The Widow's Mite 3: Return to the Questions

Having begun an initial exegesis and then reviewed the setting of the pericope, Mark 12:41-44, against the narrative structure of its Gospel, I am at a severe and dangerous place. Often, having done a little spade work, I feel I know where I am going. But that is danger made deadly by effort. The level of Bible understanding is so slipshod and lazy in our day that a little work feels more than it is. There remain many questions--a sign the work is unfinished. Ignore them and risk finding what you came for; the first sin was substituting human words for God's. Ergo, it is best to let application come slowly. And, besides, eisegesis is boring. The quest is in the questions.

Therefore, let us return to the original observations and add additional ones based on our investigation. As we discovered, the episode with the widow is the denoument of a two-part interaction between Jesus and the scribes in the Jerusalem temple. Our text is larger. The original pericope of 41-44 now begins at verse 28 (Mark 12:28-44). New material means new observations; the exegetical process begins again.

Observations about Mark 12:28-44

Pericope 1: The Greatest Commandment (28-34)

• Where does this exchange take place? In the temple (Mk. 11.27)
• Why is the location important? God has come back to the temple after leaving it in Ezekiel 10. It is the center pole of Israel's identity as a polis in an era when religion and politics were not separated and as a people in covenant with Yahweh. Interrogating Israel's righteosness anywhere else would be meaningless. For Jesus to do it makes it nothing less than a sign that the last days have come and the day of the Lord has dawned.
• Why does the scribe ask Jesus a question? the scribe wants to know where Jesus stands in relationship to that which is most central to their religious identity—keeping the Law. He has overheard Jesus throw off the materialism of the Sadduccees and re-affirm the importance of Moses's prophetic office in the Torah, not to mention its supernatural character. Jesus begins with the transcendent, ruling reality of Yahweh interpreting their question about the dead around that. So, then, the scribe's follow-up question is not sarcastic or rhetorical. It is genuine. The scribe is asking if this infamous teacher is one one of his kind of people. He is establishing his bona fides. In that sense, he is acting properly as a keeper of the Law for the people both living in Jerusalem and for the readers of this Gospel.
• Who were the scribes? The beauracratic, professional class of lawyers and religious leaders that interpreted the cultic and legal life of the people. Because of their education and training in the law, scribes were often appointed as trustees for widows and orphans. Sociologically, the rabbis were the successor to the prophets, who mediated the divine will. So one can expect a possible conflict between who is the real prophet; who really speaks on behalf of Yahweh for the people? There is a subtext of Jesus's teaching vis-a-vis the Pharisees. Jesus did not teach like them, quoting and citing authorities. Jesus spoke on his own authority. He spoke like a prophet directly commissioned by God.
• Why did he ask this question? Was this a common question? Was this a “sure to trick them” question? Was this an “establish your orthodoxy” question? What kind of question is this? Allow me to quote from the Pulpit Commentary about this: "The question was one much mooted amongst the Jews in the time of our Lord. "For many," says Beds, "thought that the first commandment in the Law related to offerings and sacrifices, with regard to which so much is said in Leviticus, and that the right worship of God consisted in the due offering of these." I quote this because Corban--which comes up in Mark 7--is the underlying question of this entire exchange with the scribes. Here is more about corban: "The Greek word korban [קָרְבָּן qorbān] is related to the term korbanas, signifying the “temple treasury.” In Jewish practice, therefore, the word “corban” had been coined as a sort of “vow” term. According