Abstract
This study of a current current in biblical research surveys and appraises an interpretative trend that associates future-oriented Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70
Collectively, Son of Man sayings form a fascinating feature of the synoptic tradition. Used self-referentially by Jesus rather than as a confessional title, in the Synoptic Gospels ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου appears in sayings of Jesus relating to three facets of his mission: (1) sayings broadly associated with Jesus’ historic mission, including summary statements about the character and saving significance of his mission (Mt. 20:28; Mk 10:45; Lk. 19:10); (2) sayings regarding his betrayal, suffering, and premature death, sometimes accompanied by presentiments of divine vindication by resurrection from death; and (3) sayings that anticipate a role for the Son of Man beyond Jesus’ historic mission. Whether and in what sense(s) the historical Jesus employed this idiom is beyond the scope of this study, which focuses on the third group of Son of Man sayings within Luke’s Gospel. Such texts are often classified as ‘apocalyptic’ Son of Man sayings, but for the purpose of this study a more neutral designation is necessary because, although many scholars presume that such future-oriented sayings refer to the return or parousia of Jesus following his ascension into the presence of God (see, e.g., Bock 2013: 898), increasing numbers of scholars consider that this group of Son of Man sayings relate, in some sense, to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70
Especially significant are future-coming Son of Man sayings in Mt. 24:1–44, Mk 13:1–37, and Lk. 21:5–36, parallel passages within which Jesus forecasts the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and presages a majestic coming of the Son of Man. Everyone accepts that in these passages Jesus is recalled as predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and/or its temple, and some devote considerable energy to defending the prescience of the historical Jesus in this respect. I accept that Jesus probably foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, but that is not my concern here. The purpose of this study is to survey and to subject to critical scrutiny a view that has gained significant traction in recent decades, namely, that when Jesus is remembered as referencing the Son of Man’s powerful and glorious arrival in or by means of a cloud or clouds (Mt. 24:30; Mk 13:26; Lk. 21:27), he was referring not to his return or end-time parousia but rather, in metaphorical mode, to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Although this view is considered by some to explain most of the content of Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, this study focuses on Luke’s conception of the future-coming Son of Man. The reason for focusing on Luke’s future-oriented Son of Man sayings is twofold: first, more clearly than either of his synoptic counterparts, Luke records Jesus as predicting Jerusalem’s destruction in unambiguous terms; and second, by virtue of the existence of Acts, written by the author who composed Luke’s Gospel, one may be confident about certain Lukan convictions (identified below) that should help to facilitate an appraisal of which referent is more plausibly in view in Luke’s future-focused Son of Man sayings—Jerusalem’s destruction or the return of Jesus.
Broadly speaking, three ‘horizons’ are proposed as marking when Jesus’ prophecies about the coming of the Son of Man in Mt. 24:1–44, Mk 13:1–37, and Lk. 21:5–36 are envisaged as either having been fulfilled or still await fulfillment. One horizon, especially with respect to Mk 13:24–27, is that such prophecies find their resolution intratextually within the narration of Jesus’ passion or at least by the end of the Gospel (Mann 1986; Radcliffe 1987; Myers 1988; Bolt 1995, 2004: 85–115, 2021a; van Eck 2011). Another is that Mt. 24:1–44, Mk 13:1–37, and Lk. 21:5–36 relate in their entirety to Jerusalem’s destruction, although some interpreters accept that the return of Jesus is presaged within these chapters, albeit not in sayings about the coming of the Son of Man. The third, more traditional, horizon is that although Mt. 24:1–44, Mk 13:1–37, and Lk. 21:5–36 clearly reference the destruction of the temple and/or Jerusalem, these passages also look beyond that historical event to the end of history as currently experienced, coinciding with the return of Jesus as the heavenly Son of Man. Especially in the case of Luke 21, moreover, there is one further interim eschatological horizon, one between the passion of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem, during which events prophesied by Jesus in Lk. 21:12–19 are seen to be fulfilled by occurrences narrated in Acts. In no case, however, is any such prophecy associated with the coming of the Son of Man. In tandem with the gifting of the Spirit, perhaps intimated in Lk. 21:15 and explicitly promised by Jesus in Lk. 24:49 and again in Acts 1:1–8, certain events in Acts are presented as eschatological prefigurations—partial fulfillments that both strengthen confidence in Jesus’ prophetic prescience and anticipate final fulfillment when Jesus returns (Acts 1:11).
Luke 21:20–28: An Interpretative Challenge
In the Lukan presentation of Jesus’ teaching in Lk. 21:5–36, the temple is not only a focal topic of Jesus’ instruction but also remains the setting for his discourse, rather than, as for Matthew and Mark, the Mount of Olives. At a key point in this temple discourse, Jesus refers unambiguously to Jerusalem’s siege, sacking, and subjugation: When you see Jerusalem surrounded by army encampments, realize then that her desolation has drawn near. Then those in Judea should flee to the hills and those within her should get out and those in the crop-fields should not enter back into her because these are days of vengeance in fulfilment of all that is written. Alas for pregnant and nursing women in those days, for there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath for this people, and they will fall at the edge of a sword and will be taken captive into all the nations (εἰς τὰ ἔθνη πάντα), and Jerusalem will be trampled by gentiles (ὑπὸ ἐθνῶν) until the times of the gentiles (καιροὶ ἐθνῶν) will be fulfilled. (Lk. 21:20–24, author’s translation here and elsewhere)
Unlike Matthew and Mark, who rather clearly demarcate between events associated with the temple’s destruction and the subsequent coming of the Son of Man, Lk. 21:25 records Jesus as continuing with the following words, ‘And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations (συνοχὴ ἐθνῶν) in despair …’ (21:25–26), before continuing further with this affirmation about the coming Son of Man: ‘And then (καὶ τότε) they will see the Son of Man coming in (or by means of) a cloud with power and much glory’ (21:27). Since at this point Luke does not clearly differentiate between events associated with the destruction of Jerusalem and various signs leading up to the coming of the Son of Man, this has been taken to support the view that the signs and phenomena of Lk. 21:25–27 are biblical imagery for, or theological commentary on, Jerusalem’s destruction itself. In other words, there is no change of referent between Lk. 21:24 and 21:25; the topic of Lk. 21:20–28 in its entirety is Jerusalem’s impending destruction.
Crispin Fletcher-Louis (2002: 118–19) traces this particular interpretative tradition to John Lightfoot (1658). But among more recent precedents for a Jerusalem-focused interpretation of future-oriented Son of Man sayings within one or more of the Synoptic Gospels, one thinks of Ezra Gould’s 1896 ICC commentary on Mark’s Gospel, in which he equates the coming of the Son of Man to the coming of the kingdom of God and both the coming of the Son of Man and the coming of the kingdom to Jerusalem’s destruction, as evidence of Messiah Jesus’ heavenly rule (Gould 1896: xxx, 159, 249–53, 279). First published in the same year as Gould’s commentary, Alfred Plummer’s ICC commentary on Luke’s Gospel advanced the view that the imminent predictions of Lk. 9:27 and 21:32 reference the destruction of Jerusalem but not the Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27, which Plummer (1922: 483–85) discusses under the rubric of ‘The Signs of the Second Advent’ (Lk. 21:25–28). Taken together, these two inceptive commentaries in a prestigious series foreshadowed—and probably influenced—more recent interpretative developments.
The most high-profile current advocate of this particular interpretation of future-oriented Son of Man sayings is N. T. Wright (1992: 280–338, 1996: 320–68, 612–53, 2019: 129–52), who contends that Jesus’ future-focused sayings featuring the Son of Man look forward to Jesus’ vindication by means of his exaltation to God—divine vindication of Jesus’ mission historically demonstrated by Jerusalem’s destruction interpreted as divine judgment for Israel’s failure to acknowledge Jesus as God’s messianic agent of salvation. From the early 1970s until his death in 2012, R. T. France (1971: 227–39, 2002, 2007, 2013) promoted a similar view of at least some future-oriented Son of Man sayings in all three Synoptic Gospels. With respect to Matt 24:4–35, views similar to France’s may be found in the work of Jeffrey Gibbs (2000, 2018: 1243–93), David Garland (2001), Alistair Wilson (2004), and Sarah Underwood Dixon (2021); and in connection with Mark 13, those with affinities to France’s interpretative perspective include Thomas Hatina (1996, 2002: 325–73), Keith Dyer (1998, 1999, 2002a, 2002b), Andrew Angel (2006: 125–34), Timothy Gray (2008: 94–155), and Underwood Dixon (2021). Regarding Lk. 21:20–28, representatives of this alternative interpretation of future-oriented Son of Man sayings include G. B. Caird (1963; see also 1965), A. R. C. Leaney (1966), and, more recently, Angel (2006: 135–39), Steve Smith (2017: 81–118), Ryan Juza (2020: 92–128), and Steve Walton (2021). Although these interpreters differ on individual points of exegesis regarding Luke’s temple discourse, they agree that Lk. 21:25–28 relates to Jerusalem’s destruction no less than does 21:20–24. In favor of this interpretation is biblical prophetic precedent for two motifs: first, Jerusalem’s destruction construed as divine judgment; and second, atypical heavenly phenomena or cosmic collapse as imagery for divine judgment of hubristic earthly powers, alongside divine vindication and rescue of God’s oppressed people. It is possible that Jesus and/or a Gospel writer brought these motifs together to provide a theological interpretation of Jerusalem’s destruction, whether in anticipation or in hindsight. Among the Gospel writers, moreover, Luke’s version of Jesus’ eschatological discourse is perhaps the most susceptible to such a reading, not least because of the juxtaposition of Lk. 21:20–24 and 21:25–28 without any clear temporal demarcation between the events presaged in these contiguous pericopes. This is one reason for focusing on the future-focused Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27. Another reason, as outlined below, is that, unlike the Gospels according to Matthew and Mark, the Lukan literature provides resources for assessing which of the alternative interpretations of Lk. 21:27 more likely matches Luke’s own view.
