No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Realized Eschatology in Q? A Consideration of the Sayings in Luke 7.22, 11.20 and 16.16
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
It is surprising that more British scholars have not investigated the theology of Q. Those scholars who have done so are mainly German, with a few other continentals and some Americans. The hypothesis I wish to maintain is that Q has a consistently futurist eschatology. Those verses which apparently uphold a realized eschatology are to be explained as compatible, without contradiction, with the overall futurist eschatology that pervades Q.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1987
References
1 Lührmann, D., Die Redaktion der Logienquelle WNAMT 33, (Neukirchen — Vluyn, 1969)Google Scholar; Schulz, S., Q Die Spruchquelle der Evangelisten (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972)Google Scholar; Polag, A., Die Christologie der Logienquelle WMANT 45 (Neukirchen, 1977)Google Scholar. The following concentrate more upon the Son of Man in Q: Tödt, H. E., The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition (London: SCM, 1965), 212–245Google Scholar; Hoffmann, P., Studien zur Theobgie der Logienquelle (Münster, Aschendorff, 1972)Google Scholar; Vögtle, A., ‘Bezeugt die Logienquelle die authentische Redeweise Jesu vom “Menschensohn”?’, in Delobel, J. (ed.) Logia (Leuven: Leuven U.P., 1982), BETL 59, 77–99Google Scholar; Mearns, C. L., ‘The Son of man trajectory and eschatological development’, ET 97 (1985–1986), 7–12Google Scholar.
2 Kee, H. C., Jesus in History (N.Y.: Harcourt Brace, 1970), 87–119Google Scholar; J. M. Robinson, ‘“Logoi Sophon”. On the Gattung of Q,’ and H. Koester, ‘Gnomai Diaphoroi’ and ‘One Jesus and Four Primitive Gospels’; all in: Robinson, J. M. and Koester, H., Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 71–113, 114–157 and 158–204Google Scholar; Edwards, R. A., A Theology of Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)Google Scholar. Perin, N. and Duling, D. C., The New Testament: An Introduction (N.Y.: Harcourt Brace, 1982), 100–106Google Scholar. — Among the few contemporary British scholars who have investigated the theology of Q, see Stanton, G. N., ‘On the Christology of Q’ in Lindars, B. and Smalley, S. S. (eds.), Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament (Cambridge: CUP, 1973), 25–40Google Scholar. Schillebeeckx, E., Jesus (London: Collins, 1979) treats of Q especially: 100–102Google Scholar; 233–237; 274–282; 406–416.
3 Neirynck, F. ‘Recent developments in the study of Q’, in Logia, the Sayings of Jesus, 75Google Scholar.
4 Fitzmyer, J., The Gospel according to Luke (N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), Vol. 1, ad. loc.Google Scholar
5 Vassiliadis, P., in Logia, 379–387Google Scholar. Matthew prefers the climax at the end rather than in the middle of a sequence. He is referring to: Taylor, V., ‘The order of Q’, and ‘The original order of Q’, in New Testament Essays (London: Epworth, 1970)Google Scholar.
6 This point is made in the introduction to: Synoptic Studies: The Ampleforth Conferences of 1982 and 1983, ed. Tuckett, C. M.. JSNT Supplement Series 7 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1985)Google Scholar.
7 For a critical survey, see Marshall, I. H., ‘The hope of a new age: the Kingdom of God in the New Testament’, Themelios 11, (1985), 5–15Google Scholar. See especially p. 6 for assessments of Perrin, N., The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (London: SCM, 1963Google Scholar, and Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); also of Chilton, B. D., God in Strength (Freidstadt: Plöchl, 1979Google Scholar and Sheffield: JSOT, 1985). It may also be that the evidence for a non-apocalyptic concept of the Kingdom in the Targums, to which Chilton appeals, reflects anti-apocalyptic reactions to the apocalyptically sponsored disasters of 70 and 135 CE; this may not therefore be relevant to the Judaism of Jesus' time.
8 In support of the use of ‘generation’ to cover a period of 20–25 years, see Cross, F. M., ‘A reconstruction of the Jewish restoration’, JBL 94 (1975), 9Google Scholar: ‘In Near Eastern antiquity, the generation (i.e. the years between a man's birth and his begetting of his first born son) is ordinarily 25 years or less.’