to the prevailing tradition, one could designate his financial resources as “corban,” which, practically speaking, was a way of “tagging” them, suggesting, “this belongs to God,” and thus was not to be used for personal interests. There is a passage in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus, that illustrates the fact that funds from the temple treasury were “corban,” hence could not be used for secular purposes, e.g., city improvements, as in the building of an aqueduct for water supply (Wars 2.9.4). Thus, in the manner just described, the covetous, ungrateful Jews callously neglected parental responsibility by an appeal to this perverted human tradition. In so doing, they flouted the law of God." Also, this bit from Wikipedia of all places: "The Septuagint generally translates the term in Koine Greek as δῶρον "gift", θυσία "sacrifice", or προσφορά "offering up". By the Second Temple period, Hellenistic Jewish texts use korban specifically to mean a vow. The New Testament preserves korban once as a transliterated loan-word for a vow, once also a related noun, κορβανάς "temple treasury", otherwise using δῶρον, θυσία or προσφορά and other terms drawn from the Septuagint."
• What was the relationship between the scribes and commandments? The core duty of the scribal class was to maintain and copy religious records and scriptures. The scribes were experts in the Torah. It was their job to interpret it for the people and safeguard its orthodoxy against especially Hellenistic influences.
• What commandment does Jesus quote? He quotes the Shema: Deut. 6:4-5. The Shema was a portion of Scripture quoted both morning and evening by devout Jews and worn in phylacteries on the arm and forehead by the Pharisees. He doesn't just quote it, though. He reinterprets it so that there is a blurring and uniting of the oneness of Yahweh and his Messiah.
• What language does he quote it in? Jesus likely knew some Greek, and he knew Hebrew well enough to read and speak it when necessary. But Aramaic was the lingua franca of first century Jewish life.
• Why does he say these are a “commandment” and not “commandments”?
• Is it significant that (a) the sacrificial system is mentioned, and (b) a scribe says that system is not primary but secondary to ethics?
• How would the scribe have understood the Kingdom of God? Though the phrase "kingdom of God" is not found in OT or other Jewish literature, its content is clearly there. He would have understood it to be the realized moment of the rule of God, and Christians see that in the very presence of the King himself. Given that Jesus is evaluating Israel for her covenant faithfulness, his commendation is no empty gesture.
• Why does he go on to quote the second command? Because love of God and neighbor is the substratum on which any specific commandments required by the Jewish law would rest. If he'd only quoted the first, he'd only have referenced the first table of the law. By quoting the second, he includes the second table--the entire law. He also further explains the principle of his own judgment which he is doing now as God come back to his temple and as king come to his people. // Bill Mounce, commenting on this verse, says that the Greek conjunction kai ties the second together to the first. "God is 'one' and we are to love him." he says. "The single greatest commandment is both the theology of monotheism as well as the recognition that the one God is worthy of our love. Intellectual assent of monotheism is insufficient in and of itself. The commandment is both theology and praxis; all good theology leads to praxis."
• Why is it that this pericope concludes this way? Why was this question and answer so final that there was no need to repeat it? Because everyone agreed that Jesus's answer is true. Nothing more needs to be said. Jesus has established his right to act as a member of the scribal cast, and he has correctly interpreted the discipline. This is the principle by which Israel's righteousness is to be judged. And those in Israel who are trained in the Law agree.
• Jesus is first interrogated and, in the process, interrogates.