Despite interpretative commonalities between scholars who relate Lk. 21:27 to Jerusalem’s destruction, different nuances in their respective readings need to be appreciated. For Wright, Lk. 21:27, along with other future-oriented Son of Man (and temporally conditioned kingdom of God) sayings, refers to God’s vindication of Jesus and his mission by means of his exaltation, with Jerusalem’s destruction, conceived as divine judgment, serving as historical confirmation. Divine vindication of Jesus by exaltation confirmed by Jerusalem’s destruction is the gist of Wright’s interpretation of Lk. 21:27 within its context. In other words, the historical destruction of Jerusalem by Roman forces in 70
The distinctive feature of Angel’s interpretation of Lk. 21:25–28 (2006: 135–39) is that this passage, like Mk 13:24–27, evinces the influence of the Hebrew Chaoskampf tradition found in a wide range of Jewish and Christian texts from the beginning of the Second Temple period to circa 200
In the view of Angel (2006: 126–34), the evidence of the allusions to Isa. 13:10, Isa. 34:4, and Dan. 7:13 in Mk 13:24–27 leads to the conclusion that Mark identifies the Son of Man as the divine warrior who rescues the elect people of God in tandem with the destruction of Jerusalem—a creative development of the Chaoskampf tradition in which the divine warrior executes destructive judgment on wicked non-Jewish cities. By contrast, although Lk. 21:25–28 is dependent on Mk 13:24–27, Luke downplays imagery associated with the divine warrior and borrows imagery from a different range of texts representative of the Chaoskampf tradition, especially Jer. 31:35–37, in which Israel’s continuation as a nation is affirmed to be contingent on the continuation of the created order. For Angel (2006: 138), Lk. 21.25–6 describes the raging of the chaos waters and the shaking of the heavenly hosts. The text implies that the chaos waters have overcome the heavenly bodies. The clear implication to someone who knew Jer. 31.35–7 is that Israel will cease to be a nation. Luke puts this image immediately after the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, and excises material from his [Markan] source in order to do so. Therefore, Luke identified the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome with the destruction of the created order and, in accordance with Jer. 31.35–7, the destruction of Israel the nation.
Important in this connection is Luke’s use of καί at the beginning of 21:25. Contesting the views of several prominent Lukan commentators, Angel (2006: 137–38) asserts: ‘The καί (and) of Lk. 21.25 does not imply a change of time from Lk. 21.24. Quite the reverse is true—it implies continuity between what follows it and what has come before’. Also important for Angel’s view of Lk. 21:25–28 is that, although Luke does not obviously follow Mark in identifying the Son of Man with the divine warrior, his use of the Son of Man motif references the redemption of Jesus’ disciples, whom Angel (2006: 138–39) takes to be Jesus’ audience in Luke 21. In sum, ‘Luke’s treatment of the cosmic disturbances in Jesus’ eschatological discourse makes use of the imagery of the HCT [Hebrew Chaoskampf tradition], especially Jer. 31.35–7 and Dan. 7.13. He uses this imagery to refer to the destruction of Israel and the redemption of Jesus’ disciples’ (Angel 2006: 139).
For Smith, whose understanding of Lk. 21:20–28 is indebted to Angel, Lk. 21:27 relates to Jerusalem’s destruction, along with the rest of 21:20–28, but this Son of Man saying does not imply the vindication of Jesus by means of the destruction of Jerusalem. Rather, according to Smith (2017: 114–17), texts such as Acts 2:24–33 reveal that, for Luke, the vindication of Jesus occurs by means of apostolic witness to his resurrection and exaltation. Smith clearly differentiates his view from Wright’s by denying that Lk. 21:27 affirms the vindication of Jesus and his mission by means of the destruction of Jerusalem. Luke’s more positive affirmation of divine vindication of Jesus by means of the proclamation of his witnesses in Acts is a strong counterpoint to the idea that Jesus’ vindication by exaltation is demonstrated by Jerusalem’s destruction. Despite Smith’s differentiation of his view from Wright’s, however, his interpretation of the Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27 is difficult to distil. In part, this is because Smith (2017: 114–15) opens his discussion of Lk. 21:27 by asserting: ‘Luke 21.27 does not refer to the parousia because its language is most naturally interpreted like 21.25–26 as referring to a historical event at the time of the fall of Jerusalem’. At this point, then, one is encouraged to envisage Lk. 21:27 as referencing a historical event either coinciding with or closely following the destruction of Jerusalem. Smith (2017: 115–16) continues by emphasizing that Lk. 21:27–28 foresees the coming of the Son of Man to earth with saving effect. Again, then, Smith differs from Wright in seeing Lk. 21:27 as referencing something subsequent to the Son of Man’s vindication by exaltation to God. Indeed, for Smith, any vindication intimated by Lk. 21:27 is for those faithful to Jesus, whose salvation at the coming of the Son of Man coincides with the destruction of the temple. At one level, then, Smith’s interpretation of Lk. 21:27 is reasonably clear: the coming of the Son of Man relates to the destruction of Jerusalem by demonstrating that God’s saving action occurs in Jesus rather than by means of the temple cult. As Smith (2017: 117) writes, the phrase τότε ὄψονται (21.27) indicates that the coming [of the Son of Man] occurs after the attack on Jerusalem in a logical sense rather than a purely chronological one: in other words, the contrast is between the two spheres of salvific action of YHWH – Jesus or Zion. The fall of the temple is met with salvation revealed in the SM [Son of Man]: salvation is found in Jesus, not in the temple.
The way in which Smith presents his interpretation of the Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27 may be understood in such a way that this coming of the Son of Man is a historical event related to, but distinct from, the destruction of Jerusalem, in which case the obvious question is: which or what historical event? But in view of Smith’s clarification that the coming of the Son of Man follows from the destruction of Jerusalem in a logical rather than chronological sense, what he seems to mean is that the destruction of Jerusalem corresponds to the coming of the Son of Man inasmuch as believers in Jesus infer from the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem that their salvation comes from Jesus rather than from the temple cult. That this is how Smith understands Lk. 21:27 is confirmed by his discussion of how readers are likely to find relevance in this saying, in tandem with the Son of Man saying in Lk. 22:69, for making sense of the vision of Stephen in Acts 7:55–56 (Smith 2017: 178–87).
Although Juza’s treatment of Jesus’ temple discourse in Luke 21 occurs within a monograph concerned with cosmic eschatology across the New Testament, his discussion of this discourse is the most extensive to date provided by a proponent of a Jerusalem-oriented interpretation of the passage. Prior to publishing The New Testament and the Future of the Cosmos, Juza (2016) reprised Leaney’s Jerusalem-focused interpretation of Lk. 17:22–37. In his monograph, chapters 2, 3, and 4 are devoted, respectively, to Mt. 24:29 understood within the context of Matthew 24–25, Mk 13:24–25 understood within the context of Mark 13, and Lk. 21:25–28 understood within the context of Lk. 21:5–36. Although Juza’s interpretation of Lk. 21:20–28 is comparable to those of Leaney, Wright, Angel, and Smith by reading the whole of this passage as relating to Jerusalem’s destruction, he does not interpret Matthew and Mark’s parallels to Lk. 21:27 along the same lines (Juza 2020: 19–128). For Juza, in other words, the correlation of the coming of the Son of Man with Jerusalem’s destruction is a Lukan, not a broader synoptic, association.
Space constraints preclude detailed engagement with Juza’s interpretation of Lk. 21:5–36 in its entirety, even though it deserves careful consideration. What is important for this study is his understanding of Lk. 21:27. Like Smith, Juza treats Lk. 21:20–28 as a unified pericope focused on Jerusalem’s destruction, whose opening verse composes the beginning of Jesus’ reply to the question posed in 21:7 about the sign when the things predicted by Jesus in 21:6 are presaged to take place. Read in relation to Lk. 21:20–26, the Son of Man saying in 21:27 is construed as envisaging an event comparable to a biblical ‘day of the Lord’ bringing both judgment and liberation. Distinctive to Juza’s interpretation of Lk. 21:27 is that he presents that anticipated coming of the Son of Man as associated not only with Jerusalem’s destruction but also with socio-political upheaval in the wider world, as well as with the vindication-by-liberation of Jesus’ disciples (2020: 97–99, 105–121).
Juza sees the progression of thought from Lk. 21:24 to 21:25 as entailing a shift in perspective from the local to the global, from Jerusalem’s destruction to worldwide upheaval, as hinted at initially in 21:8–11 and then echoed in 21:23b. There is no temporal gap between Lk. 21:20–24 and 21:25–28. ‘Rather’, according to Juza (2020: 111), ‘21:25–26 shifts the focus from Judea (i.e., local) to the nations (i.e., global) in order to continue a discussion concerning the devastating effects of “those days.” Not only will God’s vengeance fall upon Jerusalem, it will rock the nations as well’. Juza (2020: 116) also understands Luke’s emphasis on the reaction of the nations in 21:25–26 as indicating a concern with historical events interpreted theologically, rather than as biblical imagery for socio-political upheaval: In other words, just as 21:20–24 was a theological interpretation of the local events that were introduced in 21:8–9, Luke 21:25–26 is a theological interpretation of the global events that were introduced in 21:10–11. Luke 21:20–26, then, depicts the Day of the Son of Man as a worldwide judgment that will come upon Jerusalem (21:20–24) and the nations (21:25–26). Thus, not only is the ‘coming’ of the Son of Man portrayed as a local event which liberates some (Jesus’s disciples) and condemns others (this generation), it is also portrayed as a global event which liberates some (probably Luke’s readers) and condemns others (the nations). Luke 21:25–26, then, depicts the judgment of the Roman world as a day reminiscent of the Day of the Lord. It interprets the chaotic events listed in 21:10–11 theologically, revealing the ‘great distress on the earth’ (21:23b) which comes with the Day of the Son of Man.
Here Juza identifies the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:27 as ‘the Day of the Son of Man’, a phrase also used as his heading for the immediately following section in which he discusses this specific text. In part, this choice of phrase probably stems from his judgment that the pericope as a whole resonates with biblical ‘day of the Lord’ imagery, but Juza (2020: 93) draws this phrase from Lk. 17:22–37, a passage that in his view prepares readers or hearers to interpret Lk. 21:5–36 in its totality with reference to Jerusalem’s destruction. Luke never uses the precise phrase, ‘the day of the Son of Man’, however, and to assert that Lk. 17:22–37 prepares readers or hearers to comprehend the entirety of Jesus’ discourse in 21:5–36 as referencing Jerusalem’s destruction is question begging, especially since there is no obvious reference to Jerusalem’s destruction in the earlier passage. Nevertheless, according to Juza (2020: 118), ‘Luke 21:27 is the climactic scene of the discourse, the culmination of the “days of vengeance.” The unfolding of God’s wrath against “this generation” of Jews (21:24) and the Roman Empire (21:25–26) will reveal Israel’s Messiah and the true King of the world’ (21:27).
