15 - The Widow's Mites

Summary

This small pericope has no Matthean parallel, and thus the GH must claim that Luke first inserted the story into the Matthean structure and that Mark used Luke. Farmer argues that this indeed happened, and his case depends almost solely on form-critical evidence. Farmer discusses the ‘Chreia’ form as used by Greek rhetoricians, and claims that Luke's version is nearest to this pure form. Mark's version, on the other hand, clearly shows secondary features in the‘completely unnecessary’ threefold repetition of the term used for the‘temple treasury’, the lack of conciseness in the introduction, the added detail that‘he called his disciples to him’ which is ‘but a literary effort at verisimilitude which adds nothing to the Chreia\ and in the interpretative gloss explaining that two lepta in terms of Roman coinage amounted to a quadrans. ‘On strictly form-critical grounds, Luke's form is clearly more original.’

With regard to these form-critical considerations, it is very doubtful if they will bear the weight which Farmer puts on them. He claims that the unit is a Chreia, and quotes with approval the definition of Dibelius:‘It is a reproduction of a short pointed saying of general significance, originating in a definite person and arising out of a definite situation.’