¹ Brown, Raymond E., The Death of the Messiah (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994) 2.930Google Scholar. See also Gorman, Heather M., Interweaving Innocence: A Rhetorical Analysis of Luke's Passion Narrative (Luke 22:66–23:49) (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2015) 7–10, 129Google Scholar; Neyrey, Jerome H., The Passion According to Luke: A Redaction Study of Luke's Soteriology (New York: Paulist Press, 1985) 109Google Scholar; and Soards, Marion L., ‘Tradition, Composition, and Theology in Jesus’ Speech to the “Daughters of Jerusalem” (Luke 23, 27–32)’, Bib 68 (1987) 221–44, at 240Google Scholar. For citations of scholars who argue this section was derived from a pre-Lukan source, see Gorman, Interweaving Innocence, 123–4. For the view that Luke 23.27-28a was a Lukan construction while the following verses in the pericope drew on earlier material, see Hans Klein, Das Lukasevangelium (KEK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 704. For summaries of various pre-Lukan allusions proposed for this text, see Dennis Ronald MacDonald, ‘The Breasts of Hecuba and Those of the Daughters of Jerusalem: Luke's Transvaluation of a Famous Iliadic Scene’, Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative (ed. Jo-Ann Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005) 239–54 and Michael Wolter, Das Lukasevangelium (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 755-6 / Michael Wolter, The Gospel According to Luke Volume II (Luke 9:51-24) (trans. Wayne Coppins and Christoph Heilig; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017) 522-3. MacDonald includes his own argument that Luke 23.27–31 is drawn from Iliad 22.

² Gorman, Interweaving Innocence, 117.

³ Gorman, Interweaving Innocence, 118–22.

⁴ Rice, Peter, ‘The Rhetoric of Luke's Passion: Luke's Use of Common-place to Amplify the Guilt of Jerusalem's Leaders in Jesus’ Death’, BibInt 21.3 (2013) 355–76, at 367 and 369Google Scholar.

⁵ Rice, ‘Rhetoric of Luke's Passion’, 371.

⁶ Both Kloppenborg and Sterling argue that Luke particularly drew on the death of Socrates tradition in his passion narrative: Kloppenborg, John S., ‘Exitus clari viri: The Death of Jesus in Luke’, TJT 8.1 (1992) 106–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sterling, Greg ‘Mors philosophi: The Death of Jesus in Luke’, HTR 94.4 (2001) 383–402Google Scholar. Scaer argues for the influence of Greek rhetoric and Hellenistic Jewish martyr accounts, as well as Greco-Roman concepts of the good death derived from the death of Socrates: Scaer, Peter J., The Lukan Passion and the Praiseworthy Death (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005) 90–134Google Scholar.

⁷ All Greek text is from UBS⁴.

⁸ Neyrey, The Passion, 108–28. An earlier presentation of this argument can be found in Neyrey, Jerome H., ‘Jesus’ Address to the Women of Jerusalem (Lk. 23. 27–31)—A Prophetic Judgment Oracle’, NTS 29 (1983) 74–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gorman concurs with this view (Interweaving Innocence, 121).

⁹ Barbara E. Reid and Shelly Matthews, Luke 10-24 (Wisdom Commentary 43B; General editor, Barbara E. Reid; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2021) 601.

¹⁰ Soards ‘Tradition, Composition and Theology’, 229–30. Bovon, Brown, Melzer-Keller, and Neagoe also view the women positively: Bovon, François, Luke 3: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28–24:53 (ed. Koester, Helmut; trans. Crouch, James; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012) 302Google Scholar; Brown, The Death of the Messiah 2.910–20; Melzer-Keller, Helga, Jesus und die Frauen: Eine Verhältnisbestimmung nach den synoptischen Überlieferungen (Freiburg: Herder, 1997) 299-300Google Scholar; and Neagoe, Alexandru, The Trial of the Gospel: An Apologetic Reading of Luke's Trial Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wolter argues against Neyrey's negative assessment, but understands the women in a more neutral fashion as prompt for Jesus’ statement (Lukasevangelium, 754-5; Luke II, 521).

