The Parables of the Kingdom

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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On the other hand it may be associated with the final and absolute state of bliss in a transcendent order, as in the Assumption of Moses, ch. x:

"And then His Kingdom shall appear throughout all His creation,
And then Satan shall be no more,
And sorrow shall depart with him ...
For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne,
And He will go forth from His holy habitation
With indignation and wrath on account of his sons ...
For the Most High will arise, the Eternal God alone,
And He will appear to punish the Gentiles,
And He will destroy all idols.
And thou, Israel, shall be happy, ...
And God will exalt thee,
And He will cause thee to approach to the heaven of the stars."
[Translation by Charles in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha]

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Where a personal Messiah is looked for, the kingly rule of God is thought of as exercised by the Messiah, whether He is a human prince of the house of David, or a supernatural personage. Thus in Apocalypse of Baruch ch. lxxiii:

"And it shall come to pass,
When He (the Messiah) has brought low everything that is in the world.
And has sat down in peace for the age on the throne of His kingdom.
That joy shall then be revealed,
And rest shall appear,"
[Translation by Charles, op. cit.]

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In all these forms of belief the common underlying idea is that of God's sovereign power becoming manifestly effective in the world of human experience. When it pleases God to "reveal" or "set up" His kingly rule, then there will be judgment on all the wrong that is in the world, victory over all powers of evil and, for those who have accepted his sovereignty, deliverance and a blessed life in communion with Him.*

*.... Sooner or later He will reveal his sovereignty. He will be King of all the world, not only de jure but de facto: "the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom" (Dan. vii. 18). Thus the eschatological idea of the Kingdom of God seems to arise naturally from primitive Hebrew conceptions, under the influence of prophetic teaching and of outward events.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In considering the meaning of "The Kingdom of God" in the Gospels, we shall do well to be guided by the results of source-criticism. It would now be generally agreed (a) that the material which appears in all three Synoptic Gospels lies before us (broadly speaking) in its earliest form in Mark; (b) that where Matthew and Luke agree independently of Mark, they are following a second source of some kind. Much of their common material seems to have been handed down in floating tradition. The symbol Q is often used to denote the supposed lost document; but as its reconstruction is problematical, it seems best to use this symbol for that stratum of the First and Third Gospels in which they agree together but do not seem to depend on Mark as a source. In using the Gospels as documents for the life and teaching of Jesus it is not necessary to decide whether a given passage did or did not form a part of a written document before it entered into our Gospels. In any case, if Matthew and Luke show any striking measure of agreement, and if this agreement cannot be accounted for by their common use of Mark, then the material in question did in any case belong to a tradition, substantially earlier than any date we can assign to the completed Gospels, and that is all we really know.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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As for the remaining portions of the First and Third Gospels, they come from the sources of which we can say little. If the once widely accepted theory of B. H. Streeter is right, we have to allow for four relatively primitive sources, those represented by Mark, 'Q' and the peculiar portions of Matthew and Luke respectively. But although we may suspect that the two latter were possibly as old as Mark or 'Q', we can never know whether a given passage in Matthew or Luke was drawn directly from the early sources, or whether it represents a later development. We know from their treatment of Mark that the other synoptists used their sources with some freedom. Nor, if it be true (as I think it probably is) that behind the Third Gospel lies a 'proto-Luke' which might be as early as Mark, are we entitled to give the same weight to this hypothetical document as we give to the Second Gospel; because (a) we do not know what amount of revision 'proto-Luke' underwent in being incorporated in the Third Gospel, and (b) the peculiarly Lucan material, on its merits, seems in places almost demonstrably secondary to Mark, even though in some places it may be thought to have preserved a more primitive tradition.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We are therefore left with Mark and 'Q' as primary sources, and I do not think criticism has yet provided us with any better organon for approximating to the original tradition of the words and works of Jesus than is supplied by a careful study and comparison of these two.* No one supposes that either is infallible. But they serve to correct, confirm, and supplement one another,** and their agreement in some important points gives us confidence that we are in touch with the tradition at a very early stage indeed, before the two lines of transmission which culminated in Mark (at Rome) and 'Q' (in Palestine or Syria (?)), began to diverge.

*The school of Formgeschichte (form-criticism) seeks to go behind our written sources to the oral tradition. It often illuminates the development of the tradition, and I have not been unmindful of its methods in what follows. But I do not think it has yet provided us with a trustworthy criticism for the historical value of the reports in the Gospels. And we must always bear in mind that any deeper analysis on Mark and 'Q' must be speculative in a sense in which the determination of the proximate sources of the Gospels is not speculative but demonstrative.
*I assume that Mark and 'Q' are independent of one another. The attempts to show that Mark depends on "Q", and that "Q" depends on Mark, cancel out, and neither has carried conviction.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In dealing therefore with the complicated question of the Kingdom of God, we shall not only be saving time by leaving out of account (with few exceptions) those parts of Matthew and Luke which have no parallel in other Gospels, but we shall also be dealing with material which has the best claim to bring us in touch with the earliest tradition accessible to us all.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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The twofold Jewish usage of the expression "The Kingdom of God" is reflected in the teaching of Jesus a recorded in the earliest traditions.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

