The Parables of the Kingdom

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We may observe (1) that the whole prophetic and apocalyptic tradition, which Jesus certainly recognized, anticipated tribulation for the people of God before the final triumph of the good cause; (2) that the history of many centuries had deeply implanted the idea that the prophet is called to suffering as a part of his mission; (3) that the death of John the Baptist had shown that this fate was still part of the prophet calling; and (4) that it needed, not supernatural prescience, but the ordinary insight of an intelligent person, to see whither things were tending, at least during the later stages of the ministry.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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When now we turn to the Gospels records we find that in all four of the main sources, or strands of tradition, which criticism recognizes, there are forecasts of persecution for the followers of Jesus, both direct and allusive. Such forecasts are indeed so emphatic and so characteristic of the whole temper and tone of the teaching that is seems impossible to attribute them all to the later reflections of the persecuted Church. The various contexts in which they occur leave it possible to doubt whether the sufferings anticipated were expected to come almost immediately, or at a later date. For example, one group of such predictions occurs in Matthew in the Charge given to the Twelve when they are sent out to preach and heal (x. 17-22), and in Mark in the final discourse (xiii. 9-13), just before the death of Jesus. In the latter case they are clearly taken to refer to the persecution of the Church recorded in the Acts of the Apostle and elsewhere. In the former case the impression is that persecution might break out at any moment, perhaps even while the Twelve were out on their mission. In Luke, some of the same group of predictions occur in a third different context (xii. 11-12).

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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It is clear that the occasion of such sayings was not clearly indicated in the earliest tradition. But it is noteworthy that a call to endure sufferings is in several passages of Mark and Luke associated with the theme of a journey to Jerusalem, and indeed the impression which we gather from the Gospels as a whole is that Jesus led His followers up to the city with the express understanding that a crisis awaited them there which would involve acute suffering both for them and for Him. The most striking of such passages is Mk. x. 35-40. Here the sons of Zebedee are assured that they shall drink of the cup of which their Master drinks, and be baptized with His baptism. The purport of the words is not doubtful. The disciples are to share the fate of their Master, and surely to share His fate in the crisis which lies immediately before them. In point of fact the followers of Jesus did not at that crisis share his fate. Strangely enough, the Jewish authorities seem to have been content with the death of the Leader, and to have left His followers alone. Naturally the Church sought fulfillment of this and other similar predictions in events which happened many years later.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In a passage which occurs in slightly different forms in Mark and in the common material of Matthew and Luke, and therefore possesses the combined attestation of our two best sources, Jesus speaks of the coming sufferings of His disciples in the form of a call to "bear the cross" (Mt. viii. 34, reproduced in Mt. xvi. 24, Lk. ix. 23; Mt. x. 38 = Lk. xiv. 27). As the cross was an only too familiar method of execution under Roman government, the suggestion is that He wished to prepare them not only for suffering but for death. There is a hint in the same direction in the "Q" saying, "Fear not them that kill the body" (Mt. x. 28 = Lk. xii. 4).

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In this context of thought it becomes entirely credible that Jesus did, as the Gospels say, predict His own death. To what point in the ministry such predictions belong, is a question which for our purpose we need not answer. It is at any rate clear that at the Last Supper Jesus anticipated immediate death for Himself; but at this point it is equally clear that He expected His followers to survive. He passes the cup by, because He has done with this world; He gives it to His disciples because they must endure "the fellowship of His sufferings" in this world.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The most natural reconstruction of the facts from the evidence would seem to be that Jesus anticipated tribulation for Himself and His followers; that towards the close of his ministry He led His followers to Jerusalem with the expectation that He, and at least of them, would suffer death at the hands of the authorities; and that at the last He went open-eyed to death Himself, predicting further tribulations for His followers after this death.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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There is another group of predictions which refer to coming disasters for the Jewish people, their city and temple. According to Mk. xiv. 58, it was alleged against Jesus at His trial that He had said "I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands." The same saying occurs in John ii. 19, in the form "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up". Now it seems clear that the belief that Jesus had said something of this kind was an embarrassment to the early Church. Mark is concerned to invalidate the evidence given at the trial: it was never proved, he says, that Jesus had said this; there was a conflict of evidence (Mk. xiv. 59). John is concerned to show that the saying did not bear the meaning put upon it (ii. 21-22). But if Jesus did not say something of the kind, is it likely that the Church would have produced so embarrassing a saying? Mark himself avers (xiii. 2) that what Jesus had actually said was, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another without being pulled down."

