Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.4
ephthasen; 129 but a different Aramaic form is equally possible (qereb, 'approach'),
130 and Q's use of different Greek verbs presumably indicates an awareness
early in the traditioning process of a significant difference between the two
sayings. It is certainly difficult to give engizein, the verb used in both the relevant
Markan and Q passages, any other sense than 'come near'. 131
The sense, then, is of imminence rather than of presence. 132 Whatever underlying
Aramaic may be detected, the Greek is clear enough. The Evangelists
would presumably have had no doubt that the event which had thus brought the
kingdom near was the mission of Jesus. But the fact that the emphasis was so
fixed and so central in the tradition, for earliest missionaries and churches,
strongly suggests that this was the emphasis behind the fixing and reuse of the
tradition from the first. It was disciples who recalled Jesus as so preaching; it had
been an important factor in their becoming disciples. It was as disciples who already
saw in Jesus an event of final significance that they no doubt thus established
and thus rehearsed the tradition.
What was it that had drawn near? God's kingdom, the exercise of God's
kingship, the manifestation of God's sovereignty. The saying adds nothing to our
understanding of 'the kingdom of God' per se. It focuses only on the nearness of
the kingdom's appearing.
Under the same heading we should note also the parable of the budding fig
tree, which all three Synoptic Evangelists have included in the apocalyptic discourse
(Mark 13.28-29 pars.). The tradition uses the term engys ('near') twice:
From the fig tree learn the parable: when already its branch has become tender
and it puts forth its leaves, you know that the summer is near. So also
when you have seen these things happening, you know that it is near, at the
gates.
The reference to what is near is unclear in the Mark/Matthean form of the saying
itself, though Luke identifies it as 'the kingdom of God'. 133 But the saying does
129. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Religious Book Club, 1935,
3 1936) 44.
130. Dalman, Words of Jesus 106-107; Taylor, Mark 166-67; Black, Aramaic Approach
208-11; Chilton, Pure Kingdom 61-62; similar strictures in Casey, Aramaic Sources 27.
131. W. G. Kümmel, Verheissung und Erfüllung ( 3 1956), ET Promise and Fulfilment:
The Eschatological Message of Jesus (London: SCM, 2 1961) 24; McKnight, New Vision 123;
see further below, § 12.5a.
132. Meier is less confident about the force of the saying and includes it in the 'already
present' category (Marginal Jew 2.430-34); Crossan follows Kelber in reading 1.14-15 in conjunction
with Mark 6.12, as 'the gospel of the Kingdom's hidden presence' (Historical Jesus
345); see also below, n. 280.
133. By sequencing the sayings in the apocalyptic discourse as he does, Mark, followed
408