Unlike Wright but in concert with Smith, Juza defends an envisaged downward movement of the Son of Man from heaven to earth, even though he does not conceive of the Son of Man’s ‘coming’ in literal terms. As he clarifies (2020: 120 n.92), ‘In 21:27, Luke is not referring to a literal “coming” in the sense that Jesus leaves heaven. The “coming” is manifested in the accomplishment of earthly events’. Thus, the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:27 is not, for Juza, an actual arrival of the Son of Man in or by means of a cloud but rather a theological interpretation of both the destruction of Jerusalem and socio-political upheaval in the wider world. Moreover, this theological inference is alleged to be made by both Jewish and non-Jewish unbelievers who reject Jesus and cause suffering for both Jesus and his witnesses. Juza’s (2020: 120) discussion of Lk. 21:27 concludes with these words: Thus, Jesus the King will be vindicated before those who have rejected him. He comes on a cloud with the status of Yahweh himself, prepared to exercise his messianic power and authority as their Ruler by making war against them. They will see and experience a ‘Day of the Son of Man’ that will play out in the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple and other socio-political upheavals throughout the Empire. The kingdom of God will be made manifest in their judgment.
Although it might have been possible for believers in Jesus to see the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, alongside wider socio-political upheaval, as an expression of God’s royal rule in Jesus being manifested within history, it is difficult to envisage those without faith in Jesus as God’s messiah coming to this conclusion. It is also difficult to view the redemption promised in Lk. 21:28 as signaling the liberation of Jesus’ followers from oppressors, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, around the time of Jerusalem’s destruction, which is how Juza (2020: 120–21) interprets the concluding verse of this pericope.
In a 2021 essay collection on Eschatology in Antiquity, Walton’s chapter on eschatology in Luke–Acts focuses on four key concerns: ‘the kingdom of God and its relation to the End (i.e. the end of the present space-time universe, accompanied by the return of Jesus to earth); the “coming” of the son of man; the work of the Spirit in the early church; and the timing of the End’ (Walton 2021: 383; cf. 385–91). Although Walton accepts that Luke anticipated a decisive end associated with the return of Jesus, the realization of the kingdom of God, and future judgment, he does not consider that this is what Luke had in mind when recording sayings of Jesus about the future coming of the Son of Man, for example, Lk. 9:26, 12:40, 17:22, 18:8, and 21:27.
For Walton, who regards Dan. 7:13–14 as determinative for understanding Jesus’ use of the Son of Man idiom within the synoptic tradition, an apparently crucial feature of his reading of this text is that the Son of Man comes with the clouds to the Ancient of Days, rather than to earth. In Daniel 7 one like a son of man undoubtedly comes with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days, but nothing in Daniel 7 requires that the Ancient of Days is enthroned in heaven rather than on earth. According to Walton (2021: 387, emphasis original), however: Thus for Jesus to speak of himself as ‘the son of man coming with a cloud with power and great glory’ (Luke 21:27) is pointing to Jesus’ vindication by coming (ἐρχόμενον) – better, from an earthly perspective, ‘going’ – to God. Whatever this is referring to, it is not Jesus’ return to earth from heaven, travelling on a cloud – that would be to fail to recognise the direction of travel in Daniel 7, as well as taking the metaphor flat-footedly literally. When Jesus identifies himself as ‘the son of man seated at the right side of the power which is God’, the Sanhedrin respond that Jesus is blaspheming, for they recognise the claim involved – that he will share the reign of YHWH (Luke 22:67–71). To read Luke 21:27 in the light of Dan 7:13–14 suggests that Jesus’ vindication in his resurrection and ascension is in view.
At this point in his discussion, Walton does not relate his reading of Lk. 21:27 to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. In a subsequent brief treatment of Lk. 21:5–36, however, he clearly contends that this passage in its entirety references the destruction of the temple. Like others who adopt this interpretative line, Walton (2021: 390, 392) holds that the imagery of ‘cosmic catastrophe’ in Lk. 21:25–28 is metaphorical description of mundane events and therefore not to be taken literally. Even in his discussion of Lk. 21:5–36, Walton does not address the precise relation between the ‘coming’ of the Son of Man (the vindication of Jesus by means of his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God) and the destruction of Jerusalem, but other points made within this chapter suggest that he envisages Jerusalem’s destruction as demonstrating God’s vindication of Jesus. If, as Walton affirms, the Son of Man’s exaltation to the right hand of God implies sharing in God’s reign, how else is one to read these words from the concluding paragraph of his discussion of Lk. 21:5–36 (2021: 392)? In sum, this passage shows Jesus speaking of the coming fall of Jerusalem in 70
In summary, for Wright, Angel, Smith, Juza, and Walton, the coming of the Son of Man in or by means of a cloud in Lk. 21:27 is unrelated to the return of Jesus but is rather either a theological interpretation of Jerusalem’s destruction or a theological inference stemming from that historical calamity. The literary context, prophetic precedent for associating cosmic calamity with political destruction discerned as divine judgment, and the absence of any definite demarcation between Jerusalem’s destruction and the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:20–28 form the basis for this reading of the passage.
Jerusalem’s Destruction and the Coming of the Son of Man: A Lukan Association?
In the practice of textual interpretation, knock-down arguments are rare. So many points of exegesis and interpretation are open to alternative explanations, influenced not only by different ways of making sense of the textual data themselves but also by multiple interpretative stances and ideological presuppositions. Most interpretative arguments are probabilistic at best, such that one must compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of competing viewpoints with a view to discerning which offers the most explanatory clarity. For this reason, this study proposes a means of assessing whether, on balance, Luke is likely to have associated Jerusalem’s destruction with the coming of the Son of Man.
Since the respective topics of the destruction of Jerusalem and the future-coming Son of Man appear at several points in Luke’s Gospel, it should prove worthwhile to examine whether these themes overlap or are closely related in the narrative elsewhere than in Luke 21. Both the destruction of Jerusalem, interpreted as divine judgment, and the return of Jesus are indisputable Lukan convictions, although for the purpose of this study, one must appeal to texts in Acts in support of the latter hope so as not to beg the question by treating future-coming Son of Man texts as implicit references to the return of Jesus. Although eschatological expectation is muted in Acts, hope for the return of Jesus is unambiguously expressed—nowhere more clearly than in Acts 1:11, where those who witness Jesus’ ascension are assured by two men dressed in white that ‘this Jesus, the same one taken up from you into the sky, will likewise come in the same way as you observed him journeying into the sky’. This hope is clearly echoed in Acts 3:19–21, whatever one decides about the contested relation between ‘times of refreshment’ and the ‘restoration of all things’. In short, by virtue of part 2 of Luke’s two-part chronicle of Christian origins, one may be confident that he affirmed the return of Jesus. Due to textual resonances between Acts 1:11 and Lk. 21:27, one may also be confident that Luke envisaged the return of Jesus in a way similar to that in which he records Jesus as presaging the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:27. Thus, without prejudging the relation between the coming of the Son of Man and the destruction of Jerusalem, understood in terms of divine judgment, one may appeal to texts in Luke’s Gospel that affirm the latter conviction, without reference to the Son of Man, and texts in Acts that confirm Luke’s hope for the return of Jesus, also without reference to the Son of Man. In dispute is which of these two extra-textual referents—one an event of ancient history, the other an enduring hope since antiquity—is most closely associated with Jesus’ future-oriented Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel. Even the solitary Son of Man text in Acts 7:56 confirms the following Lukan convictions: first, assuming an alignment between Luke’s view and Stephen’s (or vice versa), the risen and ascended Jesus is the exalted Son of Man; second, within the timeframe covered by Acts, the ascended Jesus is in heaven at God’s right hand, confirming, in different ways, Lk. 9:35 and 22:69 as well as Acts 1:9–11 and 2:32–33; and third, ascension into heaven and exaltation to God’s right hand is the presupposition for the return of Jesus.
In what follows, then, I examine pertinent texts in two groupings, the first focusing on four texts in Luke’s Gospel routinely accepted as anticipating Jerusalem’s destruction. Importantly, in these four texts in which Luke records Jesus as presaging the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, there is no reference to the Son of Man. After commenting on these four passages, I turn my attention to future-coming Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel with a view to ascertaining whether any of them is likely to have as its focus of concern the same topic as the four texts in which Luke clearly has Jerusalem’s destruction in mind. Although I have selectively consulted the vast commentary literature on future-oriented Son of Man texts in Luke’s Gospel, space constraints preclude detailed engagement with, or extensive citation of, this literature, which in most cases interprets the majority of such sayings as referencing the return of Jesus, a position I have aimed not to prejudge.
Jerusalem’s Destruction in Luke’s Gospel
Within Luke’s Gospel there is a series of passages in which Jesus rather clearly anticipates Jerusalem’s destruction: 13:31–35, 19:41–44, 21:20–24 (preceded by 21:6), and 23:26–31. These ‘sibling passages’, especially when read in relation to each other, provide an index of instances in which Luke undoubtedly had Jerusalem’s destruction in mind. Notably, in none of these passages is there a reference to the Son of Man, let alone to the coming of the Son of Man, although it must be acknowledged that the coming of the Son of Man in or by means of a cloud in Lk. 21:27 follows closely upon the obvious reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 21:20–24. Hence the importance of discerning the right relation between Lk. 21:20–24 and 21:25–28. Even if the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:27 is perceived to relate to the destruction of Jerusalem, however, this is an exception to Luke’s general rule of dissociating references to the future coming of the Son of Man from explicit or near-explicit references to Jerusalem’s destruction.
In The Fate of the Jerusalem Temple in Luke–Acts, Smith adopts an intertextual and intratextual approach to Luke’s four ‘sibling texts’ referencing Jerusalem’s destruction and Stephen’s temple-critical speech in Acts 7. Smith’s research is intertextual because he attends closely to the role of biblical resonances, whether by direct citation or by allusion, in each of the five Lukan texts he examines. By describing his study as intratextual, Smith underscores the importance of interpreting Acts 7 in the light of the four ‘sibling passages’ in Luke’s Gospel while also seeing Acts 7 as the definitive statement on the temple in Jerusalem to which the four Gospel pericopes point. As he writes, ‘Acts 7 is understood in the light of the Gospel, but the Gospel’s message [about the temple] is completed by Acts 7’ (2017: 3; cf. 190). Smith’s monograph is especially pertinent to this study for two interrelated reasons: first, it composes a relatively recent and fairly comprehensive study of the four passages in which Luke clearly references or alludes to Jerusalem’s destruction; and second, as already indicated, Smith advocates reading Lk. 21:25–28 as no less concerned with Jerusalem’s destruction than 21:20–24. Here it is impossible to do justice to Smith’s discussion in its entirety, but the following points made about Lk. 13:31–35, 19:41–44, 21:20–24, and 23:26–31 are noteworthy.
