Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§16.4 How Did Jesus See His Own Role ?
37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the
coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those
days before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until
the day Noah entered the ark. 39 and they knew
nothing until the flood came and swept them all
away,
the coming of the Son of Man.
so too will be
much suffering and be rejected by this generation.
26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it
will be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 They
were eating and drinking, and marrying and being
given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the
ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them.
28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot:
they were eating and drinking, buying and selling,
planting and building, 29 but on the day that Lot
left Sodom, it rained fire and sulphur from heaven
and destroyed all of them 30—it will be like that
on the day that the Son of Man is revealed'.
Clearly Matthew and Luke are drawing on common material. But each has so
integrated the material to his own schema that it is difficult to gain a clear impression
of the tradition history involved. 202 In particular, it is unclear whether
Luke has introduced talk of the day(s) of the Son of Man, a phrase unique to this
section, and unclear quite what was in view with the phrase. 203 It seems to envisage
a period (days) during which life continues in its normal round, only to
be disrupted by sudden catastrophic judgment (day). That fits well enough with
Jesus' warnings of impending judgment elsewhere. 204 But is the implication
that the son of man is a figure like Noah and Lot, warning of impending judgment,
and/or that the son of man will be the major figure in the impending judgment?
In the former case we would then have a parallel to the sign of Jonah
(§ 15.6b) and could probably infer that an indefinite/self-referential bar ' e nasa
lies behind it. 205 The latter however gives only weak support for the suggestion
that Dan. 7.13 is being alluded to, or that the phrase would be heard by Jesus'
audience 'as a well-known term for the eschatological agent of judgment'. 206
Unfortunately, the possibility of drawing confident conclusions as to Jesus' own
usage is not strong. 207
202. See further below, §16.4f.
203. See further Fitzmyer, Luke 2.1168-69.
204. See above, §12.4e. Cf. Pss. Sol. 18.5: 'the appointed day at the raising up (anaxei?)
of his Messiah'.
205. Cf. Hampel, Menschensohn 59-70, 79-98.
206. Pace Becker, Jesus 206; the judgment in favour of authenticity by Bultmann (History
122) and Tödt {Son of Man 48-52) depends on the assumption that reference was to a wellknown
figure (challenged by Perrin, Rediscovering 195-97).
207. Higgins argued for the more complex case that Luke 17.24, 26, 30 are the only genuine
utterances of Jesus (apart from Luke 11.29-32 and 12.8-9), partly on the ground that they
did not speak of his 'coming' (whether in exaltation or to earth), but only warned of the imminence
of the (judgment) day (Son of Man 56-72, 79, 124). See also Lindars, Jesus Son of Man
94-97.
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