to those who are patiently looking, with oft-deferred hope, for the coming of their redemption, the appearance of the Son of man. Apparently Luke is not concerned to define that redemption in the terms of the portion G, for this he omits. That portion may have been intelligible with difficulty to him, if he conceived of the messianic rule as destined to be established upon the regenerated earth. He leaves the method and form of the "redemption" to be inferred by his readers; he seems solicitous to assure only that its coming is certain, and that it will be for the joy of the disciple (H), though for the woe of the world (C). In the rewriting of portion B, he gives recognition to the contemporary hope for "signs." That he does not, in taking over portion B, retain the explicit assertions that the sun will be darkened, and the moon fail, and the stars fall, may, perhaps, be taken as additional evidence that he conceives of the new aeon as spent upon the earth under normal physical conditions, thoroughly regenerated, indeed, but yet so truly normal that there is need of the service of the celestial bodies. The complete omission of the chronological indication in portion A is probably to be attributed to the greater distance in time of Luke from the destruction of Jerusalem. Had any considerable number of years passed since that event, Luke could hardly use effectively the portion A, which implicitly appears to make a close sequence of that catastrophe and the appearance of the Son of man. Indeed, Luke goes farther than mere omission of that which seems to have failed of fulfilment; for in the latter part of the verse by which he immediately precedes this paragraph, Luke 21:24, he introduces an entirely new chronological factor, "the times of the Gentiles," which he asserts must "be fulfilled" before Jerusalem is again occupied by its own people. It is obvious, therefore, that he separates the destruction of Jerusalem, "that tribulation" of document MK (A), from the appearance of the Son of man by at least the period of "the times of the Gentiles." The experiences of history have led him, it seems, to modify his document in more than one particular.

In addition to the portion E, which Matthew derived otherwise than from his document MK, he enlarges upon the statements of portion G by the words, "with a great sound of a trumpet." This accretion seems to have come into the record of Matthew from that

passage in Isaiah where he is describing the assembling of the scattered tribes of Israel in the day of Jehovah, in terms similar, in general, to those used in portion G, among which is this: "And it shall come to pass in that day that a great trumpet shall be blown." Elsewhere than in these additions, Matthew is faithful to his source, the document MK.

In the presence of such extensive and dramatic additions by the evangelists to their document MK as are shown in the portion C added by Luke, and in the portion E added by Matthew, it seems reasonable, if not imperative, to raise the question whether the document MK itself is an accurate report of the words on this subject spoken by Jesus. To a decision on that problem, the gospel parallels can give no further help, for they both witness to a document MK substantially such as we have in this paragraph. Since the comparison of gospel with document yields no more than a possibility or probability of primal modification in the document MK, and that especially with respect to dramatic details, there is suggested the endeavor to gain further knowledge by the comparison of document with document, a method which has elsewhere yielded important results.

E

1 Isa. 27:12, 13.

for as

F

the lightning, when it lighteneth out of the one part under the heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall the Son of man be in his day.

And as it came to pass in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: after the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed.

That the content of document P §60 bears some original relation to the final discourse of Jesus on the future has been suggested by the evidence, more than once, in preceding studies. It is significant that the portion G does actually appear in the document MK report of the discourse; the fact that it has retained a place there, despite its lack of relation to the immediate context, testifies, it would seem, to its right to be located elsewhere in the same discourse. To this evidence is to be added the closeness of verbal likeness between the portions B of the two documents. Of special significance is the similar sequence of subjects, the rise of messianic claimants being followed by a description of the day of the Son of man in both documents. This agreement in sequence would be notable in any case, but it takes on increased evidential value when it is observed that in document MK the statement about messianic claimants holds a relation to what precedes and to what follows which is intelligible with difficulty. Thus the rise of messianic claimants is set in intimate connection with the destruction of Jerusalem by the opening words, "And then if any man, etc." It is followed by the promise of the day as to come “in those days, after that tribulation." Thus the activity of the messianic claimants is set in comparative isolation and within narrow limits of time. Indeed, to the chronological outline of document MK in this discourse, the sayings about the claimants form more or less of an interruption. Their retention here seems to indicate clearly that in the discourse of Jesus they did actually follow upon the words about the destruction of Jerusalem, the difficulty of their interpretation as in document MK being created solely by the "And then" of that document and the absence of such a transition forecast as is supplied by the portion A of document P.