Luke 13:31–35 occurs roughly midway through Luke’s journey toward Jerusalem, well before any other statements or actions of Jesus critical of Jerusalem or its temple. At this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ retort to some Pharisees builds on earlier sayings at Lk. 9:22, 44 and 11:49–51 to convey the sense that his forthcoming death in Jerusalem will be the result of his rejection as a prophet. On the basis of intertextual associations with various biblical texts, Smith (2017: 38–48) argues that Lk. 13:34–35 prophesies God’s abandonment of the temple for reasons comparable to biblical explanations for Israel’s exile, albeit closely associated with Jerusalem’s rejection of Jesus and his expressed desire to provide protection and shelter for its inhabitants. He also considers that the verbatim citation in Lk. 13:35b of the six-word phrase from The final part of the oracle [in Lk. 13:34–35] uses a quotation of Ps. 117.26 which plays a crucial role in the narrative. It raises reader expectancy over the significance of the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem, and whether the people would welcome him as the Messiah and agent of God’s eschatological salvation, or whether they would reject him, as Jesus predicted. This quotation also forms a literary link with Lk. 19.38. Luke 13.34–35 therefore provides an introduction to the relationship of Jesus and the fall of Jerusalem….
Although none of Jesus’ obvious prophetic forewarnings of judgment for Jerusalem makes reference to the Son of Man, one could perhaps argue that Luke’s evident identification of Jesus as ‘the king coming in the name of the Lord’ (13:35; 19:38a) establishes a linguistic association for interpreting the majestic coming of the Son of Man in 21:27 as Jerusalem’s destruction understood in terms of divine or divinely authorized judgment. Luke 19:37–44 does not present Jerusalem as welcoming and blessing Jesus as its coming king, but rather as failing to recognize divine visitation in Jesus, which is given as the reason for its inevitable desolation. By association, then, it might be possible to relate the coming of the Son of Man with one coming in judgment against the city that failed to meet the condition for seeing Jesus by saying, ‘Blessed is the one coming in the name of the Lord’. Within Luke’s Gospel, one might argue, the inhabitants of Jerusalem fail to recognize Jesus as God’s messiah when he comes to Jerusalem, but at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction they will perceive that event as the Son of Man coming in or by means of a cloud with power and great glory (21:27). Smith makes no argument along these lines, but Juza (2020: 119) lists Lk. 13:35 alongside other Lukan texts in support of his interpretation of 21:27 to mean that ‘Jesus comes as the suffering-yet-vindicated Messiah, enacted in the destruction of Jerusalem and worldwide upheaval (cf. 9:26–27; 13:35; 17:24, 30; 18:8; 20:16)’. France’s brief comments on Lk. 13:35 could also be appealed to in support of such a reading of this text. After opining that the opening clause of Lk. 13:35 links Jerusalem’s rejection of Jesus to the destruction of the temple in 70
Luke 19:38 cannot be interpreted as fulfilling the conditional prophecy in 13:35b; indeed, Jesus’ arrival to Jerusalem emphasizes the opposite (Kinman 1999). It is also difficult to envisage how the destruction of Jerusalem could be seen to elicit, on the part of its inhabitants, this blessing of Jesus as the messianic king coming in the name of the Lord. Thus, any potential association between Lk. 13:35b and 21:27 is likely to be eschatological—hope that Jerusalem or Israel might one day recognize Jesus as God’s messiah, perhaps thereby bringing nearer the coming of the Son of Man (see also Oliver 2021: 83–86).
Regarding Lk. 19:41–44, Smith correctly considers this distinctively Lukan text in relation to its larger literary context, 19:29–46, encompassing Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem following his parable of the Throne Claimant (19:11–28) and his entry into the temple, from which he evicts vendors. While Smith’s discussion of this larger passage is valuable, the focus here must remain on Lk. 19:41–44, which, according to Smith (2017: 59), evokes two prophetic forms, threat oracles and laments. Taking the format of threat oracles as his guide, Smith attends first to the indictment against Jerusalem and then the specific threat. The indictment against Jerusalem is found in Lk. 19:42 and the final phrase of 19:44, both of which accuse Jerusalem of failing to perceive or recognize something critical and also contain temporal markers, leading Smith (2017: 60–62) to conclude: ‘The relationship of the indictment in 19.44 to that in 19.42 is too strong for this saying to be anything other than a missed visitation of blessing’. Not until the conclusion to his broader discussion, however, does one learn from Smith (2017: 79) that this prophetic threat oracle contains the clearest expression of the conviction that Jerusalem’s destruction was divine payback for failing to acknowledge and to receive Jesus as God’s messianic agent of deliverance.
As for the five specific threats found in Lk. 19:43–45, Smith (2017: 66) finds that no specific biblical text or series of texts serves as an intertext for this forewarning of Jerusalem’s destruction; rather, ‘the repeated echoing of different aspects of city destruction functions like a poetic metaphor, encouraging the exploration of the motifs which OT texts of city destruction have in common’. Such motifs include exilic associations and military invasion construed as divine judgment for covenantal infidelity. ‘But this is not an indictment of all of Jerusalem’, according to Smith (2017: 67), ‘Luke–Acts is not so sweeping in judgement; it is focused on the temple system and its leadership’. Although this interpretative comment serves as a suitable segue to Smith’s subsequent discussion of Luke’s description of Jesus’ temple action, it misrepresents the reality, both in Jesus’ threat oracle (as recorded by Luke) and in the historical record, that even if the primary target of Jesus’ indictment was the temple system and its leadership, the city as a whole was warned that it would experience—and subsequently did experience—indiscriminate and near-total demolition, devastation, and desolation.
Because Smith treats Lk. 21:20–28 as a single, unified pericope focused on Jerusalem and its temple, much of the chapter in which he discusses 21:20–24 is devoted to what follows in 21:25–28. According to Smith (2017: 82), ‘This unique Lukan material in Lk. 21.20–24, addressing the fate of the city [of Jerusalem], forms the main area of interest for this chapter’. Of the thirty-eight pages comprising this chapter, however, roughly ten are devoted to Lk. 21:20–24. In contrast to Juza (2020: 94), who sees Lk. 21:20–28 as Jesus’ answer to the request for a sign and 21:29–36 as his answer to the question regarding timing, Smith (2017: 82) sees Lk. 21:20 as addressing both parts of the two-part question articulated in 21:7, ‘Teacher, when, therefore, will these things occur and what sign will signal when these things are about to happen?’ Much of his discussion of Lk. 21:20–24 is concerned to explore potential biblical intertexts for its terminology, phrases, and imagery, for example, Hos. 9:7 as the most likely specific intertext for Lk. 21:22 and Zech. 12:3 as the closest prophetic precedent for Lk. 21:24. Despite identifying some relatively clear allusions, however, Smith (2017: 83–93) concludes that Lk. 21:20–24 echoes general prophetic motifs associated with Jerusalem’s conquest by foreign forces, thereby evoking various themes associated with the punishment of exile for covenant unfaithfulness. For Smith (2017: 91), moreover, even more noticeable than biblical intertextual resonances in Lk. 21:20–24 are intratextual echoes of previous Lukan passages, most obviously 19:41–44, thereby drawing attention to the important point that, in intratextual perspective, Luke’s ‘sibling passages’ relating to Jerusalem’s destruction should be interpreted in relation to each other.
Commenting on Lk. 21:24, Smith overlooks the point that the culmination of this crucial passage is not restricted to Jerusalem’s conquest. Although advocates of a Jerusalem-oriented reading of Lk. 21:27 routinely claim that the coming of the Son of Man correlates to Jerusalem’s destruction in some way, it warrants notation that Lk. 21:20–24 encompasses the destruction of Jerusalem but is by no means restricted to it. Also included, if indeed Lk. 21:20–24 identifies the historical referent of the metaphorical language in 21:25–27, is the continued subjugation of Jerusalem to other nations until the times of the gentiles have been fulfilled, whatever that might mean and whenever that might be. However one interprets Lk. 21:24, this verse apparently has in view not only the destruction of Jerusalem but also a passage of time well beyond that historical event. This is surely important for those attracted to a Jerusalem-oriented interpretation of the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:27 because it apparently preserves Jesus from error when he solemnly declared that his generation would not die out before the fulfillment of all that he had prophesied (Lk. 21:32). The destruction of Jerusalem in 70
Within the framework of an understanding of Lukan eschatology in which Jerusalem’s destruction, end-time judgment, and even judgment associated with an individual’s death are perceived to be closely related, John Nolland (1993a: 871, 1993b: 999–1007) has attended carefully to the biblical background and syntax of Lk. 21:24. In his commentary on Luke’s Gospel, Nolland (1993b: 1002–4) identifies a prophetic pattern as probably informing the final phrase of Lk. 21:24, a pattern in which divine judgment on Jerusalem or Judah or Israel is followed by judgment on non-Jewish instruments of God’s judgment upon the people of God. In a later study, Jeremiah 25 is presented by Nolland (2010) as providing the pattern for interpreting Lk. 21:24 correctly. The principal features of this pattern, various aspects of which Nolland (2010: 134) detects in several other prophetic texts, are outlined as follows: (1) the judgement of God’s people is announced as now a fixed prospect; (2) judgement will be at the hands of the dominant nation of the day; (3) this nation will in turn experience judgement for its own sin; (4) this double pattern can also be viewed as a single universal judgement, beginning with Jerusalem….
After close consideration of the syntax of the final clause of Lk. 21:24 by examining all biblical instances of temporal expressions as the subject of either πληρόω or πίμπλημι in the passive, Nolland concludes that when the subject is ὁ καιρός or ὁ χρόνος such expressions always imply a temporal ‘ellipse’, by which he seems to mean the completion of an identified passage or period of time. For Nolland (2010: 141), ‘It is clear, therefore, that there is no barrier to translating ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καιροὶ ἐθνῶν in Lk. 21.24 as “until times of the nations have their fulfillment” or, in a more expanded manner, as “until the time has passed that reaches to beginning of the times of the nations.”’ After considering Lk. 21:24 within the context of the temple discourse as a whole, Nolland (2010: 146–47) concludes that its final clause points forward to a time when non-Jewish nations will experience the kind of judgment of which they themselves were instruments in God’s judgment of Jerusalem. The ‘times or seasons of the nations’ refers neither to gentile dominance over Jerusalem in a general sense nor to the gentile mission (see, e.g., Maddox 1982: 120, Garland 2011: 834) nor, indeed, to both (Green 1997: 738–39) but rather to a time when non-Jewish nations will experience their own divine judgment, presaged by (in accordance with prophetic precedent), but subsequent to, the judgment on Jerusalem enacted by its trampling by gentiles. As Nolland (2010: 144) states succinctly, ‘A future beyond the destruction of Jerusalem is identified at the end of Lk. 21.24’.
