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The ‘Parable’ of the Sheep and the Goats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

J. A. T. Robinson
J. A. T. Robinson
Affiliation:
Cambridge
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Extract

The vision of the Last Judgment with which St Matthew concludes so magnificently the teaching ministry of Jesus stands out from the Gospel pages with a unique and snow-capped majesty. It is a literary tour de force never quite approached elsewhere in the First Gospel, and it possesses that grandeur of simplicity which removes it toto coelo from the lurid and melodramatic scenes of the End which Jewish apocalyptic, like subsequent Christian thought, found it necessary to paint. As Professor T. W. Manson says, and Professor J. Jeremias agrees (The Parables of Jesus, p. 144), ‘It contains features of such startling originality that it is difficult to credit them to any-one but the Master himself’ (The Teaching of Jesus, p. 249); or, again, in the more recent words of Théo Preiss, it evinces ‘a sobriety of feature and colour, a reserve, a bareness which can come from hardly any other source but that of Jesus himself’ (Life in Christ, p. 47).

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , May 1956 , pp. 225 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1956

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References

page 225 note 1 Cf. and contrast Enoch xc. 20–7 and Orac. Sib. iii. 663–97.

page 226 note 1 Professor C. H. Dodd, earlier, contented himself with a reference to the ‘parable‘The climax of the passage is to be found in the two sayings xxv. 40 and 45, which are parallel to Matt. x. 40–2, Mark ix. 37. The judgment scene was probably composed to give a vivid, dramatic setting to these sayings’ (The Parables of the Kingdom, p. 85).

page 227 note 1 The reasons for regarding the Matthaean version (x. 32f.) as secondary are given on p. 230 ff. below.

page 227 note 2 Luke ix. 26 follows Mark without significant variation, except at one point to be noted below.

page 228 note 1 I do not believe it is fortuitous in Luke ix. 26, but he appears to have a different motive confined to this passage. He seems deliberately to be making a connexion with the words with which he supplements the Markan Transfiguration narrative in v. 32: ‘And they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.’ The glory of Jesus, of the Father revealed in the Shekinah, and of the two celestial figures corresponds in anticipation to the triad of v. 26.

page 228 note 2 Contrast xlvii. 3, where ‘the Head of Days’ ‘seated himself upon the throne of his glory’.

page 229 note 1 Cf. Strack-Billerbeck, 1, 973.

page 229 note 2 The nearest parallel is Enoch 1xi. 10, where the Lord of Spirits summons to the judgment ‘all the angels of power, and all the angels of principalities, and the Elect One’.

page 229 note 3 The association of the coming of God with his angels also forms part of the Enoch vision: ‘Behold, he comes with ten thousand of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly’ (i. 9). This is cited in Jude 14f.

page 229 note 4 The remaining one is in the famous Q passage of Matt. xi. 27 = Luke x. 22.

page 229 note 5 Cf. the D text of Matt. xxv. 41: ήτοίμασεν ό πατήρ μ ου.

page 230 note 1 Luke has the much more appropriate (xiv. 21).

page 230 note 2 Cf Jeremias, , op. cit. pp. 37f.Google Scholar

page 231 note 1 The same conclusion must also hold for , which Jeremias (op. cit. p. 67) regards, with insufficient evidence, as a characteristically Matthaean word.

page 231 note 2 So Allen, W. C. and McNeile, A. H. (ad. loc.), Jeremias (op. cit. p. 143), Preiss (op. cit. p. 45).Google Scholar

page 232 note 1 Cf Jeremias, , op. cit. p. 84, note 96.Google Scholar

page 232 note 2 Cf. (for example), Enoch x. 13, where the fallen angels are ‘led off to the abyss of fire, to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever’.

page 233 note 1 A., Schiatter (Der Evangelist Matthäus, pp. 16f.) sees the use of the participial λέγων (which also appears in these same verses, 37, 44, and 45) as characteristically Matthaean. In a comparison with Mark, which is his immediate intention, he probably establishes his case; but this is only to say that Matthew, like Luke, writes smooth Greek in contrast with Mark's reiterated . It requires more to establish the usage as ‘a stylistic peculiarity of Matthew’ (Jeremias, op. cit. p. 66, n. 3). Nevertheless, the fact that it occurs in verses which are already indicated as Matthaean may be regarded as some confirmation.Google Scholar

page 233 note 2 It will be noted that this reconstruction avoids the use of , which may have been introduced by Matthew when making the comparison with the Last Judgment, exactly as in xiii. 40.

page 235 note 1 Omitting λόγους with W and k and C. Turner, H. (J.T.S., vol. xxix, 2f.), Manson, T. W. (The Sayings of Jesus, p. 78), Dodd, C. H. (The Parables of the Kingdom, p. 93).Google Scholar

page 236 note 1 Cf. also Matthew's characteristic phrase: ‘my Father who is in heaven’.

page 236 note 2 The sense of συνάγω in vv. 35, 38 and 43 may argue for an Aramaic background for (d). Théo Preiss also detects an Aramaism in the use of in vv. 40 and 45 (op. cit. pp. 45f.).

page 236 note 3 There is no parallel in the Gospels for ‘the King’ used allegorically, and not merely parabolically, for God. But the metaphor of the King is so familiar in this connexion as to be little more than a reverential periphrasis (cf. Matt. v. 35: ‘the city of the great King’). In The Assumption of Moses, x. 3 God arises to judgment from his royal throne.

page 237 note 1 The Teaching of Jesus, p. 265; The Sayings of Jesus, pp. 249f.

page 237 note 2 In Mark, at the right hand of God (xiv. 62), in Matthew on his own throne also (xix. 28).

page 237 note 3 Cf. the editorial and hardly fortuitous óυίò τοũ άνθρώπου of xxvi. 2, immediately following.

page 237 note 4 Cf. also John xii. 44 and 48.