The Kingdom of God
Identifieur interne : 000B83 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000B82; suivant : 000B84The Kingdom of God
Auteurs : J. C. O'NeillSource :
- Novum Testamentum [ 0048-1009 ] ; 1993.
Url:
DOI: 10.1163/156853693X00095
Links to Exploration step
ISTEX:6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88Le document en format XML
<record><TEI wicri:istexFullTextTei="biblStruct"><teiHeader><fileDesc><titleStmt><title>The Kingdom of God</title><author wicri:is="90%"><name sortKey="O Neill, J C" sort="O Neill, J C" uniqKey="O Neill J" first="J. C." last="O'Neill">J. C. O'Neill</name></author></titleStmt><publicationStmt><idno type="wicri:source">ISTEX</idno><idno type="RBID">ISTEX:6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88</idno><date when="1993" year="1993">1993</date><idno type="doi">10.1163/156853693X00095</idno><idno type="url">https://api.istex.fr/document/6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88/fulltext/pdf</idno><idno type="wicri:Area/Istex/Corpus">000B83</idno><idno type="wicri:explorRef" wicri:stream="Istex" wicri:step="Corpus" wicri:corpus="ISTEX">000B83</idno></publicationStmt><sourceDesc><biblStruct><analytic><title level="a">The Kingdom of God</title><author wicri:is="90%"><name sortKey="O Neill, J C" sort="O Neill, J C" uniqKey="O Neill J" first="J. C." last="O'Neill">J. C. O'Neill</name></author></analytic><monogr></monogr><series><title level="j">Novum Testamentum</title><title level="j" type="sub">An International Quarterly for New Testament and Related Studies</title><title level="j" type="abbrev">NT</title><idno type="ISSN">0048-1009</idno><idno type="eISSN">1568-5365</idno><imprint><publisher>BRILL</publisher><pubPlace>The Netherlands</pubPlace><date type="published" when="1993">1993</date><biblScope unit="volume">35</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">2</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="130">130</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="141">141</biblScope></imprint><idno type="ISSN">0048-1009</idno></series><idno type="istex">6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88</idno><idno type="DOI">10.1163/156853693X00095</idno><idno type="href">15685365_035_02_s002_text.pdf</idno></biblStruct></sourceDesc><seriesStmt><idno type="ISSN">0048-1009</idno></seriesStmt></fileDesc><profileDesc><textClass></textClass><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage></profileDesc></teiHeader></TEI><istex><corpusName>brill-journals</corpusName><author><json:item><name>J.C. O'Neill</name></json:item></author><genre><json:string>research-article</json:string></genre><host><volume>35</volume><pages><last>141</last><first>130</first></pages><issn><json:string>0048-1009</json:string></issn><issue>2</issue><genre></genre><language><json:string>unknown</json:string></language><eissn><json:string>1568-5365</json:string></eissn><title>Novum Testamentum</title></host><language><json:string>eng</json:string></language><qualityIndicators><score>4.786</score><pdfVersion>1.4</pdfVersion><pdfPageSize>426.24 x 671.04 pts</pdfPageSize><refBibsNative>false</refBibsNative><keywordCount>0</keywordCount><abstractCharCount>0</abstractCharCount><pdfWordCount>4274</pdfWordCount><pdfCharCount>23100</pdfCharCount><pdfPageCount>12</pdfPageCount><abstractWordCount>1</abstractWordCount></qualityIndicators><title>The Kingdom of God</title><publicationDate>1993</publicationDate><copyrightDate>1993</copyrightDate><doi><json:string>10.1163/156853693X00095</json:string></doi><id>6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88</id><fulltext><json:item><original>true</original><mimetype>application/pdf</mimetype><extension>pdf</extension><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88/fulltext/pdf</uri></json:item><json:item><original>false</original><mimetype>application/zip</mimetype><extension>zip</extension><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88/fulltext/zip</uri></json:item><istex:fulltextTEI uri="https://api.istex.fr/document/6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88/fulltext/tei"><teiHeader><fileDesc><titleStmt><title level="a">The Kingdom of God</title><respStmt xml:id="ISTEX-API" resp="Références bibliographiques récupérées via GROBID" name="ISTEX-API (INIST-CNRS)"></respStmt></titleStmt><publicationStmt><authority>ISTEX</authority><publisher>BRILL</publisher><pubPlace>The Netherlands</pubPlace><availability><p>BRILL Journals</p></availability><date>1993</date></publicationStmt><sourceDesc><biblStruct type="inbook"><analytic><title level="a">The Kingdom of God</title><author><persName><forename type="first">J.C.