Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §13.2
appropriately by rendering metanoeö as a call to 'convert', that is, for individuals
to radically alter the manner and direction of their whole life, in its basic motivations,
attitudes and objectives, for a society to radically reform its communal
goals and values. 46 The prodigal son who literally turned round, abandoned his
life-style and returned to his father (Luke 15.18-20a) is as good an illustration as
one could want. Similarly the parable of the toll-collector illustrates that such a
turn-round/repentance has to be unconditional (in contrast with the Pharisee's
confidence in his acceptability to God, Luke 18.10-13). 47
The only passage in the Synoptic tradition which expresses this sense of
conversion by means of strephö ('turn') is Matt. 18.3 — 'Truly I say to you, unless
you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven' (Matt. 18.3). It seems to be Matthew's rendering of a less radical saying
preserved in Mark 10.15/Luke 18.17. 48 But John 3.3, 5 probably indicates that
the tendency to re-express Jesus' teaching at this point in more radical terms was
common to more than one stream of the Jesus tradition: to enter the kingdom it
was necessary not only to become like a little child (paidion), but to become a
newborn baby! And in Thomas it becomes the basis of a differently radical exposition
(GTh 22). 49
b. 'Believe'
According to Mark Jesus called his hearers not simply to repent/convert, but also
to believe —pisteuete (1.15). Mark has put the call in the language of later missionaries
— to 'believe in the gospel'. 50 But talk of 'faith' is no stranger to the
46. Goppelt gives particular emphasis to the call for repentance (Theology chs. 3-4):
'Each of Jesus' demands was after nothing less than a transformation of the person from the
very core, i.e., total repentance' (118).
47. Despite their sole attestation by Luke, it is widely agreed that these parables originated
with Jesus (e.g., Fitzmyer, Luke 1083-86, 1183-85; Funk, Five Gospels 356-57, 369;
Becker, Jesus 152, 76-77; E. Rau, 'Jesu Auseinandersetzung mit Pharisäern über seine
Zuwendung zu Sünderinnen und Sündern. Lk 15,11-32 und Lk 18,10-14a als Worte des
historischen Jesus', ZNW 89 [1998] 5-29; Hultgren, Parables 83-84, 125; Lüdemann, Jesus
365), though Lüdemann thinks Jesus did not speak the latter parable, because 'it is based on a
fundamental hostility to the Pharisees which Jesus did not share' (376; contrast Becker 76).
48. Davies and Allison suggest that the Matthean form of the saying is more primitive
than Mark 10.15, since 'receive the kingdom' is more likely a post-Easter expression (it occurs
only here in the Synoptics) in contrast to Jesus' talk of 'entering the kingdom' (Matthew 2.757).
49. Note also GTh 46.2, which seems to have merged the thought here into the Q tradition,
Matt. 11.11/Luke 7.28. See further below, §14.2.
50. 'Gospel' as a noun seems to have been coined by Paul or early missionaries, so there
can be little doubt that 'in the gospel' is Mark's own gloss (see above, chapter 12 nn. 3-4).
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