τίς με κατέστησεν κριτὴν ἢ μεριστὴν ἐφ’ ὑμᾶς;

15 εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς αὐτούς, Ὁρᾶτε καὶ φυλάσσεσθε ἀπὸ πάσης πλεονεξίας, ὅτι οὐκ ἐν τῷ περισσεύειν τινὶ ἡ ζωὴ αὐτοῦ ἐστιν ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτῷ.

Someone from the crowd said to him (Jesus), “Teacher, tell my brother to apportion with me our inheritance”. (14) He (Jesus) said to him (the speaker) “Dude, who designated me judge of which is the portion upon you (plural)? (15) Then he said to them, “See and guard from all covetousness (lit = something like ‘filling up’) that in the overabundance is the life of him is not from those (things) ruling over him. ( less literally = that the overabundance [of possessions] is not the ruling [principle] in his life )

I was dead certain that this exchange was in both of the other two gospels; as it turns out, it’s in neither. This is unique to Luke. As such, I’m simply going to note the admonition against greed, and move on to the next sections, in which Jesus develops the theme.

I do just want to comment on the set-up question. Is this an indication of how Jesus–or more likely James–had come to be seen by contemporaries? As a person who brings justice by insisting that inheritances be shared equally among heirs? As a cultural Christian who went to a Catholic elementary school, I have to say that this is not the sort of role I would think of when considering my stereotypical Jesus. I don’t have any sort of answer, or even any sort of resolution to this question. But I think it’s important that it be asked.

13 Ait autem quidam ei de turba: “ Magister, dic fratri meo, ut dividat mecum hereditatem ”.

14 At ille dixit ei: “ Homo, quis me constituit iudicem aut divisorem super vos? ”.

15 Dixitque ad illos: “ Videte et cavete ab omni avaritia, quia si cui res abundant, vita eius non est ex his, quae possidet ”.

16 Εἶπεν δὲ παραβολὴν πρὸς αὐτοὺς λέγων, Ἀνθρώπου τινὸς πλουσίου εὐφόρησεν ἡ χώρα.

17 καὶ διελογίζετο ἐν ἑαυτῷ λέγων, Τί ποιήσω, ὅτι οὐκ ἔχω ποῦ συνάξω τοὺς καρπούς μου;

18 καὶ εἶπεν, Τοῦτο ποιήσω: καθελῶ μου τὰς ἀποθήκας καὶ μείζονας οἰκοδομήσω, καὶ συνάξω ἐκεῖ πάντα τὸν σῖτον καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου,

19 καὶ ἐρῶτῇ ψυχῇ μου, Ψυχή, ἔχεις πολλὰ ἀγαθὰ κείμενα εἰς ἔτη πολλά: ἀναπαύου, φάγε, πίε, εὐφραίνου.

20 εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ ὁ θεός, Ἄφρων, ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ τὴν ψυχήν σου ἀπαιτοῦσιν ἀπὸ σοῦ: ἃ δὲ ἡτοίμασας, τίνι ἔσται;

21 οὕτως ὁ θησαυρίζων ἑαυτῷ καὶ μὴ εἰς θεὸν πλουτῶν.

22 Εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς τοὺς μαθητάς [αὐτοῦ], Διὰ τοῦτο λέγω ὑμῖν, μὴ μεριμνᾶτε τῇ ψυχῇ τί φάγητε, μηδὲ τῷ σώματι τί ἐνδύσησθε.

23 ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ πλεῖόν ἐστιν τῆς τροφῆς καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ ἐνδύματος.

He spoke a parable towards them. “There was a certain wealthy man, the country of whom brought forth riches. (17) And he said within himself saying, ‘What shall I do, that I do not have where to gather my grain?’ (18) And he said, ‘I will do this. I will take down my storehouses and I will build bigger (ones), and I will gather there all the grain and (all) my good things. (19) And I will say to my inner self, “Inner self, you have many good things and laid out are many years (less lit = I have many years to live). Rest, eat, drink, and rejoice”.’ (20) But God said to him, ‘Fool! this very night your life I will take from you. Ready yourself, and to who will it (your wealth) be?’ (21) Thus was the treasure of him and not of God was his wealth”. (22) He said to his disciples, “Through this I speak to you, do not care in life what you eat, nor for the body what you wear. (23) For life is more than what you eat, and your body (is more than) its clothing”.