Pericope 2: Whose Son is He? (35-37)

• Why does this pericope exist? Having established his right to speak as a scribe and having established the principle of judgment to everyone's agreement, Jesus now does to the scribal class what he did to the other classes: he judges them on their own turf. Here, he takes them to task for not recognizing him. The Shema is the ultimate principle of judgment, but for those who should know better. Recognizing the Messiah, which Jesus said the Jewish leadership should have done (also John's prologue), is the penultimate principle.
• Could anyone teach anything in the temple? There is at least an informal policing going on. Anyone putting out their shingle would be publicly cross-examined by established teachers. Failure would have at least meant ridicule. And anyone not getting the hint may have faced a sliding scale of expulsion from the temple or worse. People did not separate religious teaching from political speech; look at what ISIS did to imams it did not agree with.
• What were people’s thoughts on the Messiah at the time?
• Was Jesus bringing up a common problem?
• Is Jesus's teaching style reflective of a kind of teaching? Jesus is employing a rabbinic method of teaching called haggadah, which is primarily wisdom instruction for living a God-fearing life. (now quoting some online research): Of the haggadic methods of interpretation, the most frequently used by Jesus is remez. Remez, or hinting, is a very rabbinic way of making a statement or declaration about something or someone by alluding to an Old Testament verse or passage of Scripture. Jesus hints at a biblical verse or passage just by mentioning one key word or phrase in the passage. His listeners, knowing the Bible by heart, much in the same way hear a key phrase and can recall the whole passage. Often, the point being taught is found in the biblical passage immediately before or just after the “hint” from that passage. However, it was unnecessary, in fact a waste of time, to quote a long passage from the Bible which the listeners all knew from memory. The moment the “hint” was given, the whole passage hinted at immediately burst into the mind of each listener.
• What do we learn about Jesus’s awareness of himself from his use of this psalm.
• Is this Psalm, Psalm 110, addressed elsewhere in Mark’s Gospel?
• Was Jesus siding with a certain line of argumentation?
• Why this psalm? What was this particular point important to bring up in this place? Four Davidic Psalms (2, 118, 110, and 22), each cited or alluded to at least twice, in this order, and at critical junctures in Mark's narrative, play a key role in his Gospel. In contemporary understanding Psalm 2 was associated with the future messianic purging of Jerusalem and especially the temple (e.g.4QFlor, Pss Sol 17). Psalm 118, concluding the Egyptian Hallel, spoke of Israel's future deliverance under a Davidic king with the restored temple as the goal of Israel's return from exile. Psalm 110's surprisingly elevated royal designation, uniquely expressed in Melchizedekian priestking terms, contributed to several portraits of exalted heavenly deliverers, some messianic, who would preside over Israel's restoration (e.g.11QMelch, 1 Enoch) while Psalm 22's Davidic suffering and vindication described the deliverance of righteous Zion (e.g.4QPs). Drawing from the dual perspective of their original contexts and contemporary interpretations, this paper proposes that Mark's careful arrangement of his psalm citations presents Jesus as both Israel's Davidic Messiah (Pss. 2, 118) and the temple's Lord (Ps. 110) who, coming to purge Jerusalem but rejected by the temple authorities, announces the present structure's destruction and, through his death and vindication (Ps. 22), its replacement with a new people-temple centered on himself. https://brill.com/view/journals/bi/15/3/article-p307_6.xml
• Should this pericope be part of the previous one?

Pericope 3: Jesus's Condemnation of the Scribes (38-40)

• What is the difference between the material above and these open judgments?
• Is this a rhetorical form--first trounce their teaching and then trounce them?
• The fourfold things they like: long robes, marketplace respect, best seats at synagogue, best seat at banquets. Why are these so wrong?
• Why are widow's houses and long prayers even mentioned? The former makes some sense, but the latter?
• Where did condemnation come up? The "greater" condemnation? What is the lesser one? Are we assuming he was talking about condemnation?

Pericope 4: The Lord's Doom Upon Jerusalem / The Widow's Mite (41-44)

• Why does this story exist here? Because, quoting again from the Pulpit Commentary: "The Greek word korban is related to the term korbanas, signifying the “temple treasury.” The charge is that the scribes, and indeed all of Israel's rulers, have made a corban (a vow -- kind of like a making a covenant) with the world system instead of living by their covenant vow to Yahweh. Therefore, the judgment will be made in the korbanas of the temple where the world system and Jewish devotion meet each other. It is a deeply ironic location.
• The people in the story are the crowds, rich people, Jesus, his disciples, temple benefactors, and the widow.
• The place is the temple treasury (Where is that?)
• Why does the temple have a treasury?
• What narrative requirement does each person in the story fulfil? What purpose do they serve?
• Money is important to the story and how much or little of it there is.
• Economic class is part of this: some live in abundance, but the widow lives in poverty.
• The story has Jesus going through a series of postures: he sits, he watches, he calls, he speaks.
• Jesus praises the largest gift, but based on a value completely other than its commercial value.
• No one is concerned about what happens to this widow after Jesus's pronouncement. Odd if her character is the point.
• The author makes a point to tell the reader how much the widow's coins were worth.
• Even if the commercial value of the coins is not important or, indeed, if money is not the object, is there still an implicit teaching about money?
• There is a lot of the verb "put" in this story.
• The dramatic engine of the story is fueled by compare and contrast: wealth and poverty, large and small, the crowd and the individual, Jesus and the disciples, a wide view versus a narrow view, the value of the crowd and Jesus's value, watching silently and speaking aloud.
• The story doubles up on its description of the amount the widow put into the treasury: everything she had, all she had to live on.
• Are these two adjectival phrases about the widow's gift meant to give us more information about the widow, or is this just repetition for emphasis?
• Jesus begins his teaching with "Truly, I tell you." Is this important?
• The disciples are not present in the story until Jesus calls them.
• The reaction of the disciples nor of anyone else is recorded. Audience reaction is assumed.
• Why are all the verbs in the simple past tense save the ones in Jesus's pronouncement. Those are all in the perfect tense?
• Is there a reason Jesus contrasts the verbs "have contributed" and "has put in" in the final comparison?
• Does giving tithe to the temple equate one-to-one to contemporary church tithing or to charitable giving today?
• What did this story mean to Jews or God-fearing gentiles who circulated it a decade or two before the temple's destruction?
• What status or position in society did widows have in first-century Palestine?
• Who is Jesus at this point in the Gospel narrative?
• What more does this story tell us about Mark's Jesus? How does this story advance the story about Jesus that Mark's gospel is telling?
• There is a kind of implicit narrative blocking that shapes the story.

