Abstract
The parable of the Steward (Luke 16:1–8) has long vexed interpreters. Central to its difficulty is how the behaviour of a steward identified variously as “dishonest” or “unjust” can stand as an exemplary figure. Previous attempts to resolve this issue have included studies which have identified the Steward as a slave, and compared him to figures who appear in literary studies (the Trickster) and the Comedy of the ancient world (the servus fallax or callidus). However, these have failed to realize fully the moral ambiguity offered by these literary types. When set in the fictive world of moral ambiguity and subversion that they represent, it becomes easier to see how the Steward, with all the subversion he brings, becomes an exemplary model of discipleship. His financial chicanery will mirror the unorthodoxy of reconciliation that is lived out by Jesus of Nazareth.
At the heart of the matter lies a simple question: how can such a character provide an example of discipleship, or of how to conduct one's affairs in the world? Since the time of Julian the Apostate, the parable has been used to imply a moral crisis at the heart of Christianity (Bailey: 86), even allowing for rhetorical hyperbole of that charge.
The following reading will attempt to argue for a slightly different point: that the actions of the steward are tricky, and their morality is ambiguous. This ambiguity, in part, involves the question: whose morality? Indeed, this reading questions whether the Steward should be a morally acceptable character. Then a further question arises: what happens when the Steward is viewed as a morally ambiguous type, such as the Trickster, who, as a literary figure performing in a narrative form, skewers the conventions of society and provokes readers to question their own actions, and, perhaps, to mock themselves?
In this approach, the pericope is read as comedy. There is no novelty in considering gospel texts to be comedic (Bernadz). Appreciation of the comedic, however, is not always to the fore in theological studies. Thomas Oden has commented on the value of comedy for theology:
Because of piety's penchant for taking itself too seriously, theology–-more than literary, humanistic, and scientific studies–-does well to nurture a modest, unguarded sense of comedy. Some comic sensibility is required to keep in due proportion the pompous pretensions of the study of divinity.
When the chips pile up too high, I invite the kind of laughter that wells up not from cynicism about theology but from lightness about it. This comes from glimpsing the incongruity of humans thinking about God [Oden: 1].
It is important to state from the outset that comedic texts demand a specific type of reading. The Form Critics have rightly reminded us that different literary forms and genres should be read appropriately (Collins: 158–61). Thus parables are read differently from other kinds of writing, and different types of parable in different ways: an allegory is not read in a manner identical to a narrative (Drury: 8–20). If a parable is identified as a comedy, it should be read through that lens. This, for a start, means being aware of the perils of reading any ancient comic text:
Principally, the difficulty of deciding what may be taken at face value and what is “part of the joke”–-and therefore subject to distortion, exaggeration, inversion or even outright absurdist transformation [Tordoff: 3–4].
Bednarz's study, drawing on George W. Buckley's, The Wit and Wisdom of Jesus (26–29), makes it clear that a number of Lukan passages are comedic in nature. The parable of the Steward is among these (Berdnaz: 27). More recent scholarship also holds this evaluation: C-S. Abraham Cheong notes the humorous dimensions of the parable, describing it as “literary carnivalisation” that depends on parodic exaggeration, liminality, and “dialogic battle” (71–75). This awareness frees the critic from an obligation to present the steward in a positive light, or to think that he presents a literally acceptable way of acting. A comic steward is set free from the prescriptions of normal behavior, and is not necessarily an example to be followed literally, as his behavior in the parable may be shaped by any of the elements cited above.
In this regard, the steward appears analogous to what Meredith Warren has identified as a “ritual in ink.” In her My Flesh is Meat Indeed, she explores the vexed problem of eating flesh and drinking blood in John 6:51–58. Eschewing a sacramental interpretation based on the eucharist, she suggests that Greek novels provide a means of rendering an unacceptable action (anthropophagy) acceptable. The “ritual in ink” is a recognizable manifestation of religious behavior revealed in a literary text, but not necessarily in a clear religious action or handbook (8–10). The remarks made about ritual are also apposite to parable, ethics and morality:
Rituals in ink matter. Ancient texts do not constitute a hermetically sealed realm. Texts participate in the wider society in which they were created. In that space texts have a performative dimension regardless of the mimetic or fictitious character of their embedded rituals. Such texts were part of their contemporary religious discourse; they are part of textual communication with their ancient audience, and they are inevitably part of the specific mode of communication that we call religion [Barchiesi: vii–viii].
