| Argumentative function (PRIMARY). | Gospel citation in Latin + identification. | Old Testament scripture in Latin + reference. |
|---|---|---|
| Harmony/logia-compatible interpretive scholion | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | "Confringe panem tuum esurienti… mendicos… qui sine tecto sunt, induc in domum tuam" (Isa 58:7) |
| Redactional anti-Marcionite framing (secondary “Luke vs Marcion” encoding) | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | (implicit typology) “in resurrectione” retributio; “amantes munera… sectantes retributionem” (implicit Isaianic/Jeremiac invective pattern) |
| Distinctively Lukan-dependent argument | "Homo quidam fecit coenam et vocavit multos" [Gospel: Luke] | (—) (implicit typology) “coena” → “vitae aeternae saturitas” |
| Harmony/logia-compatible interpretive scholion | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | (implicit typology) domestici/familiares per Adam “qua homines” et per patres “qua Iudaici” |
| Redactional anti-Marcionite framing (secondary “Luke vs Marcion” encoding) | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | (implicit typology) “ante iam vocatos per patres… per prophetas” vs “subito… eandem faciens horam coenandi et ad coenam invitandi” |
| Harmony/logia-compatible interpretive scholion | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | "Fac nobis deos qui praeeant nobis" (Exod 32:1); (implicit typology) “aure audientes et non audientes” (cf. Isa 6:10, implicit) |
| Prophetic fulfillment exegesis independent of specific gospel wording | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | "Audite vocem meam, et ero vobis in dominum et vos mihi in populum…" (Jer 7:23–24) |
| Distinctively Lukan-dependent argument | "Agrum emi, et boves mercatus sum, et uxorem duxi" [Gospel: Luke] | (implicit typology) Jeremiac “non audierunt… concupiverunt corde suo malo” mapped onto the three excuses |
| Prophetic fulfillment exegesis independent of specific gospel wording | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | "Et emisi ad vos omnes famulos meos prophetas… Et non audiit populus meus… obduravit collum suum" (Jer 7:25–26; cf. Jer 11:8) |
| Harmony/logia-compatible interpretive scholion | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | "Numquid solitudo factus sum domui Israelis, aut terra in incultum derelicta?… Non venimus ad te" (Jer 2:31) |
| Distinctively Lukan-dependent argument | "de plateis et vicis civitatis" [Gospel: Luke] | (implicit typology) “civitas” as Israelite sphere; selection from within |
| Distinctively Lukan-dependent argument | "de viis et sepibus colligi" [Gospel: Luke] | "Avertam faciem meam ab eis… obaemulabor eos in non natione, in natione insipienti provocabo eos in iram" (Deut 32:20–21) |
| Redactional anti-Marcionite framing (secondary “Luke vs Marcion” encoding) | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | "tanquam specula in vinea et in cucumerario casula" (Isa 1:8) |
| Redactional anti-Marcionite framing (secondary “Luke vs Marcion” encoding) | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | (implicit typology) parabola requires “prima vocatio” + “secundo actu admonitio”; denial that a “totum opus semel fecit” god can supply this |
| Redactional anti-Marcionite framing (secondary “Luke vs Marcion” encoding) | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | (implicit typology) “fastidiosos iudicare” requires prior invitation; “secundo venturus” logic for gentile sublection |
| Harmony/logia-compatible interpretive scholion | (—) [No explicit gospel wording; narrative/argument only] | (implicit typology) terrena promissa “vini et olei et frumenti… civitatis” figurari “in spiritalia” by creator |
The chapter’s surface is anchored in a Lukan parable (“Homo quidam fecit coenam…”) and in the familiar Lukan triad of excuses (“Agrum emi… boves… uxorem duxi”), yet Tertullian’s controlling logic is not narrowly Lukan but structural and transferable: the parable is read as a compressed history of vocation, refusal, prophetic admonition, and replacement. The initial move grounds Christ’s dining injunctions in Isaiah’s ethic of hospitality (“Confringe panem tuum esurienti…”), so that the social logic of inviting those unable to repay becomes an index of the creator’s moral economy, not a novelty requiring a new god. Even where “resurrectio” is invoked as the horizon of recompense, the argument proceeds by continuity of divine character—opposition to “amantes munera” and “sectantes retributionem”—rather than by dependence on uniquely Lukan phrasing.
The interpretive engine is prophetic fulfillment and prophetic patterning. Jeremiah supplies the template of a prior invitation, a refusal (“Audite vocem meam… Et non audierunt”), and repeated prophetic sending (“Et emisi ad vos omnes famulos meos prophetas”), which is then overlaid onto the parabolic sequence: the first call corresponds to the patriarchal past, the second to prophetic admonition, and only then does the narrative expand to new invitees. On this reading, the excuses function less as individual moral vignettes than as emblematic condensations of Israel’s long-standing deafness and misdirected desire, explicitly keyed to Jeremiah’s “concupiverunt corde suo malo.” This prophetic scaffolding can be carried independent of Luke as a fixed text, because it depends on the parable’s temporal structure (invitation → reminder → refusal → substitution) more than on its exact verbal form.
At the same time, the chapter is saturated with secondary “Luke vs Marcion” encoding. The polemical target is a deity who “totum opus semel fecit,” lacking an ordered economy with stages of vocation and admonition. That claim is not derived from the parable itself but imposed as a criterion of plausibility: a sudden god cannot produce the parable’s sequential logic without collapsing its internal chronology (“eandem faciens horam coenandi et ad coenam invitandi”). The argument thus treats the parable as evidence for an economy of salvation that already includes patriarchs and prophets; anti-Marcionite framing appears as a retroactive explanatory grid applied to an inherited exegetical premise that parables encode salvation-history.
The shift from “plateae et vici civitatis” to “viae et sepes” is the hinge where the inherited logic most clearly coheres with a broader harmonized tradition: internal Israelite calling first, then gentile ingathering. Tertullian anchors this in Deuteronomy’s jealousy oracle (“obaemulabor eos in non natione”) and sharpens it with Isaiah’s image of Zion left as a “specula… casula,” so that the transfer of guests is not an ad hoc Lukan story-beat but a prophetic necessity. Here prophetic fulfillment is not ornament but causality: the movement to the “sepes” is made to happen because Deuteronomy already scripted a displacement and Isaiah already pictured the abandonment.
Detached from Luke, the argument would still work wherever a “great supper” parable with staged invitation and refusal is available in a logia/harmony complex, because the decisive claims are about temporal economy, not about Lukan stylistics. The chapter’s proof is that the parable presupposes prior divine dealings (a first invitation) and subsequent prophetic reinforcement (a second sending), and that the later ingathering of outsiders is legible only within the creator’s long-form disposition. Luke supplies the narrative vehicle, but Jeremiah and Deuteronomy supply the hermeneutical motor, with Isaiah policing the outcome as abandonment and replacement within a single economy of judgment and promise.
