1. The Reconstruction and its Parallel

In a previous article, I have proposed the following reconstruction of P.Oxy. 4009 recto:Footnote ¹

Translation:

It is necessary to note that some uncertainties remain as regards the precise wording of the lost letters in each line. In line 9, εἶπον δέ may have alternatives. In line 11, the words διὰ τί—or διὰ τί σύ—could be replaced with another, corresponding expression like πῶς or πῶς σύ; a reconstruction like μένων αὐτῷ· ἐν τῷ ὀ- is possible, but unlikely.

This reconstruction makes it likely that P.Oxy. 4009 is a fragment of a Gospel. Dieter Lührmann has reconstructed, on the basis of comparison with the parallel text 2 Clem 5.2–4, the other side of P.Oxy. 4009 as follows (lines are in brackets, letters visible in fragment are in bold):Footnote ²

Lührmann's reconstruction is widely accepted, but his conclusion that the fragment is part of the Gospel of Peter has not only been welcomed but also contested.Footnote ³ Now, setting aside for a while the identification of the Gospel of the fragment, it is obvious that the author of this Gospel drew not only upon a tradition similar to 2 Clem 5.2–4 but also directly upon the Gospel of Luke. The side reconstructed here must be the recto because the version of the Lukan story must have taken up much space on the previous papyrus page. Between line 14 of the recto and line 4 of the verso reconstructed by Lührmann, we have some 15 lines of unknown content. It is reasonable to assume that the story of the sinful woman ended with a poignant saying of JesusFootnote ⁴ and that the discourse then soon moved over to the sending out of the disciples known from Matt 10 and Luke 10. There is enough space for such a sequence, and it not necessary to assume that the side reconstructed here was not simply a recto but a previous column in a manuscript that was written in double columns per page.

Some observations on the narrative strategy strengthen the assumption that the side reconstructed here is the recto of a page that possibly once belonged to a papyrus codex. P.Oxy. 4009 verso is less eschatological and much more antagonistic in tone than the accounts in Matthew and Luke. The martyrdom of the disciples becomes the central theme of the discourse. The sayings of Jesus in lines 7–8 and 15–19 are based on Matt 10.16b, 16a (Luke 10.3) and 28 (Luke 12.4); they indicate that the harvest mentioned in line 4 is part of a saying like that of Matt 9.37–38 (Luke 10.2).Footnote ⁵ This arrangement of different pieces of tradition may be partly understood in terms of Luke's interest in introducing the themes of discipleship and mission immediately after the story of the sinful woman (8.1–3; cf. also the parable of the sower in 8.4–10).

On the recto, the story of the sinful woman is turned into a dispute about Jesus' authority to forgive sins; the scene underlines the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish religious authorities. In one way or another, this conflict paves the way for Jesus' discourse on the mission and martyrdom of his disciples.Footnote ⁶ They must also call people to repentance and forgive their sins in the name of their Lord. During their mission, they will be persecuted and killed by their enemies who are foreshadowed by Jesus' host and the other guests who do not acknowledge Jesus' authority to forgive sins.

The reconstruction of the recto of P.Oxy. 4009 strengthens the theory that this fragment is not only a part of a Gospel but a part of the Gospel of Peter. In addition to the I-narrator pointed out by Dieter Lührmann and the vocative ΚΕ in line 13, the author of this Gospel, as in the text known to us through the Akhmîm fragment, has used the Gospel of Luke in a creative way. Furthermore, both here and in the Akhmîm text, Lukan stories are interpreted for anti-Jewish purposes. Herod and Pilate (Luke 23.6–12 and Gos Pet 1–5) as well as the repentant evildoer (Luke 23.39–43 and Gos Pet 13–14) are both seen through specifically anti-Jewish lenses. Against this background, it is not at all difficult to understand why the story of the sinful woman is interpreted in terms of an authority conflict and located immediately before Jesus' intensive discourse on the mission, persecution and martyrdom of his disciples.