It has to be admitted that while the Steward in no way provides a description of a specific ritual, he does serve an analogous moral purpose, subverting normal conventions and acting out a set of behaviors that are otherwise unacceptable, in a manner not dissimilar to the Johannine treatment of anthropophagy. A number of the other factors mentioned in the quotation ensure its relevance: the Gospel is a text designed for a religious purpose and performance, and so has a “performative dimension” and is a part of “contemporary religious discourse” (Parsons: 3–5). The parable suggests that what is normally unacceptable somehow becomes acceptable, and does that within “the specific mode of communication that we call religion.” Like the “ritual in ink,” the parable offers a subversive religious text which challenges convention. Its comedic form is part of that process.
Comedy is able to explore complex theological themes and claims. Dan O. Via, in what is essentially a structuralist analysis, noted the value of comedy as providing a “logic” that fits well with themes of justification and resurrection. His classical reference point is, in essence, Aristophanes (1975: 39–69; 98–103). Between the time of Aristophanes, commonly designated as Old Comedy, and the New Testament, a further comic form emerged: New Comedy. New Comedy included, amongst its exponents, Menander, Plautus, and Terence; it often had a domestic setting, where complicated romantic associations were resolved, often with the contrivance of slaves and household servants. Mary Ann Beavis’ reading of the Steward explores the parable in light of New Comedy.
These remarks on comedy and slavery provide the jumping off point for the following piece, by restating Beavis’ claim that the Steward is most likely a slave. Moving towards literary treatments, it then looks at the figure of the Trickster, with particular reference to ancient literature, before focusing on the slaves of New Comedy as ancient examples of the Trickster and a potential hermeneutic lens for the Steward.
The Steward as Slave
Given that the Gospel of Luke is to be read for a “general Christian audience, living in the Roman Empire at the turn of the second century” (Bauckham: 21 n 22), and given the prevalence of slavery across that readership in the Roman Empire (Beavis: 38–39), it is likely that slavery provides a socio-cultural matrix in which the parable is grounded. This holds good whether the parable, as a distinctive Lukan piece, might be held to originate within Palestine or elsewhere. Mikael Parsons has followed Mary Ann Beavis in comparing the parable to an episode in the Life of Aesop, in which Aesop, falsely accused of eating figs, turns the table on his accusers by exposing their lies (246; Beavis: 45–47). For these commentators, Lukan slave and master stories reflect conventional norms and literary expectations (such as slaves being untrustworthy), but also sometimes subvert these, as when the master waits on his servants (Luke 12: 35–38; Beavis: 41; Bednarz: 181).
However, Beavis’ claim that the Steward is a slave, which is followed by Parsons, has been criticized. Glancy rejects his identification as slave on the grounds that the punishment he fears is expulsion from the household. In her view this is unlikely punishment for a slave, who would be more likely to endure corporal punishment or demotion (108–10). However, Roman practice suggests otherwise. Slaves might be manumitted so that their masters no longer had to support them. The practice did not always give some desirable or beneficial freedom: it could be as much an act of cruelty as kindness (Beavis 49; Hopkins 117–20). Slaves were manumitted for the economic benefit of the owner, who was freed from financial obligations to support them, with no other means of support given. Nor may the exact provenance of the parable be used to query the identification as a slave, if the steward fears manumission. Whilst it has been claimed, through the analysis of Jewish manumission documents from the Jewish Diaspora around ancient Panticapaeum and Anapa on the Russian Black Sea, that Jewish slavery systems did not allow for the manumission of non-Jewish slaves (Beavis: 38 n 11), this needs qualification. Westermann's conclusions are more circumspect: “Probably manumission of Gentile slaves was not acceptable to all in the first century under a strict interpretation of Jewish law” (125). Elizabeth Leigh Gibson concludes that Judaic slave practice was not distinctive from Graeco-Roman (153). Given that a case may still be made for a slave to be expelled from both Judaic and Graeco-Roman households, the fear of expulsion does not remove the potential for the Steward to be a slave.