Further work on the Widow's Mite

Work continues on the pericope of the widow's mite. I did an initial analysis of that pericope in Mark 12:41-44 last September. The exegetical work was pretty thorough, but it raised more questions than provided answers. The Bible typically does this. But, in this case, there is a straightforward reason. The event of the widow's mite does not stand on its own. It is final case evidence in a series of prosecutions Jesus makes of the Jewish ruling classes in 11:1-13:37. These begin during Jesus's time in Jerusalem right after the triumphal entry. The king is, if you will, seeing how things are. He cross-examines the people he has left in charge. And this cross-examination ends at the widow's mite. After that, the king delivers his judgment, as the following pericope is Mark's mini-apocalypse, in which every stone of the temple complex will be cast down, and the cursing of the fig tree.

The outline of this section of the Gospel looks like this. And I note some chiastic elements: The triumphal entry and subsequent temple cleansing over against the tribulation and the entry of the polluting abomination into the temple. The fig tree is cursed over against its appearance as an object lesson after Jesus's apocalyptic sermon. And even the bewilderment of Herod and all Jerusalem at the triumphant entry over against Jesus's statement that no one will know the day or the hour of his coming, linking the first and second advents of Jesus to Jerusalem. These chiastic sections bookend the challenge-response material that make up the king's cross-examination. He is come to his vineyard and is interrogating the wicked tenants.

A few more words about the challenge-response section of the Jerusalem section of Mark's Gospel: That Jesus responds to the chief priests and the temple hierarchy with a parable does not bode well. Parables are judgment speech meant to sift the hearer, obscuring or revealing as one has ears to hear. One would expect the most senior religious class to not require parabolic sifting. And yet, Jesus does so. The sifting begins. Each response Jesus provides is made on the challenger's home turf: Caesar's coin, the Torah, exegesis of the Psalms. Each response exposes the true nature the challenger is attempting to hide underneath a pious facade. That the scribes get a double retort on two different bases--exegetical and ethical--is surprising, and I cannot yet explain it. Perhaps, because the interlocutors begin at the top of the class pyramid and end at the bottom, Jesus expects more from the scribes. I do not know. Also, I included the widow's mite as part of Jesus's denunciation of the scribes (see also Exodus 22.22-24).

• A The triumphal entry, 11:1-11
• B The cursing of the fig tree, 11:12-14
• C Jesus cleanses the temple, 11:15-19
• D The lesson from the withered fig tree, 11:20-26

• CHALLENGE: Temple hierarchy questions Jesus’ authority, 11:27-33
• RESPONSE: The parable of the wicked tenants, 12:1-12
• CHALLENGE: Pharisees and Herodians question Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar, 12:13-16
• RESPONSE: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, 12:17
• CHALLENGE: Sadducees question Jesus about the resurrection, 12:18-23
• RESPONSE: Jesus backs the resurrection, 12:24-27
• CHALLENGE: Scribes question Jesus about the greatest commandment, 12:28-34
• EXEGETICAL RESPONSE: Jesus asks how the messiah can be David’s son, 12:35-37
• ETHICAL RESPONSE: Jesus denounces the scribes, 12:38-44 (widow's mite, vv. 41-44)

