Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§12.4 The Kingdom of God
way experience the kingdom before they die. 255 By sequencing it as he does,
Mark may well have intended his audiences to interpret that experience as the experience
of the three inner core disciples (Peter, James, and John) in witnessing
the transfiguration of Jesus (Mark 9.2-10 pars.). 256 That interpretation, however,
is hardly plausible, since Mark himself reports that the transfiguration followed
only six days later, but it may point to a certain degree of puzzlement on Mark's
part regarding the prediction. 257
What gives more cause for pause is that the key part of the saying for our
purposes (the kingdom) appears to be so unstable. Of course, the variation is easily
explained as the kind of variation which we could expect to find in the performance
of oral tradition. But that is just the point: our findings thus far have suggested
that the greater the variation, the less important the variable material was
deemed to be within the traditioning groups and churches. Or should we be content
to conclude simply that Jesus was remembered here as saying something
about the kingdom as future? In which case, Kümmel's argument reemerges with
some force: Jesus expected a public manifestation of God's kingdom within the
lifetime of his disciples. 258
The second of Kiimmel's texts does not speak of the kingdom, but comes
255. Dodd argued that the perfect tense, elelythuian ('has come'), refers to the awakening
of the disciples to the fact that the kingdom had already come in his ministry (Parables 53-
54); similarly some members of the Jesus Seminar think that the saying referred to the kingdom's
(visible) arrival in Jesus' exorcisms (Funk, Five Gospels 81). But the perfect tense denotes
rather completed arrival and ongoing presence, equivalent to 'until they see God's rule established
in power' (Kümmel, Promise 26-27; Gundry, Mark 469).
256. The interpretation goes back to Clement of Alexandria. See, e.g., the brief review
in Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom 187-88.
257. Chilton argues that the Aramaic form of speech 'x will not happen until y' is used to
insist that both parts of the statement are valid, but combines the point with the claim that
'those who will not taste death' refers to people who never die (like Enoch and Elijah), leading
to the thesis that the following story of the Transfiguration 'is a visionary representation of Jesus'
promise' (Pure Kingdom 62-65); but it is unclear whether he thinks that the saying implies
that some of Jesus' companions will never die. A more plausible interpretation would have
been to link the prediction to the report of Pentecost, understood as an empowering display of
God's rule by Luke (Acts 1.3-8); but no NT writer actually makes such a link. See further
Gundry, Mark 467-69, and the helpful review of opinions in Davies and Allison, Matthew
2.677-81.
258. Kümmel, Promise 25-29; 'seeing' and 'coming in power' point 'too obviously to a
publicly visible and tangible manifestation of the Reign of God to allow for evading the conclusion
that this promise refers to the eschatological appearing of that Reign' ('Eschatological Expectation'
40-41); similarly Pesch, Markusevangelium 66-67; Fitzmyer, Luke 790. But most remain
somewhat nonplussed by the saying. E.g., Meier (Marginal Jew 2.343-44) and Lüdemann
(Jesus 59-60) think the more obvious setting for the emergence of the saying was after the first
deaths within the first-generation churches.
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