</forename><surname>O'Neill</surname></persName></author></analytic><monogr><title level="j">Novum Testamentum</title><title level="j" type="sub">An International Quarterly for New Testament and Related Studies</title><title level="j" type="abbrev">NT</title><idno type="pISSN">0048-1009</idno><idno type="eISSN">1568-5365</idno><imprint><publisher>BRILL</publisher><pubPlace>The Netherlands</pubPlace><date type="published" when="1993"></date><biblScope unit="volume">35</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">2</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="130">130</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="141">141</biblScope></imprint></monogr><idno type="istex">6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88</idno><idno type="DOI">10.1163/156853693X00095</idno><idno type="href">15685365_035_02_s002_text.pdf</idno></biblStruct></sourceDesc></fileDesc><profileDesc><creation><date>1993</date></creation><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="1993">Created</change><change when="1993">Published</change><change xml:id="refBibs-istex" who="#ISTEX-API" when="2016-3-13">References added</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><extension>txt</extension><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88/fulltext/txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus brill-journals not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/2.3/journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article article-type="research-article" dtd-version="2.3">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="e-issn">15685365</journal-id>
<journal-title>Novum Testamentum</journal-title>
<journal-subtitle>An International Quarterly for New Testament and Related Studies</journal-subtitle>
<abbrev-journal-title>NT</abbrev-journal-title>
<issn pub-type="ppub">0048-1009</issn>
<issn pub-type="epub">1568-5365</issn>
<publisher>
<publisher-name>BRILL</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>The Netherlands</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1163/156853693X00095</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>The Kingdom of God</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group>
<contrib contrib-type="author">
<name>
<surname>O'Neill</surname>
<given-names>J.C.</given-names>
</name>
</contrib>
</contrib-group>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<year>1993</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>35</volume>
<issue>2</issue>
<fpage>130</fpage>
<lpage>141</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>© 1993 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>1993</copyright-year>
<copyright-holder>Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</copyright-holder>
</permissions>
<self-uri content-type="pdf" xlink:href="15685365_035_02_s002_text.pdf"></self-uri>
<custom-meta-wrap>
<custom-meta>
<meta-name>version</meta-name>
<meta-value>header</meta-value>
</custom-meta>
</custom-meta-wrap>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body>
<p>THE KINGDOM OF GOD by J.C. O'Neill Edinburgh In New Testament studies, perhaps the most influential sentence ever written has come from Gustaf Dalman: 'There can be no doubt whatever that in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature the word when applied to God always means "kingly rule" and never means "kingdom", as if to suggest the territory ruled by him'. 1 Dalman is of course correct to point out that the word in the Bible often has to be translated by 'royal power' rather than by 1 Gustaf Dalman, Die Worte Jesu mit Berücksichtigung des nachkanonischen jüdischen Schrifttums und der aramäischen Sprache, Band I, Einleitung und wichtige Begriffe (Leip- zig: J.C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1898, reprinted 1930) 77; The Words of Jesus Considered in the Light of Post-Biblical Jewish Writings and the Aramaic Language, authorised English version by D.M. Kay, I: Introduction and Fundamental Ideas (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902) 94. I have made a new translation of the Ger- man. It is important, in the light of the Author's Preface to the English Edition, always to refer to Kay's English translation: 'As to the relation of the English translation to the German original, I have only to add that the English version practically forms a second edition of the work. A number of small errors have been corrected by the author throughout the whole book, and the introductory part has been partly rewritten and rendered more complete.' Compare the sentence cited in the text with two further quotations. 'Here (in post-Biblical Jewish literature) the words are never used to specify the locus of the divine sovereign power. They always refer to this power itself as it unfolds in the present and in the future, without the idea being specifically eschatological or developing in that direction.' German, 110; English, 135. 'For him (Jesus) the reign of God was the divine power that from now on by steady progress accomplishes the renewal of the world. But the reign of God was also the renewed world into whose sphere people will one day enter, which even now presents itself, and which can, for that reason, be laid hold on and received as a prize possession.' German, 112; English, 137. See the criticisms of Dalman in Sverre Aalen,' "Reign" and "House" in the Kingdom of God in the Gospels', NTS 8 (1961-2) 215-240 at 216; George Wesley Buchanan, The Consequences of the Covenant (Supplements to Novum Testamentum xx; Leiden: Brill, 1970) 44 n. 5; Jesus: The King and His Kingdom (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1984) 19 n. 19.</p>