9 For the technique of backward extrapolation, see Hurd, J. C., The Origin of I Corinthians (London: SPCK, 1965), p. xvi and passim.Google Scholar
10 For the problem of the blurred frontier between words of the earthly Jesus and utterances of the risen Christ, see Hill, D., New Testament Prophecy (London: Marshall's Theological Library, 1979Google Scholar) and Aune, D., Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983Google Scholar) — both on the conservative side. But for very cogent arguments on the other side, see Boring, E., The Sayings of the Risen Jesus (Cambridge: CUP, 1982)Google Scholar. Aune admits: ‘Boring's failure, if my arguments against his position are valid, does not mean that oracles of Christian prophets could not enter into the synoptic tradition. It does mean that the methodology for clearly and convincingly detecting such a process has not yet been formulated’. The affirmation here (the double negative cancelling itself) seems more important than the denial!
11 Prime examples of eschatological dissonance are: Luke 17.20–21 with 17.22–32; John 5.24–27 with 5.28–29; and Rom. 6.8 with 6.11.
12 For the notion ‘Prophetic-cum-sapiential Davidic messianism’, see Schillebeeckx, E., Jesus, 456–457Google Scholar.
13 This diverges from G. N. Stanton, op. cit., 40–42. H. E. Tödt saw that Q was produced by a community not centred on the Kerygma of the cross and resurrection which became normative for the New Testament. For Mark the cross was normative (other than for Q), but parousia rather than resurrection is the other focus of the ‘elipse’ of the gospel for Mark, just as it was constitutive of ‘gospel’ in Q.
14 The omission of resurrection in G.Thorn, was not for the same reason as in Q. For Christ is the ‘Living One’ in G. Thorn.; future resurrection is now a present reality, and the faithful believers now possess eternal life: G. Thorn. 1, 3, 51, 111, 113.
15 Kümmel's, W. G. assertion: ‘the Gospel of Thomas can teach us nothing about the origin and the literary character of Q’, in his Introduction to the New Testament (London; SCM, 1966), 76, does need qualifyingGoogle Scholar.
16 So Robinson, J. M., ‘On the Gattung of Q’, in Trajectories, 102, n. 69, and p. 132Google Scholar; also H. Koester, ‘One Jesus and four primitive gospels’, ibid., 175–177. Thus also the conclusion of Montefiore, H., ‘A comparison of the parables of G. Thorn, and of the synoptic gospels’, NTS 7 (1960–1961), 220–248CrossRefGoogle Scholar. R. McL. Wilson, E. W. Saunders, and R. North all assign ‘a higher possibility to the derivation of the entire (or almost entire) tradition contained in the G. Thorn, from an independent early stage of the sayings tradition’.
17 For the boldly suggestive phrase ‘in enemy hands’ applied to explain Paul's apparent reluctance to cite the sayings of Jesus directly, see Wedderburn, A. J. ‘Paul and Jesus: The problem of continuity’, in SJT Vol. 38 (1985), 189–203 esp. 190–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 H. E. Tödt, The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition, passim.
19 R. A. Edwards appears to pass over this difficulty, or not to perceive it as one, in A Theology of Q, ad. loc.
20 Daniel is a work comparable to Q in the force of its imminent futurist apocalyptic stance. Yet it does contain some passages of ‘realized’ eschatology (Dan. 4.3, 17, 26, 32), especially v. 26 acclaiming ‘Heaven rules all’. Yet this may imply the common apocalyptic notion that imminent future events on earth have their counterparts laid up in heaven, ready to be revealed upon earth. So the heavenly rule of God about to be manifested in eschaton-events upon earth, in virtue of its heavenly presence, can from a heavenly perspective already be viewed as operative ‘in anticipation’. However, even if this argument is not conceded, one still looks to the main thrust and primary emphasis of the eschatological consciousness; in both Daniel and Q, this is undoubtedly in favour of futurist apocalyptic. (I am indebted to Dr Maurice Casey for an observation raising this issue.)