The version that we have in P.Oxy. 4009 obviously included most of the narrative elements of the story in Luke 7.36–43. In lines 1–9, the author quotes Luke's presentation (vv. 45–47a) in a different order. Before that, he has obviously described what Luke says in v. 44. The different presentation of the actions of the host (H) and the sinful woman (W) in P.Oxy. 4009 and Luke 7 reveal some important aspects of the Pseudo-Petrine redaction:

The author of the Gospel of Peter has changed the order of these items in order to sharpen the conflict between Jesus and his host. Correspondingly, the exemplary actions of the sinful woman—which reflect love and faith—no longer appear as a positive contrast to the negligence of the pious host. As already mentioned, Pseudo-Peter does not accept the idea that the host should have anointed Jesus' head; instead, he should only have provided oil for him that he could have done it himself. This clumsy idea distances the host from Jesus more than was necessary in the Lukan story. On the other hand, Pseudo-Peter has also toned down the affectionate side of the woman's actions. He describes how the woman first anoints Jesus' feet and only then starts kissing them; in his presentation, there is no place for the Lukan phrase ἀϕ’ ἧς εἰσῆλθον. He has also replaced Luke's καταϕιλοῦσα with the more sober ϕιλοῦσα.

Thus far, the affinities of the P.Oxy. 4009 recto with the Western text are dependent on the reconstruction that fills in the lost lines of the fragment. However, in line 9, the fragment does not follow the text of Luke attested by most witnesses and accepted as original by NA 27. It is precisely here that the above-suggested similarities between P.Oxy. 4009 and the Western text become essential for the understanding of this fragment. As A. F. J. Klijn has demonstrated, the Gospel of Peter known through the Akhmîm fragment is clearly drawing upon the Western text of the canonical Gospels.Footnote ⁷ In P.Oxy. 4009 line 9, the author of the Gospel of Peter offers neither Jesus' reasons for his claim that the woman's sins are forgiven (Luke 7:47bc) nor his formal declaration of forgiveness (v. 48). Jesus' words, ἀϕε(ί)ω[νται αὐτῇ πολ]λαὶ ἁμα[ρτίαι, are immediately followed by the response from among the guests. Pseudo-Peter formulates this response in a way that allows him to develop a brief but sharply focused dialogue on the authority of Jesus. This brings his redaction of the Lukan scene much closer to the charge of blasphemy known from Mark 2.7 parr. The missing Lukan verses are these:

Did the pseudo-Petrine author know these verses from the manuscript which he used and simply discard them? Let us take this possibility seriously. In theory, it is possible that Pseudo-Peter knew these sentences and used them partly in lines 14–20. The only instance in which this seems to be possible is line 17 in which the letters πη may indicate the sentence ὅτι ἠγάπησεν πολύ. However, if this option is followed, the other lines are still very difficult to reconstruct. On the other hand, some expressions in v. 47bc may be seen as support for such a conclusion. Pseudo-Peter would not want the reader to understand that Jesus' host loves ‘little’ but that he does not love at all. In addition, he is not interested in the love motif, but in the authority of Jesus and the conflict it raises. However, v. 48 points in the opposite direction. Pseudo-Peter would hardly have discarded v. 48, which emphasizes Jesus' status as the one who has the authority to forgive sins. Therefore it is easiest to assume that the author of the Gospel of Peter simply did not know these verses.

It is much more striking that parts of vv. 47b–48 are missing from independent witnesses of the Western text. In the light of the evidence that will be presented below, it seems likely that Pseudo-Peter, writing in the second third of the second century, did not have these verses in the manuscript of Luke he used. The list of missing parts in the deviant manuscripts is brief but calls for explanation:

The Venetian Diatessaron has been regarded by some scholars as a late and spurious version of the harmony tradition going back to Tatian.Footnote ⁹ However, taken together, these witnesses point at readings which can be traced back to the second or third century. The earliest witness for vv. 47b–48 as an integral part of the Lukan story is the third-century papyrus P75 (Papyrus Bodmer XIV/XV). If P.Oxy. 4009 now proves that the author of the Gospel of Peter used a text of Luke which did not include vv. 47b–48, it is very difficult to dismiss the deviant Western readings as various secondary omissions. Furthermore, it is difficult to explain the origins of such omissions if vv. 47b–48 are considered a well-attested part of the original text of Luke.

