A Marcion Textual Crux
Luke 5:39
The Old Wine is Good

Overview

The metaphor of new wine, which requires new wineskins to hold it, occurs in all three Synoptics, where it symbolizes the newness of the teachings of Jesus. It is followed, but only in Luke, by a statement (Lk 5:39) that the old wine is after all better than the new:

Lk 5:39. And no one after drinking old wine desires the new, for he says, The old is good.

The question is whether this passage is really Lukan, or was instead a later addition.

Marcion, on the detailed testimony of his contemporary enemies, consistently rejected Jewish elements in Christianity. He favored Luke among the Gospels (the associated Acts clearly defines the future of Christianity as lying outside Judaism). Among other writings, he regarded only the Epistles of Paul as canonical (it is Paul who declares the Jewish law to be no longer binding in the Age of Jesus). One story has it that Marcion challenged the churchmen of Rome, who were disposed to accept Jewish law as still relevant for Christians (a view articulated in Matthew), to explain the Matthean version of the new wine saying (Mt 9:17), which contradicts it by preferring the new wine. The Lukan parallel to that saying is Lk 5:37-38.

Marcion's own version of Luke, we are informed by the adverse witnesses, included Lk 5:37-38, but not 5:39. If 5:39 had been in Marcion's text of Luke, Marcion might well have excised it, as favoring continuity with Old Testament traditions. On the other hand, if it was not in the text of Luke which Marcion used (and the Matthean and Markan parallels suggest that it is extraneous), of course he could not have included it. The absence of 5:39 in Marcion's Luke thus has two possible explanations. Which is more likely to be correct?

We note that if the passage was not in Marcion's Luke, the ruling possibility is that it was added later by an anti-Marcionite hand, to counter the Marcionite interpretation of the preceding passage. There is thus a convincing motive for the addition of what, on any reasonable reading, is inconsistent with the plain sense of the preceding "new wine" metaphor. In the event that other evidence suggests that 5:39 was not in Marcion's Luke, we thus have a plausible scenario for its addition. It is not immediately obvious that an equally convincing motive can be adduced for its addition after the completion of Luke, but before Luke was seen by Marcion. To that extent, the possibility that 5:39 was not present in Luke as seen by Marcion is better supported against the alternative.

Further Details

Textual Support. Lk 5:39 is present in the usual major texts: Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and the great majority of others, including the early Papyrus 75. It is absent in Bezae and in the Old Latin version as reconstructed by Jülicher. This pattern of support is somewhat reminiscent of the so-called Western Non-Interpolations, a set of nine passages (8 in Luke, 1 in Matthew) which are present in Vaticanus and the rest, but absent in Bezae and a few Old Latin manuscripts. The best critical opinion (see the dissenting view of Metzger Textual Commentary ad loc) holds that these are very early interpolations in the ancestor of Vaticanus and others, but were not made in the ancestor of Bezae, which in these instances actually preserves the earlier wording. The implication is that the ancestor of Bezae split off very early from the main line of development. A current question in text criticism is how many other passages may belong to the same category as the nine recognized, and excised, by Westcott and Hort. Lk 5:39 is one possible candidate for such consideration. Its direct contradiction of the sense of the preceding metaphor favors the idea that it was a later addition to 5:37-38. We now have two points in favor of this possibility, one of which (the anti-Marcionite addition theory) implies a date after 145 for the addition.

The Non-Canonical Texts present another complication. Thomas 47 reads as follows:

Th 47. (1) Jesus said, it is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to bend two bows. (2) Also, it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters, or he will honor the one and insult the other. (3) No one drinks aged wine and immediately wants to drink unaged wine. (4) Also, unaged wine is not put into old wineskins so that they may burst. Nor is aged wine put into a new wineskin so that it may spoil. (5) An old patch is not sewn onto a new garment because a tear would result.

This is from the portion of Coptic Thomas that is not paralleled in Greek Thomas, and there is always the possibility that parts of Coptic Thomas lying beyond the compass of Greek Thomas (whose range is Th 1-39 inclusive) are later additions. Th 47 is obviously a composite of several Synoptic sayings: (1) is without close Synoptic parallel, unless it is a joke at the expense of Matthew's picture of Jesus riding two animals as he enters Jerusalem; Mt 21:2-6. (2) is from Mt 6:24 ~ Lk 16:13. (3) is distinctively Lk 5:39, our passage, but here put first rather than last in the "wine" sequence, and followed, in upward order, by the other sayings in the series common to all the Synoptics. That is, Th 47 does not merely quote Lk 5:39, it puts it ahead of the sayings which that passage follows in Lk.

