jewish-christian gospels and syriac gospel traditions Saying
[A man said] to him, “Tell my brothers to divide my father’s possessions
with me.” He said to him, “Oman, who has made me a divider?”He turned
tohisdisciplesand said to them, “I am not a divider, am I?”Origen,Comm. Matt. .^103
(The Gospel of the Hebrews)^104
It is written in a certain gospel which is called according to the Hebrews
(if, however, it pleases somebody to accept it, not as authority but in order
to bring to light the question that has been put): Another rich man, it says,
said to him: “Master what good must I do in order to live?” He said to him:
“Man, do the Law and the prophets.” He answered him: “I have done.” He
said to him: “Go, sell all that you possess and divide it among the poor and
come, follow me.” But the rich man begun to scratch his head and it did
not please him. The Lord said to him: “How can you say: ‘I have done the
Law and the Prophets?’ For it is written in the Law: love your neighbor as
yourself. See, many of your brothers, sons of Abraham, are covered with
dung, dying from hunger and your house is full of many good things, and
nothing at all comes out of it for them.”He turnedand saidtoSimon,his
disciplethat was sitting by him: “Simon, Son of Jonah, it is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of heaven.”Stylistic Similarity
Quispel notes that the expressionστρα1ε,ς πρ.ς τς μαητ%ςis found
in the NT only in Luke : but he thinks that “Thomas and H. Ev.,
however, show that this stylistic device is not exclusively Lukan.”^105 For
Quispel, the rarity of the expression seems to indicate that there must be
a connection between the fragment in Origen’s passage and theGospel of
Thomas, but in his view, the connection is not related to Luke.
Quispel’s stylistic argument has not received much attention. However,
he may have been on the right track although the hypothesis about
the independence ofGos. Thom.andtheGospel of the Ebionitesfrom
Luke is difficult to prove. First of all, the only unique feature in the
expressionστρα1ε,ς πρ.ς τς μαητ%ςis an explicit use of the noun
μαητ8ς.Second,bothAνρωπεandστρα1ε,ς πρ.ς τς...areclearly
compatible with Luke’s style and are used several times in his gospel.
(^103) The translation draws on Klijn & Reinink , –, and Vielhauer & Strecker
^2 (^1 ), .
(^104) TheGHattributesthisto“theGospeloftheNazarenes”.Foranalysis,seeChap-
ter ..
(^105) Quispel , –.