A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

Luke 16:19

It was probably horror vacui that prompted more than one copyist to provide a name for the anonymous Rich Man. In Egypt the tradition that his name was Nineveh is incorporated in the Sahidic version, and seems to be reflected also in î⁷⁵, which reads plou,sioj ovno,mati Neuhj (probably a scribal error for Nineuhj). During the third and fourth centuries a tradition was current in the West that the Rich Man’s name was Phineas. The pseudo-Cyprianic treatise De pascha computus, which was written in the year 242/3 in Africa or in Rome, declares (ch. 17): Omnibus peccatoribus a deo ignis est praeparatus, in cuius flamma uri ille Finaeus dives ab ipso dei filio est demonstratus (“Fire has been prepared by God for all sinners, in the flame of which, as was indicated by the Son of God himself, that rich man Phineas is burned”). The same tradition is repeated toward the close of the fourth century in the last of the eleven anonymous treatises that are customarily assigned to Priscillian, a wealthy, highly educated layman who became the founder of a gnosticizing sect in southern Spain. Here the name is spelled Finees (in the only manuscript extant of Tract ix the name is spelled Fineet with the t stroked out and surmounted by s). The reason that the name Phineas was given to the Rich Man may be because in the Old Testament ( Numbers 25:7, Numbers 25:11) Eleazar [compare Lazarus] and Phinehas are associated. A note in the margin of a thirteenth century manuscript of the poem “Aurora,” a versified Bible written in the twelfth century by Peter of Riga, states Amonofis dicitur esse nomen divitis (“The name of the Rich Man is said to be Amonofis [i.e. Amenophis]”). ¹⁴

¹⁴ So M. R. James, Journal of Theological Studies, IV (1902—03), p. 243.

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A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

Luke 16:19

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