Luke 16 - Introduction

CHAPTER 16.

TWO ADDITIONAL PARABLES ON THE RIGHT USE OF WEALTH.

These two parables, the unjust steward and Dives, bear such a foreign aspect when compared with the general body of Christ's teaching as to give rise to a doubt whether they have any claim to a place in an authentic record of His sayings. One at first wonders at finding them in such company, forming with the preceding three a group of five. Yet Luke had evidently no sense of their incongruity, for he passes from the three to the two as if they were of kindred import (ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ). Doubtless they appealed to his social bias by the sympathy they betray for the poor (cf. Luke 6:20; Luke 11:41), which has gained for them a place among the so-called Ebionitic sections of Luke's Gospel (vide Holtzmann in H. C.). In favour of the authenticity of the first of the two parables is its apparently low ethical tone which has been such a stumbling-block to commentators. Who but Jesus would have had the courage to extract a lesson of wisdom from conduct like that of the unrighteous steward? The literary grace of the second claims for it the same origin and author.