<p>131 'kingdom'. For example, in 1 Chron 29:30 David's 'kingdom' refers to his exercise of kingly authority or might-and the word 'might' is given. The standard phrase 'in the fortieth year of the kingdom of David' means 'in the fortieth year of the reign of David' (1 Chron 26:31; 2 Chron 3:2 &c.). The same is true of the New Testament. The word ?3aav?ia probably means 'reign' rather than 'realm' in Luke 1:33, the end of the angel Gabriel's message to Mary, and Rev 17:12, 17, 18. The important thing to note, which Dalman tries to deny, is that the reign is over a realm. The word paJthiia may well mean 'the right to reign as king' in the parable about the nobleman who went away to receive a kingdom (Luke 19:12), but the right to reign is the right to reign over a designated realm. The word group always refers to kingly power that is effective, and the effectiveness of the power is always thought of as power over land and subjects. Whenever this word and related words are used, the land is always in view, or the subjects over whom the rule is exercised. When Balaam prophesied that the king of Israel would be higher than Agag and that his kingdom would be exalted, he meant that this king would eat up the nations that were his enemies and take their land (Num 24:7). When God brought Manasseh again to Jerusalem into his kingdom, he both restored Manasseh's authority and gave him a place from which to rule over a domain (2 Chron 33:13). God, too, can have a kingdom in the ordinary territorial sense. Nathan prophesies that David's son will be settled in God's house and in God's kingdom (1 Chron 17:14). Solomon will sit on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel ( Chron 28:5). Dalman concedes that the word in secular usage can refer to the ter- ritory over which the king rules (2 Chron 20:30 &c.), but he ignores the passages in which it similarly refers to the territory over which God rules. God is, of course, a special case. He is king, always has been king, and always will be king (Psalm 47; 95:3; Jer 10 : 10 ; Matt 6:13 &c.). He reigns, even though some angels and some human beings do not acknowledge his sovereignty. As soon as he created anything, he had a territory. The rebellion of angels and humans in a sense deprived him of his territory, for there was a clear distinc- tion between that territory where the rebels held sway, on the one hand, and heaven, where his sovereignty was effective beyond challenge, on the other hand. Satan, like God, can be said to have</p>
<p>132 a kingdom (Matt 12:26), and he tried to carry the war into heaven (Rev 12:3-4, 7-9).2 The Bible pictures God as preparing his throne in the heavens so that his sovereignty, which is there absolute, might become absolute on earth as well. That is probably the sense of Psalm 103:19: 'The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom rules over all', meaning: his kingly authority will eventually extend over all. This is certainly the sense of Obad 21: 'Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.' The time will come when the Lord will reign over the restored strong nation in Mount Zion from henceforth and for ever (Mic 4:7, where the Targum reads, 'The kingdom of God will be revealed'.) When the Psalmist says, 'The kingdom (is) the Lord's, he is the governor among the nations', he patently means that the Lord will eventually be the absolute governor among the nations; for the Psalmist, the Lord is not yet ruler of the nations, and he looks in hope to a time when the Lord's writ will run where it should run, on earth (Psalm 22:29). Dalman misses Obad 21 and Psalm 22:29 because he does not take into account the word The Bible gives us a perfectly consistent pattern. God has absolute sway in heaven. He should have absolute sway also on earth. There are some on earth who acknowledge him as king; there was a time when Solomon ruled in the Lord's kingdom; and there will come a time when David's son will be settled in God's house and God's kingdom. The time of the son of David will be the time when the kingdoms of this world will give way to the kingdom of God and his messiah (Dan 2:44; Rev 11 : 15). Dalman performed a great service in drawing attention to the importance of the evidence from early Judaism. He listed about twenty rabbinic passages that used the expression 'the kingdom', and he also cited the targums. A few of his passages were drawn from wisdom literature and apocalyptic literature, and a full collec- tion and discussion of these is now available in the dissertation of Odo Camponovo.3 Without exception, all those passages simply confirm the pattern already found in the Bible. There are those on 2 James H. Charlesworth reminded me of the war in heaven. 