This text contains on the face of it one of the most difficult and embarrassing sayings in Scripture, offering an exegetical conundrum which challenges even the ablest of interpreters: "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes" (v. 9). The fourth-century Roman emperor Julian the Apostate and others cited this text in an attempt to discredit Christianity as a religion of scoundrels. Marxist interpreters have seen in this story a leitmotif for the proletariat struggle against the ruling capitalist class. The text has been called the enfant terrible of the Bible, a "notorious puzzle" and an example of Jesus' humor and sarcasm. One scholar describes the enormous literature on this text as a "jungle of explanat…