¹¹ For example, David E. Garland, Luke (Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament 3; General editor, Clinton E. Arnold; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011) 918. The mourning is described as ‘signs of remorse’ by Kevin L. Anderson ‘But God Raised Him from the Dead’: The Theology of Jesus's Resurrection in Luke-Acts (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006) 30.

¹² Bovon, Luke, 302 is a recent supporter of this view. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 919 n.18 presents an argument against this reading.

¹³ For example, Anton Büchele, Der Tod Jesu im Lukasevangelium: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu Lk 23 (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1978) 43 and Walter Käser, ‘Exegetische und theologische Erwägungen zur Seligpreisung der Kinderlosen Lk 23_29b’, ZNW 54 (1963) 240–54, at 241. Sabine Bieberstein, Verschwiegene Jüngerinnen—vergessene Zeuginnen. Gebrochene Kozept im Lukasevangelium (NTOA 38; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag and Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998) 208-13 calls attention to the risks in showing such public solidarity with someone condemned to death and compares the women's mourning in Luke with other ancient examples of women's protests or resistance.

¹⁴ Bovon, Untergassmair, and Bieberstein also emphasise the ritual nature of the verbs used to describe the women's actions: Bovon, Luke, 301; Franz Geog Untergassmair, Kreuzweg und Kreuzigung Jesu: Ein Beitrag zur lukanischen Redaktionsgeschichte und zur Frage nach der lukanischen „Kreuzestheologie“ (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1980) 17; Bieberstein, Verschwiegene Jüngerinnen, 206-7. Pace Neyrey, The Passion, 112, who asserts that ‘the daughters of Jerusalem are not now weeping over Jesus…’ and identifies their crying as akin to that ‘occasioned by God's judgment on sinful Jerusalem (Jer 9:13–16)’.

¹⁵ BDAG s.v. κόπτομαι; LSJ s.v. κόπτομαι; G. Stählin, ‘κοπɛτός, κόπτω, ἀποκόπτω, ἐγκοπή, ἐγκόπτω, ἐκκόπτω’, TDNT 3.830–60.

¹⁶ BDAG s.v. θρηνέω; LSJ s.v. θρηνέω; G. Stählin, ‘θρηνέω, θρῆνος’, TDNT 3.148–55.

¹⁷ On mourning in the Hebrew Bible: Stählin, TDNT 3.150–1; Stählin, TDNT 3.836–40. For the practice in Second Temple Period Judaism: Rachel Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005) 205, 326–7; S. Safrai, ‘Home and Family’, The Jewish People in the First Century (eds. S. Safrai and M. Stern; Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1976) 2.775; Stählin, TDNT 3.151–2; Stählin, TDNT 3.841–4. For Greek practice from the Archaic period through the Late Antique: Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (rev. Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos; Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002²) 6–13, 27–31. For Roman practice: Valerie M. Hope, Death in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2007) 177–8. For an overview of women's lament in the eastern Mediterranean more broadly: Angela Standhartiger, ‘“What Women Were Accustomed to Do for the Dead Beloved by Them” (‘Gospel of Peter’ 12:50): Traces of Laments and Mourning Rituals in Early Easter, Passion, and Lord's Supper Traditions’, JBL 129 (2010) 559–74, at 560–3.

¹⁸ On the distinctions between idealised and actual gender roles in Roman funerary ritual: Darja Šterbenc Erker, ‘Gender and Roman Funeral Ritual’, Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death (ed. Valerie M. Hope and Janet Huskinson; Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011) 40–60.

¹⁹ Šterbenc Erker, ‘Gender and Roman Funeral Ritual’, 57.