First, let’s talk about the uses of the word psyche. In Verse 19, we are told he spoke to his psyche, by saying, Psyche, I have much goods…Three of my four crib translations render this as …he said to his soul, “Soul…” I don’t know about you, but that does not sound like idiomatic English to my ear. This is where we run into all those problems with psyche = soul. The NIV renders it as “…he said to himself…” That is idiomatic English. And so it is with psyche. Soul is one possible meaning, and it may be the most common possible meaning, but the correlation between the Greek psyche and English soul is not very exact. There is some overlap; in English, while soul can have the sense of “oneself”, it almost never does. It can refer to a life, or more correctly, a person, as in the sense of a “lost soul”, but I have never run across someone saying, “O, soul” in the sense of speaking to oneself. Yet, that is how this passage is frequently rendered. Maybe it made sense when the KJV was printed, but that sense is long since lost. 

With that out of the way, let’s look at the overall sense of the passage. As noted, this is unique to Luke. The theme is wealth, and the disparagement of the wealthy. When we realize that the story of Dives (Wealth) and Lazarus is also in Luke, and unique to Luke, then maybe we can sense a theme? And this is why I don’t think it can be taken as a given that “blessed are the poor” is in any sense more “primitive” than “blessed are the poor in spirit”. The first is a reflection of the current conditions; the second is excusing those conditions. My apologies, but that’s what it does, even if that isn’t the intended point of the words–but I fully believe it is/was. On reflection, I need to step down from my statement. Of course there is a way in which Luke’s is more “primitive”, because casuistry is, necessarily, a sophisticated activity. And to classify Matthew’s aphorism as “casuistry” is another very strong statement; but this is not one I feel the need to calibrate more precisely. The point is that, taking this story, that of Dives and Lazarus, and “blessed are the poor” we have at least the framework of a theme. Luke is concerned about the poor, perhaps more so than the other two we’ve read. And Luke has the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, so perhaps he has a bit more to say about how we should live overall. Because that is the other theme of this particular section, the reason I found it hard to split it up more. Do care about eating or clothing, or laying up treasure–again with the wealth–that is of this world. So don’t care about wealth, love your neighbour–who is, at least could be,  someone you despise–don’t worry about the trappings of life. This is an overall prescription for how to live, based on a non-admiration of money. So “blessed are the poor” isn’t primitive; it’s an imperative.

In fact, far from being the “primitive” version of this pericope Luke presents us with the more developed. The ending, that life is more than food etc is unique to Luke. So is the bit about the ravens. In an act of serious disrespect, Burton Mack includes Luke’s unique material as part of Q. Of course he does. So can a proponent of Q explain why Matthew omitted this? And it should be redactionally consistent with the reasoning for leaving all the other stuff out that is unique to Luke. To Mack’s credit, he does not include the parable of The Clueless Landowner; apparently, Luke is granted some credit for originality. Plus, it seems like this emphasis on poverty has developed since the time Matthew wrote, and even more so since Mark wrote. True textual analysis would not simply focus on just the words–like the kai/de occurrences–but should focus just as much–more?–on what the words are saying. How is what Matthew says different from what Mark says, and how is Luke different from both? Then we take these differences and see if the themes presented have changed at all. The biggest example is Jesus’ divinity in Mark vs in Matthew & Luke; the latter two are similar on this theme, but John takes it several steps further. That is, the theme has developed over time, and through time. The failure–more like refusal–of the Q proponents to have these discussions represents something akin to intellectual malpractice, and it makes it difficult to treat a lot of NT scholarship as serious scholarship.

16 Dixit autem similitudinem ad illos dicens: “Hominis cuiusdam divitis uberes fructus ager attulit.

17 Et cogitabat intra se dicens: “Quid faciam, quod non habeo, quo congregem fructus meos?”.

18 Et dixit: “Hoc faciam: destruam horrea mea et maiora aedificabo et illuc congregabo omne triticum et bona mea;

19 et dicam animae meae: Anima, habes multa bona posita in annos plurimos; requiesce, comede, bibe, epulare”.