The Steward as Trickster: A Perennial Figure
Moving into the literary rather than the social environment, Parsons, again following Beavis, also identifies Aesop as a Trickster (246–47). However, there is one problem with the comparison: Aesop is clearly a good character who has been accused falsely of wrongdoing. There is no ambiguity or deceit here, simply an innocent man clearing his name by using his wits. His cleverness is well within the rules, not unlike that of Daniel in the story of Susanna, who is able to dismiss the charges brought against her by exposing the perjury of the two lascivious elders (Susanna (LXX)/Daniel 13: 52–59). Both are clever, but are those grounds enough for an identification as a Trickster? Are wit and intelligence alone the characteristics of a Trickster? Identifying the “unjust steward” with a good person will never resolve the problem of his probity. However, Tricksters are more morally complex than Aesop, Daniel and Susanna. Tricksters are not always as respectable as these characters, an important factor when considering the more ambiguous Steward.
Parsons’ is not the only study of the Trickster to face this criticism. Susan Niditch's study, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore: Underdogs and Tricksters, engages with the tricky wives and cunning brothers of Genesis, as well as Esther. However, Tamar (Gen 38), arguably the most ambiguous and complex Trickster of the patriarchal narratives, is strangely absent, meriting only the briefest of mentions in dispatches (60). Dean Andrew Nicholas gives her more attention, describing her as a Trickster who manages a “perfect reversal of roles” in order to have a child and heir (62).
The Trickster … takes us into the realm of nonsense, … but nonsense always has its own truth. …
Dan O. Via takes a slightly different view of the Steward, which admits a greater moral ambiguity: “the story of a successful rogue who makes conventional society look foolish but without establishing any positive alternative” (1967: 159). This is a murkier figure, one who resonates more with the steward whose moral ambiguities have dogged the commentators. Via's “successful rogue” is obviously not going to be a straightforward hero or exemplar. In this respect, he demands a revisiting of the Trickster, particularly in accounts which have ambiguous characters at their center. Tricksters are not just clever or sly; they may be outlaws, or flaunt the conventions of society. As Bercovitch notes:
tricksters steal their weapons of ludic resistance (puns, parodies, inversions) from social institutions–-institutions of interpretation that are first and foremost centers of social control. Tricksters know where the status quo is most vulnerable, but so does the dominant culture [63].
Part of the difficulty is that the figure of the Trickster, while pervasive across both oral and literary traditions (Test: 37), is not static, and is interpreted in a fresh way by each generation. Tricksters are found across a broad sweep of time and history (Sherman), such as the Winnebago Trickster Cycle (Radin), the Ghanaian Anansi (Norfolk), and the East African Sungura Mjanja (Madumulla) to name a few. George Hansen gives the following outline:
Briefly, the trickster type is a character found in mythology, folklore, and literature the world over; tricksters appear as animals, humans, and gods. They have a number of common characteristics, and some of their most salient qualities are disruption, unrestrained sexuality, disruption, and nonconformity to the establishment. They are typically male. Tricksters often deceive larger and more powerful beings who would thwart them; they may be endearingly clever or disgustingly stupid–-both cultural heroes and selfish buffoons. Like much of mythology their stories appear irrational and are difficult to decipher into logical coherence. They have often puzzled scholars. The stories do not follow linear sequences, and their meanings need to be decoded. Fortunately there is a sizable body of scholarship on the trickster, in a variety of disciplines, and keys to decoding are found in the concepts of liminality and anti-structure [Hansen: 28].
The Trickster, arguably, takes us into the realm of nonsense (as a “perennial phenomenon” around playing with words, rather than a distinct genre [Tigges: 230]), but nonsense always has its own truth or raison d'être:
Whenever nonsense is discussed in terms of the society that produced and appreciated it, it is generally regarded as a phenomenon which is critical of the current state of affairs, or which offers an escape from it [Tigges: 230].
This is also true of the Trickster. Paul Radin describes the Trickster as a mirror of human experience, who:
represents not only the undifferentiated and distant past, but likewise the undifferentiated present within every individual. This constitutes his universal and persistent attraction. And so he became and remained everything to every man–-god, animal, human being, hero, buffoon, he who was before good and evil, denier, affirmer, destroyer, creator. If we laugh at him, he grins at us. What happens to him happens to us [Radin: 168–69].
S/he provides “the contradiction of the Trickster and cultural hero combined in one figure” (Test: 39) … is “an “outsider … but in no sense a pariah” (Test: 42). Tricksters are also a source of laughter, and ignoring this may “do violence to the material and skew whatever meaning is ascribed to the figure” (Test: 42). This humor may often be satirical, a projection of the “mockery and ridicule of behaviour that undermined social cohesiveness and allowed for socially approved ritual for disarming hostility and aggression” (Test: 42). The combination of humor and satire means that:
By being or becoming what he attacks, the trickster-satirist reduces the distance between the folly and the vice out there among others and the folly and the vice in here in ourselves. Identification with the trickster-satirist becomes a trap by which we are able to see ourselves as the objects of satire, the ultimate satiric and ironic trick of the trickster [Test: 48].
