chapter five
Luke is the only synoptic writer that uses the address “man” (Aνρωπε)
and it is also typical of Luke to describe Jesus’ “turning to” people.^106
Thus, it seems clear that the phrases were originally created by Luke.
Nevertheless, there is evidence which indicates that bothThomasand
theGospel of the Hebrewsdid not get these expressions directly from the
Gospel of Luke but from a harmonistic gospel that is somehow related to
theDiatessaron.
Three Rich Men in the Diatessaron
The synoptic parallel for logion is in Luke :–. Because these
verses are only found in Luke, the discussion about the tradition history
of logion has usually focused on the question of whether or not
it is possible to see traces of Luke’s editorial work inThomas’saying,
and it has often escaped the notice of scholars that the same verses
were also in theDiatessaron.Itisknownthat,intheDiatessaron,Luke
:– functioned as an introduction to the Parable of the Rich Fool
(Luke :–) which was the first story in the sequence of three
stories about rich men. The second one in the series was the Rich Man’s
Question (Mark :–; Matthew :–; Luke :–). That is
precisely the same story of which a Jewish-Christian version is quoted
in Origen’sCommentary on Matthew. The third story in theDiatessaron
was the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke :–, –
).^107 Thus, when Quispel pointed out a stylistic similarity between
logion and the fragment in Origen’sCommentary,hewasinfact
referring to two passages that followed each other in theDiatessaron.
Becausethesepassagesarenotlinkedtogetherinthesynopticgospels,the
observation that they followed each other in theDiatessaronincreases the
probability that their stylistic similarities are not coincidental. However,
theDiatessaron’ssequence of passages cannot prove anything unless there
is further evidence which shows that the writers of logion and the
Jewish-Christian fragment knew the same sequence.
(^106) Aνρωπεoccurs three times in Luke: in : it replaces Mark’sτ κνν, : is in
Luke’s own tradition, and in : Luke probably rewrites Mark :. Mark does not use
στρ 1ωat all, and, in Matthew, Jesus “turns to” his disciples (Peter) or supplicants twice:
Matt : and :. In Luke this happens seven times: :, ; :; :; :; :;
:.
(^107) The first one to notice this Diatessaronic sequence of passages was C.A. Phillips in
. For the summary of Phillips’ observations, see Petersen , –.