"Make friends...by unrighteous mammon"

What's the worst misunderstanding of Christ's teaching?

How about believing that Jesus commands disciples to act like an embezzler and corrupter of others?

So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail*, they may receive you into an everlasting home.

Luke 16:8-9 (NKJV)

*Other manuscripts read, "it fails"

Why do nearly 100% of known Bible translations present Jesus as commanding His disciples to act like a house-manager who first squanders his lord's property, and then, when facing unemployment, pulls other people into a conspiracy of fraud, lying, and stealing from his lord?

Any professional translator of Ancient Greek knows* that Luke 16:9 can be translated as a question instead, which would avoid painting Jesus as recommending fraud, lying and stealing, which are elsewhere in the New Testament condemned as sins whose practice prevents a person from inheriting God's Kingdom (1 Corinthians 6:10, Revelation 21:8).

It sure looks like a confirmation of what the Holy Bible warns, with regard to mental blinding: (1) A general mental blindness for all who do not properly value knowledge of God (Romans 1:31)

(2) Specifically theological mental blindness for those who lack humility (Matthew 11:25), repentance (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12) or obedience to Christ (John 14:15-17), mentioned again in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4.

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* It is a plain fact, inexplicably beyond the knowledge of any professional Bible translator or commentator, that the long-enduring grammatical norms of Ancient Greek, from Classical (Morwood 2001:162) through Koine (Blass Debrunner 1975:365), often require dependence on the context of a written clause to determine whether it is a question or a declaration, because the text of the clause is unmarked, lacking a question word, altered word order, or punctuation. This norm is well attested in the New Testament itself: there are at least 22 examples of unmarked clauses that popular modern translations have interpreted as questions (Matthew 3:14; 8:7; 11:3; 15:16; 20:22; 27:11; Mark 14:61; 15:2; Luke 7:19, 20; 9:54; 22:48; John 18:33, 34; Acts 22:27; 25:9; Romans 3:9, 29; 1 Corinthians 7:27; 2 Corinthians 11:22, 23; Galatians 1:10). Cited: Morwood, James, 2001, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, Oxford University Press; Blass, Friedrich, and Debrunner, Albert, 1975, Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, University of Chicago Press.

What is a scientifically* and ethically* justifiable translation of Luke 16:9?

We propose the following answer:

This text has more than one intended meaning:

1. Hearers who interpret using a rule that Jesus is always consistent will read it with irony.

2. Hearers who believe Jesus is not always consistent will read it without irony.

3. Hearers who believe Jesus teaches licentiousness will likely read it without irony.

PROPOSED TEXT OF LUKE 16:8-9 FOR POPULAR PUBLICATION

And the lord praised the house-manager for the unrighteousness, because he acted shrewdly, because the sons of this aeon are shrewder than the sons of light, in their own generation. And I say to you, 'Make friends for yourselves from the mammon of the unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they may welcome you into the eternal dwellings!'?*

*The Greek text can be read as a question or as a statement.

WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR THAT ANSWER?

LET'S TAKE A LOOK FIRST AT THE EVIDENCE*

(*The other parts of the basis for that answer, namely the presuppositional, logical, archival, and bias-corrective premises, are described after the evidential premises.)

The combination of cooperative and competitive meanings is a basic principle of the Holy Bible:

1. The prophet Isaiah is given a message that is not intended to be understood by those whom God does not want to convert before terrible judgement has fallen:

Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant,

and the houses without man,

and the land be utterly desolate,

and the Lord have removed men far away,

and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

But yet in it shall be a tenth,

... so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

Isaiah 6:11-13, KJV

2. Jesus describes that His use of parables is a New-Covenant fulfillment of the Old-Covenant, foreshadowing history of Isaiah's message not-to-be-understood:

And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: for this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. "

Matthew 13:10-16, KJV

3. In Psalm 25, the connection between fear of the Lord and wisdom (so often repeated in the Holy Bible) is detailed further:

Who is the human who is fearing the Lord?

He will furnish law for him, in a way that He selected.

The soul of his will lodge among good things,

and the seed of his will inherit land.

The Lord will strengthen them fearing Him,

[and the name of the Lord, them fearing Him,]

and His covenant He will make known to them.

Psalm 25:12-14, CFB

4. Psalm 25 also finds a New-Covenant fulfillment in Christ's teaching:

If you would love Me, the commandments of Mine you will keep*, and I will ask the Father and another helper He will grant to you, so that with you, into the aeon, It will be, the Spirit of the truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees It nor knows It. You know It, because beside you It abides and in** you It will be.

John 14:15-17, CFB

*The Greek verb can be read also as an imperative, "keep!"

**Or, "among".

5. The ironic question in Isaiah 1:18 is also missed by many translators, and also resolved clearly by its immediate context.

16 Wash! Become clean! Take away the iniquities of your lives from before My eyes! Cease from your iniquities!

17 Learn to do good! Seek out judgement!

Rescue the injured! Be judges for the fatherless! Do justice for the widow!

18 And come here and let us reason! says the Lord:

So if the sins of yours would be like crimson, I shall whiten them like snow? And if they would be like scarlet, I shall whiten them like wool?

