Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.4
31), 175 and Matthew's parable of the labourers in the vineyard, where the latecomers
receive the same payment as those who have laboured throughout the day
(Matt. 20.1-15). 176 The Queen of the South and the Ninevites will receive a more
favourable verdict at the last judgment than the present generation of Israel
(Matt. 12.41-42/Luke 11.31-32). 177 Finally we should note the exaltation promised
to the twelve at the end of Q, that 'you will sit on thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel' (Matt. 19.28/Luke 22.30). 178
In all this there is a present note: the very fact that the assurance is being
given in the here and now, and with such confidence, gives Jesus' message an immediacy
of appeal. But the overall thrust is more forward-looking: the assurance
is that God is the God of different priorities and that this will become evident in
sis of Jesus' protest against the presumption of the righteous within Israel (see below §13.5).
Scott reads the parable as reversing and subverting the system of honour: 'The man who gives a
banquet loses his honor and joins the shameless poor' (Hear Then the Parable 173-74); but
does any version of the parable (including GTh 64) encourage that reading? See also n. 236.
175. See below, n. 213.
176. Despite its sole attestation in Matthew, the parable's subversive note (kingdom as
just reward) has generally impressed itself as characteristic of Jesus (Jeremias, Parables 33-38,
136-39; Scott, Hear Then the Parable 296-98; Funk, Five Gospels 224-25; Lüdemann, Jesus
213; Hultgren, Parables 41-42 nn. 38, 39). Gnilka treats it as paradigmatic of Jesus' message
(Jesus of Nazareth 82-93); also W. R. Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue
of the Oppressed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994).
177. Cited below (§12.5b). As with Matt. 8.11-12/Luke 13.28-29 (above, n. 173), the
assumption that warnings to Israel must be attributed to early Christian disappointment at the
failure of the mission to their fellow Jews (Funk, Five Gospels 188-89; Lüdemann, Jesus
339; see also above, §7.4c) is spurious. Jesus could well have seen the generation condemned
by Moses (Deut 1.35; 32.5, 20) as foreshadowing his own generation in the equivalent time
of eschatological expectancy (Moses spoke 'beyond the Jordan in the wilderness', Deut.
1.1). Manson drew attention to the strophic parallelism evident in the saying 'as the most distinctive
characteristic of his (Jesus') poetry and his special contribution to the forms of poetry
in general' (Teaching 56). See Davies and Allison, Matthew 2.357, Becker, Jesus of Nazareth
65-66, and further Reiser, Jesus and Judgment 230-41. Reiser takes up Manson's
neglected insight in concluding: 'In all probability, there is scarcely a word in the Jesus tradition
that we can more confidently regard as authentic', referring inter alia to Semitic diction
and phraseology, the 'rabbinic' argumentation, and 'the strict form of symmetrically constructed
double saying that has scarcely any parallels outside the Jesus tradition' (209, 211,
219-20).
178. The thought may be of the twelve 'ruling over' the twelve tribes (as did the judges
of old) (Horsley, Jesus 201-206 — he even translates krinontes as 'saving [effecting justice
for]'; C. A. Evans, 'The Twelve Thrones of Israel: Scripture and Politics in Luke 22:24-30', in
Chilton and Evans, Jesus in Context 455-79 [here 471-72]; Allison, Jesus of Nazareth 102, 141-
45; others in C. Tuckett, 'Q 22:28-30', in D. G. Horrell and C. M. Tuckett, eds., Christology,
Controversy and Community, D. R. Catchpole FS [NovTSup 99; Brill: Leiden, 2000] 99-116
[here 103 n. 20]; but see below, n. 205.
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