In the last post, I covered the similarities and differences in Mark’s, Matthew’s, and John’s renditions of the story of the woman who anointed Jesus. However, the common core of the story remained the same. However, in Luke 7:36-50, the only details that seem to be the same are the name of the host as “Simon”, though it is Simon the Pharisee rather than Simon the Leper, and the act of anointing Jesus with perfume. There is a striking agreement between Luke and John that she anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. This latter action, however, seems to make more sense in Luke as she was crying over his feet and wiping the tears away with her hair. Was John dependent on Luke in conflating the Lukan and Markan stories, was Luke dependent on John in correcting an odd detail in the latter, or were both Luke and John familiar with an oral variant where the woman anointed Jesus’ feet? This parallel cannot be discussed apart from the other parallels between Luke and John such as the miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11; John 21:1-14), the names Lazarus and the sisters Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38–42; 16:19–31; John 11:1–44), the visit of Peter to the sepulcher (Luke 24:12; John 20:2–9), and the resurrection appearances localized in Jerusalem (Luke 24:1–11, 33–53; John 20:1–29).
Otherwise, Luke 7:36-50 looks like a completely different story: the woman is described as a sinner from the city, the Pharisee with whom Jesus was dining casts judgment on her and on Jesus for letting her touch him, Jesus corrects the Pharisee with a parable about a moneylender who cancels debt and about how the affections she has lavished on Jesus were due to her receiving forgiveness to such a great extent. Has Luke relocated Mark’s story and completely re-written it to serve the author’s own editorial and theological interests? The theory that I prefer is that Luke actually knew another story about how Jesus pardoned a woman accused of some transgressions earlier in the ministry; it was Luke who omitted the Markan story of the woman who anointed Jesus yet transferred a few of its details over to what was originally a completely independent story of an encounter between Jesus and a different woman. To see what this account might have looked like before it was incorporated into Luke 7:36-50, we must turn to data from outside the New Testament next.
The Jesus Memoirs 