• D1 The destruction of the temple and signs before the end, 13:1-8
• C1 Tribulation foretold, 13:9-13
• The abomination of desolation, 13:14-23
• The coming of the Son of Man, 13:24-27
• B1 The lesson from the fig tree about the end time, 13:28-31
• A1 No one knows the day and hour, 13:32-37

This working outline gives context to my original work with the widow's mite. One can easily see that it fits in to a larger argument going on in the Gospel. A meaningful investigation of Jesus's pronouncement "this poor widow gave more" (12:44) must take this argument into account. As I said above, the widow sits at the bottom of this great descent through the religious classes of Jerusalem. Her act of selfless giving and Jesus's opinion of it become the linchpin of the king's sitting pronouncement. What began at the gate ends at the court of the women. The last become first when the Kingdom comes in power. And one cannot forget that the king's role is to take up the case of the orphan and the widow (see Ps 94).

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Thoughts on the Structure of 12:28-44

The section in question begins in 12.28 ( Καὶ προσελθὼν εἷς τῶν γραμματέων; and one of the scribes came near). The previous section was about the Sadducees. Thus, the entrance of a scribe makes this a new section. The confrontation with the scribes continues until v 44, the end of the pericope commonly called the widow's mite. We confirm it does because directly after, Jesus and the disciples leave Jerusalem entirely. So, then: how to divide up this loaf of sixteen verses? Here is the way they are structured as a four-part schema:

12.28 -- as we saw above -- Καὶ προσελθὼν εἷς τῶν γραμματέων; and one of the scribes came near [what is the greatest commandment?]

12.35 -- Καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ; and Jesus answered [how is the Messiah David's son?]

12.38 -- Καὶ ἐν τῇ διδαχῇ αὐτοῦ; and as he taught [Jesus calls down the scribes for being prideful and for eating widow's homes]

12.41 -- Καὶ καθίσας κατέναντι τοῦ γαζοφυλακίου; he sat down opposite the treasury [Jesus calls attention to just such a widow]

Each of our parts here begins with the conjunction. Mark gives us no other overt clue how to juxtapose them. But at least we know, right? At least we are now making the hard calls.

I see the fourth part--the widow's mite--connected as an object lesson to Jesus's condemnation of the scribes in the third part. So, at the very least, I see three parts, not four. The fourth και section supports the third. But, at the same time, you could argue that there is a progression of speaking. In the first, a scribe opens the debate. In the second and third, Jesus is speaking. And, in the fourth, Jesus sits down. I guess this is kind of where I am going. Not to three parts, but to two. The scribe's opener and Jesus's retort, first verbally and then in court's evidence of the suffering of the righteous widow.

Actually, no. I see that fourth part with the widow as the culmination of an entire series of condemnations moving from political, to priestly, and finally to the scribal/teaching class. It all begins with the triumphal entry (the first mention of the temple, btw, in 11.15) & the cleansing of the temple, and ends with Jesus sitting down and condemning the whole thing on the basis of the evidence of the abused poor. In the very next pericope, Jesus says the temple is going to be cast down, which is the real cleansing of the temple. (A search on "temple" in Mark yields interesting results: eleven results clustered in chapters eleven through fifteen.)

Exegeting the Widow's Mite: A first look at the story in English

The story of the widow's mite is a cash cow for workaday ministry. Thanks to this story, the needy pastor need not fear when the once-a-year stewardship campaign or a building fund fundraiser comes due. He or she has it covered. Yes, from the very lips of Jesus himself drops money talk heaven-sent to open the wallets of the faithful. It is textual. It is orthodox. It is guilt free.

The story of the widow's mite is simple enough. Jesus is sitting near the treasury on the temple grounds. He with his retinue are watching people toss money into an offering box. A widow comes in. She tosses in a few mites--a tiny amount of money and probably the last bit of cash she had. Jesus sees it and says something like, "See! This widow is better than these other people. They give from their extra, but she gave even the last few coins she had to live on." And so the usual conclusion is to be like the widow. Dig deep. Give much. "The widow cast but two brass coins into the treasury and yet she shall be preferred before Croesus with all his wealth." said Jerome.