Taking account of Nolland’s work on Lk. 21:24, Juza (2020: 108, emphasis mine) nevertheless integrates this verse into his Jerusalem-focused interpretation of Luke’s temple discourse as a whole: In Luke 21:24, Luke uses the period(s) to qualify the duration of Gentile ‘trampling’ over Jerusalem (cf. 19:43–44). ‘Trampling’ appears to have a connotation of divine judgment (cf. Lam 1:15; Zech 10:5; 12:3), especially as an expression of the ‘days of vengeance’ (21:22). This seems to suggest that when God’s judgment against ‘this people’ is finished, so then will be ‘the times of the nations’. Thus, the phrase appears to indicate that God’s divine judgment of Jerusalem will be carried out by the Gentiles for a set time until God’s wrath is complete. Understood in this way, the phrase does not begin a transition to the subject of the parousia in 21:25. Rather, it begins a transition from a discussion of the Jews (21:24) to a discussion of the Gentiles/nations (21:25–26).
As observed earlier, a feature of Juza’s interpretation of Lk. 21:27 in its literary context is that he correlates the coming of the Son of Man not only with Jerusalem’s destruction but also with broader socio-political upheaval in the non-Jewish world. What he asserts about Lk. 21:24 matches this broader interpretation. For this interpretation of Lk. 21:27 to make sense, however, socio-political upheaval in the wider world must be envisaged as roughly contemporaneous with Jerusalem’s siege and sacking by Rome. Juza (2020: 109; see also 101 n.30) is explicit about this: ‘Luke 21:25–26 … does not describe worldwide events that will happen after Jerusalem’s destruction, but worldwide events that will happen concurrently with it’. But with respect to Lk. 21:24, Juza seems to accept that the times of the nations comes after the completion of God’s judgment against Jerusalem. As a result, if the coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 21:27 is a theological interpretation of a historical event or a theological inference based on a historical event, that historical event is not restricted to the destruction of Jerusalem or to events roughly contemporaneous with Jerusalem’s destruction.
Regarding the fourth and final prophetic oracle of Jesus against Jerusalem in Lk. 23:26–31, Smith (2017: 124) correctly observes that this pericope ‘makes an association between the rejection of Jesus and the fate of the city’, even if the enigmatic proverbial saying with which this passage ends might also evoke further associations. Alongside other illuminating insights, Smith (2017: 129) prioritizes Luke’s emphasis upon the culpability of Jerusalem’s Jewish leadership for rejecting Jesus, pointing out: ‘This rejection is thrown into sharp relief by the more positive responses of other people around Jesus: women mourn, a criminal expresses faith, a centurion has insight, and people beat their breasts at his death (23.40–43, 47–48); some even embrace the salvation Jesus offers and act as the leaders should have “in the green wood.”’ Also cast into sharp relief, however, is the discrepancy, yet again, between the culpability of certain representatives of Jerusalem (its Jewish leadership) and those envisaged to experience divine judgment in the form of overwhelming and near-total destruction of their city (‘daughters of Jerusalem’ and their children, those most likely to have sympathized with Jesus and those whom Luke depicts as being of special concern to Jesus).
Much more could be said about Lk. 13:31–35, 19:41–44, 20:20–24, and 23:26–31 (Neville 2013: 111–17, Neville 2017: 57–91). The principal purpose of this discussion, however, is to reinforce the uncontroversial point that, at various points in Luke’s Gospel, the destruction of Jerusalem is explicitly addressed. Both explicitly and implicitly, moreover, Luke records these prophetic oracles to convey the conviction that Jerusalem’s destruction is an expression of divine judgment for rejecting Jesus as God’s messianic agent. When Luke presents Jesus as referencing Jerusalem’s looming date with destiny, he names Jerusalem and even addresses it by name. In all but the first of these prophetic utterances, Jesus presages aspects of what the inhabitants of Jerusalem will experience. And in each of these four oracles of judgment, Jesus not only describes what is likely to befall Jerusalem but he also interprets the destruction of Jerusalem theologically—as the outcome of God’s abandonment of the temple (13:35a), as the result of failing to perceive in his own person and mission God’s visitation (19:44), as days of divine punishment in fulfillment of scripture (21:22), and, in proverbial terms, as the consequence of rejecting Jesus by killing him (23:31). In these texts, in other words, not only is Jerusalem’s destruction clearly referenced but this event is also interpreted theologically. What this implies is that if, indeed, the imagery of Lk. 21:25–26 and the saying about the coming of the Son of Man in 21:27 provide theological commentary on Jerusalem’s destruction, these are additional layers of theological interpretation on a text, 21:20–24, that already interprets the devastation of Jerusalem theologically. Finally, although it might be possible to argue for an association between the one coming in the name of the Lord in Lk. 13:35 (echoed in 19:38a) and the coming of the Son of Man in 21:27, the point remains that no text in which Luke explicitly references Jerusalem’s destruction contains a Son of Man saying, let alone a future-oriented Son of Man saying.
The Future-coming Son of Man in Luke’s Gospel
In Luke’s Gospel there are no fewer than twenty-five Son of Man sayings, but scholars who correlate the coming of the Son of Man with the destruction of Jerusalem appeal only to future-oriented Son of Man texts—sayings that are future-focused from the perspective of Jesus, as his mission is narrated by Luke. As a result, with certain exceptions, Son of Man sayings clearly relating to Jesus’ historic mission—including what he foresees about his betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection—need not be discussed. Beginning with a crucial passage in Luke 9, relevant Son of Man sayings are here considered in their narrative sequence, with the exception of the key saying in 21:27, to which I return after discussing all other texts.
In Lk. 9:21–27, immediately following Peter’s confession of Jesus as ‘God’s messiah’ (9:20), Jesus utters both his first ‘suffering’ Son of Man saying (9:21–22) and, shortly thereafter, his first future-coming Son of Man saying (9:26), in which he warns that the Son of Man, when he comes in pluriform glory—his own no less than the glory of the Father and of holy angels (Fitzmyer 1981: 784, Green 1997: 375–76), will be ashamed of those who are ashamed of him and of his words. In the next narrative episode, set some eight days later on a mountain, Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about his ‘exodus’, which he would complete in Jerusalem (9:30–31). Here, then, in two contiguous and closely related pericopes (Marshall 1978: 380, Johnson 1991: 150–57, Garland 2011: 384–88, Carroll 2012: 209–20), one finds both a future-oriented Son of Man saying and a reference to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is referred to as the destination for the denouement of Jesus’ own mission, however; no textual detail in this passage intimates its destruction. Read without reference to the transfiguration scene, one might conceivably posit Jerusalem’s destruction as the manifestation of the Son of Man’s shaming of those who, in the meantime, are ashamed of him and of his teaching. But if, as seems probable, the transfiguration of Jesus is to be understood as a partial, anticipatory fulfillment of Jesus’ words in Lk. 9:27 that some of his hearers would not die before seeing the kingdom of God (Fitzmyer 1981: 786, Nolland 1993a: 490, 503, Bock 1994: 857–60, Green 1997: 376, Vinson 2008: 286–87, Carroll 2012: 215), the first future-coming Son of Man saying in 9:26 can hardly relate to the destruction of Jerusalem. And even if, as also seems likely, Lk. 9:27 looks beyond the transfiguration to dawning recognition, on the part of at least some of the disciples, of the presence of God’s kingdom in the ministry of Jesus itself (see 11:20; 17:11–21; Garland 2011: 391), nothing in this passage suggests that perception of God’s royal rule relates to Jerusalem’s destruction.
In this connection, due consideration should be given to the reality that, within Luke’s Gospel, every Son of Man saying is Christologically connected and conditioned (Nolland 1989: 254–55), meaning that Jesus is either the subject or object of the principal verbs with which this self-referential periphrasis is associated. In Lk. 9:21–22 the Son of Man is initially the direct object of imposed suffering (in accordance with divine necessity), rejection by Jewish leaders, execution, and raising from death; in 9:26 the Son of Man is the subject who, when he comes in glory, will be ashamed of whomsoever is ashamed of Jesus and what he says. Two inferences may be drawn from the observation that Lk. 9:21–27 introduces both the first ‘suffering’ Son of Man saying and the first ‘coming’ Son of Man saying in this decisive pericope immediately following Peter’s confession of Jesus as God’s messiah. First, Luke tethers the future coming of the Son of Man to the mission of the suffering Son of Man, the messiah of God whose mission is vindicated by his being raised from death by God and exalted into the presence of God. Otherwise, the discipleship sayings in Lk. 9:23–25 and the warning of 9:26 are meaningless. And second, in those sayings within which the Son of Man is the subject of the main verb, one may infer that Luke envisaged Jesus to be the primary agent. Although Luke draws a connection between the rejection of Jesus’ mission and Jerusalem’s destruction, he does not present Jesus as the agent of Jerusalem’s destruction (Bock 1994: 859–60). Even those who adopt a Jerusalem-oriented interpretation of future-coming Son of Man sayings posit God as the primary agent; somehow or other, God vindicates Jesus (and, for some, faithful followers of Jesus) by judging Jerusalem, with Roman troops as the means of judgment. As a result, insofar as the narrative context in which Luke’s first future-coming Son of Man saying occurs is important for interpreting Luke’s remaining future-oriented Son of Man sayings, such sayings are unlikely to relate to Jerusalem’s destruction.
Luke 11:29–32, in which Jesus offers no sign to his generation other than the sign of Jonah, contains this saying: ‘For as Jonah presented as a sign to the Ninevites, so also will be the Son of Man to this generation’ (11:30). Taken alone, this saying could be construed as forecasting Jerusalem’s impending destruction (Danker 1988: 236), especially if read alongside the following description of Jonah in Lives of the Prophets 10.10–11: And he gave a portent concerning Jerusalem and the whole land, that whenever they should see a stone crying out piteously the end was at hand. And whenever they should see all the gentiles in Jerusalem, the entire city would be razed to the ground.