20 Dixit autem illi Deus: “Stulte! Hac nocte animam tuam repetunt a te; quae autem parasti, cuius erunt?”.

21 Sic est qui sibi thesaurizat et non fit in Deum dives”.

22 Dixitque ad discipulos suos: “Ideo dico vobis: nolite solliciti esse animae quid manducetis, neque corpori quid vestiamini.

23 Anima enim plus est quam esca, et corpus quam vestimentum.

 

Luke Chapter 12:1-12 – Updated & Revised

Apologies for the long hiatus. The real world can intrude into the life of a blogger!

So on to Chapter 12. Completing this chapter will put us half-way through the gospel. I believe this is more Q stuff, and I believe it corresponds to material in the Sermon on the Mount. Personally, I prefer Luke’s arrangement of Matthew’s material; I found that having three successive chapters of Jesus’ lessons got to be a bit tiresome. Granted, that may just be a symptom of my anti-Q bias; but it is equally probable that the insistence on Matthew’s “masterful arrangement” is simply a manufactured argument created to bolster the “case” for Q.

Text

1 Ἐν οἷς ἐπισυναχθεισῶν τῶν μυριάδων τοῦ ὄχλου, ὥστε καταπατεῖν ἀλλήλους, ἤρξατο λέγειν πρὸς τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ πρῶτον, Προσέχετε ἑαυτοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς ζύμης, ἥτις ἐστὶν ὑπόκρισις, τῶν Φαρισαίων.

In those days having gathered myriads of the crowd, so that they were trampling each other, he began to speak to his disciples first, “Take heed amongst yourselves from the yeast, which is hypocricy, of the Pharisees. 

This is interesting. First of all, “myriad” means both 10,000 or simply “a whole lot”. So either Luke is telling us that there were 20 or 30,000 people in the crowd, or simply that the crowd was very large. It’s rather a more literary description than we have gotten from the other two; whether it should be taken literally, however, is another matter. Regardless, I like the bit about them trampling upon each other. This is a novel detail, and it’s the sort of thing that leads me to refer to Luke as the novelist of the Evangelists.

Second, this is a serious case of misdirection. By opening with the size of the crowd, one might expect that we were embarking on a retelling of the feeding of 5,000 or something. Instead, we get a warning about the yeast of the Pharisees. In either Mark or Matthew, this warning comes up as they were crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat, and they had forgotten to bring bread, and the disciples thought that Jesus was making reference to that lack of provision. Given that this makes the disciples look like dolts, chances are this setting was in Mark. OK, upon further review, turns out it’s in both gospels. 

1 Interea multis turbis circumstantibus, ita ut se invicem conculcarent, coepit dicere ad discipulos suos primum: “Attendite a fermento pharisaeorum, quod est hypocrisis.

2 οὐδὲν δὲ συγκεκαλυμμένον ἐστὶν ὃ οὐκ ἀποκαλυφθήσεται, καὶ κρυπτὸν ὃ οὐ γνωσθήσεται. 

3 ἀνθ’ ὧν ὅσα ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ εἴπατε ἐν τῷ φωτὶ ἀκουσθήσεται, καὶ ὃ πρὸς τὸ οὖς ἐλαλήσατε ἐν τοῖς ταμείοις κηρυχθήσεται ἐπὶ τῶν δωμάτων.

“For nothing is covered up which shall not be spread about, and nothing is is hidden which will not be known. (3) Against which however much you speak in the shadows, in the light will be heard, and about which those things you speak inside will be proclaimed upon the house. 

This is a really interesting passage. We heard this sentiment expressed in Matthew, but Luke has recast the vocabulary and the metaphors with some real literary flair. At least, I consider it literary flair; this is, after all, a value judgement, like the one that says Matthew’s arrangement of the Q material was so masterful. Regardless, it indicates a very deliberate and conscious effort on Luke’s part to add a new twist to the words that came to him. Whether these words came from Q or Matthew is not the issue here; at least, it’s not entirely the issue. Because with me, that’s always the issue, or at least part of it. There are two things to note here. 