3 Odo Camponovo, Königtum, Königsherrschaft und Reich Gottes in den frühjüdischen Schriften (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 58; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984).</p>
<p>133 earth who acknowledge that God is king; they wait for the time, praying that it will be near, when God alone will be king on earth and his kingdom will endure for ever and ever. The prayer in Tobit 13 that begins, 'Blessed is God who lives for ever, and blessed is his kingdom', beautifully expresses this hope. It is the prayer of one who looks for a new Jerusalem on earth, a city made of precious stones. These examples alert us to a cluster of idioms or conventions. We notice that the coming kingdom, the area in which God is effective and unchallenged sovereign, is like a town or a city centred on a house or a palace (1 Chron 17:14; 2 Chron 1:18, 2:11 ( = 2:1, 12): 1 Enoch 91:13; 93:7; 2 Bar 4:1-6, 40:1-4; 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 7:26; 8:52; 10:54; 13:36; T Dan 5:12-13; 1QSb 4:26; Gal 4:26; Phil 3:20; Heb 11:10, 16; 12:22; 13:14; Rev 3:12; 21:2, 10; Herm sim 9:12:1-5, cf. Sib Or 3:46-62, 286-290, 652-656; 5:414-433). The kingdom is once even identified with Jerusalem (2 Esdras 2:10, 'the kingdom of Jerusalem')4 and Jerusalem is thought of as greatly enlarged in order to accommodate more inhabitants (Sib Or 5 :247- 264). All these images place the emphasis on the circumscribed space at the centre of the kingdom, the holy place with a wall around it and a door through which the citizens of the kingdom may enter and at which those who are not worthy are debarred. This kingdom is an ideal kingdom in the future. When the Lord reigns in Mount Zion it is said that 'the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem' (Micah 4:7-8), and when the kingdom comes some will enter it and some will not (Isa 52 : 1 ; Ezek 44:9; Rev 21:27). Another very important idiom or convention is the elliptical use of the expression 'the kingdom' to stand for things connected with the coming kingdom. The rabbis often spoke of the recitation of the shema as taking the yoke of the kingdom on oneself (meaning, acknowledging the effective sovereignty of God, an acknowledgment made by someone living in the world, but expec- ting the coming of the kingdom). However, the rabbis could just as easily speak of taking the kingdom on oneself (Ber. 24a; Deut. Rab. 2). Something similar is already found in the Bible. In Dan 4 See J.C. O'Neill, 'The Desolate House and the New Kingdom of Jerusalem: Jewish Oracles of Ezra in 2 Esdras 1-2', Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Tem- ple presented to Ernst Bammel (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supple- ment Series 48, ed. by William Horbury, Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 226-236.</p>
<p>134 6:5( = 4), the presidents and princes could find no fault in Daniel 'concerning the kingdom', meaning: concerning the administration of the kingdom. This convention explains Rom 14:17-18: 'the kingdom of God is not cating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit', meaning: people do not get into the kingdom by eating and drinking correctly, but by acting justly, peacaebly and joyfully (cf. 1 Cor 4:20). This also explains expres- sions such as that the kingdom is near. The kingdom itself is not near, but the time when the kingdom is to be established is near. In another example of the same idiom, the expression 'my salvation is near to come' in Is 56:1 means not that God's salvation is near but that the time of God's salvation is near. Armed with this perfectly straightforward knowledge of the sense and usage of the expression `the kingdom of God', we are in a posi- tion to understand Jesus' use of the term. There is no reason, how- ever, to confine ourselves to the Gospels, for the rest of the New Testament conforms to the same usage. Nothing stops us from listing passages from Acts and the Epistles and Revelation alongside passages from the Gospels. The onus is on those who detect different meanings of the term in different layers of the New Testament to produce examples; I think that the alleged different meanings are based