²⁰ Epic tradition portrays mourning in this way, e.g. in Homer (Il. 24.719–24), Vergil (Aen. 12.604–7), and Lucan (Bell. civ. 2.21–8), as does Greek tragedy (e.g. Aeschylus, Cho. 423–8 and Euripides, Suppl. 71–9) and the satirist Lucian (De luctu 12). Greek and Roman funerary iconography uses images of women mourning as a way of epitomizing a funeral scene (see, e.g. the Louvre prothesis pinax (Louvre 905), the tomb of the Haterii (Hope, Death, 3.19), and a relief from Aquila (Hope, Death, 3.21)). For further examples of women mourning in Hellenistic and Roman literature: Stählin, TDNT 3.835. In the Hebrew Bible: Stählin, TDNT 3.150–1; Stählin, TDNT 3.838. On professional female mourners in early Judaism: Stählin, TDNT 3.151–2 and Stählin, TDNT 3.842–3. Stählin notes that in early Jewish ritual women ‘were mainly in evidence on the way from the house to the place of interment, and esp. during the breaks in the procession…’ (TDNT 3.843). He describes more prominent mourning roles for men rather than women among members of the family in early Jewish practice.

²¹ A number of legislative restrictions are known in the Greek world from the Archaic through Hellenistic period. Second Sophistic author Plutarch emphasises concern about women's mourning in his discussion of Solon's sixth century bce Athenian funerary legislation (Sol. 21). Hope, citing Plutarch's account of Cleopatra's dramatic mourning of Antony in Ant. 77, notes that ‘[b]y the late Republic overly melodramatic displays were not seen as the norm or ideal for a Roman lady’ (Death, 178). Alexiou Ritual Lament, 28–31 discusses the continuation of this concern in Christian texts going into the Byzantine era. Philosophical texts also promote the ideal of restrained mourning (e.g. Socrates not wanting his wife present in Plato Phaed. 60a; Stählin, TDNT 3.835).

²² Scaer, The Lukan Passion, 113, for example, sees funerary mourning as part of what characterises Jesus’ death as noble. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 2.920 understands the funerary mourning as a ‘dramatic touch’.

²³ Untergassmair, Kreuzweg und Kreuzigung, 17.

²⁴ G. Stählin: Stählin, TDNT 3.153 and Stählin, TDNT 3.845–6.

²⁵ Stählin, TDNT 3.146. Untergassmair, Kreuzweg und Kreuzigung, 17–8 has observed that these funerary terms and the actions they describe do not appear after the crucifixion, where they might be expected.

²⁶ Compare Jesus’ discussion of the coming days in Luke 17.22 and 21.6.

²⁷ For overviews of various interpretations see Darrel L. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996) 1844–5; Käser, ‘Exegetische und theologische Erwägungen’; Neyrey, The Passion, 108; and Soards, ‘Tradition, Composition, and Theology’, 221–4. For an interpretation of Jesus’ injunctions as apocalyptic asceticism, see Brant James Pitre, ‘Blessing the Barren and Warning the Fecund: Jesus’ Message for Women Concerning Pregnancy and Childbirth’, JSNT 81 (2001) 59-80.

²⁸ Brown, Death of the Messiah, 921; Soards, ‘Tradition, Composition and Theology’, 232; Untergassmair, Kreuzweg und Kreuzigung, 19; and Wolter Luke II, 521 also note the allusions to Luke 7 and 8. Untergassmair even makes the interesting suggestion that klaiein is technical funerary terminology. None of these studies, however, bring out a connection with the theme of resurrection. Brown, for example, concludes that ‘[i]n the previous cases Jesus was about to remove the cause for mourning by resuscitating the dead; here he is turning away the grief from his own death toward the death of the city and its inhabitants’. Shelly Matthews makes a very different argument for the significance of this phrase, suggesting that it is part of ‘this author's attempt to suppress traditions highlighting women's roles in creating gospel’: Shelly Mathews, ‘The Weeping Jesus and the Daughters of Jerusalem. Gender and Conquest in Lukan Lament’, Doing Gender—Doing Religion. Fallstudien zur Intersektionalität im frühen Judentum, Christentum und Islam (eds. Ute E. Eisen, Christine Gerber, and Angela Standhartinger; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck) 381-403, at 381.

