Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§ 12.5 The Kingdom of God
kingdom' is equivalent to 'enter life'; the alternative is to be cast out into gehenna
(again implying some sort of judgment). Sometimes the expectation may have
been of the final divine intervention establishing things as they ought to be on
earth, 273 that is, of the restoration of justice under God's rule. 274 But such variation
is quite in character with the wider range of eschatological expectation
within Second Temple Judaism summarised in §12.2. Undoubtedly the motifs
were elaborated within the transmission of the Jesus tradition. But given the
scope and extent of the motifs within the Jesus tradition, it is scarcely credible to
conclude other than that Jesus was remembered from the first as proclaiming the
kingdom as coming and as already drawn near.
12.5. The Kingdom Has Come
If the note of the kingdom still to come seems to be firmly struck in the Jesus tradition,
the clashing note of the kingdom already come seems to be struck no less
forcefully. It is clearly to be heard in all the strands of the Synoptic tradition, including
parables, and particularly when Jesus speaks about his exorcisms and
about the Baptist.
a. The Time Has Been Fulfilled
Mark's headline statement at the beginning of Mark's account of Jesus' mission,
already quoted (§12.1), has a double emphasis. Not only does Jesus proclaim the
kingdom's nearness; equally thematic is the note of fulfilment. The headline is
introduced by the information that the Baptist had been removed from the scene
(Mark 1.14a) and begins with the words, 'The time has been fulfilled (peplerötai
273. Characteristic of the ambiguity is Matthew's use of palingenesia ('rebirth') in his
version of the final judgment 'in the palingenesia' (Matt. 19.28 = 'in my kingdom' in Luke
22.30; = 'in the coming age' in Mark 10.30). Palingenesia had become a technical term in Stoic
thought for the rebirth of the cosmos, but Cicero could describe return from banishment as
palingenesia (Att. 6.6). Philo draws on the Stoic idea of cycles of cosmic conflagration and rebirth
consistently in Aet. (9, 47, 76, 85, 93, 99, 103, 107), but also uses the term both for the reconstitution
of the world after the flood (Vit. Mos. 2.65) and for life after death (Cher. 114).
Similarly Josephus uses it for Israel's reestablishment in the land after the exile (Ant. 11.66),
but also speaks of life after death as palin genesthai (Ap. 2.218) (F. Büchsel, palingenesia,
TDNT 1 [1964] 686-88; Davies and Allison, Matthew 3.57).
274. See, e.g., Oakman, Jesus 207-16 ('the economic reign of God'); Herzog, Parables as
Subversive Speech; also Jesus, Justice and the Reign of God: A Ministry of Liberation (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2000); Malina, Social Gospel 34-35 ('Jesus' proclamation of the
kingdom of God was indeed his social gospel'); Crossan and Reed, Excavating Jesus 172-74.
437