Jesus, Disciple of the Kingdom. Osvaldo D. Vena

straight from Mark.

      Verse 24: Q. The theme of the days of the Son of Man is restated.

      Verse 25: Lukan redaction. He takes the reference to suffering and rejection from the Markan tradition about Jesus’ prediction of his death (see above).

      Verses 26–27: Q. The theme of the Son of Man in his day is compared with the days of Noah. The catastrophic end of the pre-flood world is made into a model, or a type, of what is going to happen in the day of the Son of Man.

      Verses 28–29: Lukan redaction. The theme of the fate of Sodom as a warning and reminder of what is going to happen at the final judgment is from Q (Luke 10:12/Matt 10:15), but Luke is not quoting directly from that document. This is seen by the fact that Matthew omits it. It looks more like his own midrash on Genesis 19:24–26.

      Verse 30: Q. Once again, we have the theme of the Son of Man in his day. The threefold repetition of the theme is already found in Q. Therefore, Matthew includes it in his gospel also (cf. Matt 24:26–28).

      Verse 31: Mark. Here, Luke seems to be using his Markan source independently from Q, since Matthew omits it.

      Verse 32: Lukan redaction. This is part of the midrash we mentioned above.

      Verse 33: Q. This seems to be Q’s version of the tradition behind Mark 8:35.

      Verses 34–35: Q. Notice how Matthew uses the image of two in the field rather than two in one bed, thus moving the action from the house, the domain of females, into the outside world, the domain of males.

      Verse 36: Some MSS omit this verse. It reads: “Two will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” We assume it is from Q, because Matthew uses it (24:40) and it is missing in Mark. The fact that Luke has replaced it with the image of two sleeping in the same bed is very interesting, since the gender of those mentioned is masculine! (ὁ ἑις and ὁ ἕτερος).

      Verse 37: Q. This saying is obviously from Q, for Matthew uses it also.

      Following Q, Luke affirms that the day of the Son of Man, who through his redactional work he equates with the historical Jesus, will be a day of judgment comparable to the days of Noah and Lot, when God’s wrath poured relentlessly over the whole of humanity and over the city of Sodom. But this day will be also a day of vindication for the faithful, the chosen ones, who “cry to him day and night.” This is made clear by the Lukan material that follows immediately in 18:1–8 and which seems to deal with anxiety on the part of the believers due to the delay of the end times. In this way, the section represented by 17:22—18:8 comes to a close as a self-contained piece. It also closes Luke’s famous “Large insertion,” 9:1—18:14.

      It is clear then that for Q, and for Luke and Matthew, the Son of Man is more of an individual figure similar to the one described in 4 Ezra and 1 Enoch who will inaugurate God’s judgment on his day, an event akin to that described in the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. Joel 1:15; 2:1–2; Amos 5:18–20; Isa 2:11–22, 13:6–19; Ezek 30:1–4; Zeph 1:2—2:13). The Markan understanding of this figure is more corporate than individualistic, as we demonstrate in chapter 4, and it is pretty much missing from Q and also from Luke and Matthew, except when they use Mark. But even when they do that, they make sure to highlight the individual aspect of the Son of Man. I suggest that the reason for this is that the community behind Q had experienced so much rejection by their contemporaries and so much disappointment because of the delay of the end times that they were not invested in becoming conduits of salvation for the world. They were waiting anxiously to be rescued from their present situation, vindicated, and welcomed into the kingdom. Something similar may be said about the Lukan and Matthean communities. They were aware of being part of the Greco Roman world and of having a mission in it. Matthew ends his gospel with the Great Commission (Matt 28:16–20), and Luke writes a second volume in which he describes this mission as exemplified ideally by the early church. But he still maintains an eschatological expectation made clear by the ascension narrative (Luke 24:50–53; Acts 1:6–11), which promises the coming of the risen Christ from heaven at a certain point in the now extended future.

      Nothing like this is to be found in Mark, as I explore in depth in chapter 4. The experience of the Markan community was different. They were invested in participating in the redemption of the world via self sacrifice for the gospel, and they envisioned a time when the Son of Man, the risen Christ, was going to reissue the mission from Galilee, only that this time the community was going to be empowered to carry it on, thus acting as agents in the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth.

      The Use of Son of Man in “M” and “L”

      In chapters 13 and 25, Matthew uses the expression “Son of Man” again (13:37, 41; 25:31), but this time utilizing exclusive material that does not appear in either Mark or Q. There are recurrent themes in both passages: a) the kingdom of heaven is the prevailing metaphor, explicitly mentioned in 13:24 and 25:1. It is also referred to as the “kingdom of their Father” in 13:43. b) People are separated into two groups, the righteous and the unrighteous, exemplified by the weeds and the wheat and the sheep and the goats. c) The Son of Man is both the sower and the eschatological judge sending his angels to gather people for the final judgment. As he has done before, Matthew makes it clear that this Son of Man is the historical Jesus. He does so by supplementing the parable of the sower from Mark, where the sower is equated with Jesus (see my analysis in chapter 3), with the parable of the weeds, where the sower is identified with the Son of Man (13:37). He also makes the ethical responsibility of the righteous toward the weak and marginal members of society to be the main qualifier or disqualifier for entering the kingdom. The idea here is that, in the absence of Jesus, the believers find him in the lives of the marginalized. d) Shining like the sun in 13:43 and eternal life in 25:46 are also similar images.