The "nice version" and the "nasty version"

[Jamie123]

At church today we had the "Parable of the Wedding Feast": Matthew 22:1-14, which is what I call "the nasty version". These are the "nasty parts":

• The wedding guests (or those who would have been the wedding guests) beat up and kill the king's servants.
• The king sends his soldiers to kill the murderers and burn down their city. (Isn't it a bit odd that they all lived in the same city? And what about the people living in that city who were not murderers?)
• When the king notices one of his guests not wearing a "wedding robe" he doesn't just have him ejected: he has him "bound hand and foot" and thrown out "into the darkness" with "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (*shudder*)

The "nice version", Luke 14:15-23, is the same story (almost) but with the nasty bits removed. So what's going on? Did Luke base his account on Matthew's, but edit out the nasty parts? Or did Jesus tell the same story more than once, changing some of the details?

Let's go with the nasty version...

This mirrors Jewish history - God sent his prophets to the Jews, but they persecuted and murdered them. So God sent the Babylonians to destroy their nation and burn down their city. (Exactly what we've been talking about in the BoM reading group - what Lehi was running away from.) Then God opens his invitation instead to the Gentiles - but some Gentiles are no more worthy than the Jews, and are rejected in exactly the same kind of way.

Perhaps I'm stretching the analogy a bit far, but there's a difference between murdering someone's servants and merely disregarding their dress code. There's no specific mention that the king had the improperly dressed guessed killed, though the disturbing words at the end might offer a clue. I've often wondered: does the "gnashing teeth" refer to some sort of hellish torment (the sort of thing Hieronymus Bosch might have painted)...

...or is it merely the frustrated teeth-gnashing of souls unable to get into heaven?

[zil2]

This recent General Conference talk may interest you:

Put On Thy Strength, O Zion by Elder Bednar.

[Jamie123]

49 minutes ago, zil2 said:

This recent General Conference talk may interest you:

Put On Thy Strength, O Zion by Elder Bednar.

Very interesting - he glosses over the first two "nasty bits" - though of course they weren't relevant to his message.

The speaker seems to read a lot into the story that's not there in the text. I've always thought it odd that the king should expect people grabbed at random off the streets to have their wedding clothes to hand, so it does seem reasonable that he should have provided them himself. But Jesus does not say this. The Calvinists* will say that God chooses some for salvation and others for damnation for reasons inscrutable for us: that whatever the man's reason was for not having a robe, he was simply not one of the Elect.

On the other hand, perhaps the custom of a host providing robes for his guest was something the original listeners would have assumed. Also, it's interesting to hear "and he was speechless" considered. (Those words are usually brushed over.) Maybe this really is Jesus telling us that the man really didn't have an excuse - like "my robe is at home" or "I'm too poor to afford a robe" etc. Sometimes words which seem insignificant, or mere embroidery, do have a meaning we easily miss.

*I use the word "Calvinist" in its modern sense. I'm well aware that John Calvin was not overly big on the idea of predestination.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Jamie123

[zil2]

59 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

The speaker seems to read a lot into the story that's not there in the text.

He's interpreting it in light of the restored gospel, which gives added meaning to the various symbols and characters.

1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

On the other hand, perhaps the custom of a host providing robes for his guest was something the original listeners would have assumed.

As I recall, E. Bednar is suggesting this was a cultural norm - that even the original (presumably wealthy) invitees would have been given such attire.

[Vort]

1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

*I use the word "Calvinist" in its modern sense. I'm well aware that John Calvin was not overly big on the idea of predestination.

[Jamie123]

I've been thinking about this on and off all afternoon, and I think I could offer another insight: that Jesus deliberately made this story ridiculous in order to give it shock and surprise value. It is not something that would ever actually happen in the real world.

We have a king - not just a rich man, but an actual king. Kings, in those days, were not people you trifled with. You certainly did not kill a king's servants - just for fun - just because they came to summon you to a feast. It was an idiotic thing to do and the result was inevitable. Yet it was exactly what the Israelites had done. Could they really be surprised by how God had dealt with them?