on a misunderstanding of standard idioms. The scheme to be found in the New Testament is simplicity itself: (I) the kingdom is like a delectable house or city or territory which people long to be able to enter when it comes; (II) people can talk about the kingdom; and (III) people can seek to prepare to enter the kingdom by taking its yoke upon themselves now. I 1. The kingdom is like a house or city or land. Only such a view would allow anyone to speak of 'entering' the kingdom. (We recall the importance of gates and doors in the New Testament [Matt 7 :7- 8, 13-14 ; Luke 13:24, 25, 28; Matt 25:10-11; Rev 3:8, 4:1 not to mention John 10:7, 9].) When the kingdom comes, people will enter the kingdom (Matt 5:20; 7:21; 18:3; 19:23; Mark 10:23; Luke 18:24; Matt 19:24; Mark 10:25; Luke 18:25; Matt 21:31; Mark 9:47; 10:15; Luke 18:17; Mark 10:24; John 3:5). It will be entered after many tribulations (Acts 14:22). It has a gate with keys that have been entrusted to servants of the king who unlock its gate</p>
<p>135 or bar its gate (Matt 16:19); the servants may themselves refuse to enter (Matt 23:13). Those who enter the kingdom will eat and drink at the son of David's table (Matt 26:29). People can be rescued now from evil and can be destined to enter the kingdom (2 Tim 4:18; 2 Pet 1:11 ); this certainty can be so strong that entering the future kingdom can be spoken of as already accomplished, in the way prophets spoke of what the Lord had promised to do as already accomplished (Col 1:13; cf. the aorists of the Magnificat). There are deluded people who think that the kingdom has come already, who believe they are full and rich and reigning; Paul wishes they were right, for then he would be reigning too, and his troubles would be over (1 Cor 4:8; cf. 2 Tim 2:18). These people held exactly the same view of the kingdom as did everyone else at the time; they differed only in their perception of the state of the world.5 5 2. The time of the kingdom's coming is near (Matt 3:2; Matt 4:17; Mark 1:15; Matt 10:7; Matt 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 10:9, 11). There can be signs it is near (Luke 21 :31). Pray that it come (Matt 6:10; Luke 11:2). When it comes it will be seen (Luke 9:27; John 3:3). It will be manifested (Luke 19:11). People can expect it (Mark 15:43; Luke 23:51) and work for its coming (Col 4:11). It is not to be one of the kingdoms of this world, but will come from heaven to replace the kingdoms of this world (John 18:36; Rev 11:15; 12:10). When God is to reign, the marriage of the Lamb will come, and his bride will have prepared herself (Rev 19:6; cf. Acts 3:19-21). The king, the son of David, will come with his kingdom (Luke 23:42; 2 Tim 4 : 1 ; cf. Mark 11 : 10). He is to reign at the right hand of God in heaven during the time of rebellion (1 Cor 15:25), and he will eventually reign on earth (Heb 1:8; Rev 11:15, 17). After the final battle against his enemies, he will hand the kingdom over to God the Father ( Cor 15:24), and there will be no end to his reign (Luke 1:33). 3. There will be least and greatest in the kingdom when it comes (Matt 5:I9; 18:1, 4). The least in the kingdom will be greater than John the Baptist is now (Matt 11:11; Luke 7:28), and the righteous will shine as the sun (Matt 13:43). Some will be appointed a 5 I am grateful to Gerald Downing for pointing out the importance of 1 Cor 4:8, and for reminding me that I needed to include reference to passages containing and</p>
<p>136 kingdom, which seems to mean: some will be assigned vice-regal posts in the coming kingdom (Luke 22:29). Seats at the right hand and the left hand are sought (Matt 20:21). The little flock will be given the kingdom (Luke 12:32). Those who enter the kingdom will recline at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (Matt 8:11; Luke 13:29); they will eat with the messiah (Luke 22:30). They will reign with Christ on earth (Rev 5:10; 20:4-6; 22:5; cf. Rom 5:17). Blessed is anyone who will eat bread there (Luke 14:15) or drink wine (Matt 26:29; Mark 14:25). The kingdom is for Israel (Acts 1:6). There are sons of the kingdom (Matt 13:38). Some people who had expected to enter the kingdom will be rejected, seeing the patriarchs and the prophets inside, and themselves outside (Luke 13:28; Matt 8:12; 21:43). Some will be counted worthy of the kingdom because they suffered for it (2 Thess 1:5; 2 Tim 2:12; Rev. 1:9) and, having put their hand to the plough, did not turn back (Luke 9:62). The kingdom will be for the poor (Matt 5:3; Luke 6:20; Jas 2:5) and the persecuted (Matt 5:10) and the childlike (Matt 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16; John 3:3). The merciful will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foun- dation of the world (Matt 25:34) and sinners will not ( Cor 6:9, 10; Gal 5 : 2 1 ; Eph 5:5; cf. Matt 13:41). Nor will flesh and blood (1 I Cor 15:50), for the kingdom is not eating and drinking but righteousness, peace, joy (Rom 14:17-18), and it is not to be entered by mere talk (1 Cor 4:20). II 1. The kingdom can be proclaimed (Matt 4:23; 9:35; Luke 8 : 1 ; 16:16; Matt 24:14; Mark 1:14; Luke 4:43; 9:2,11,60; Acts 20:25; 28:23,31). There are mysteries of the kingdom that can be known (Matt 13:11; Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10), a word of the kingdom that can be heard (Matt 13:19), things concerning the kingdom that can be spoken of (Acts 1:3; 8:12; 19:8). God calls into his kingdom those who walk worthy of him (1 Thess 2:12). 