19 Then, if you are willing and you hearken to me, you will eat the good of the land.

20 But if you are not willing and you do not hearken to me, a sword will devour you.

For the mouth of the Lord spoke these things.

Why is it possible to translate Luke 16:9 as ironic?

(1) A yes/no question was often written in Ancient Greek in an identical way to a non-question (a declarative clause). Context and background knowledge could enable a reader to recognise it as a question:

Daniel 2:26

Is it so you are able to make known to me the dream ...?

ha ’i: ta: ik ka:hel lə ho:w ḏa: ‘u: ta ni: telma:’ (Aramaic)

duné:se:i de:lô:saí moi tò hórama; (Ancient Greek*)

The clause is marked in Aramaic by ha as a question but is unmarked in Ancient Greek. Much later, editors have added punctuation to manuscript copies.

* This is a phonetic transcription of the Ancient-Greek text of the online Rahlfs/Hanhart 2006 edition of the Septuagint.

Luke 9:54

Lord, You want we tell fire to come down from the Heaven...?

Kúrie, tʰéleis eípo:men pûr katabê:nai apò toû ouranoû...;

Luke 10:40

Lord, not it matters to You that the sister of mine alone me leaves

Kúrie, ou mélei soi hóti he: adelfé: mou móne:n me katéleipen

to serve?

diakoneîn;

(2) The text begins with an Ancient Greek word "kaí" that can introduce a contradiction.

St Luke's Gospel has other examples where "kaí" joins two clauses that have a clear adversative relation to each other.

Luke 11:29

It asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it... (NRSV)

se:meîon ze:teî kaì se:meîon ou dotʰé:setai auté:…. (NA28)

Luke 13:26-27

Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate before You and drank, and in the streets of ours you taught!’

And He will say to you, 'I do not know where you are from....'

kaì ereî légo:n humîn ouk oîda pótʰen esté (NA28)

Luke 13:34

Jerusalem! Jerusalem who killed the prophets and stoned them sent to her! How often I wanted to gather together the children of yours, that way a hen gathers the brood of her own under the wings,

and you were not willing.

kaì ouk e:tʰelé:sate. (NA28)

Luke 20:19

Both the scribes and the chief priests sought to put the hands on Him in the selfsame hour,

and they feared the people

kaì efobé:tʰe:san tòn laón (NA28)

In Biblical Aramaic and Hebrew, the conjunction "wə" is likewise or even moreso used to join contradictory statements.

Irony and ambiguity are also easier to produce when using a conjunction like "and", "kaí", or "wə".

Psalm 106:15

wa- jitten la-hem she’elatam (Masoretic text from BHS)

And He gave to them their request,

wa- jeshalach razon be-nafsham.

[a1] and sent wasting/disease into their souls

[a2] and sent fullness into their souls

(3) It matches the structure of argumentation found when Jesus uses irony elsewhere in the New Testament: An ironic statement followed by the contradiction and explanation.

(i) Jesus ironically lists possible explanations for what people went out to see in the wilderness where John the Baptist was: “A reed shaken by the wind? … A person clothed in soft garments?” (Matthew 11:7-8, Luke 7:24-25).

(ii) Another example of irony in Jesus’s speech (Luke 7:31-34) may suffice to clarify the pattern throughout, consistent with Isaiah 1:18, namely the articulation of the absurdity of an opposing argument or position (comparable to the reductio ad absurdum form of argumentation).

Why is the cooperative meaning of Luke 16:9 the ironic reading?

(1) Jesus immediately makes 6 separate statements against acting like the house-manager of the parable. These all conflict with a non-ironic reading of Christ's words.

“He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16.10a, NKJV).

“He who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16.10b, NKJV).

“Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” (Luke 16.11, NKJV).

“And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?” (Luke 16.12, NKJV).

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other” (Luke 16.13a, NKJV).

“You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16.13b, NKJV).

(2) The non-ironic reading of Luke 16:9 is also contradicted elsewhere in the New Testament:

1. Practising falsehood leads to eternal condemnation (Revelation 21:8, 22:15).

2. Leading other people into sin (e.g. fraud, lying, stealing) is prohibited, on pain of eternal condemnation (Matthew 18:6-9, Mark 9:42-48, Luke 17:1-2).

3. Good conduct toward even unjust masters is required of Christian bondservants (Ephesians 6:5-8, Colossians 3:22-25).

4. People cannot “welcome” other people into the eternal dwellings. It is God who judges and then welcomes (or not). Entry into eternal life or condemnation is not decided by a vote, and certainly not a vote by people who have conspired to defraud, lie and steal. This fact is so plain in Israelite and Christian teaching that the irony of Jesus’s statement is surely to be obvious.

(3) There is evidence that the parable is a warning to disciples about the corrupting influence of wealth, where the master in this parable (unlike in many other of Jesus’s parables) does not represent God but “the god of this aeon” (cp. 2 Corinthians 4:4), who, in the fashion of a chief corrupter, praises the shrewdness of his corrupt house-manager who corrupts many others too.