But is it really that simple? I confess to feeling a twinge of suspicion whenever I've heard this passage preached. Not to say that I felt the sermon wicked or the speaker a villain--not at all! Good people do they best they can at hard texts. I just knew that there was more to it, hearing as it were a kind of distant echo. And, sure enough, there is more--a lot more.

The best way to find out what is there is to dive deeply into the story itself.[1] There is a fecundity to scripture. Even the most obvious bit of story, if you sit with it, will slowly widen out into a satisfying tableau. This story, or pericope, (A pericope /pear-ICK-oh-pee/ is a set of verses that forms one coherent unit or thought. Pericopes are the bits of scripture read aloud in liturgical worship.) is found in Mark 12.41-44 and Luke 21.1-4. I am going to focus on the Marcan instance. Mark is the earliest gospel, and Luke does not use the periocope any differently than Mark. The goal is to arrive at a defensible, understandable, and meaningful interpretation that gives it reason in its lexical setting and makes its teaching available to us today. I will be using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), as it is the critical English text used in universities and seminaries. I also want to stay with English as far as possible before consulting the Greek. So the text reads

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

When I begin to examine a pericope, I always start with two techniques: observation and structural analysis. Observation is what it says: focused looking. It is helpful to make a list of what is observed. Observation is all about the details, and each should be listed on its own line. Doing so helps the mind dismiss assumptions and see what is there. Like pulling up carpet, one sometimes finds new layers underneath. Structural analysis is different from observation in that it is not concerned with what is being said, the meaning of content, but with how it is said. Structural analysis uncovers the framework in which content is presented. The reader is after the purpose of a text. He or she wants to know the main idea and how other ideas are arranged around it. The structure usually tells you that. To do structural analysis, I use grammatical techniques like sentence flowing or sentence diagramming. You can also underline parallel constructions, highlight verbs with a highlighter, and so on. Any technique is useful. Here is the diagram I made of this pericope. I do not use verse numbers or include chapter headings. The point is to discover grammatical and rhetorical structure.

Beginning with observation, here are several written in the order they were made. The more observations one makes, the better.

• The people in the story are the crowds, rich people, Jesus, his disciples, temple benefactors, and the widow
• The place is the temple treasury (Where is that?)
• Why is each person there?
• Money is important to the story and how much or little of it there is
• Economic class is part of this: some have "abundance," but the widow lives in poverty
• The story has Jesus going through a series of postures: he sits, he watches, he calls, he speaks.
• Jesus praises the largest gift, but based on a value completely other than the currency values of the day
• No one is concerned about what happens to this widow after Jesus's pronouncement
• The author makes a point to tell the reader how much the widow's coins were worth
• There is a lot of the verb "put" in this story
• The dramatic engine of the story is fueled by compare and contrast: wealth and poverty, large and small, the crowd and the individual, Jesus and the disciples, a wide view versus a narrow view, the value of the crowd and Jesus's value, watching silently and speaking aloud
• The story doubles up on its description of the amount the widow put into the treasury: everything she had, all she had to live on
• Are these two adjectival phrases about the widow's gift meant to give us more information about the widow, or is this just repetition for emphasis?
• Jesus begins his teaching with "Truly, I tell you." Is this important?
• The disciples are not present in the story until Jesus calls them
• The reaction of the disciples nor of anyone else is unrecorded
• Why are all the verbs in the simple past tense save the ones in Jesus's pronouncement. Those are all in the perfect tense?
• Is there a reason Jesus contrasts the verbs "have contributed" and "has put in" in the final comparison?
• Does their giving to the temple equate to our giving to the church or to charitable giving today?
• What did this story mean to Jews or God-fearing gentiles circulating it twenty years before the temple's destruction?
• What comes before this story? What comes after? How does this story "work" between then?
• What status or position in society did widows have in first-century Palestine?
• Who is Jesus at this point in the gospel?
• What does this story say about Jesus? How does this story advance the story about Jesus that Mark's gospel is telling?

And now for the structural analysis.

The fun begins when structural analysis is finished (to whatever degree one desires). And it is fun! Sometimes I find it hard to complete an analysis for the insights jumping off the page! Highlighting structure words like then, therefore, and, but, etc. reveal the machinery of the text. It becomes easy to see how each piece, each paragraph, each sentence, fits together. And, in doing so, it guides the reader toward the main idea.