²⁹ Standhartinger, ‘What Women Were Accustomed to Do’, JBL 129, 3 (2010) 564. Standhartinger suggests that the funerary actions in the resurrection narratives of the four canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Peter ‘refer to different phases, from the preparation of the corpse (Mark) to delayed rituals for the dead (Gospel of Peter), mourning at the tomb (John), watching at the tomb (Matthew), and finally care for the tomb after burial (Luke)’. See also Angela Standhartinger, ‘Words to Remember—Women and the Origin of the “Words of Institution”’, lectio difficilior 1 (2015) 1–25, at 6.

³⁰ Bieberstein, Verschwiegene Jüngerinnen, 235-6; Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2.1257–8; Deborah Green, ‘Sweet Spices in the Tomb: An Initial Study on the Use of Perfume in Jewish Burials’, Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context (eds. Laurie Brink and Deborah Green; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008) 145–73, at 162; Klein, Lukasevangelium, 720; Carolyn Osiek, ‘The Women at the Tomb: What are They Doing There?’, HTS 53/1&2 (1997) 103–18, at 111; and Safrai, ‘Home and Family’, 776.

³¹ Green, ‘Sweet Spices’, 160–9.

³² Green, ‘Sweet Spices’, 162–3. She specifically discussed the accounts in Mark and John and does not directly discuss Luke.

³³ Alexiou, The Ritual Lament, 5; Green, ‘Sweet Spices’, 159, 161; Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, 480–1; Hope, Death, 97; Byron R. McCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003) 31. The author of the Gospel of John explains that the wrapping and the spices are part of Jewish burial custom. Indeed, the Mishnah discusses the practice of anointing bodies in preparation for burial (Šabb. 23.5). McCane Roll Back the Stone, 32 notes that Rabbinical texts indicate men could wrap male corpses, but women could wrap both male and female.

³⁴ Greek: Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Death, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001) 23–34; Jewish: Green, ‘Sweet Spices’, 159–60; McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 31–2, 94; Roman: Hope, Death, 97–104. One feature particular to Jewish practices is an emphasis on burial as soon as possible after death, often on the same day, so preparing the corpse for burial and processing to the tomb typically happened quickly (McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 31, 94).

³⁵ On the funerary anointing of Jesus in Mark 14 and 16, see Luise Schottroff, ‘Maria Magdalena und die Frauen am Grabe Jesu’, EvTh 42 (1982) 3–25 at 14–16.

³⁶ See Matthews, ‘The Weeping Jesus’, 398-9 for a different interpretation of Luke's modification of the anointing story.

³⁷ For example, David E. Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985) 77–157; Gary Gilbert, ‘Luke-Acts and Negotiation of Authority and Identity in the Roman World’ The Multivalence of Biblical Texts and Theological Meanings (Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 37; ed. Christine Helmer with the assistance of Charlene T. Higbe; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 90–4; Gorman, Interweaving Innocence; William S. Kurtz, ‘Luke 22:14–38 and Greco-Roman and Biblical Farewell Addresses’, JBL 104.2 (1985) 251–68; Keith A. Reich, Figuring Jesus: The Power of Rhetorical Figures of Speech in the Gospel of Luke (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Rice, ‘The Rhetoric of Luke's Passion’; Scaer, The Lukan Passion; Daniel Lynwood Smith and Zachary Lundin Kostopoulos, ‘Biography, History and the Genre of Luke-Acts’, NTS 63 (2017) 390–410; Denis E. Smith, ‘Table Fellowship as a Literary Motif in the Gospel of Luke’, JBL 106.4 (1987) 613–38, at 613–4, including n. 1–4; and John T. Squires, ‘The Gospel according to Luke’, The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels (ed. Stephen C. Barton; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 158–9.

³⁸ Studies of the history of funerary ritual often note how the processes of death and burial have become increasingly segregated from many people's daily life and how ritualised responses to death have become more muted in the modern industrialised world, for example, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature (London: Routledge, 1992) 14 and Valerie M. Hope, ‘Introduction’ Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death (ed. Valerie M. Hope and Janet Huskinson; Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011) xi. This change seems to be due, in part, to a growth in professionalised burial services and the medicalisation of death (Georganne Rundblad, ‘Exhuming Women's Premarket Duties in the Care of the Dead’, Gender and Society 9.2 (1995) 173–92).