Th 47 has a point, and one consistent with the general stance of the Thomas Logia: one must choose between alternatives. So much is obvious to all the commentators. Why the Thomas author preferred the "old wine" saying to the "new wine" one is not immediately apparent. One possibility is that old wine is more conducive to intoxication, and that intoxication itself has a positive value in Thomas. Pursuing that possibility, we first notice that drunkenness in Thomas 28 (a saying within the compass of Greek Thomas) is apparently negative, a symbol of delusion:

Th 28. Jesus said, I took my stand in the midst of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. My soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see, for they came into the world empty, and they also seek to depart from the world empty. But meanwhile, they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, then they will change their ways.

Even here, though, we may note that "being thirsty" may be symbolic of spiritual aspiration. Th 47 might then be interpreted: "I found them full of wrong wisdom, and not thirsting for true wisdom; they intend to meet their death without any wisdom at all." More directly supportive of wine as a positive metaphor is

Th 13. Jesus said to his disciples, Compare me to something and tell me what I am like. Simon Peter said to him, You are like a righteous angel. Matthew said to him, You are like a wise philosopher. Thomas said to him, Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like. Jesus said, I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended. . . .

This makes the transition from literal wine to "living water" (reminiscent of the "living water" in Jn 4:13-15), while retaining the positive value of "intoxication." After Saying 47, wine never reappears in Thomas, which contains in all 114 sayings. A positive image of drinking does occur toward the end of the text, in Th 108 ("Jesus said, whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him"), but this may more easily be seen as developing the basic thirst metaphor of Th 74 ("He said, Lord, there are many around the drinking trough, but there is nothing in the well"). We may take it that a metaphor of wine as symbolic of higher knowledge was current in Thomas as late as Saying 47, but not thereafter, and that in the rest of the text, a metaphor of drinking from living water was preferred.

It the Thomas compiler of that period found Lk 5:39 in place, we can understand his putting it first, and reversing the other sayings associated with it in Luke. The possibility that Th 47 is primary to Lk 37-39 founders on the facts that (1) what is primary to Lk 37-38 is obviously the Matthean and still earlier Markan parallels, and that in this portion of Thomas, the directionality consistently runs Lk > Th. We end by concluding that the Thomas 47 compiler probably did find the saying in Luke, and highlighted it in its Lukan context. This puts an upper time limit on when Lk 5:39 can have been added to Luke: it must have been prior to the composition of Th 47. Unfortunately, we cannot at present establish the absolute value of that limit, but it does add a constraint that must be satisfied by any solution of the 5:39 problem.

Chronological Conclusion

On present evidence, including points reached on other pages of this site, and given the known history of Marcion and his negative reception, the inconsistency of Lk 5:39 in context, the presence of Lk 5:39 for the compiler of the clearly composite saying Th 47, and the pattern of manuscript attestation, the most likely sequence seems to be this:

Implications

There are implications for other passages outside the Westcott-Hort Nine, which may qualify as early interpolations in the Alexandrian text of Luke and the other Synoptics.

Retrospect

We thus end up differing with Metzger, who, speaking for the UBS 4 Committee, judged that "The external attestation for the inclusion of this verse is almost overwhelming; its omission from several Western witnesses may be due to the influence of Marcion, who rejected the statement because it seemed to give authority to the Old Testament." Why Marcion should have had greater textual influence in the west (whence he was excommunicated and expelled) than in his native east, where his teachings retained a following for several centuries, is not clear.

We also differ from Fitzmyer, who feels that the authority of early witnesses like P75 is virtually decisive, not stopping to notice that the Marcionite interlude occurred well before the probable date of P75, and who struggles to legitimize Lk 5:39 as "wry," that is, as genuine despite the fact that it clearly refutes the presumptively genuine sayings immediately preceding it.

Metzger and Fitzmyer are among the more reliable of modern critics and commentators. But neither of these gentlemen, in our view, has a case on Lk 5:39 that is consistent with their sounder pronouncements elsewhere in Luke. See, for example, Metzger on omitting the chiefly Lukan Western-Non-Interpolations, which have the same pattern of support and unsupport as Lk 5:39; and see Fitzmyer on that same issue and many others throughout his commentary. Text critics deserve to be judged on their happier thoughts, and posterity is best served by not following them in their less happy ones. We so recommend.

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