Against the general suggestion that document P §60 is the report

of a part of the original final discourse, there may not be urged its present position in document P, for it seems to have been established in preceding studies that the document P settings of sayings and order of narratives are not either in intention or in fact strictly historical. To this important general result there is to be added the significant specific fact that an important section of the sayings about persecution in this discourse is actually found at a point in document P much further removed from the period in which they were spoken, document MK 13:11= document P $22, their isolated character in document P making it practically certain that they are not repeated sayings. That other portions of the same discourse should find retention in other parts of document P is therefore highly probable, especially such vivid and clearly unified sections of the discourse as the present P §60, a portion which might very easily have an independent history of transmission.

There must not be an overemphasis upon the judgment of the evangelist Matthew, but it is worth noting that he believed that not only P §60,' but also other sections of that document might rightly be distributed in this final discourse. He places there the portions P§§60, 28, 29, and the document M equivalents for P §§27, 64. If one does not follow him in his judgments, one is under the exacting and most difficult obligation to show, for instance, what relation the portions P§§27-29 bear to the context or occasion assigned them by document P.

While both documents in the above paragraph deal with the same two themes, namely, the rise of messianic claimants and the day of the Son of man, their verbal resemblances are close only in the first of these themes, the portion B, except again in the portion G retained by document MK as part of another paragraph. But while this is true of the wording, there is a substantial agreement in thought in all parts that are parallel. The lengthy portion F, which is omitted by document MK, has, despite its length, only a single, simple thought, namely, that the day is of such a nature that its coming has no premonitory signs; it finds men in the midst of their normal occupations and modes of feeling and life. The portion H of document MK is a fair equivalent for its parallel in document P; and the same may be 1 See pp. 64-67.

said for the two reports of portion E. The whole of the document MK record of the sayings may be regarded as the report from a mind which has retained the substance of the thought but has lost the precise original phrasing of it. If one presses the inquiry as to how the document MK report assumed the form of wording which it exhibits, it may be answered that this wording sprang from a reporter whose mind was saturated with the Old Testament descriptions of the Day of Jehovah, descriptions which he has unwittingly assigned to Jesus in the place of the precise phrasing chosen by Jesus for the Day of the Son of man.

Thus there may be traced in portion E of document MK the influence of Dan. 7:13, "I saw in a vision of the night, and lo, there came upon the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man.' The phraseology of the document MK portion H appears more than once in the prophetic descriptions of the Day of Jehovah. It occurs in passages where the assembling of the scattered tribes of Israel is in the prophet's view. Zechariah represents Jehovah as giving to his people the assurance: "I will gather you together out of the four winds of heaven." Moses attaches promises for Israel to his exhortation in behalf of the Law, among which stands this: "If thy dispersed be from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven, from thence will Jehovah gather thee together."3 To the vision of Isaiah the gathering of the chosen in the day of Jehovah appears in this form of activity by Jehovah: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall beat off his fruit, from the flood of the River unto the brook of Egypt, and ye shall be garnered one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great trumpet shall be blown; and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and they that were outcasts in the land of Egypt; and they shall worship Jehovah in the holy mountain at Jerusalem."4 It will be agreed that the portions E and H of document MK are much

: LXX = “ ἐθεώρουν ἐν ὁράματι τῆς νυκτός, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἐπὶ (μετά, Th.) τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἤρχετο ἐρχέμενος, Th.).”

2 Zech. 2:6, LXX = “ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων ἀνέμων τοῦ οὐρανοῦ συνάξω ὑμᾶς.”

3 Deut. 30:4, LXX=“ἐὰν ᾗ ἡ διασπορά σου ἀπ ̓ ἄκρου τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἕως ἄκρου τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ἐκεῖθεν συνάξει σε κύριος.”

4 Isa. 27:12, 13.