The primacy of POxy-5575

Peter Gurry has spent the last week putting together a synopsis of POxy-5575. We have this as of 1:30 AM last night. Busy guy! Tonight we'll evaluate why anyone in this context is talking about Luke. This should start with Luke 12:24 - against Matthew 6:26.

Here all three record the speaker, a son of the Father in Heaven, as he points to the birds. As you remember from Life of Brian, the Father feeds them. POxy-5575 is fragmentary, but Matthew and Luke fill in some additional content: the birds do not sow (σπείρουσιν) or reap (θερίζουσιν) or gather (συνάγουσιν, Matthew only) the excess into barns (ἀποθήκας) or granaries (ταμεῖον, Luke only). For Matthew and Luke, is intertext. Matthew is referring back to vv. 19-21; warning not to "thesaurise" on Earth on account the best treasury is in heaven. As for Luke...

Luke interposes 12:12-21. Here a rich man has no space to gather (συνάγ-) his crop. So he would upgrade his barn (ἀποθήκας). But finally "his life is to be demanded of him". The gospel of Thomas in logion 63 is only Coptic so far; but some Greek seeps in, like ταμ-. And it's disassociated from any followup. We do learn that the rich man "died" in the night.

POxy-5575 begins that "he died (-θ̣ανε)" before the narrator commences "I say to you". That is why the editors believe that POxy-5575 is here paralleling Luke, who had the story; even if the one Greek word POxy-5575 provides looks more like the direct speech of Thomas 63.

A longstanding problem, relevant here, is the direction of Matthew / Luke dependence. There isn't much need for Matthew to note whether birds have a harvest, nor if they συνάγουσιν (in fact they do, it's called a "nest", but whatevs); POxy-5575, for its part, doesn't bother [UPDATE 9/14 nor Justin]. Matthew 6:19-21 has nothing about farming, just about thesauri. This implies Matthew knew Luke's parable of the rich fool - from somewhere else. (Evan Powell would have kittens if he'd noticed this.)

The problem is soluble if we allow that POxy-5575 was composed first, that Matthew borrowed from it, and that Luke took Matthew and restored POxy-5575's parable. Also restored in Luke, I think, is the context, because Luke sequesters the whole section apart from his Sermon On The Plain.