It's the same with the parable of the vinyard (Matthew 21:33-41). Would you send your son to reason with a bunch of cut throats who'd already murdered half your servants? I don't think you would! Yet God loved the Israelites so much that he'd done exactly that!

And the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). For a son to ask for his inheritance while his father was still alive was a supreme insult. And for the father to welcome his son back with joy after he had squandered it all on prostitutes - that was just plain ridiculous! Yet that is the extent of God's love for his children.

We accept the oddness of these stories with a shrug because we're so used to them. There could be value in recognising their silliness as part of their intended effect!

 

[Jamie123]

1 hour ago, zil2 said:

As I recall, E. Bednar is suggesting this was a cultural norm - that even the original (presumably wealthy) invitees would have been given such attire.

Yes indeed - I got that point. What I'm saying is that perhaps the custom was so well understood by Jesus' listeners that he didn't need to explain it. We on the other hand do need an explanation as we usually bring our own party clothes. (I'm being my own interlocutor here - the poor man's Paul!)

Edited October 15, 2023 by Jamie123

[Carborendum]

4 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

Very interesting - he glosses over the first two "nasty bits" - though of course they weren't relevant to his message.

The speaker seems to read a lot into the story that's not there in the text. I've always thought it odd that the king should expect people grabbed at random off the streets to have their wedding clothes to hand, so it does seem reasonable that he should have provided them himself. But Jesus does not say this. The Calvinists* will say that God chooses some for salvation and others for damnation for reasons inscrutable for us: that whatever the man's reason was for not having a robe, he was simply not one of the Elect.

On the other hand, perhaps the custom of a host providing robes for his guest was something the original listeners would have assumed. Also, it's interesting to hear "and he was speechless" considered. (Those words are usually brushed over.) Maybe this really is Jesus telling us that the man really didn't have an excuse - like "my robe is at home" or "I'm too poor to afford a robe" etc. Sometimes words which seem insignificant, or mere embroidery, do have a meaning we easily miss.

*I use the word "Calvinist" in its modern sense. I'm well aware that John Calvin was not overly big on the idea of predestination.

After reading Elder Bednar's speech, here is my commentary on it which I delivered in sacrament meeting.  At least, these are the notes.

https://thirdhour.org/forums/topic/72673-put-on-thy-strength-o-zion/

[Just_A_Guy]

I figure it’s because Luke is writing to a gentile audience; so he tones things down a notch.  Also, Matthew is very interested in making sure his readers know just what the Jewish establishment did to Christ and what their punishment is going to be . . . Luke has no such priorities.

With regard to a wedding garment:  what I get out of that is that even for the Johnny-come-latelies who are invited from the highways and hedgerows, there *is* a price to be paid.  They are expected to show respect for the nature of the event.  The invitation may have been to both bad and good (v 10), but the bad are expected to make themselves good (or at least be willing to explain their failure to do so and beg their Lord’s pardon) or else will find themselves being dismissed from the feast.  

Edited October 16, 2023 by Just_A_Guy

[Carborendum]

On 10/15/2023 at 8:56 AM, Jamie123 said:

"Parable of the Wedding Feast": Matthew 22:1-14,

The "nice version", Luke 14:15-23, is the same story (almost)

So what's going on?

As JAG said, they were different audiences.

There is some information/references in Matthew's version (to the Jews) which gentiles would not understand.

[Carborendum]

12 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

The invitation may have been to both bad and good (v 10), but the bad are expected to make themselves good (or at least be willing to explain their failure to do so and beg their Lord’s pardon) or else will find themselves being dismissed from the feast.  

There is a reason it was called a wedding garment.  I'd call attention to the part about the interloper not even offering an answer.

In parables where someone doesn't do what is the "obvious" thing, but instead does nothing, it is often because the metaphor involved indicates that the person cannot to that thing.

The obvious response would have been to lie and make up an excuse.  But he didn't even do that.  He simply didn't answer.  It is because he couldn't answer.

So, The King asks one of the wedding guests a question.  That guest cannot answer.  He can't answer because he has never received an answer -- his answer.