The trouble with Luke 7.47b–48 does not end with explanations of simple textual variations, but goes much deeper than that. The interpreters have seen the key problem of the story in the stance of the sinful woman: Was she already forgiven or does Jesus proclaim her sins forgiven only in the house of the Pharisee? There are three basic problems related to this question: (1) there is a tension between v. 47 and vv. 41–42; (2) the proclamation of forgiveness is repeated after Jesus' words to the sinful woman (v. 47) in v. 48; and (3) love is the ground of forgiveness in v. 47, while according to Jesus' words in v. 50 the sins of the woman are forgiven because of her faith.Footnote ¹⁰ Scholars have offered various explanations of these problems. Particularly in previous scholarship, many interpreters have thought that the forgiveness shown to the woman is the result of her love.Footnote ¹¹ Nowadays most scholars rather assume that the woman was forgiven before she entered Simon's house. Some of them, defending the historicity of the story, assume that Jesus, out of pastoral concern, directed his personal word to the sinful woman in v. 48.Footnote ¹² Some others suggest that the tensions in the text are due to the final verses composed by Luke, who has integrated the parable in vv. 41–43 with the narrative.Footnote ¹³ Some interpreters think that only Luke has taken the woman's act of love as the basis for Jesus' declaration of forgiveness.Footnote ¹⁴ All these theories must presuppose that Luke did not quite master the story he was working on.

This brief survey shows that the presence of vv. 47b–48 in the text is directly involved precisely with the key problem of the pericope. Up to v. 47bc, the Pharisee has treated the woman as a notorious sinner, while Jesus already knows that she is no longer a sinner and that her sins are forgiven. Only on the basis of v. 47bc does the act of the sinful woman become an act of repentance, to which Jesus responds in v. 48 by declaring to her that her sins are forgiven. Once vv. 47b–48 are removed, this tension disappears, and we can see that Luke was a master of his narrative. The actions of the woman must be seen as a sign of love and gratitude, not repentance.

Furthermore, the double formulation of the forgiveness in vv. 47a and 48 speaks for the secondary character of vv. 47b–48. The reading of Codex Bezae reveals the development of the tradition. The clumsy repetition of Jesus' forgiving words after his direct address to the woman had the advantage of clearly pointing out that the woman was still a sinner when she came into the house of the Pharisee and that she needed to have Jesus' explicit absolution on the basis of her acts of repentance and love.

What about v. 47bc? In a stimulating and learned study from 1968, Walter Henss has—with reference to the work of Johann Christian Zahn in 1816—argued that the original text of the Diatessaron had the question of Jesus in v. 42b in another form than in the most manuscripts: τίνα [αὐτῶν] πλεῖον ἠγάπησεν (‘Which one [of them] did he love more?’). Henss tries to demonstrate that this is the original reading and that it was influential in radical Pauline and Gnostic circles which stressed that Christ loved the ‘elect ones’ more than others. Accordingly, the canonical form is a correction of the text against the ‘elect ones’. Henss further assumes that v. 47bc is also a later addition which was meant to rebut such a misinterpretation. He demonstrates that behind v. 47c, there is a positively formulated agraphon: Cui enim plus dimittitur, plus diligit (‘For the one who is forgiven more, will love more’). This agraphon appears in some texts of the Western fathers (Irenaeus Adv. haer. 3.20.2; Origen Hom. in Ps. 38.9; Cyprian Test. 3.116); Henss thinks that the agraphon was added to these texts later. He finds the earliest indisputable quotation only in John Chrysostom's Hom. in Acta Apost. 30: Ὧι γὰρ πλεῖον ἀϕέθη, πλεῖον ἀγαπήσει. He draws the conclusion that the agraphon becomes more widely attested only around 400.Footnote ¹⁵ According to him, the original text of Luke demonstrated the repentance and love of the sinful woman; v. 47bc is merely a secondary ecclesiastical explanation which glorifies her act of love. However, the textual basis of this theory is poor; Tjitze Baarda has convincingly demonstrated that all relevant versions of the Diatessaron read Luke 7.42 like the majority of the witnesses: τίς αὐτῶν πλεῖον ἀγαπήσει αὐτόν.Footnote ¹⁶