The similarity of this reference to aspects of Jesus’ prophecy in Lk. 21:20–24 is noteworthy (Garland 2011: 485–86), but the two explicit references to Jerusalem in both passages clearly differentiate them from Lk. 11:30 within its immediate context, where there is no reference to Jerusalem. It would not be a stretch to interpret the Son of Man saying in Lk. 11:30 as drawing a comparison between the warning sign that the prophet Jonah proved to be to Ninevites and the sign to fellow Israelites constituted by the prophetic presence of Jesus, but Luke 11:32 envisages men of Nineveh being raised at the judgment, ἀναστήσονται ἐν τῇ κρίσει, along with ‘this generation’ and condemning it because the proclamation of Jonah provoked change on their part. In other words, Luke contextualizes the Son of Man saying in 11:30 in relation to final judgment (Marshall 1978: 486, Green 1997: 464–65, Carroll 2012: 256–57, Wolter 2017: 113–15), not divine judgment within history. Like Luke, Matthew also places Jesus’ saying about the sign of Jonah within the context of eschatological judgment, but he also goes further by associating Jonah’s three days and nights in the belly of a large sea creature with the Son of Man’s three days and nights in the heart of the earth (Mt. 12:38–42; cf. 16:4). In other words, regarding the sign of Jonah, both Luke and Matthew seem to distance the related Son of Man saying from any direct association with Jerusalem’s destruction, despite the potential to make such a connection.
The future-oriented Son of Man saying in Lk. 9:26 is both echoed and elaborated in the paired Son of Man sayings in 12:8–9. According to Michael Wolter (2017: 137), The whole speech of Jesus up to now has led to the double logion emphasized through λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν, which formulates an eschatological talio…. The meaning is obvious. The allocation of eschatic salvation and unsalvation in the last judgment is oriented solely to whether or not one has publicly … confessed one’s Christian identity (see also at 9.26).
Not everyone finds the couplet in Lk. 12:8–9 quite so transparent, however. The closer echo of Lk. 9:26 in 12:9 makes no reference to the Son of Man, but the antithetical parallelism of the two sayings in these verses implies reciprocal renunciation on the part of the Son of Man no less than reciprocal acknowledgment by the Son of Man of those who either renounce or acknowledge Jesus, respectively. Some take the passive form of the verb ἀπαρνηθήσεται as an instance of the divine passive, meaning that those who renounce Jesus before people will be repudiated by God (see, e.g., Bovon 2013: 182, Levine and Witherington 2018: 339–40). But if treated as an antithetical couplet forewarning of the consequences of acknowledging Jesus or renouncing him in the presence of people, especially people of prominence (see 12:11), the most likely subject of the third person singular future passive indicative verb in 12:9 is the Son of Man. Interpreted as a divine passive, one could conceivably construe ἀπαρνηθήσεται in Lk. 12:9 as a repudiation by God, in the form of Jerusalem’s destruction, for renouncing Jesus, but the anticipated audience of the ‘angels of God’, a phrase repeated at the end of both 12:8 and 12:9, would seem to envisage an eschatological judgment setting (Fitzmyer 1985: 960, Vinson 2008: 407; but cf. Marshall 1978: 515, Nolland 1993a: 679, Bock 1996: 1139). Furthermore, if the repudiation about which Lk. 12:9 forewarns is interpreted as coinciding with the destruction of Jerusalem, one must also infer that this instance of wholesale repudiation is unrelated to people’s renunciation (or acknowledgment) of Jesus, which undermines the proportionate reciprocity intrinsic to the couplet in Lk. 12:8–9. Additionally, even if not decisive, commentators inclined to interpret the future-oriented Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27 as related to Jerusalem’s destruction do not interpret Lk. 12:8–9 in this way (see Leaney 1966: 198, Caird 1963: 159–61, Wright 2001: 147–50, France 2013: 214).
In Lk. 12:35–48 Jesus urges readiness because ‘the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour’ (12:40). Contextualized at the end of a brief hortatory unit encouraging readiness and alertness on the part of people awaiting the return of their lord (12:36), it is difficult to read this saying as referencing either the historic mission of Jesus itself (see 19:10) or the destruction of Jerusalem forty years later, unless one has decided on the basis of other future-oriented Son of Man sayings that either of these options is the interpretative lens for understanding all such sayings. Moreover, to equate the unexpected coming of the Son of Man in Lk. 12:40 with the destruction of Jerusalem is incongruent with the counter-cultural scenario depicted in 12:37–38, in which the returning lord serves his slaves at table (cf. 17:7–10). According to this counterintuitive scenario, enclosed by makarisms that do not feature in other parables (Schweizer 1984: 213), the returning lord acts in concert with the manner in which Jesus characterizes his own mission—especially at his final meal with his disciples when, in response to a dispute among his disciples as to which of them had the greatest status, Jesus points out: ‘I myself am in among you as one serving’ (22:27c). Although Richard Vinson (2008: 423–32) makes sobering contextual observations about Lk. 12:35–48 in its entirety, it is nevertheless difficult to dismiss the discernment of Robert Tannehill (1986: 249): ‘To picture the returning Lord as still serving gives this aspect of his work unexpected prominence. It suggests that service is a permanent characteristic of the Lord, even when he is exalted’. By contrast, the ‘lordship’ displayed by the Roman forces that overwhelmed Jerusalem in 70
Since the block of future-oriented instruction in Lk. 12:35–48 contains warnings of severe punishment for unfaithful and abusive leaders, such warnings could conceivably have in view Israel’s or the temple’s leadership. But both their narrative context—well before Jesus reaches Jerusalem—and their immediate occasion (12:41) indicate that the warnings of Lk. 12:42–48 are probably directed to leaders among those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord. In Lk. 12:41 Peter addresses Jesus as ‘Lord’, κύριε, after which ‘lord’ language reverberates through the remainder of the pericope (12:42 [twice], 43, 45, 46, 47). It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, as Luke presents this instruction by Jesus, it is directed toward insiders (Ellis 1974: 181, Bock 1996: 1177–78; but cf. Caird 1963: 164–66, Wright 2001: 154–57). In short, nothing within Lk. 12:35–48 seems to relate to the destruction of Jerusalem. The following pericope, Lk. 12:49–53, presages judgment—perhaps inclusive of suffering associated with the destruction of Jerusalem, although more likely referencing Jesus’ own mission culminating in his death—but this evocation of the purpose of Jesus’ mission is not articulated as a Son of Man saying.
Returning to Luke’s future-oriented Son of Man texts, what may be said about Lk. 17:22–37 (or, perhaps better, 17:20–18:8), an enigmatic section (Bovon 2013: 512–13) in which Jesus looks ahead to ‘one of the days of the Son of Man’ (17:22), ‘the Son of Man in his day’ (17:24, though ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ αὐτοῦ is textually uncertain), ‘the days of the Son of Man’ (17:26), and ‘the day on which the Son of Man will be unveiled’ (17:30)? Like the temple discourse in Luke 21, Lk. 17:22–37 has been interpreted in relation to the destruction of Jerusalem (Leaney 1966: 68–72, 229–32, Juza 2016; cf. Neville 2017: 237–48, 2020), even though there is no apparent reference to that calamitous historical event, as in the four ‘sibling passages’ that, taken together, clearly anticipate Jerusalem’s destruction (13:31–35, 19:41–44, 21:20–24, and 23:26–31). And although the passage as a whole is focused on the Son of Man at some future day, the closest future-coming Son of Man saying appears at Lk. 18:8, the end of the pericope that follows 17:22–37: ‘Even so, when the Son of Man comes, how likely is it that he will find faith(fulness) upon the earth?’ The relation between Lk. 18:1–8 and the passage that precedes it is difficult to discern, although Fitzmyer (1985: 1177) is probably correct that 18:8b is Luke’s way of relating the parable of the Persistent Widow to ‘the preceding eschatological instruction about the day(s) of the Son of Man’ (cf. Maddox 1982: 127). Thus, one cannot simply treat Lk. 17:22–18:8 as analogous to 21:20–28, especially since the referent(s) of 17:22–37 is (or are) not self-evident and must be demonstrated. Furthermore, the future-coming Son of Man saying in Lk. 18:8b seems clearly to envisage a coming of the Son of Man to earth (Marshall 1978: 676–77); it probably presupposes the exaltation of the Son of Man, but the saying itself does not envisage the exaltation of the Son of Man to God—nor, indeed, any historical event that might be nominated as somehow correlating to or demonstrating the Son of Man’s exaltation to God (cf., however, Wolter 2011: 104).
In close proximity to the future-coming Son of Man saying at Lk. 21:27 is the distinctive hortatory advice recorded in 21:34–36, in which Jesus forewarns against living in such a way that ‘that day’, presumably related to the coming of the Son of Man and also the arrival of the kingdom of God (21:31), catches his audience unprepared. Using a verb found in the New Testament only at 21:35, ἐπεισέρχομαι, Luke records Jesus as saying that that anticipated day will come suddenly on all who dwell upon the face of the entire earth. The saying that concludes Luke’s temple discourse may be translated as follows: ‘Be alert in every season, praying so as to be fortified to escape all these things that are destined to occur and to stand before the Son of Man’. Although Juza (2020: 105) reads Lk. 21:34–36 with reference to Jerusalem’s destruction, Leaney (1966: 263) proposes a more distant eschatological horizon: ‘One is tempted to think that these warnings are meant for the time after the establishment of the kingdom, when the Apostles will have power (xxii. 29–30)’. France (2013: 335) considers that the continued presence of direct second-person address in these concluding verses supports an interpretation along the lines of encouraging Jesus’ addressees to be prepared for Jerusalem’s destruction, but this comment leads into the following concession: But the idea here of a sudden event that catches people unprepared also recalls 12:39–40; 17:26–35, and it may be that the thought in Luke, as in Mark and Matthew, here moves on to the eschatological ‘day of the Son of Man’. The universal scope of ‘all those who live on the face of the whole earth’ suggests as much, and ‘to stand before the Son of Man’ would be appropriate language for the final judgment (cf. 12:8–10). It is not easy to decide which Luke intended.
