the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

indeed is odd that he had no relatives or friends who would welcome him into their homes, or
that he saved nothing for his basic provisions while he stewarded, it is not difficult to
understand such situations, given the fact that his lifestyle, as alluded to in v. 1, was formed
as habit of squandering his own possessions, like the younger son in the preceding parable.
According to his plan conceived before, he begins with the debt reduction after
summoning his master’s debtors. It is not essential to the parable’s main point whether the
steward summons the debtors one by one privately, or all of them together to one place. 34
The amount of the debts is huge. In the case of one hundred baths of oil, it would be
equivalent to about 800 or 900 gallons or to the wages of about three years for the average
worker. And in the case of one hundred kor of wheat, it would be about 1100 bushels or one-
half year of labor for the average worker. 35 The debtors benefit the equivalent of about 500
denarii by the debts reduction. The steward then acts as an agent as if the master did it
himself, in accordance with the Jewish law on agency. 36 With the quantities involved and the
nature of the commodities, Piper, following Danker’s study of benefaction in the Greco-
Roman era, 37 argues that the debtors who receive the debt reduction would have been forced
to pass on the reductions to the wider populace who relied on these foodstuffs, which were
the basic foodstuffs of the ancient Mediterranean world. 38
Yet he is not so much alleviating
the suffering of the poor as ensuring his own survival. There is, to be exact, no suggestion to
support that he indeed hoped to help the poor through the debt reduction.
With respect to the debt reduction, there are several further points, such as the interest, the
steward’s commission and the principal. Derrect, following P.W. Pestman’s survey, argues
that the audience would consider the debt reduction as the elimination of the original interest,
since the interest rate on food commodities in Egypt was fifty percent, which is like the
39
amount of the debt reduction in the parable. The main problem with the usury or interest,
34. The word is read generally each or every. See BDAG, 298.
35. Jeremias, Parables, 181; Douglas E. Oakman, “Jesus and Agrarian Palestine: The Factor of Debt,” in ed.,
Kent Harold Richards, Society of Biblical Literature 1985 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars, 1985), 57-73,
here 71; James Breech, The Silence of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 107-8; Nolland, Luke, 799.
36. Derrett, “The Parable of the Unjust Steward,” 201, says that “the three great maxims of the Jewish law of
agency are as follows: (1) A man’s agent is like himself. (2) There is no agency for wrongdoing. (3) It is
presumed that an agent executes his commission.” See also b. Gittin 77b; b. Baba Mesi
101
e a 96a; b. Qiddušin 43a; b.
Baba Qamma 113b; b. B. Qam. 51a, 79a; b. Qiddušin 42b and b. e Erubin 31b.
37. F.W. Danker, Benefactor. Epigraphic Study of a Graeco-Roman and New Testament Semantic Field (St
Louis, Clayton Publishing House, 1982), 75-76.
38. Piper, “Social Background and Thematic Structure in Luke 16,” 1649-51.
39. Derrectt contends that “in considering the customary interest on loans one has to differentiate between loans
of money and loans of consumer goods such as grain, wine, salt, and such like. Demotic loans were drawn in the