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AND : AN INTERTEXTUAL-LITERARY EVALUATION*

Marc Turnage

Imbedded within the questions posed by the chief priests to Jesus and his subsequent response to them (Matt 26:59–66;Mark14: 55–64; and Luke 22:67–71), “From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of Power,” lie the remnants of an ancient Jewish midrashic complex relating to the exaltation and enthronement of a human figure. In their present form, each of the synoptic accounts has felt the editorial hand of the Evangelists, which has blurred the primitive Jewish exegesis behind this episode. For example, although all three of the Synoptic records preserve an outright confession by Jesus to the question(s) posed by the chief priests (see Matt 26:64; :62;andLuke22:70), the vocabulary and style of the affir- mative confession differ so greatly between the Synoptic accounts that one must rightly challenge the appearance of this confession in any of the sources used by the Evangelists. Apparently the writers generated this confession motivated from the feeling that either Jesus’ response to the priests’ inquiry was too ambiguous or they failed them- selves to understand the intent of his allusive response.1 One need not conclude, however, that the Gospel writers obscured their sources to such an extent as to make the historian’s task impossible. A careful historical-philological methodology can identify the individual stylized literary and theological tendencies of each gospel writer enabling the historian to uncover the sources used by the Evangelists, which may

* For Lucas and Jordan. I want to thank my professor and friend Dr. R. Steven Notley for his comments and suggestions contributing to this article. 1 Cf. D. Flusser, Jesus (2d. ed.; : Magnes Press, 1998), 132; and idem, “The Trial and Death of Jesus of ,” in Jewish Sources in Early (Tel Aviv: Sifrat Poalim, 1979), 124–125 [Hebrew]; repr. from Molad 23 (1968). Flusser draws attention to the similarity in Luke between Jesus’ response to the priests (22:70) and his reply to Pilate (23:3). If, however, this confession grew out of the literary relationship of the , it should be noted that only Luke can account for the two variants in Matthew and Mark; thus, either he knew both Matthew and Mark, or Mark and Matthew drew from a source like our Luke. 140 marc turnage be assumed a priori to stand closer to the historical reality expressed by the Gospels.2 Portions of the complex upon which this Gospel dialogue rests appear scattered throughout post-biblical Jewish literature; thus, a careful historical-philological investigation of this saying can help to place it within the religious and ideological matrix of Judaism during the Second Commonwealth. The unanimous testimony of the Synoptic Gospels indicates that Jesus’ reply resulted from a question posed by the chief priests regard- ing his self-awareness (Matt 26:63;Mark14:61;andLuke22:67). While a certain literary relationship seems certain between the Synoptic ac- counts of this encounter, one should not assume entirely that the vari- ants in the accounts are solely products of authorial style and creativ- ity. This seems particularly true for the account preserved in Luke’s Gospel.3 For instance, the double question in Luke (“If you are the Christ, tell us … Are you the Son of God, then?”) seems to derive from a more primitive account of this inquisition than do the single questions found in Matthew and Mark.4 The single question posed to Jesus in Matthew (“… tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God”) and Mark (“Are you the Christ the Son of the Blessed?”) seemingly betrays a later Christian redaction of the material, for assumed within the singular form of this question lies the assumption that the titles Messiah and Son of God are necessarily equivalent—a notion more reflective of later Christian theology.5 Within the multitude of Jewish messianic speculations, a (or

2 All inquiry into the historical Jesus must begin from two foci: 1) the life of Jesus recorded in the Canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and 2) the Jewish cultural world in the land of Israel during the Second Temple Period. It is this writer’s assumption that a historical-philological methodology that compares the Gospel accounts, primarily Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with the Judaisms of the Second Temple Period taking seriously the tri-lingual (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) nature of first century Israel, can uncover the style and method of the Gospel writers and the primitive sources which they used. 3 Cf. V. Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 563 [henceforth: Mark]; R. Brown, The Death of the Messiah (2 vols.; ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1:472; and I.H. Marshall, The (NIGTC; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1995), 848–849 [henceforth: Luke]. 4 While acknowledging Luke’s reliance upon primitive non-Markan material for this episode, J.J. Kilgallen sees the two questions in Luke as the result of Luke’s “deliberate choice.” He fails to understand the primitive exegesis behind Luke’s two questions [see below]; “Jesus’ First Trial: Messiah and Son of God (Luke 22,66–71),” Bib 80 (1999): 401–414. 5 Notice also the minor agreement in the form of the question between Matthew and Luke: 7να μν εTπ<ης ε σ! ε , >ριστ$ς (Matt 26:63), ε σ! ε , >ριστς επ$ν μν