We’ve already brought up the issue of the more literary quality here. Second, Luke’s version is longer than that of Matthew. Why? I am very willing to bet that none of the Q proponents has ever bothered to explain that fact. Put together, these two observations would, seemingly, blow a huge hole in the idea that Luke retains the more is the more primitive version of Q of the two gospels, wouldn’t it?  Of course, Q proponents say that Luke is the more primitive, except when he isn’t. IOW, they are not terribly consistent about this, which is interesting since they demand the redactionally consistent explanation for every instance in which Luke deviates from Matthew. What about when Matthew deviates so glaringly from the Q text–taking “Q” as equivalent to “Luke”, which is standard in the Q argument–as Matthew does in this quote? Do we get explanations for those cases? Of course not. Only those attempting to refute Q have to be consistent.

2 Nihil autem opertum est, quod non reveletur, neque absconditum, quod non sciatur.

3 Quoniam, quae in tenebris dixistis, in lumine audientur; et, quod in aurem locuti estis in cubiculis, praedicabitur in tectis.

4 Λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν τοῖς φίλοις μου, μὴ φοβηθῆτε ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποκτεινόντων τὸ σῶμα καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα μὴ ἐχόντων περισσότερόν τι ποιῆσαι.

5 ὑποδείξω δὲ ὑμῖν τίνα φοβηθῆτε: φοβήθητε τὸν μετὰ τὸ ἀποκτεῖναι ἔχοντα ἐξουσίαν ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν γέενναν: ναί, λέγω ὑμῖν, τοῦτον φοβήθητε.

“I say to you my friends, do not fear from those killing the body and afterwards not having anything more to do. (5) I will demonstrate to you something you should fear: fear the one after the killing having power to throw you into Gehenna. Yes, I say to you, you should fear this. 

Once again, let’s remind ourselves of the context here. Jesus & crew are in the midst of an innumerable multitude, in a crowd so dense that they are stepping on each other. And yet, Jesus turns to his disciples first, and starts talking about the Pharisees. Then he starts talking about killing the body and throwing it into Gehenna. If he spoke to the disciples first, is he still speaking to them solely? Or has he  turned to the wider crowd? In both Mark and Matthew, these speeches of Jesus occur in situations in which Jesus is alone with the disciples. 

So why does Luke change the surroundings? I do not have a ready answer for that. However, as I see it, what matters is that Luke did change the surroundings. There is a lot made of how Luke never agrees with Matthew against Mark when it comes to placement of stories. He does, however, frequently disagree with both Mark and Matthew when the latter two agree. Luke does not scruple not only to change the location of the story in the narrative flow, but he also has no qualms about changing the actual setting, the physical circumstances that existed around Jesus when he delivers his message. The fact that Luke consistently does this in situations where M&M agree, but not when Matthew disagrees with Mark should not be seen as coincidental. It happens too often, and only in this one direction.

4 Dico autem vobis amicis meis: Ne terreamini ab his, qui occidunt corpus et post haec non habent amplius, quod faciant.

5 Ostendam autem vobis quem timeatis: Timete eum, qui postquam occiderit, habet potestatem mittere in gehennam. Ita dico vobis: Hunc timete.

6 οὐχὶ πέντε στρουθία πωλοῦνται ἀσσαρίων δύο; καὶ ἓν ἐξ αὐτῶν οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπιλελησμένον ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ.

7 ἀλλὰ καὶ αἱ τρίχες τῆς κεφαλῆς ὑμῶν πᾶσαι ἠρίθμηνται. μὴ φοβεῖσθε: πολλῶν στρουθίων διαφέρετε.

“Are not two sparrows sold for five (small coins)? And one of them is not forgotten (= not one of them is forgotten) before God. (7) But also the hairs of your heads are all numbered. Do not fear: you are different from many sparrows.