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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And here attention must be called to a significant point which has not been sufficiently noticed. It is a practice of Mark, when he records something which seems to call for explanation, to introduce a private interview between Jesus and His disciples at which the matter is elucidated. After the saying about the destruction of the temple he introduces such a private interview between Jesus and four disciples, at which the long "apocalyptic discourse" is delivered. That whole discourse is introduced primarily in order to set the saying about the destruction of the temple in its proper light. So far from having threatened to destroy the temple (Mark means) Jesus had predicted that after a long period of tribulation there would be a horrible act of sacrilege in the temple, and then would follow a great tribulation in Judea, and afterwards the final catastrophe, in which the whole universe would collapse. In this scheme the destruction of the temple is not explicitly mentioned, but it is implied that it would come as a sequel to the great sacrilege. It is not an impending historical event, still less an act which Jesus Himself had plotted, as His enemies alleged. Our evangelist would surely not have made so much pother about it if there had not been a good tradition (to be explained or explained away) that Jesus had affronted the feelings of His Jewish hearers by predicting the ruin of their holy place.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In the "Q" material there is no such explicit prediction. But in Mt. xxiii. 37-38 = Lk. xiii. 34-35 we have an address to Jerusalem culminating in the declaration: "Your house is abandoned." The "house" may be the city of Jerusalem itself; more likely it is the temple,"Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised thee" (Is. lxiv. 11). It is abandoned, not, probably, by the worshippers, but by the divine presence which alone gives its significance. The temple is not now, as God meant it to be, "a house of prayer for all nations"; it has become as it had become in the days of Jeremiah, "a brigand's hold" (Mk. xi. 17). As Jeremiah had predicted its ensuing destruction, so, we are to understand, did Jesus. In spite of Mark's attempt to associate the prediction with an apocalyptic catastrophe, it is most natural to suppose that Jesus pronounced the doom of the temple as an impending event in history.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We cannot but connect this doom of the temple with the various words of judgment upon the Jewish people and its leaders. The existing generation of Israel, according to the "Q" prophecy in Mt. xxiii. 34-36 = Lk. xi. 49-51, will bear the accumulated penalty of all the righteous blood shed "from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias." [Note: stay tuned to this thread for Josephus' account of the fulfillment of this prophecy ―JR] As for the form in which this judgment is conceived, our Gospels in their existing form leave us in some doubt. Lk. xix. 43-44 predicts a siege of Jerusalem, in some detail; cf. also xxi. 20, where the investment of the city by enemy forces takes the place which in Mk. xiii. 14 is occupied by a sacrilege of the temple. The context in Mark is fantastic, but nevertheless the predictions of xiii. 14-20 suggest an historical catastrophe. The command to flee to the mountains in Mk. xiii. 14 seems to correspond to the "oracle" which according to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. III. v. 3) led the Christians of Jerusalem to desert the city in A.D. 66. If so, it is not likely to be a vaticinium ex eventu. The injunction, "He who is on the housetop must not come down to take up anything from his house, and he who is in the field must not turn to take up his coat," would admirably suit a supposed situation in which the quick-marching Roman armies are threatening Jerusalem; and the prayer that it might not happen in winter is appropriate to war conditions. In a purely supernatural "apocalyptic" tribulation summer or winter would matter little!

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We may further adduce a passage peculiar to Luke, which nevertheless seems to bear the marks of historical veracity―the reference to the massacre of Galileans and the fall of the Tower of Siloam in Lk. xiii. 1-5. In themselves these incidents were comparatively inconspicuous. They are made to foreshadow judgment on Israel in the form of the sword of Rome and the collapse of the towers of Jerusalem. This quite incidental and allusive reference to the Roman peril seems to me to be significant.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The evidence is not entirely satisfactory, but it does appear, when all allowance has been made for the probable coloring of our tradition by the experience of the Church, that just as the Old Testament prophets saw in the Assyrian or the Babylonian peril the form in which divine judgment on Israel was approaching, so Jesus saw in the growing menace of a clash with Rome a token of coming disaster, in which the sins of the Jewish people would meet their retribution. Our Gospels were written at a time, and for a public, to which the political fortunes of Judea had little relevance. It is not surprising if the historical realism of some of the sayings of Jesus has been slurred over in a generalized eschatological scheme. It appears that the prophets made use of earlier mythological conceptions of "the Day of Jehovah," and rationalized and moralized them in terms of the historical situation in their day. Their predictions were in many cases re-absorbed (so to speak) into mythology by the apocalyptists. It may well be that a similar tendency has affected the Gospel records of the sayings of Jesus.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We conclude that Jesus uttered predictions comparable with those of the Old Testament prophets, that is to say, He forecast historical developments of the situation in which he stood. In particular, He forecast a crisis in which He himself should die and His followers suffer severe persecution; and He forecast disaster for the Jewish people and their temple.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We may now ask whether there is any evidence to show how the crisis which brings the death of Jesus is to be related to the disasters coming upon the Jewish people. Actually the death of Jesus was separated from the fall of Jerusalem by about forty years, and we must expect the knowledge of this fact to have colored our records. But we observe that it is "this generation" upon which the retribution from the blood of the righteous is to fall (Mt. xxiii. 35-36 = Lk. xi. 50-51). Now Mark, in reporting the forecast of the coming disasters makes Jesus say that generation He addresses will experience not only these disasters, but also the final collapse of the universe: "This generation will not pass away until all these things have happened" (xiii. 30). No doubt when Mark wrote, and even in A.D. 70, there were many people alive who were also alive in A.D. 29. But the generation which suffered the calamities of the Roman war was not, in any real sense, the same generation as that of forty years before. We must suppose that historical exigencies have led to a certain expansion of the interim period, and that Jesus actually expected the tribulation of Judea to follow more closely His own death. We must add that the saying about the destruction of the temple, whatever its original form, must have been capable of being understood as an immediate menace, and not a forecast of something to happen in the comparatively remote future.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Consider again the following important passage, which occurs both in Matthew and in Luke. In Luke it is embedded in a context full of such parallels with Matthew, and therefore may fairly be attributed to a common source, written or oral, even though the wording differs considerably:―

Mt. x. 34-36

"Do not suppose that I came to cast peace upon the earth but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance with his father, a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of his household."

Lk. xii. 49-53

"I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism to undergo, and how I am cramped until it is accomplished! Do you think I came to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division! For from this time on there will be five in one house divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against farther, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

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