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Inside and Outside

Data

(1) GThom. 89
(2) 2Q: Luke 11:39-41 = Matt 23:25-26

 

Texts

(1) GThom. 89

Jesus said, "Why do you wash the outside of the cup?
Don't you understand that the one who made the inside
is also the one who made the outside?" [Complete Gospels]

 

(2) Luke 11:39-41

Then the Lord said to him,
"Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish,
but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.
You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?
So give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.

= Matt 23:25-26
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate,
but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
You blind Pharisee!
First clean the inside of the cup,
so that the outside also may become clean.

 

Notes

John Dominic Crossan

Item: 102
Stratum: I (30-60 CE)
Attestation: Double
Historicity: +
Common Sayings Tradition: Yes

Crossan [Historical Jesus, 262] includes this item in a group of complexes related to the ideal of open or egalitarian commensality: 19 What Goes In, 76 Speck and Log, 80 The Blind Guide, 84 On Hindering Others, 113 Eating with Sinners, 124 Honors and Salutations, and 126 Salting the Salt.

As advocated in parable and acted out in practice, [this ideal] involved very specific challenges from mesocosmic table to macrocosmic society. There is, first and above all, 19 What Goes In [1/4], a complex that negates any value to food taboos or table rituals. The same point is made in 102 Inside and Outside [1/2]. Together they insist that the inside and what comes from the inside out are more important than the outside and what comes from outside in. There is no need to presume that Jesus was speaking against the fully developed table rituals of the Pharisaic sect. An open table and an open menu offend alike against any cultural situation in which distinctions among food and guests mirror social distinctions, discriminations, and hierarchies. It would of course, offend the Pharisees, but it was not directed exclusively against them.

 

IQP

The International Q Project reconstructs the original Q saying as follows:

Woe to you, Pharisees, for you purify the outside of the cup and dish,
but inside [they are] full of plunder and dissipation.
Do you not understand that the one who created the inside
is also the one who created the outside?
[Purify] ... the inside of the cup ... its outside ... pure.

 

Jesus Seminar

Text

Item

 Source

JS Mtg

%Red

%Pink

%Gray

%Black

W Avg

Color

Thom 89:1-2

68

Q, T

87StP

22

35

35

9

0.57

Pink

Matt 23:25-26

68

Q, T

87StP

0

39

26

35

0.35

Gray

Luke 11:39-41

68

Q, T

8tStP

4

22

39

35

0.32

Gray

The commentary in The Five Gospels notes:

The Fellows of the Seminar agreed that the simpler form in Thomas was more likely to be the earlier and so awarded it a pink designation. The forms in both Matthew and Luke appear to have been heavily edited and so were labeled gray. (p. 243)

 

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