2. There are parables to tell what the kingdom is like, meaning parables to show people now how they should behave in order to enter the kingdom when it comes (Matt 13:24,31; Mark 4:30; Luke 13:18; Matt 13:33; Luke 13:20; Matt 13:44,45,47; 18:23; 20:1; 22:2; 25:1; Mark 4:26). The idea that the kingdom is redefined by being likened to a mustard seed or to leaven rests, of course, on a</p>
<p>137 misunderstanding. When someone says, 'The kingdom of God is like...', they do not compare the kingdom to the first term of the story but to the story as a whole. The Gospel of Thomas begins the perfectly comparable parable of the leaven with the words, 'The kingdom of the Father is like a woman' (Gosp. Thos. 96). A little thought will show that the kingdom of God cannot itself be like ten virgins (Matt 25: 1). Furthermore, the introduction does not mean that the kingdom itself is being compared with what happens in the story. The kingdom of God is assumed to be what everyone in the audience knows it to be, the coming kingdom when God's will will be done on earth as it is done now in heaven. Everyone in the audience hopes to be admitted to that kingdom when it comes, and not to be rejected. The parables must be offering insight or encouragement or warning about the nature of the steps the audience should take to be sure of entering the kingdom. III The kingdom is to be sought, meaning that in this life things should be said and done that will bring entrance to the kingdom when it comes (Matt 6:33; Luke 12:31). Things can be done now for the sake of entering the kingdom when it comes (becoming a eunuch, Matt 19:12; swearing to refrain from eating and drinking, Matt 26:29; Mark 14:25; Luke 22:16,18; leaving house and wife and brothers and parents and children, Luke 18:29). There are those who act violently to 'seize' the kingdom; that is, they claim to be God's warriors bringing in the kingdom (Matt 11:12; Luke 16:16). People can be 'discipled' to the kingdom (Matt 13:52). Their actions can show them to be not far from the kingdom, mean- ing they are nearly ready to enter it when it comes (Mark 12:34). The kingdom is received, meaning the yoke of the kingdom: things one must do now in order to enter it when it comes (Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17; Heb 12:28); those who receive the kingdom have a citizenship in heaven from whence they expect a saviour (Phil 3:20). Those destined to be in the kingdom can be said to be 'made a kingdom' (Rev 1 :6 ; 5: 10). The strength of the case for understanding the kingdom passages in the New Testament in the way I have done rests on the weight of numbers. Whenever a student made rash assertions about the New Testament, J.Y. Campbell (1887-1978) used to say, 'Give six</p>
<p>138 examples'. There are hosts of plain examples that clearly fall under the three headings I have adopted above. Some passages are more difficult to understand, but reference to the obvious sense of the more numerous cases often resolves our doubts; they should join the majority. The argument from weight of numbers is backed by another related argument. It is far more likely that a teacher like Jesus, with a great and urgent message, would use common terms in their usual sense, than that he would change the meaning of the terms. He did not have to use 'the kingdom of God' in his teaching; he must have chosen the term because he accepted its meaning. There is no good evidence that he tried to redefine the meaning of the well-known term. The contortions of commentators who take Dalman as their starting point beggar belief. One recent writer realized that phrases about entering the kingdom make it very difficult to maintain that 'kingdom' should really be translated as 'the kingly power of God' . He thinks to escape this objection by seizing on the straightforward words of Psalm 68:24-25, which speak of the Lord's entering the Temple accompanied by the singers; these words he interprets as meaning not that the worshippers enter the Temple but, rather, that the singers enter into the dynamic kingly power of the Lord as he enters the Temple. He then misunderstands