In performing this role, Tricksters have a morality all their own. Julian the Apostate's criticism, it must be remembered, was one which served a rhetorical purpose: it suited his ends to make the Steward reprehensible. That was the significance for him, but it does not necessarily constitute what the Steward was meant to represent. In response to this, it might be argued that the representations of Trickster presented above are ahistorical or thematic reductions. To avoid such criticisms in light of the fluidity which surrounds the different Trickster phenomena, it is important to see whether such readings might be supported by ancient examples.
The Trickster in Ancient Greece and Rome
In an essay appended to Radin's work, Karl Kerényi explores the Trickster figure of Greek mythology. Identifying the Trickster as an archaic figure, his comments are similar to those of Test:
His [the trickster's] function in an archaic society, or rather the function of his mythology, of the tales told about him, is to add disorder to order and so make a whole, to render possible, within the fixed bounds of what is permitted, an experience of what is not permitted [Kerényi: 185].
In Greek mythology Tricksters like Herakles and Hermes have a certain freedom of action: they are not limited “by the fixed bounds of custom and law” in what Kerényi further describes as “no man's land, a sealed off, Hermetic region between the fixed bounds of property, where finding and thieving are still possible” (186). Crucially, in talking of the attempts to interpret Tricksters, Kerényi notes that “systematizers of religion lose themselves all too easily in abstractions and are bound to be embarrassed by a figure like the trickster” (186), not unlike biblical scholars scrutinizing the parable.
The Trickster–-The Servus Callidus/Fallax of New Comedy
Turning to ancient literature, it is possible to find slaves in ancient comedy. While many of the slaves of Old Comedy are silent players, the more active slaves of Aristophanes’ Frogs and Wealth provide prototypes for the clever slaves of New Comedy (Sells: 93). Clever slaves appear in Greek New Comedy (Bosher: 198), but were particularly important in Roman Comedy, including Terence's and Plautus’ servus callidus or fallax (Karakasis; Tordoff: 58). Beavis has drawn detailed attention to the slaves of Plautus (47–48, 51). Of particular interest are those in the last group whom Alison Sharrock names the architectus: “the ‘clever slave’ character who is renowned for his metatheatrical power” (103), who may act as “the voice of the poet” (97, 101). The type varies: in Plautus, the scheming character is more to the fore, whereas in Terence, slaves may not be involved in, or indeed initially oppose, trickery (Karakasis: 212). The slave of comedy usually works as an agent on behalf of another, such as the amans (the unlucky in love), not for his or her own gain (for a female agent, see Habrotonon, in Menander's Epitrepontes [Marshall: 189]). Such characters have even made a transition into recent comedy: the BBC's Up Pompeii and Stephen Sondheim's musical and film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum re-worked them for modern audiences.
To summarize briefly, slaves in comedy may be considered to perform three tasks:
They provide a release of aggression and anxiety
They are a source of amusement about comic masters: “masters who fail are objects of derision” (Tordoff: 41).
“Metaphorical transfer” and “psychological identification”: “seeing the slave get the better of his master or prove himself his master's superior is amusing because it acts as a form of wish-fulfillment for all who feel in one way or another subjected or inferior to others in a social hierarchy” (Tordoff: 42).
The Steward as Servus Callidus/Fallax
A study of the parable shows that the Steward performs the functions often associated with the Trickster. We can note these briefly: the Steward is a subordinate in a rich man's household (Luke 16:1). Faced with a crisis (Luke 16:2–3), he rewrites the bills of his master's debtors (Luke 16:5–7). This is an action which contravenes the norms of his society. Even commentators who present the steward in a good light as representing some higher order of morality admit that the action is counter-cultural, even if permissible (Ukpong: 201–07); as such it is a course of action typical of a trickster. Finally, his actions end well, not just for himself, but for the debtors and even in the eyes of his master, inasmuch as he is praised for what he has done (Luke 16:8). For those familiar with the figure, a number, but not all, of characteristics of the Trickster leap out of this description: disruption, nonconformity, a ludic challenge to social conventions, thwarting the powerful, endearingly (?) clever, and a puzzle to scholars. However, scholarship which attempts to read the steward “straight” and a clear moral type may simply have put him in the wrong place: he needs to be on the borders of propriety, if not outside. His is the realm of nonsense, not common sense.
