Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§12.4 The Kingdom of God
7.24-27/Luke 6.47-49). 215 Other parables strike the same note: the wheat and the
tares, where the tares will be collected and burnt (Matt. 13.24-30/GTh 57), 216 with
its strong echoes of the Baptist's preaching; 217 the fishnet, where the bad fish will
be thrown out (Matt. 13.47-48); 218 the sheep and the goats, where the goats are
condemned to 'eternal punishment (kolasin)' (Matt. 25.31-46); 219 and the rich fool
Lüdemann, Jesus 232 refer Matt. 24.40-41/Luke 17.34-35 back to Jesus; otherwise there would
be a strong consensus that the tradition in both Matthew and Luke has been quite extensively
developed.
215. Text cited in §8.5d, where it is argued that the differences between the two versions
are better regarded as performance variants than editorial redaction (even if the two categories
overlap). The Jesus Seminar (Funk, Five Gospels 158-59) attribute the parable to 'common Israelite,
Judean, and rabbinic lore' (the fallacy of the criterion of dissimilarity again), and
Lüdemann, Jesus 154, joins them in denying the parable to Jesus because it envisages final
judgment. Otherwise Luz, Matthäus 1.412-13; Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth 151-52.
216. Cited below (§12.5e). The parable reflects not only early Christian concern about
mixed membership of the churches (corpus mixtum) (Funk, Five Gospels 194; Lüdemann, Jesus
183), but also Jesus' objection to attempts to achieve or maintain (by exclusion) a pure Judaism
(see below, §13.5; E. Schweizer, The Good News according to Matthew [Atlanta: John
Knox, 1975] 304; Davies and Allison, Matthew 2.409-10; Hultgren, Parables 299-301). Note
also the parable of the seed growing secretly (Mark 4.26-29; also below §12.5e), with its echo
(4.29) of Joel 3.13 — harvest as a symbol of universal judgment (cf. Rev. 14.15-16).
217. See above, §11.4b. The Thomas parallel is unusual in its retention of a note of future
judgment (GTh 57); see also Reiser, Jesus and Judgment256-58. A similar echo is in Luke's parable
of the barren fig tree: if it does not produce fruit it should be cut down (Luke 13.6-9).
218.
Matt. 13.47-48
47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that
was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every
kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat
down, and put the good into baskets but threw out
the bad.
GTh 8
Man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into
the sea; he drew it out of the sea when it was full
of little fishes. Among them the wise fisherman
found a large good fish. The wise fisherman cast
all the little fishes down into the sea (and) chose
the large fish without difficulty.
The specific application to 'the end of the age' when the angels separate the evil from the righteous
and cast the former 'into the furnace of fire' (Matt. 13.49-50) is probably Matthew's elaboration.
But even so, GTh 8 does not have the note of judgment implicit in Matthew's version;
Thomas's, parable is more like that of the hidden treasure or the valuable pearl (Matt. 13.44-46);
the little fish are thrown back into the sea. The appropriateness of such a parable in a setting by
the Sea of Galilee, accustomed to fishing by net, is obvious (Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the
Kingdom 135-38; Hultgren, Parables 307-308).
219. The parable undoubtedly reflects Christian perspectives, but its moral emphasis is
thoroughly Jewish in character (Bultmann, History 123-24; Davies and Allison, Matthew 3.425-
28; Hultgren, Parables 323-26). The problem of discerning an earlier form is indicated by the
opening reference to the Son of Man: is it integral to the parable? As with 19.28 (n. 205 above)
the reference suggests later reflection on the role of the Son of Man; on the other hand, the 'coming'
of the Son of Man here is to his 'throne of glory' (25.31); see further below, §16.4e.
423