the meaning of receiving (the yoke of) the kingdom of God as a child in Mark 10:15a, and uses his extraordinary new sense of entering the kingdom to suppose that Jesus meant not that those who had received (the yoke of) the kingdom would enter the kingdom, but that they would incorporate themselves into God's powerful inva- sion of this world (Mark 10:15b) .6 Commentators tend to start from an obscure saying of Jesus, and then try to read the majority of plain statements according to the strange new meaning for the kingdom of God that they think they have recovered from the difficult verse. If they cannot make the majority fit this new usage, they chop off the sayings that do not fit by doubting their authenticity. Two very difficult sayings are commonly made the starting point for theories that Jesus used the kingdom of God in a new and unprecedented way: 'If by the finger of God I cast out demons, 6 Joel Marcus, 'Entering into the Kingly Power of God', JBL 107 (1988) 663-675.</p>
<p>139 then the kingdom of God has come upon you,' Matt 12:28; Luke 11:20; and, asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come be said, 'The kingdom of God does not come with observa- tion, nor will they say, Lo here or there, for lo the kingdom of God is 'ev-c6q Luke 17:20-21. In the first case the act of healing cannot be the coming of the kingdom, for it is the objectors to Jesus upon whom he says the kingdom has come, not the sufferers. Furthermore, the kingdom has come upon them only if he has cast out the demons by the finger of God, only if he has not cast out the demons by the finger of Satan, as they averred. If they are right, then the kingdom has not come upon them. Pretty clearly, we have here another case of 'the kingdom' standing for one of the accompaniments of the kingdom, just as 'the kingdom' could stand for the yoke of the kingdom. The elliptical expression 'the kingdom' must stand, in this saying of Jesus, for something like the wrath of God or the judgment of God which will accompany the coming of the kingdom. The verb used, is commonly used to refer to the pronouncing in advance of an event that is to come; in 1 Thess 2:16, for example, the wrath of God is said to have come upon the J udaeans who put Jesus and the prophets to death, who persecuted the apostles, and who tried to prevent them preaching to Gentiles. The words do not mean that the wrath had finally been executed, but that the wrath is laid up for them if they do not repent. In the LXX of 2 Chron 19:2, Jehu said to Jehoshaphat, 'Wrath has come upon you from the Lord', using the aorist iyivilo to refer to the wrath destined to come upon J ehoshaphat. 7 As it stands, Luke 17:20-21 seems to threaten our whole edifice. The words in Jesus' reply, when he denies that they will say 'Behold, here! or there!', compel us to take the first part of Jesus' answer to mean, The kingdom comes without it being possible to observe its coming. Jesus cannot mean to deny the apocalyptic view that the kingdom's coming will be preceded by signs (Bultmann), because, even if there were no signs preceding the coming, when it came the kingdom would still be visible. They would be able to 7 J.C. O'Neill, Messiah: Six lectures on the ministry of Jesus (The Cunningham Lec- tures 1975-76; Cambridge: Cochrane Press, 1980, repr. 1984) 14-19. See the instructive list of passages cited in the note on T. Levi 6:11 in H.W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 8; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 148.</p>
<p>140 say, 'Behold, here! or there!'8 If the kingdom is to come without it being possible to observe its coming, it must be internal to individuals. If it were present in a space defined by the 'you' in ev,r6q it would be visible, and they could say, 'Behold, here!' The preposition ivI6q can mean 'within' a designated space (like a wall [11. 12:374,380] or a camp [Xen. Anab. i:10:3] or a sanctuary [Ign. Eph. 5:2; Trall. 7:2]), but it can scarcely mean inside an individual. When the preposition is used with reference to an individual, it means within the individual's grasp (C.H. Roberts) . 