France is correct that Luke’s intended sense is not easy to ascertain, especially in relation to other future-oriented Son of Man sayings incorporated into his Gospel. This interpretative difficulty is the reason for this study, which seeks to assess whether or not Luke associated such Son of Man sayings with Jerusalem’s destruction. Regarding the most likely sense of Lk. 21:36, it is difficult to argue that this Son of Man saying should be read in isolation from 21:27–28, which along with 21:31 seems to provide helpful context for making sense of the final phrase, ‘and to stand before the Son of Man’. If Jesus’ exhortations are heeded, his hearers will be in a position to stand before the Son of Man—for appraisal, no doubt, but with the assurance of approval (Fitzmyer 1985: 1356, Nolland 1993b: 1013, Bock 1996: 1694–95, Wolter 2017: 436)—when the Son of Man comes in or by means of a cloud and brings near the kingdom of God in its fullness and with it their deliverance. Thus, if Lk. 21:36 provides additional context for interpreting the future-coming Son of Man saying in 21:27, as it surely must, this further weakens the case for a Jerusalem-oriented interpretation of 21:27.
There also seems to be a conceptual nexus between Lk. 21:36 and the earlier Son of Man sayings in 9:26, 12:8–9, and 18:8b, whose narrative plotting is also noteworthy. Whatever else is implied about the coming of the Son of Man, these similar sayings envisage personal encounter with the Son of Man that includes some level of appraisal by the Son of Man. None of these texts envisages a universal judgment scenario of the kind found in Mt. 25:31–46, but each of them seems to correlate the future coming of the Son of Man with personal judgment by the Son of Man. Such anticipated judgment, however, is of a qualitatively different kind than the indiscriminate ‘judgment’ inflicted on Jerusalem in 70
Luke’s final future-oriented Son of Man saying is found in 22:69, at which point Jesus says to the Sanhedrin: ‘Hereafter (ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν) the Son of Man will be sitting to the right of the power of God’. If Luke was familiar with a version of this saying that included the idea of the coming Son of Man (cf. Mt. 26:64; Mk 14:62), he modified it to refer solely to the Son of Man’s presence at God’s right hand (Creed 1930: 279, Maddox 1982: 108, Fitzmyer 1985: 1463, Nolland 1993b: 1110, Bovon 2012: 244–45, Wolter 2017, 499–500; cf. Acts 2:32–33; 3:20–21; 7:55–56). In other words, despite being a future-oriented Son of Man saying, at least from the perspective of Jesus within Luke’s narrative, Lk. 22:69 is not a future-coming Son of Man saying. Moreover, there is no contextual hint that the vindication of Jesus by means of his exaltation to the right hand of God might be inferred from some historical event such as the destruction of Jerusalem. The affirmation of Lk. 22:69 is neither tethered to nor contingent upon natural perception of some mundane phenomenon (Parsons 2015: 326). Only as confession on the part of people who accept Jesus as God’s messiah can this prophecy of Jesus be discerned as having been fulfilled.
In support of a Jerusalem-focused interpretation of the coming of the Son of Man in or by means of a cloud, at least on the view that Jerusalem’s destruction is the mundane manifestation of Jesus’ vindication by exaltation, one may appeal to Acts 1:9–11, where Jesus’ ascension either equates to or is associated with his exaltation to God. Although this text confirms that Jesus’ exaltation to God is a Lukan conviction, Acts 1:9 is a double-edged text. Wright (2019: 148) is fond of dismissing the idea that Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s future-oriented Son of Man sayings envisage Jesus returning by means of a ‘magic cloud ride’, but Acts 1:9 has Jesus ascending to heaven via cloud conveyance, and in Acts 1:10–11 Luke relates that two white-clothed men reassured Jesus’ apostles that his return would occur ‘in the same way’ (οὕτως) as his journeying into heaven. In view of this close Lukan nexus between Jesus’ ascension and his promised return, one hesitates to concur too quickly with Wright that Luke could not have envisaged Jesus returning in or by means of a cloud.
Returning to the decisive future-oriented Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27, it has already been observed that if this text is interpreted as referencing Jerusalem’s destruction in some way, that is an exception to Luke’s pattern of dissociating future-focused Son of Man sayings from Jerusalem’s destruction. But is it possible to interpret Lk. 21:27 as anticipating the return of Jesus while accounting for the arguments of those who advocate a Jerusalem-oriented reading of this Son of Man saying? Nothing short of a detailed discussion of Lk. 21:5–36 in its entirety is likely to persuade scholars already committed to a Jerusalem-oriented interpretation of 21:27, if indeed they remain open to persuasion. For the purpose of this study, however, all that is needed is to identify points of exegesis that reinforce the general conclusion that, as a rule, Luke’s future-focused Son of Man sayings point toward an eschatological horizon beyond Jerusalem’s destruction. And since Juza’s interpretation of Lk. 21:25–28 within its literary context is the most extensive discussion proffered by an advocate of a Jerusalem-focused reading of this key text, in what follows I respond to some of his arguments.
One of Juza’s guiding observations is that Lk. 21:5–36 never signals any shift of focus from the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The two related questions in Lk. 21:7 focus on the temple’s destruction, prophesied by Jesus in 21:6, and Jesus’ answer about the sign that will signal the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple begins at 21:20 and extends through 21:28, in part because there is no temporal demarcation between 21:24 and 21:25 and also because the imagery of 21:25–26 may be interpreted theologically in terms of a judging ‘day of the Lord’. Although there is a shift between Lk. 21:24 and 21:25, that shift, for Juza, is a shift in perspective from the local Judean situation to a more global viewpoint, not a temporal shift. In short, a basic premise of Juza’s interpretation of Luke’s temple discourse is that it never envisages an eschatological horizon beyond Jerusalem’s destruction and contemporaneous upheaval in the wider world.
It is difficult to dispute Juza’s contention that Jesus’ forewarning in Lk. 21:6 and the questions provoked by that prediction in 21:7 relate solely to the temple’s destruction. But Juza (2020: 95) also considers that Lk. 21:8–9 envisages Jesus as beginning his response to the questions posed in 21:7 by clarifying the relation between the temple’s destruction and the eschaton (τὸ τέλος): ‘In Luke 21:8–9, Luke separates the temple’s destruction from the eschatological consummation (i.e., the “end”), which will not immediately follow it’. In other words, although not asked about the eschaton, Jesus considers it necessary to raise it to prevent misunderstanding that the temple’s destruction would coincide with the end. In an eschatologically charged first-century Jewish context, to address eschatological expectations associated with the prospect of the temple’s destruction is understandable, as evidenced by Jesus’ warning not to be deceived by claims made in his name: ὁ καιρὸς ἤγγικεν (21:8). Juza (2020: 93, 118–20) maintains that prior to Jesus’ temple discourse, Luke prepared his audience to relate various sayings about the future coming of the Son of Man to Jerusalem’s destruction. If that is correct, however, it is puzzling why a reference to the end is introduced into a response to questions focused solely on the destruction of the temple. But if future-oriented Son of Man sayings prior to Luke 21 more plausibly reference an eschatological horizon beyond the destruction of Jerusalem, as argued above, this might help to explain why, in Luke’s narration of Jesus’ mission, he considered it necessary to present Jesus as beginning his temple discourse by clarifying that the temple’s destruction will not coincide with the end, especially since Luke intended to include not only one future-focused Son of Man saying later in this discourse, but two (21:27, 36). Whatever the case, the point remains that, at the outset of his response to the questions posed to him in Lk. 21:7, Jesus himself raises the prospect of the end. Thus, one cannot preclude the possibility that Luke presents Jesus as returning to this theme later in the same discourse.
Immediately following Jesus’ reference to τὸ τέλος in Lk. 21:9, his discourse is interrupted by an editorial insertion, τότε ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς (21:10). According to Eduard Schweizer (1984: 314), ‘Vss. 10–11 [of Luke 21] are set apart by a new introduction, a conclusion that points ahead to vs. 25 (“signs” from heaven) and “before all this” in vs. 12’. Or as Tannehill (1996: 302) observes, ‘A new discourse tag … sets off verses 10–11 somewhat from the preceding verses’. Coming so soon after the beginning of Jesus’ discourse at 21:8, where Luke introduces Jesus’ response to the questions put to him in 21:7 using the phrase, ὁ δὲ εἶπεν, which is how Luke characteristically introduces Jesus’ replies to questions (Fusco 1993: 76), the narrative intrusion at the beginning of 21:10 is noteworthy. So, too, is the continuation of Jesus’ temple discourse at the beginning of Lk. 21:12, πρὸ δὲ τούτων πάντων (‘before all these things, however’), ‘a key editorial insertion’ (Johnson 1991: 321) that reads as the resumption of an interrupted line of thought. In summary, the opening lines of Jesus’ response to the questions posed in Lk. 21:7 concludes with the words, ‘for these things must occur first, but the end is by no means imminent’ (21:9). Immediately thereafter, the content of Lk. 21:10–11 interrupts the flow of the discourse, only just begun, to form a new beginning: ‘Then he was saying to them, “People group will rise against people group and kingdom against kingdom; not only will there be great earthquakes but also, from place to place, famines and plagues, not only terrors but also great signs from heaven.”’
Only Luke presents Jesus as referring to heavenly signs so early in his temple discourse. Comparing Luke with his synoptic counterparts at this relative point (cf. Mt. 24:7–8; Mk 13:8) confirms this observation. Although Luke’s expression varies from that of his synoptic counterparts, as so often elsewhere, Lk. 21:5–11 is contextually parallel to Mt. 24:1–8 and Mk 13:1–8, but neither Matthew nor Mark makes any reference to heavenly signs so early in the discourse. As in Mt. 24:7 and Mk 13:8, Lk. 21:10–11 records Jesus as referring to clashes between nations and kingdoms, as well as earthquakes and famines here and there. Rather than identifying such phenomena as but the beginning of birth pangs, however, Luke adds plagues to famines—λιμοὶ καὶ λοιμοί—before also adding a new pairing of preparatory events, terrors along with great signs from the heavens. It is commonly observed that the content of Lk. 21:11b, ‘not only terrors but also great signs from heaven’, is not only unparalleled in Mt. 24:7 and Mk 13:8 but also anticipates the content of Lk. 21:25–26, which immediately precedes the future-oriented Son of Man saying in 21:27. As Juza (2020: 110 n.62) observes, ‘Most scholars note an apparent relationship between [Lk.] 21:10–11 and 21:25–26 but struggle to define the connection’. Indeed, Lk. 21:25–26 may be seen as an elaboration of 21:11b arranged in chiastic fashion. Two principal aspects of terror-inducing heavenly signs, the heavenly signs themselves and the terror they cause for earthlings, feature in what Juza (2020: 111; see also Nolland 1993b: 1005–6) identifies as a conceptual chiasm in Luke 21:25–26, as follows: And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth anxiety of nations frustrated by noises of sea and surf, with people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the earth, for the heavenly powers will be shaken.
