B C E 82. QUESTION OF THE DISCIPLES And as he sat on the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when these things are all about to be accomplished? $3. RISE OF MESSIANIC CLAIMANTS And Jesus began to say unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray. Many shall come in my name]], saying, I am he; and shall lead many astray. $4. EVENTS BEFORE THE SIEGE And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be not troubled: these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: there shall be earthquakes in divers places; there shall be famines: these things are the beginning of travail. $5. PERSECUTION OF THE DISCIPLES but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. But take ye heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in synagogues shall ye be beaten; and before governors and kings shall ye stand for my sake, for a testimony unto them. And the A gospel must first be preached unto all the nations. And when they lead you to judgement, §6. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM and let him that is on the housetop not go down, nor enter in, to take anything out of his house: and let him that is in the field not return back to take his cloke. But when ye see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let them that are in Judæa flee unto the mountains: But woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days! And pray ye that it be not in the winter. For those days shall be tribulation, such as there hath not been the like from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never shall be. And except the Lord had short- D ened the days, no flesh would have been saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he chose, he shortened the days. $7. RISE OF MESSIANIC CLAIMANTS And then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ; or, Lo, there; believe it not: The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And they shall say to you, Lo, there! Lo, here! go not away, nor follow after them. for there F shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew signs and wonders, that they may lead astray, if possible, the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have told you all things beforehand. §8. THE DAY OF THE SON OF MAN G But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven, and the powers that are in the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven. For as 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. In that day, he which shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away: and let him that is in the field likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife. I say unto you, In that night there shall be two men on one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. There shall be two women grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. 89. AN INTERRUPTION BY THE DISCIPLES And they answering say unto him, $10. TIME OF DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM Now from the fig tree learn her parable: when her branch is now become tender, and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that the summer is nigh; even so ye also, when ye see these things coming to pass, know ye that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, until all these things be accomplished. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. $11. TIME Of the Day of THE SON OF MAN But of that day [[or that hour]] knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. In the above exhibit there is shown consecutively all of the material in our present document MK 13:1-32, both that which is accepted and that which is not accepted as original. The accepted portions occupy the central of the three columns. To the left there are set those portions of document MK in the place of which other documentary testimony is substituted; to the right there are set those portions which are believed to be additions to the discourse as uttered by Jesus. Within brackets in $83, 4, 11 there are placed certain phrases, not conveniently detachable, which also are regarded as accretions. In the central column of 887-9 the material is drawn from document P §60. In 85 the equivalent of the portion B, which is set aside, is drawn from the Lukan record at that point, Luke 21:18, 19. Of the portions of document MK set to the left, the portion C appears later as a part of the document P account of the day of the Son of man in §8; the portion E has substantially a verbal parallel in the document P record of $7. Of the portions of document MK set to the right, the portion F statements are substantially covered by the preceding forecast of document P, itself paralleled by the portion E of document MK, the latter set to the left only because of the purer and better introduced parallel of document P in §7. By this review it will be seen at a glance that the amount of the proposed disturbance in the document MK record is not considerable. Additional justification for the proposed reconstruction may be had by bringing into view certain considerations which could not emerge so clearly earlier in the examination. Thus it is possible now to raise the question as to the relative intelligibility and appropriateness of the portion B and the proposed Lukan substitute. If Jesus did not promise that the day of the Son of man would certainly follow upon the destruction of Jerusalem at no great distance, what meaning can there be in the Markan portion B? "The end" which is referred to there is either the destruction of Jerusalem or the day of the Son of man, probably the latter, though the same phrase from Jesus in §4 does not necessarily mean more than the destruction of Jerusalem. But to whichever event it was applied by the disciples in portion B, that event brought salvation to him who endured persecution until it came. It will hardly be held that Jesus thought the destruction of Jerusalem the time of salvation; and he would surely not exhort to endurance and define salvation in terms of endurance until the time of an event of which he did not know the time, but which he impliedly, if not explicitly, set beyond that generation. On the other hand, the present Markan portion B is normally explainable, in the light of the hopes of the apostolic age, as a modification of the earlier document MK saying still preserved in Luke. An additional argument for the exclusion of the portion F and the bracketed portion in §3, on the ground of the implicit claim of Jesus to be the true Christ, may now be seen by a comparison of the Markan portion E with its document P parallel, the former bearing the phrase, "the Christ." It is not without considerable confirmatory significance that in three of the portions which, on wholly independent grounds, have been set aside there occurs that striking designation for the community, "the elect," portions D, F, and G, a designation that occurs nowhere else in the discourse. It will be recalled that it is the idea of election which constitutes the eschatological addition to the document M report of the parable of the Great Supper or Marriage Feast, closing with "for many are called, but few elected." From the evidence of this discourse it seems that there are in the Synoptic Gospels three strata of thought about the time of the day メ of the Son of man. There is the thought of Jesus that no one but the /. Father knows the time of that day. There is the thought of the early apostolic age that the day is to follow closely upon the destruction of . Jerusalem, recorded in the above portion G of document MK and elsewhere. There is the thought of the later apostolic age that before that day the gospel must be preached in the whole inhabited earth, recorded in the above portion A of document MK and elsewhere. At a previous point it was seen that there are apparently three similar strata concerning the extent of the mission of the disciples, an idea itself determined in large part by chronological considerations. 3 D Watch therefore: for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh. D Nowhere else in the Synoptic Gospels can there be found, in the details of the relation of gospels MT and LK to document MK, such phenomena as are seen in the above important paragraph with which the document MK account of the final discourse closes. Nowhere else, from first to last, do the later evangelists treat their source with such striking freedom. Nowhere else is there a twofold paragraph of material, derived from document MK, which clearly holds to the theme of the document yet re-expresses it with so little regard to the verbal content of the document. This impression of singularity in the treatment of this hortatory paragraph by Matthew and Luke is deepened when it is observed with what faithfulness the evangelists, especially Matthew, have taken over the immediately preceding paragraph on the time of the events. The altogether isolated character of the evangelists' action at this point in the handling of their document indicates the need for an especially close scrutiny of their work, with the object of determining, if possible, the active factors in this unusual procedure. The verbal indebtedness of Luke to document MK does not extend much beyond the hortatory words of portions A and D, “Take ye heed," "Watch ye." In portion B there is the thought that "that day" will come "suddenly (aipvídios),” which is allied to the figure of "the lord of the house," in portion E, who may come "suddenly (èğaíþvns).” That in portion D the evangelist Luke is returning to the "Watch ye" of portion A of his document, after having expanded the "Take ye heed" of A by portion B, seems indicated by his use of ἀγρυπνεῖτε in D against the γρηγορεῖτε of his document in D. The portion F apparently constitutes the corresponding expansion of the "Watch ye" of his document. In brief, the evangelist Luke has taken, it seems, the double exhortation of his document MK, "Take ye heed: Watch ye," together with the reason for the exhortation, "For ye know not when the time is," and has reasonably and impressively elaborated these most weighty thoughts in his portions B and F. But why did not Luke accept the elaborations of those thoughts in the form in which they were presented to him by his document MK in the portions C and E? Omissions by Luke from his document MK can be explained generally by his literary principle not to repeat I Even here Luke has πрoσéxere for the ẞλéwere of his document MK. |