In spite of the problems in his interpretation of v. 42, Henss draws deserved attention to the separate character of v. 47bc and the presence of the gnomic saying in v. 47c. In the light of his findings, it is possible to explain how this saying was attached to the text with the help of v. 47b. The addition of these sentences separates the two similar vv. 47a and 48 from each other and seeks to adapt the new understanding of the story as well as possible to the parable in vv. 41–42: the acts of love seen under the roof of the Pharisee clearly demonstrate why her many sins are declared forgiven.

Once vv. 47b–48 are dropped from the original text of Luke, there is no need for complicated literary reconstructions of a pre-Lukan story. Without these verses Luke's presentation is quite coherent. He counts the sinful woman among the tax collectors and sinners, friends of Jesus (Luke 7.34), who have received the good news, repented and changed their lives. In the ensuing story, she becomes a living example of such a new life. The parable of the two debtors justifies Jesus' proclamation of forgiveness and love; the woman, who was once a sinner, loves Jesus—and God—more than does his host, the Pharisee who has not sinned nearly as much as she. This makes the Pharisee a counter-character who cannot recognize Jesus as someone who has the authority to forgive sins. Jesus says to the Pharisee what the sinful woman already knows, and the woman, with her extremely loving and grateful act, makes a confession to Jesus: he is the one who has the divine authority to forgive sins, and he includes all repentant sinners in the realm of his good news. Finally, in v. 50, Jesus turns to her and says what she already knows: it is not her repentance or even her love that saves her, but her faith in Jesus as the one whom God has authorized to forgive sins.

In the early history of interpretation, the Lukan story was received as an important text concerning the forgiveness of sins. Irenaeus, the earliest witness to the pericope among the Church Fathers, simply quotes the beginning of the story in his survey of the Gospel of Luke. He mentions that because of the woman, Jesus ‘spoke to Simon about the two debtors’ (Adv. haer. 3.14.3).Footnote ¹⁷ The second witness for the Lukan story supports the theory presented in this article. The exegesis of Clement of Alexandria reveals that, in the latter half of the second century, there was a strong need to use the woman in Luke 7.36–50 as a model of the repentant sinner. In his spiritual and allegorical interpretation, Clement quotes the actions of the woman and the words of Jesus in v. 47a (ἀϕέωνται αὐτῆς αἱ ἁμαρτίαι), but not vv. 47b–50 (Paed. 2.8.61). However, he presents ‘tears of repentance’ (μετανοίας δάκρυα) as the basis of forgiveness. When this woman took with her the oil—the most expensive thing she had—she had not yet received the word and was still a sinner.Footnote ¹⁸

The author of the Gospel of Peter, ignorant of Luke 7.47b–48, has preserved the original reading here. Correspondingly, his interpretation of the story is independent of the canonical text and the later interpretation. In lines 9–13 he changes the astonished reaction of the guests in Luke 7.49 into a direct question to Jesus about his authority. The theme of forgiveness is subordinated to the disputation about divine authority. The reconstruction of Jesus' answer in the following lines may remain impossible. In any case, the conflict with the guests leads to a situation in which Jesus sends his disciples on their mission—and to martyrdom.