9 We were required to take the verse as referring to a kingdom internal to individuals because of Jesus' denial that they will say, 'Behold, here! or there!' This reading both forces the sense of the Greek (ivI6q) and raises the unlikely idea that the kingdom might even be inside the Pharisees. A solution on the right lines was put forward long ago by H.J. Holtzmann and Gustaf Dalman, that the words `Nor will they say, Behold, here! or there!' are a redactional addition or an interpolation. I argue that the readings of D and 69 lend support the conjecture that the words were a primitive gloss. D adds xtJI16JqIi to the words just given-a difficult reading and a reading we would have expected to follow the positive state- ment that 'They will say, Behold here! or [Behold] there!' rather than the negative, 'They will not say'. In fact 69 reads just what D required: OL 8& ipo6Jtv i8ov Lôoù ixii. In its positive form the sentence looks like a marginal remark taken from 17:23, made by someone who saw in verse 23 an example of the false way of regard- ing the kingdom to which Jesus was referring in verse 20. The gloss was naturally incorporated into the text and then made to fit the context by a skilled scribe who realized that the sense required a negative and knew that negatives were often omitted as a result of carelessness.10 Remove these words, and we remove the necessity 8 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921) 73; 2nd ed. (1931) 128; English translation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963) 121-2. Erich Klostermann, Das Lukasevangelium (Hand- buch zum Neuen Testament; Tübingen: Mohr, 1919) 537-8, listed three ways of taking verse 21, leaving the matter open; in his 2nd ed. (1929) 174-5, although he left the three possibilities in place, he followed Bultmann and plumped for the third. 9 Colin H. Roberts, 'The Kingdom of Heaven (Lk. XVII.21)', HTR 41 (1948) 1-8. 10 H.J. Holtzmann, Die Synoptiker (Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament; 3rd ed., Tübingen und Leipzig: J.C.B. Mohr, 1901) 394; Dalman, Worte Jesu, German, 118; English, 144-5; O'Neill, Messiah 19-25.</p>
<p>141 for taking the assertion oux ipxilat 1texpex'tTjp1¡crewç as a denial of the visibility of the kingdom. Jesus accepted the terms of the ques- tion he was asked. He agreed with his questioners that the kingdom would come when Israel fulfilled the conditions that God had laid down. The Pharisees thought that they themselves were doing all they could, and that others must be told what to observe; Jesus said that the responsibility for doing what God required actually lay within their own grasp: the 1texpex't1¡PTjcrlÇ they asked of others was inadequate and the way of life that would bring in the kingdom was in their own grasp. Whether or not this solution is right, we have no grounds for upsetting the settled meaning of the term 'the kingdom of God' on the basis of one notoriously difficult saying. The kingdom of God is like a city that will come, which people ought to prepare them- selves to enter.</p>
</body></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo><title>The Kingdom of God</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" contentType="CDATA"><title>The Kingdom of God</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">J.C.</namePart><namePart type="family">O'Neill</namePart></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article"></genre><originInfo><publisher>BRILL</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">The Netherlands</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1993</dateIssued><dateCreated encoding="w3cdtf">1993</dateCreated><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1993</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><physicalDescription><internetMediaType>text/html</internetMediaType></physicalDescription><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Novum Testamentum</title><subTitle>An International Quarterly for New Testament and Related Studies</subTitle></titleInfo><titleInfo type="abbreviated"><title>NT</title></titleInfo><genre type="Journal">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0048-1009</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1568-5365</identifier><part><date>1993</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>35</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>2</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>130</start><end>141</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1163/156853693X00095</identifier><identifier type="href">15685365_035_02_s002_text.pdf</identifier><accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="copyright">© 1993 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</accessCondition><recordInfo><recordContentSource>BRILL Journals</recordContentSource><recordOrigin>Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands</recordOrigin></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
EXPLOR_STEP=$WICRI_ROOT/Wicri/Musique/explor/MagnificatV1/Data/Istex/Corpus
HfdSelect -h $EXPLOR_STEP/biblio.hfd -nk 000B83 | SxmlIndent | more
Ou
HfdSelect -h $EXPLOR_AREA/Data/Istex/Corpus/biblio.hfd -nk 000B83 | SxmlIndent | more
Pour mettre un lien sur cette page dans le réseau Wicri
{{Explor lien
|wiki= Wicri/Musique
|area= MagnificatV1
|flux= Istex
|étape= Corpus
|type= RBID
|clé= ISTEX:6C52E71323380D26447033D4D16FD457039C7E88
|texte= The Kingdom of God
}}
| This area was generated with Dilib version V0.6.31. |  |