Just a few comments on the Greek. The term assarios is not at all common in Greek of any sort. The only translation I can find is “farthing”, which is an English coin no longer in use, which was equal to a quarter of a penny. Obviously, no one in the ancient world was buying and selling with English currency. Nor is the Latin any help. The word is dipundio, which means two-pundi (or something). So this is is the first example of a consensus translation in the two verses. Obviously, in this case, the meaning is clear enough; the comparison is to something very inexpensive, and sparrows are about as common–and therefore cheap–as they come. The price quoted would be the cost to purchase these sparrows for sacrifice in the Temple. As I said, this is a very uncommon word; it does, however, appear in both Luke and Matthew. Can you guess where we are going with this? How likely is it that a source that claims to be words of Jesus would use such a rare word? Would Jesus have used such a word? Almost certainly not. Would the collector of the sayings that became Q use the word? Impossible to be sure, unlikely in the extreme. It would depend on the literary chops of the collector. But let’s do a thought experiment: we know that Mark does indeed represent a more “primitive” version of the gospel than either of the other two. One salient aspect of this primitivism is the rather poor quality of Mark’s Greek. If Q dates back to shortly after the time of Jesus, then for the compiler of Q to use a word like assarios, we have to conclude that the compiler is more adept in Greek than Mark was. Does that make sense? For the compilation of Q to date back to Jesus, the aggregation would needs have been done by an early follower. Such early followers were probably Jewish/Aramaic in background; that is, they were probably not native Greek speakers, and they probably were not well enough educated to be able to write Greek.

So who was this compiler? That question is never addressed, let alone answered. There is no hypothetical discussion of this. There are a number of anonymous Greek texts dealing with political life in Athens. The controversy about who these authors were–or, at least, what sort of background they had–is fierce and contentious. My favourite attribution is to someone referred to as the “Old Oligarch”, the author of a text not terribly fond of the idea of democracy. And yet in the Q discussion, there is absolutely nothing. Crickets, as the common vernacular would put it. This is not surprising since there is essentially no discussion of the vocabulary of Q in itself, let alone any discussion of the content of the sayings of Q; do they fit the period of the 30s? Or do they seem to fit a much later period? This would be a very fruitful discussion to have.

On the other hand, we know that Matthew was rather adept at Greek. He had a decidedly large and rather sophisticated vocabulary; and Luke exceeded Matthew on both accounts. So ask yourself this question: is this word more likely to have originated in the text of some lesser-educated, non-Greek compiler, or from the pen of someone much more educated and likely much more fluent in Greek? The answer seems pretty obvious to me. By no means a slam-dunk, but nothing is in NT studies. IMO, it’s much more likely that the word came from Matthew, and was then copied by Luke.

The second consensus translation is diapherete. Here, the sense of the text is that the disciples are valued more than a sparrow, hardly an earth-shaking statement. The problem is that this is not what the word really means in Classical Greek. In my favourite quote from Marcus Aurelius, written in his Meditations, is the expression “many grains of incense on the same altar. One falls first, then another. There is no difference”. The last four English words are expressed in Greek as diapherei d’ouden. That is, the word used is the same as here. Except in Aurelius, it means there is no difference, and this is one of the standard meanings of the word in Greek. And please to note, Meditations was written about a century after the NT. So it’s not a case that the meaning of the word had evolved by the time Luke wrote. Now, in this case, the Latin very clearly says ‘you are worth more than many sparrows’, so I will have to concede this point. St Jerome knew his Greek much better than I ever could. But it is very interesting to note that Matthew uses the word consistently to mean “is of more value”. Luke only uses the word once, but he uses it exactly like Matthew does, and in an identical pericope. Yes, of course, the word is in Q. However, the word is rare in the NT. It is used by Paul in Gal 4:1, but he uses it as M Aurelius does: to mean “different”. This is, admittedly, very weak evidence on my part, but it adds yet one more straw–however thin and slight it may be–to the burden on the back of the camel that is carrying the “argument” for Q.

