70 John Makujina king of Sodom and Abram [Gen 14,21-24], which take place during the days of Lot.) We can safely assume, then, that “buying and selling” stands for the institution of commerce, in Luke 17,28. Beyond that, indirect support for this sense can be garnered from a similar word pair in the Talmud (e.g., b. Qidd. 35a): /tmw acm, lit., “car- rying and giving”, but idiomatically, “business”, “dealings”33. B. Ber. 17a, represents an especially useful example in that here /tmw acm (“busi- ness”) occurs in a series of abrogated actions and attitudes that bear a noteworthy resemblance, in either wording or theme, to Jesus’ statement in Luke 17,26-28: “A favourite saying of Rab was: [The future world is not like this world.] In the future world there is no eating nor drinking [hytv alw hlyka al] nor propagation [hybrw hyrp al] nor business [/tmw acm alw] nor jealousy nor hatred nor competition,…”34. Notice how the sequence is duplicated as well: eating-drinking immediately pre- cedes marriage/propagation, and commerce/business follows, although in Luke 17 the latter occurs in a separate set (the days of Lot, 17,28). 4. Concluding Question Together these collocations raise the following important question: if it is difficult to minimize their meanings and limit them to specific and lit- eral references, why should anyone do so with γαμέω and γαμίζω, which appear in the same context? Instead, these dyads suggest that γαμέω and γαμίζω are likewise idiomatic and signify the practice of a broad institu- tion, the institution of marriage and the family, I would argue, instead of just one of its components. If my recommendation about the meaning of γαμέω-γαμίζω in this eschatological passage is correct, it stands to reason that the combina- tion retains the same idiomatic meaning in the controversy story. This point is reinforced by the fact that γαμέω-γαμίζω serve as comprehensive descriptions of eras in both pericopes. At least the onus of proof would be on those arguing for separate meanings. 3. Non-Indigenous Evidence Extrabiblical Greek literature also offers corroborating evidence for our thesis, but not through exact lexical equivalents. Searches conducted by the author in TLG reveal that the formula γαμέω-γαμίζω makes its 33 M. Jastrow, comp., A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli, and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York 1971) 848, 863. 34 I. Epstein, ed., Seder Zera‛im (The Babylonian Talmud; London 1948) 102.