If this understanding of the Trickster bears any merit, it suggests that issues around the actions of the Steward stem from a failure to read him as a complex trickster-satirist, but rather as a character who must be wholly morally acceptable. The Steward functions in a morally grey area: according to some conventions of the ancient world his actions are positive, because they perform a recognizably valued and praiseworthy function in both Graeco-Roman and Judaic environments: debt reduction (Cheong: 150–78), but probity of his actions in the context remains questionable (Ukpong: 201–07; Parsons: 247).
When compared to the servi callidi of New Comedy, the Steward achieves the three functions associated with such characters:
His actions certainly are aimed at resolving anxiety.
In keeping with much Lukan criticism of the rich, the master comes off badly, though not completely so, inasmuch as he becomes a figure of fun, outplayed by his subordinate.
The transfer and identification are revealed in the identification of the steward with the aspirations of the audience (Luke 16:10–12).
This certainly would explain the addition of the final sardonic remarks (Luke 16:9–13), including those about serving God and Mammon, after the parable.
The architectus potentially provides a precedent for the Steward, but some discrepancies have to be addressed. The architectus of New Comedy usually is working for the benefit of another, most often the amans, the young master dealing with a love problem: the slave will usually resolve the erotic muddle. That said, ancient comedy does provide one example, atypical, of a slave who works for his own interest. In Plautus’ Persa, Sharrock argues that
Toxilus is an architectus, in the tradition of the greats, throughout the play, but that he fails because he is working for himself. … We see his failure in that he does not achieve the comic resolution between slave and master (playwright and audience) which is necessary for ending. His closural leno periit is only an attempt to appropriate comic propriety. It cannot work because the architectus cannot be allowed to work for himself [103].
This analysis might be queried: does the definition of architectus actually preclude Toxilus being judged as such, or should its parameters be expanded to include him? As Drury has remarked in his definition of parables, ancient forms should not be read on the basis of “a subsequent and later standpoint which was not available or formative for them” (Drury: 8). Furthermore, variations of a genre which do not fit the norm “do not ‘destroy’ the genre; they, in fact, may re-affirm the ‘essence’ of the genre by showing the consequences of the unexpected” (Wells: 9).
If the latter, the resolution in the parable of the Steward marks a significant departure from the usual conventions of New Comedy, but not one which breaks completely with the literary type–-a variation on a theme. It, like the Persa, subverts the genre by concluding with a successful resolution for the architectus, when he has worked for his own advantage. Yet to see the parable as only achieving a good outcome for the architectus is misleading, as the end of the story (Luke 16:8) indicates. The master and the debtors appear satisfied by the outcome: the Steward's usurpation of the master's role for an action which is potentially just, if not socially acceptable, actually benefits all: “In the steward's debt-reduction, every member of the Lukan community is ideally reconciled with each other” (Cheong: 177). He is even commended by the master.
Recognition that the Steward is a character who inhabits a different moral order, the world of the Trickster, assists in forging a Christological reading of the parable. What is good for the Trickster is also good for the “scandalous eccentric,” whom Cheong, following Bahktin, sees functioning in “an adventure plot–-which does not rely on already available and stable positions–-family, society, biography, but on what is unexpected and not predetermined”: “the steward and the objective world surrounding him is not of one piece” (both from 207). Such a “carnivalesque hero” fuses into one the sublime and the grotesque, and, by a perceptible process of conversion, pushes everyday reality to the limits of the fantastic” (Cheong: 207). Radical otherness becomes the foundation for a identification with Jesus.
Conclusion
When the moral ambiguity of the Trickster is recognized, tension between his labelling as “unjust” and the desirability of imitating him is resolved. His eccentric and morally dubious (if read literally) behavior is to be emulated because it is a fantastic cipher for the reality of Jesus’ reconciling work. Consideration of the Trickster motif, through the servi callidi of New Comedy, now transposed to the new literary environment of the Gospel, reveals the potential for such a reading, not just from the theoretical perspective of the modern, or post-modern, reader, but also for the assumed reader of the Gospel, familiar with the comedic tropes of ancient theater.