The main idea of a pericope is the pearl inside the grammatical clam. Discovering it not by whimsy or by guesswork but based on grammatical structure is one of the most important tasks of the exegete. Grammatical structure tells the hearer or reader what is important and what is not. It communicates the choice of meaning that a writer or speaker is making. Grammatical structure is a treasure map. And following it means that the exegete will not only emphasize what is meant to be emphasized, but make correct decisions about the importance of other parts of a story. Exegesis is not only understanding the words and sentences; it is understanding how the author has structured information for meaning.

The main idea is discovered by looking at the structure. So one begins looking for words that reveal it, such as relative pronouns or conjunctions that begin sorting material into independent and dependent clauses. In this case, the temporal adverb "then" divides the pericope into two halves. The first half comes before Jesus speaks and the rest follows after. Before is the factual world of action and after is the mental world of interpretation. The transition movement makes dramatic suspense. A division can also be made in the first half to create the diagram above. This pericope is a story in three acts: the opening scene at the temple treasury; the cast of characters, rich people and the widow; and the teaching that results from it all. I labeled these the Scene, Introduction of Characters, and the Lesson. But does this help to discover the main idea? Yes it does.

The main idea of a pericope will be located in structures that are supported by everything around them. It will not be found in dependent material beginning with because, for example. It will not be found in introductory material. In this pericope, then, the main idea is not to be found in the first two acts. It is located in the third.

In the third act, too, some digging for the main idea is required. The act is divided into three parts: Jesus's assembly of the disciples for instruction, Jesus's surprising announcement, and the reason for the announcement. Now, the main idea cannot be in the first subdivision because it is introductory. So, it must be in one of the other two parts. Again, structure comes to the rescue. The third portion begins with the subordinate conjunction for. That section, then, supports the second section and depends grammatically on it. Thus, the main idea can only be in the second section of the third act: "this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury." But this is a comparative clause. And so, of the two, the first assertion is favored. Thus, the main idea of the pericope is "this poor widow has put in more."

Now, there is another structure in the pericope that deserves investigation. It involves a rhetorical device called syncrisis. Syncrisis is a kind of comparison or antithesis. And it is easily observable in the A B B A structure of the third act.

     A   this widow has put in more
     B   than those
               for
     B1  all have contributed
     A1  but she has put in everything

Ancient rhetoricians used syncrisis to contrast people in order to evaluate their relative worth to society. Syncrisis is a subset of a larger genre called epideictic rhetoric which is designed to publicly praise (or shame) someone for the purpose of emulation (or shunning). Jesus's speech in the temple treasury is certainly an example of epideictic rhetoric, of a sort called an encomium, and syncrisis forms a major part of the way he structured his speech. But Jesus did not begin its use in the story. The gospel writer employed syncrisis in the second act of the pericope before Jesus's encomium. The story is built around them. I should also say that epideictic rhetoric would sometimes include some introductory narrative information. One was, after all, about to praise or damn someone, and so some factual information to set up the story might be helpful. This factual warmup is called by rhetoricians the narratio. So, then, Mark's story of the widow's mite is a three-part, dramatic, epideitic narration that begins with a bit of narratio and then uses syncrisis to publicly praise one of two contrasted people. Its hero is a widow. Its main idea is "this poor widow has put in more."

The temptation now is overwhelming to apply this as a kind of moral of the story. The sermon writes itself: "Just as this widow gave all she had out of her poverty and was praised, so you have no excuse, out of your abundance, to give to the work of the kingdom." But consider: almost none of the observations made above have been satisfied. The setting and action of the first two acts of the tale are ignored by this conclusion, as are any criticisms made by the story about class and wealth. Structural analysis has provided a framework. But there is more work to be done later in another post.

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[1] Exegesis /ex-uh-JEE-zis/ (from the Greek verb ἐξηγεῖσθαι, "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The interpreter allows the text to "lead out" the meaning. The antonym is eisegesis /AI-suh-jee-zus/ where an interpreter "leads in" to a text a preconceived meaning.