(4) The distinction is made in the parable between “the sons of this aeon” (represented by the house-manager, and perhaps the debtors he led into fraud) and “the sons of light”. Would Jesus recommend that his disciples act like “the sons of this aeon”?

The misunderstood teaching of Jesus to “be wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16) may contribute to misunderstanding here too.

Being told to be as wise as serpents does not imply that one is being told to act like a serpent; this is clarified by the context and the accompanying command to be as innocent as doves. Rather, it is fairly clear that Jesus means that the disciples ought to be anticipating the strategies of the evil into which Jesus explicitly warns he is sending his disciples.

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NOTES

* SCIENTIFICALLY JUSTIFIABLE

How should we define scientific?

The practice of science focuses on producing reliable knowledge. Science is required to produce knowledge so dependable that it can be used in applications involving high costs and risks: for example engineering, medicine or pastoring. Science itself depends on its own knowledge, because new research builds on old research, in a steadily accumulating process of more and more knowledge enabling greater and greater understanding of phenomena.

How science produces reliable knowledge is widely debated. However, the reliability requirement inescapably implies one necessary aspect of a scientific method: it must allow a knowledge-claim to be tested by others to check how reliable that claim is. Only after a claim of new knowledge has been tested widely by many different people is it reasonable to consider it reliable enough to be used in an application.

2-part core requirement for a scientific method

A transparent attempt to falsify a claim of new knowledge is the core requirement for a scientific method. Transparency is necessary so others can review and repeat the attempt. The attempt to falsify is necessary because if a claim is of a type there is no way to falsify, then it cannot be distinguished from imagination.

Transparency is provided by fully disclosing all the elements of the scientific investigation. Here we propose that a knowledge claim should be disclosed as a conclusion drawn from 5 types of premises:

(1) Presuppositional*

(2) Evidentiary

(3) Logical

(4) Archival

(5) Reflexive / Bias-correcting

Falsification

How can a claim about the intended meaning of an ancient text be falsified? Two ways are:

(1) It leads to an inconsistency in its explanation of the ancient text.

(2) It is contradicted by reliable facts about the text or the world.

Summary

A scientifically justifiable translation involves two parts:

(I) A fully disclosed claim about what a text can have been intended to mean.

(II) A fully disclosed attempt to falsify the claim.

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*The first 4 types are proposed in Hugh G. Gauch Jr, Scientific Method in Brief, Cambridge University Press, 2012. We propose 5th type on the grounds of arguments made in Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg, Reflexive methodology—New vistas for qualitative research, 2nd edn, SAGE, 2009.

* ETHICALLY JUSTIFIABLE

How should we define ethical?

Among many competing definitions, the New-Testament definition of moral goodness is to care for others as Christ cared for others (Luke 9:23; John 15:12-14; Romans 8:17; 1 John 4:17). The Christ Care Principle of ethics can be summarised as: Act to maximise all others' quality of life over an unknown timespan.

Who are "all others"? All others can be defined consistently with the TNK and NT as all possibly sentient beings: human (1 Timothy 2:4), angelic (Hebrews 1:6), non-human animal (Proverbs 12:10), and non-animal (Psalm 98:8, Isaiah 55:12). This definition of ethical entails that something is ethically justifiable if it does not suppress all others' quality of life over an unknown timespan.

Summary

An ethically justifiable translation includes four claims of non-suppression of others' quality of life over an unknown timespan:

(1) Humans

(2) Angels

(3) Non-human animals

(4) Non-animals

What is a cooperative meaning?

The concept of a cooperative meaning comes from a branch of Language Sciences (or Linguistics) called Pragmatics. The groundwork of Pragmatics was provided by a philosopher named H.P. (Paul) Grice who worked in Oxford (UK) then Berkeley (US). His main question was, "How do speakers use language to mean things?"

To answer that question, Grice noted useful distinctions among phenomena related to meaning. One distinction is natural meaning versus non-natural meaning. Natural meaning has nothing to do with the intention of a speaker and everything to do with how natural phenomena (e.g. gravity, soundwaves, etc.) relate to each other. In (1) and (2) we see examples of natural meaning:

(1) "I feel a pulse! That means her heart is beating!"

(2) "The absence of light from that part of the Universe means a black hole is there."

In contrast, non-natural meaning has everything to do with the intentions of a speaker. Grice defined non-natural meaning as meaning that a speaker intends to communicate to an addressee together with the addressee's recognition that the meaning was intended.

Grice's definition* of non-natural meaning is precise:

A speaker "S", who produces an utterance, non-naturally means a proposition "P" to an addressee "A" if, and only if, "S" intends

(i) "A" to think "P"

(ii) "A" to recognise that "S" intended (i), and

(iii) "A's" recognition of the speaker's intending (i) to be the primary reason for the addressee to think "P".

Intended meaning that is recognised-as-intended is the focus, therefore, for trying to answer Grice's (and Pragmatic's) main question.

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* Grice gives a detailed explanation of the definition in "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions", chapter 5 of his Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 86-116.

Syntax (the study of signs’ relations to each other)

Semantics (the study of signs’ relation to what they describe)

Pragmatics (the study of signs’ relations to their users; i.e. how users use signs to mean things)

KJV: Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

NRSV: New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.