532 John J. Kilgallen the correction of this attitude. It was Jesus who had forgiven her sins (11) . This explains in part the significance of the parable. Not only did the parable establish the grounds for contrasting the reactions of the woman and Simon to Jesus, but it also establishes the fact that the forgiven is sure to thank the one who ‘forgave the debt’. The mention of these two problems and their solutions brings us to ask again: are we to assume that the writers before Luke did not understand in what they wrote, who was the forgiver of sins? Or is it not just as reasonable as not to think that Luke, inheriting vv. 36-47, drew out of this story what was implicitly already there (12)? From the composition of the parable and its inner dynamics, it seems that he who added the parable knew the deeper meaning of Jesus, while at the same time not explicitly stating it. We recall that his apparent practical reason for adding the parable was to emphasize, not Christology, but the bitter contrast between the action/inaction of the debtors forgiven (13). It needed only a later writer to draw out from the story and its parable the deeper Christology therein. Luke does this by explicitly bringing to the attention of Theophilus the meaning he sees embedded in the story: Jesus is the one who forgives sins. But, while doing this, Luke (albeit in a literary fashion) also makes clearer the inadequacy of the woman’s estimate of Jesus and corrects it. For the one and only time in the story Jesus speaks directly to the woman (14). Here he tells her that her sins have been forgiven. That this is said to her presumes that she is learning something she did not know before. It cannot be that she did not know her sins were forgiven. Rather, with the clarity brought by the question (15) of the other dinner guests, we know that she learns who her forgiver is (16). Again, is this clarity an imposition on a story which did not implicitly already contain it? It seems not. Rather, it is a clarification demanded by Luke’s own Sitz-im-Leben, which is not that of those from whom he inherited this story. Luke wants to use this story to help Theophilus understand how reliable are the things he had been taught (Luke 1,4). —————— at all that the woman has this profound understanding of Jesus. Who in the Gospel ever did know this quality of Jesus? On the other hand, the influence of the previous verses (29- 35) create the ‘right place’ for the woman’s story and suggest strongly that Jesus is known to sinners under the rubric of “preacher of repentance and forgiveness”. (11) This is the judgment to be drawn from v. 49, and buttressed with the story of Luke 5,17-26. (12) Cf. FITZMYER, Luke, 684: “As pronouncement story and a parable they [36-47] should be regarded as having come to him so in the tradition”. (13) In this scenario, it is the one who inserted the parable who added v. 47b; FITZMYER, Luke, 684 argues: “Verse 47c [our v. 47b] is an editorial addition, which relates the parable to the pronouncement story”. (14) Cf. NOLLAND, Luke, 352, “But to deny to Jesus any direct address to the woman is to cause the pericope to fail as a literary unit”. From a different perspective MARSHALL, Luke, 314 notes: “It comes as something of a surprise that Jesus now turns to the woman”. (15) The question is so written that one knows it to be a characteristic clause; that is, what is at stake here is not just that Jesus has forgiven the woman, but that forgiveness of sins is a characteristic of Jesus’ person. In this, the question is akin to what is given in Luke 5,24, which affirms Jesus’ enduring power to forgive. (16) If the dinner guests heard Jesus’ words to the woman (and they did), it can be pre- sumed that the woman heard the dinner guests asking their question among themselves (ejn eJautoi'").