21 So Mattill, A. J., Luke and the Last Things (Western North Carolina, 1979), 182–187Google Scholar.
22 For the rise of zealotry, see Barnett, P. W., ‘The Jewish sign-prophets’ NTS 27, (1981), 679–697CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 I Cor. 12.28, Eph. 4.11, 2.20, 3.5; Rom. 12.6. Evidence for Jewish Christianity's charismatic and often realized eschatological views is abundant in Acts, e.g. the Pentecost narrative, and Acts 12.28 and 21.10 (Agabus), 15.32 (Judas and Silas). Paul's Judaizing opponents at Philippi held similar views, see Mearns, C. L., ‘The identity of Paul's opponents at Philippi’, NTS 36 (1986)Google Scholar.
24 For very explicit statements of realized eschatology in G. Thorn., see the references listed above in note 14.
25 There are many examples of the ‘up-dating’ of original prophecy to make it more relevant to the situation of later generations, in Old Testament prophetic and apocalyptic compilations. For example, Dan. 9.2 adapts Jer. 25.12 and 29.10; verses from first Isaiah were taken up, re-cycled, expanded and applied to new situations in second and third Isaiahs.
26 E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 186: ‘P. Stuhlmacher has fairly cogently demonstrated that it is an early Christian creation on the part of “Christian prophets”’. See also Stuhlmacher, P., Das paulinische Evangelium, I. Vorgeschkhte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968), 223–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Mattill, A. J., Luke and the Last Things, 163Google Scholar, prefers to interpret these words with reference to baptism, i.e. ‘He who on earth is lesser as a baptizer will in the Kingdom be greater as a baptizer than John is now.’
28 For a summary of these arguments, see, e.g. Chilton, B., God In Strength, 56–58, note 96.Google Scholar
29 J. Fitzmyer dismisses the interepretation of the verb as a timeless aorist with a future meaning, ‘the Kingdom of God will be upon you immediately’. He concludes that ‘φθάνειν does not merely equal ⋯γγ⋯ζειν, draw near’; cf. The Gospel according to Luke, 915ff. This is directed against K. Clark's argument that φθ⋯νω ‘describes arrival upon the threshold of fulfilment and is synonymous with φθάνω’, in ‘Realized eschatology’, JBL 59 (1940), 367–83, as also against A. J. Mattill, who argues that Luke 11.20 means ‘the Kingdom of God has come close upon you’, from his stress on the use of ⋯π⋯ with (φθάνειν. (See Luke and Last Things, 172.)
30 Hiers, R., Jesus and the Future (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), 62–71, esp. 69.Google Scholar
31 O'Neill, J. C., Messiah (Cambridge: Cochrane, 1980), 13–26 esp. 18Google Scholar.
32 See Dunn, J. D. G., Jesus and the Spirit (London: SCM, 1975), 157–198Google Scholar.
33 A conspicuous instance of the desirability of withholding judgment until the end is the exegesis of John 6 in its connection with the eucharist.
34 Robinson, J. A. T., Redating the New Testament (London: SCM, 1976), 254–311Google Scholar, and The Priority of John (London: SCM, 1985).
35 See Georgi, D., Die Gegner des Paulus im 2 Korintherbrief WMANT 2 (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1964)Google Scholar. No doubt Mark's intention in throwing the cloak of the messianic secrecy motif over the miraculous healings of Jesus (Mark 1.25, 34, 44, etc.) is also to be explained at least partly in similar terms; it was a way of combating overenthusiasm for the gospel of miracles.
36 See Neirynck, F., ‘The Study of Q’ in Logia, 72ffGoogle Scholar. A. Polag describes Luke 7.22 and 11.20 as ‘Kernstücke’, whereas S. Schulz assigns them to a later phase of the editing of Q by Syrian Christians, possibly gentiles, putting them under the heading ‘Das Kerygma der jungeren Q — Gemeinde Syriens’.
37 Bultmann, R., The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), ad. locGoogle Scholar.
38 Beare, F. W., The Gospel according to Matthew: A Commentary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), in reference to Matt. 12.27–28Google Scholar.
39 See for example Aune, D. E., Prophecy in Early Christianity, 242, note 68Google Scholar.
40 See Mearns, C. L., ‘The Son of man trajectory and eschatological development’, ET, (1985)Google Scholar.
41 The most likely date of Claudius' edict expelling Jews from Rome, which may be referred to in I Thess. 2.16 as very recent, is 49 CE. Pauline chronologers E. Bammel, R. Jewett, G. Lüdemann and J. A. T. Robinson favour this as the edict's date.