Continued from prior post↑

The twofold Jewish usage of the expression "The Kingdom of God" is reflected in the teaching of Jesus a recorded in the earliest traditions.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The Rabbinic expression "to take upon oneself the malkuth of heaven" finds a parallel in the saying of Mk. x. 15: "Whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." The Rabbis meant by this scrupulous observance of the Torah. Jesus was evidently understood to contrast the way of the "little child," or the "babe" (Mt. xi. 25; Lk. x. 21) with the way of the "wise and prudent." For him, to accept the sovereignty of God is something other than scrupulous observance of the Torah.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Again, the Jewish prayer, "May he establish His Kingdom during your life and during your days," finds a parallel in the central petition of the Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come." The apocalyptic predictions of a future, and final, manifestation of the sovereign power of God are echoed (though, as we shall see, with a difference) in such sayings as Mk. ix. 1, "There are some of those who stand here who will never taste death until they have seen that the kingdom of God has come with power"; Mt. viii. 11, "Many will come from east and west, and sit at meat with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God." Like some of the apocalyptists, it would appear that Jesus placed the ultimate Kingdom of God in an order beyond space and time, where the blessed dead live forever and ever "like the angels" (Mk. xii. 25) Accordingly, the expression "The Kingdom of God is used in Mk. ix. 43-47, x. 17, 24, 25, alternately with "life" or "eternal life". The latter expression is an equivalent for the Rabbinic term "the life of the Age to Come," which is in our Jewish sources a far more usual expression than "the Kingdom of God" for the great object of hope, the eschaton.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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So far, the use of the expression "The Kingdom of God" in the Gospels falls within the framework of contemporary Jewish usage. The kingdom of God may be "accepted" here and now, and its blessings will be enjoyed in the end by those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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But there are other sayings that do not fall within this framework. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you" (Mt. xxii. 28 = Lk. xi. 20).* Here the Kingdom of God is a fact of present experience, but not in the sense which we have recognized in Jewish usage. Any Jewish teacher might have said, "If you repent and pledge yourself to the observance of Torah, then you have taken upon yourselves the Kingdom of God." But Jesus says, "If I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you." Something has happened, which has not happened before, and which means that the sovereign power of God has come into effective operation. It is not a matter of having God for your King in the sense that you obey his commandments; it is a matter of being confronted with the power of God at work in the world. In other words, the "eschatological" Kingdom of God is proclaimed as a present fact, which men must recognize, whether by their actions they accept or reject it.

*ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. The verb φθάνειν in classical Greek has the sense, "to anticipate" someone, to get before him, and so to be there before he knows. But in Hellenistic Greek it is used, especially in the aorist, to denote the fact that a person has actually arrived at his goal. This usage is preserved in modern Greek. If you call a waiter, I am told, he will say, as he bustles up, "ἔφθασα κύριε!" Thus ἔφθασεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ expresses in the most vivid and forcible way the fact that the Kingdom of God has actually arrived. Prof. Millar Burrows, of Yale, pointed out to me that ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ sounds to him like an echo of Dan. vii. 22 (as rendered by Theodotion) ἔφθασεν ὁ καιρός, καὶ τὴν βασιείαν ἔχον οἱ ἅγιοι ["the time arrived, and the holy ones gained possession of the kingdom" (A New English Translation of the Septuagint: Oxford, 2007)].

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The same sense seems to be intended by the formula in which Mark sums up the preaching of Jesus in Galilee (Mk. i. 14-15); "The time has reached fulfillment, and the Kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe the Gospel." On the face of it this might mean either that the Kingdom of God is near in point of time, i.e. that it will soon come; or that (in spacial metaphor, cf. Mk. xii. 34) it is within reach. But in the LXX ἐγγίζειν is sometimes used (chiefly in past tenses) to translate the Hebrew verb nagaʿ and the Aramaic verb mʾta, both of which mean "to reach," "to arrive", The same two verbs are also translated by the verb φθάνειν, which is used in Mt. xii. 28, Lk. xi. 20. It would appear therefore that no difference of meaning is intended between ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ and ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. Both imply the "arrival" of the Kingdom. With an eye on the presumed Aramaic original, we should translate both: "The Kingdom of God has come." Again we observe that the coming of the Kingdom is not represented as something dependent on the attitude of men. It is an historical happening to which men should respond by repentance, but whether they repent or not, it is there. This is made clear in the Lucan Charge to Missionaries: "Say to them, 'The Kingdom of God has come upon you' (ἤγγικεν ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς, cf. ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς, Mt. xii. 28, Lk. xi. 20). And if you enter any city and they do not receive you, go into their streets and say, 'Even the dust which sticks to our feet from your city we wipe off against you; but all the same, be sure that the Kingdom of God has come (ἤγγικεν)'" (Lk. x. 9-11).

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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It is therefore instructive to compare such an apocalyptic passage as the Testament of Dan, v. 31―vi. 4: "The Lord will be in the midst of her, and the Holy One of Israel reigning from her ... for he knows that on the day when Israel is converted, the kingdom of the Enemy will be brought to an end." In the "Q" context from which the words "The Kingdom of God has come upon you" have been quoted, the exorcisms performed by Jesus are treated as a sign that the kingdom of Satan has been overcome. As in the Testament of Dan, this is equivalent to the coming of the Kingdom of God. But here the coming has not waited until Israel should repent. In some way the Kingdom of God has come with Jesus Himself and that Kingdom is proclaimed, "whether they will hear or whether they will forbear," as Ezekiel might have said. It is an act of God's grace to reveal His Kingdom to an unrepentant generation, that they may be provoked to repentance.

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