6 Nonne quinque passeres veneunt dipundio? Et unus ex illis non est in oblivione coram Deo.

7 Sed et capilli capitis vestri omnes numerati sunt. Nolite timere; multis passeribus pluris estis.

8 Λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν, πᾶς ὃς ἂν ὁμολογήσῃ ἐν ἐμοὶ ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὁμολογήσει ἐν αὐτῷ ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀγγέλων τοῦ θεοῦ:

9 ὁ δὲ ἀρνησάμενός με ἐνώπιον τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀπαρνηθήσεται ἐνώπιον τῶν ἀγγέλων τοῦ θεοῦ.

“I say to you, all who speak the same as me before men, and the son of man will speak the same as him before the angels of God. (9) But the one denying me before men will be denied before the angels of god. 

Just a quick question: where did the angels come from? The couple of restored versions of Q that I’ve checked include the angels in the text. IOW, once again, or by default, Luke is the more primitive version, so if Luke has angels, then Q obviously had angels. The logic supporting this conclusion is atrocious. It’s a combination of circularity and post hoc ergo propter hoc. There is no coherent or consistent case for taking Luke as the more primitive version aside from the fact that he doesn’t say “our father” and he says “blessed are the poor”, omitting the “in spirit” of Matthew. Yes, there are a few other such instances, but there is no way that they add up to a satisfactory argument that can be used to take Luke’s “primitivity” as a given. I see absolutely no reason to take the inclusion of angels here as an indication of the older version. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is an understanding of angels in a sense somewhat divorced from the idea of a messenger. 

BTW: homologein literally means speak the same, but it more idiomatically means to agree. Here, however, it is taken as to confess, as in, to acknowledge. If you sneak a peek at the Latin (which I encourage; that’s why it’s there), you will see confessus, so the etymology is apparent. So, it’s stretching the original meaning of the word, but we’ve experienced worse.

8 Dico autem vobis: Omnis, quicumque confessus fuerit in me coram hominibus, et Filius hominis confitebitur in illo coram angelis Dei;

9 qui autem negaverit me coram hominibus, denegabitur coram angelis Dei.

10 καὶ πᾶς ὃς ἐρεῖ λόγον εἰς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀφεθήσεται αὐτῷ: τῷ δὲ εἰς τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα βλασφημήσαντι οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται.

11 ὅταν δὲ εἰσφέρωσιν ὑμᾶς ἐπὶ τὰς συναγωγὰς καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας, μὴ  μεριμνήσητε πῶς ἢ τί ἀπολογήσησθε ἢ τί εἴπητε:

12 τὸ γὰρ ἅγιον πνεῦμα διδάξει ὑμᾶς ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἃ δεῖ εἰπεῖν.

“And all who will speak a word against the son of man, it will be forgiven to him. To him against the sacred breath they blaspheme, it will not be forgiven,. (11) When they bring you in upon the synagogues and the magistrates and those in authority, do not be concerned how either you will defend yourselves or what you will say. (12) For the sacred breath will teach you in that hour what must be said.”

My first reaction when we went from stuff being shouted from the rooftops to not being afraid of those who can only kill the body, it seemed like we had a non sequitur. However, after reading the whole section that we’ve just finished, I see the overall structure more completely. It is:

• do not fear those killing the body;
• you are worth more than sparrows, and God cares for them;
• just be faithful to me (Jesus) before men and I will be faithful to you before of men;
• but have a care not to blaspheme against the sacred breath;
• for it will be the sacred breath telling you what to say when you’re on trial before those men–who happen to have authority.

So, yeah, that works. With one possible exception: what happened to the huge crowd that numbered in the tens of thousands? What was that all about? It would make sense if this fell into, say, the Sermon on the Mount in corresponding section of Matthew; Jesus was talking to a crowd there as well. But here? Not so much. Perhaps if I be but patient, the purpose of the crowd will become apparent.

10 Et omnis, qui dicet verbum in Filium hominis, remittetur illi; ei autem, qui in Spiritum Sanctum blasphemaverit, non remittetur.

11 Cum autem inducent vos in synagogas et ad magistratus et potestates, nolite solliciti esse qualiter aut quid respondeatis aut quid dicatis:

12 Spiritus enim Sanctus docebit vos in ipsa hora, quae oporteat dicere ”.