Luke 12
Luke 12 is the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records a number of teachings and parables told by Jesus Christ when "an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together", but addressed "first of all" to his disciples. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke the Evangelist composed this Gospel as well as the Acts of the Apostles.
Text
The original text was written in Koine Greek. Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:- Papyrus 75
- Papyrus 45
- Codex Vaticanus
- Codex Sinaiticus
- Codex Bezae
- Codex Washingtonianus
- Codex Alexandrinus
- Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus
Hypocrisy and the fear of God
Scottish minister William Robertson Nicoll calls this passage an "exhortation to fearless utterance". Henry Alford suggests that this discourse consists "for the most part of sayings repeated from other occasions".An innumerable multitude
Nicoll suggests that this is "the largest crowd mentioned anywhere in the Gospels" but Jesus speaks "first of all" to his disciples, only turning to the multitude in verses 14–21, in response to a question from someone in the crowd, and again in verses 54–59. Peter asks whether the parable of the faithful servant is addressed solely to the disciples or to the wider multitude.The Jerusalem Bible notes that an alternative reading would connect the word "first" with the succeeding statement: First of all, be on your guard.... Protestant commentator Heinrich Meyer likewise argues that "πρῶτον, before all, is to be taken with προσέχετε"; it does not belong to what precedes". The Matthew Bible and Ruth Magnusson Davis' New Matthew Bible translation pick up this reading:
Verse 2
This verse matches :Eric Franklin suggests that, in particular, it is Pharisaic hypocrisy which will be revealed, while David Robert Palmer translates the initial words of this verse, οὐδὲν δέ, ouden de, as "But there is nothing...", arguing that "the particle δέ is meant to make a contrast here, between hypocrisy, in verse 1, and the disclosure of verse 2".
Verse 3
In Matthew's wording, Jesus speaks in the darkness and exhorts his disciples subsequently to reveal what he has said. Luke's version has the disciples speaking in the darkness. Nicoll compares these versions:Parable of the Rich Fool
Among the canonical gospels of the New Testament, this parable of Jesus appears only in Luke's Gospel. The parable reflects the foolishness of attaching too much importance to wealth. It is introduced by a member of the crowd listening to Jesus, who tries to enlist Jesus' help in a family financial dispute:J. B. Lightfoot, Kuinoel, and others note and emphasise that he was "certainly no attendant of Jesus". Meyer observes that he was "a Jew on whom the endowments and authority of Jesus produced such an impression that he thought he might be able to make use of Him in the matter of his inheritance", but considers that "whether he was a younger brother who grudged to the first-born his double share of the inheritance... must be left in doubt".
An abbreviated version of the parable appears in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas with a longer version similar to Luke's in Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5575.
The parable has been depicted by artists such as Rembrandt, Jan Luyken, James Tissot, and David Teniers the Younger.