This electronic version of the PhD thesis by Roderick R. Letchford has some formatting errors due to technical difficulties in the conversion of the original to PDF Formatting variations include o Pagination varies slightly. The first page number for each chapter is as recorded in the Table of Contents. o The following footnote is missing from p.32 (beginning of Section 1.5) ”135a Justification for placing Sections 1.5 and 1.6 in the Introduction may be found in the concluding paragraph to Section 1.2.1” Fonts The text contains characters in a variety of ancient fonts. o Some diacritical marks are missing from Athenian Greek characters. In such instances the omission is indicated by a faint rectangle, eg. o A Super Greek character is missing from page 303: Footnote 6 should read: “The best manuscripts read as given: [Super Greek character for ή] 75, ℵ, B, L, 1241. …” PHARISEES, JESUS AND THE KINGDOM Divine Royal Presence as Exegetical Key to Luke 17:20-21 A thesis submitted by Roderick R. Letchford, B.Sc., Th.L., M.A. for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History (Classics), School of Humanities Faculty of Arts Australian National University June 2001 Except where specific acknowledgement is made to quoted sources this work is the result of my own research carried out under the supervision of Mr Robert Barnes of the History Department in the Australian National University. .......................................................... Roderick R. Letchford June 2001 Acknowledgments Numerous people are to be thanked for their support which enabled me to complete this project. First and most of all to my long-suffering and loving wife Heather (Much hardship has she endured with me for the sake of the Gospel, with due apologies to rabbi Natan) and my six children, Adrian, Justin, Benjamin, Teresa, Monica and Catherine, the last of whom was born a month after I started. Their support and patience during my regular absences in Canberra meant that I could continue with the minimum of guilt. Mr Robert Barnes, my supervisor, who has guided me over the last six and a half years through the M.A. and Ph.D. His scholarship, encouragement and guidance have been of the highest calibre (to say nothing of his extraordinarily generous donations to the ANU libraries) and will not be forgotten. Prof. Graeme Clarke, who read through an earlier draft of this thesis and offered many valuable suggestions, all of which were taken on board. He was also on my Academic Panel and came to my Mid-Term Review Seminar. Prof. John Painter of Charles Sturt University - St. Mark’s College, who was also on my Academic Panel and attended my Mid-Term Review Seminar. His challenging questions prompted me to tighten some aspects of the argument. The members of the Graduate Degrees Committee, who again allowed me to pursue post-graduate work at ANU even though I resided outside the A.C.T. The Research and Scholarships Office of the ANU who granted me an APA. This thesis would have remained a dream were it not for the scholarship. Drs Elizabeth Minchin, Douglas Kelly and Ann Moffatt, the other faculty members of the Classics Program, who treated my work with enthusiasm and respect, despite it being centred a little further east than theirs. Mrs Zita Denholm for her meticulous proofreading. Finally, to my fellow post-graduate students, Nan Mackey, Janet Quartermaine, Joan Stivala, Colleen Chaston, and Chris Elliott. Thankyou for making me part of the place. I shall miss our monthly Friday lunches. I hope and pray that the words of m. Abot 3:6 in some degree may have been applicable to me as I worked on this thesis: Among one who sits and works hard on Torah, the Presence comes to rest. Abstract The quest for the historical Jesus can be advanced by a consideration of disagreement scenarios recorded in the gospels. Such “conflicts” afford the opportunity not only to analyse the positions of the protagonists, but by comparing them, to better appreciate their relative stances. One area of disagreement that has remained largely unexplored is that between Jesus and the Pharisees over the “kingdom of God”. Indeed, “kingdom of God” formed the very foundation of Jesus’ preaching and thus ought to be the place where fundamental disagreements are to be found. As Luke 17:20-21 represents the only passage in the Gospels where the Pharisees show any interest in the kingdom of God, it forms the central hub of the thesis around which an account of the disparate beliefs of Jesus and the Pharisees on the kingdom of God is constructed. The main thesis is this. Luke 17:20-21 can best be explained, at the level of the Pharisees and Jesus, as betraying a fundamental disagreement, not in the identity of the kingdom of God, which they both regarded as primarily the Divine Royal Presence, i.e. God himself as king, but in the location of that kingdom. The Pharisees located the kingdom in the here-and-now, Jesus located it in heaven. Conversely, at later stages in the formation of the pericope, the pre-Lukan community identified the kingdom as the Holy Spirit located in individuals with faith in Jesus and the redactor identified the kingdom as Jesus, located both in the Historical Jesus and the Jesus now in heaven. Chapter 1, after the usual preliminary remarks, presents an analysis of Luke 17:20- 21 as a chreia, a literary form ideally suited as the basis on which to compare the beliefs of the Pharisees and Jesus. The work of three scholars vital to the development of the main thesis is then reviewed and evaluated. By way of background, a portrait of the Pharisees is then presented, highlighting in particular, issues that will be of importance in later chapters. Finally, a section on the Aramaic Targums suggests that some targum traditions may be traced back prior to AD 70 and that these reflect the influence and beliefs of first century Palestinian Pharisees. Chapters 2 and 3 are a consideration of every instance of the explicit mention of God as king (or his kingship) and the Divine Kingdom respectively, in contemporary and earlier Jewish Palestinian literature and in Luke-Acts. A model of the kingdom of God is developed in these chapters that will be applied to Luke 17:20-21 in the next chapter. Chapter 4 presents a detailed exegesis of Luke 17:20-21, taking into account scholarship on the pericope since the last monograph (an unpublished dissertation of 1962) on the chreia. It offers a composition history of the pericope and measures previous exegesis against the view of the kingdom of God as developed in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 5 presents a summary of the work that relates directly to Luke 17:20-21, some implications arising from the findings and, several possible avenues for future research. CONTENTS : IN BRIEF CONTENTS : IN DETAIL........................................................................................... ii ABBREVIATIONS....................................................................................................... xi 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 PREFACE...............................................................................................................1 1.2 AIM, METHOD AND SOURCES.........................................................................3 1.3 LUKE 17:20-21 AND ITS LITERARY FORM .....................................................11 1.4 THREE IMPORTANT SCHOLARS .....................................................................18 1.5 THE PHARISEES ..................................................................................................32 1.6 THE TARGUMS....................................................................................................65 1.7 SYNTHESIS........................................................................................................... 82 2 THE PRESENCE OF THE DIVINE KING 2.1 PREFACE...............................................................................................................83 2.2 ANCIENT PALESTINIAN LITERATURE ...........................................................85 2.3 THE PHARISEES AND JESUS............................................................................153 2.4 THE PRE-LUKAN COMMUNITY.......................................................................164 2.5 THE YAVNEAN RABBIS, THE SYNAGOGUE AND LUKE .............................165 2.6 SYNTHESIS...........................................................................................................184 3 THE PRESENCE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 3.1 PREFACE............................................................................................................... 191 3.2 ANCIENT PALESTINIAN LITERATURE ........................................................... 194 3.3 THE PHARISEES AND JESUS............................................................................ 212 3.4 THE PRE-LUKAN COMMUNITY....................................................................... 241 3.5 THE YAVNEAN RABBIS, THE SYNAGOGUE AND LUKE ............................. 249 3.6 SYNTHESIS........................................................................................................... 277 3.7 EXCURSUS : “REVEAL” AS CONVERSE OF “COME”................................ 288 4 AN EXEGESIS OF LUKE 17:20-21 4.1 PREFACE...............................................................................................................301 4.2 THE THIRD (REDACTION) STAGE...................................................................303 4.3 THE SECOND (TRANSMISSION) STAGE........................................................351