Juza (2020: 96; see also 109–111) pays close attention to thematic resonances between Lk. 21:10–11 and 21:25–26, interpreting both as entailing a shift from a local to a global perspective: In 21:10–11, Luke sets the context for understanding the temple’s destruction in relation to other contemporary world events. Luke’s unique phrase, ‘then he said to them’ (τότε ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς) appears to indicate a shift from the local perspective of the disciples (21:8–9) to a global perspective of the nations (21:10–11).
Although this comment parallels Juza’s understanding of a shift in perspective between Lk. 21:24 and 21:25, there are inconcinnities associated with his proposed shift in perspective later in the discourse, as observed earlier. Moreover, a larger than local perspective is probably already sounded in the reference to ‘wars (or conflicts) and insurrections’ in Lk. 21:9, and the seemingly unnecessary editorial interruption at the beginning of 21:10 probably hinders rather than facilitates an alleged shift in perspective from the local to the global. Even if Juza is correct, however, the decisive point is that Lk. 21:10–11 anticipates 21:25–26, especially by virtue of the reference to heavenly signs in 21:11.
As early as the published version of his doctoral dissertation, John Carroll (1988: 112) ventured the view that ‘Luke employs vv. 9–11 [of Luke 21] to provide an overview of the entire eschatological scenario’. Subsequently, in his commentary on Luke’s Gospel, Carroll (2012: 415–16) reiterated his perspective that, according to Luke, Jesus provided a preview of eschatological events early in his temple discourse, albeit in 21:10–11 (rather than in 21:9–11). Since the late-1980s, Carroll’s view about the literary function of Lk. 21:10–11 has not been accepted by every Lukan commentator, but it has been either adopted or adapted by several, including Joel Green (1997: 731, 740), Mikeal Parsons (2015: 300–301), and James Edwards (2015: 598), who interprets these two verses along lines similar to Carroll, noting their close correspondence with 21:25–27 and referring to 21:10–11 as ‘a flash forward to events immediately preceding the return of the Son of Man at the Parousia’. Moreover, both François Bovon and Wolter make observations that may support Carroll’s perspective on Lk. 21:10–11. Although Bovon (2012: 106) accounts for the distinctive and intrusive character of Lk. 21:10–11 on source-critical grounds, he nevertheless comments that the (alleged) variant tradition incorporated at 21:11 ‘signals from this moment the signs from heaven that, in his [Luke’s] eyes, will precede the arrival of the Son of Man (vv. 25–27)’. Wolter regards the entire discourse in Luke 21 as framed by 21:8–9 and 21:34–36, with the parable in 21:29–31 something of an interruption to the discourse proper (21:10–33). For Wolter (2017: 415–16), The coherence of the remaining speech part (vv. 10–28), which portrays the events until the coming of the Son of Man and the signs announcing it, is established above all by the fact that Luke has also provided it—just like the speech as a whole—with a frame. The level of the time and of the subject matter of vv. 10–11 is taken up and continued in vv. 25–28, for there is talk both here and there of events that concern not only all the nations on the earth but also heaven. Here the events that are most distant from the narrated point in time of the speech are described. They also lie in the future in relation to the viewpoint of Luke himself.
From an interpretative perspective different from Juza’s, Carroll, Green, Parsons, Edwards, Bovon, and Wolter confirm that the content of Lk. 21:10–11 anticipates, in some sense, the content of material later in the discourse. Whether that thematic anticipation should be interpreted as an eschatological preview (Carroll) or flash forward (Edwards) is less important than that the resonances between Lk. 21:10–11 and 21:25–26 serve to enclose the intervening material preceding the saying in 21:27 about the future-coming Son of Man.
In this connection, although how best to interpret Lk. 21:25–26, whether in more literal or in metaphorical terms, is an important issue (on which, in addition to authors discussed above, see Allison 1999, Crossley 2004: 19–27, Marshall 2005, Adams 2007: 133–81), three considerations about the relation between 21:25–26 and the following saying in 21:27 are noteworthy. First and foremost, whatever one decides about how best to interpret the cosmic signs and corresponding earthly distress in Lk. 21:25–26, one must exercise care in how the content of these verses is envisaged to relate to the saying about the coming of the Son of Man in 21:27. Especially for the interpretative tradition that treats Lk. 21:25–26 as biblical imagery for, or theological commentary on, socio-political events, principally Jerusalem’s destruction, the point remains that there is no precedent for interpreting the coming of the Son of Man in this specific sense. As Wright (1996: 519) acknowledges, ‘References to the “son of man” in pre-Christian Jewish literature are few and far between, and there is no precedent at all for “son of man” imagery being used against the Temple itself. This is a novum so enormous that we must postulate a context sufficiently strong to bear the weight’. Second, although the absence of any clear temporal demarcation at the beginning of Lk. 21:25 is one reason why Wright, Angel, Smith, Juza, and others relate the content of 21:25–28 to Jerusalem’s destruction, the future-oriented Son of Man saying in 21:27 begins as follows: καὶ τότε ὄψονται.... Unlike ἀπὸ τότε (Lk. 16:16), neither the phrase, καὶ τότε, which occurs only three times in Luke’s Gospel (6:42; 14:9; 21:27) and never in Acts, nor τότε alone marks a significant temporal break, but within Luke–Acts τότε tends to convey chronological or logical progression: ‘and then’, usually but not inflexibly meaning ‘next’ or ‘after that’ rather than ‘at that time’. At the very least, one may say that there is more of a temporal delimitation between Lk. 21:26 and 21:27 than between 21:24 and 21:25. And third, Luke 21:27–28 associates the coming of the Son of Man with the nearness, perhaps even the presence, of Jesus’ non-differentiated audience’s deliverance (ἡ ἀπολύτρωσις). Although one might argue that the Son of Man’s powerful and glorious advent in or by means of a cloud is but another heavenly sign, its association with hope of deliverance rather than with dread differentiates—not dissociates—Lk. 21:27–28 from 21:25–26 and also from 21:10–11. Without denying a relationship of some sort between the Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27 and the content of 21:25–26, the way in which the Son of Man saying is introduced and its association with rescue provide reasons to differentiate the coming of the Son of Man from the heavenly and earthly phenomena presaged in the previous two verses (cf. Oliver 2021: 96, 101). In short, what one decides about the meaning of Lk. 21:25–26 is not straightforwardly transferable to the Son of Man saying in 21:27.
Conclusion
Based on the two groups of Lukan texts discussed above, what may be inferred? With relative confidence, one may say that the first group of Lukan texts clearly presents Jesus as presaging the conquest of Jerusalem, not only as an imminent historical event but also as days of divine retribution for failing to accept Jesus as God’s messiah. Failure to discern the mission of Jesus as divine visitation results in the visitation of divine judgment upon Jerusalem. But no Lukan saying that clearly has the destruction of Jerusalem in view is formulated as a Son of Man saying. Hence, the burden of proof is on anyone who contends that the referent of one or more future-oriented Son of Man sayings is the destruction of Jerusalem.
Regarding such future-oriented Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel, I remain unconvinced that any one of them envisages Jerusalem’s destruction. Even when the content of a future-focused Son of Man saying evinces the potential to be construed in terms of Jerusalem’s destruction interpreted as divine judgment, it generally points toward a longer-term horizon. Moreover, in the one Son of Man saying that most naturally references the exaltation of Jesus, 22:69, Luke almost certainly amended a traditional future-coming Son of Man text so that it referred to the Son of Man’s presence to the right of God, unrelated to any historical event that might serve to validate God’s vindication of Jesus by exalting him. Had Luke associated Jerusalem’s destruction with the Son of Man’s exaltation, one would expect some evidence of this correlation at the point when Jesus explicitly forecasts the Son of Man’s exaltation, especially given the hostile setting in which this saying is uttered.
The strongest possible association between Jerusalem’s destruction and a future-coming Son of Man saying is thus the juxtaposition of Lk. 21:20–24 and 21:25–28, with no evident dissociation of the latter passage from the former. Narrative juxtaposition may well imply a thematic connection between two contiguous passages—as between Lk. 9:18–27 and 9:28–36—but to affirm a thematic connection is not to equate the referent of one with that of the other. Moreover, not everyone who considers that the referent of the heavenly signs in Lk. 21:25–26 remains the same as for 21:20–24 is willing to affirm that the future-oriented Son of Man saying in Lk. 21:27 also has Jerusalem’s destruction in view (McNicol 1996: 115–49). The conclusion of this study is that if Luke associated the coming of the Son of Man with Jerusalem’s destruction, that nexus is not that the coming of the Son of Man is an image or metaphor for the destruction of Jerusalem but rather something looser—perhaps that Jerusalem’s destruction confirms the prescience of Jesus and therefore bolsters confidence in his longer-term prophecies or that the destruction of Jerusalem is an event that serves to signal the beginning of an era, perhaps ‘the times of the gentiles/nations’, which will persist until the Son of Man comes from the right hand of God to establish the kingdom of God in fullness.
This study has restricted attention to future-oriented Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel, arguing that such sayings more plausibly equate the coming of the Son of Man with the eschatological return of Jesus rather than correlate the Son of Man’s coming with the destruction of Jerusalem. In arguing for this conclusion, however, it should be acknowledged that this study has not directly addressed the view of Peter Bolt (2017, 2021b) that the future-oriented Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel find their fulfillment within the narrative framework of the Gospel, especially through Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, confirmed by the early chapters in Acts. That said, the close intratextual relation between Acts 1:9–11 and Lk. 21:27 is a hurdle for this interpretative position. Whether what has been argued about future-coming Son of Man sayings in Luke’s Gospel is applicable also to comparable sayings in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels is also beyond the scope of this study. If Luke’s future-focused Son of Man sayings are neither theological commentary on nor theological inferences based upon Jerusalem’s destruction, however, it seems (to me) even less likely that parallel or comparable Son of Man sayings in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels have Jerusalem’s destruction in view.
Abbreviations
Anchor Bible
Abingdon New Testament Commentary
Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
International Critical Commentary
Journal of Biblical Literature
Library of New Testament Studies
New Century Bible
New International Commentary on the New Testament
New International Greek Testament Commentary
New Testament Library
Word Biblical Commentary
Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
ORCID iD
David J. Neville https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3803-2919