Dec. 3, 2006

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 21: 25-31

The consensus among scholars not driven by ideological or theological agenda is that all four gospels included in the New Testament were written and compiled after 70 C.E. That date is of enormous significance, because in that year the Second Temple of Jerusalem was desecrated and destroyed by the Roman military in an epoch-making, life-changing event for any Jew. Likewise, because all late First Century persons who would have answered to the name “Christian” would first have been Jews or would have been acquainted with the tradition built up around the Temple, its destruction would have been a shocker.

Even though it seems clear that the administration of the Temple’s affairs was conducted by a relatively small, privileged elite, and even though what would become the synagogue movement was already underway during the supposed lifetime of Jesus, the disappearance of the Temple must have had a profound impact upon the general populous of the time.

Luke, writing 25 years or so after the Temple debacle, used the images of astronomical omens, political and military conflict and natural disaster (“the roaring of the sea and the waves”) that Mark first used a decade or so earlier. All these real or imagined phenomena are meant to account for the cataclysmic nature of the Temple’s destruction. Yet it may be that by Jesus Jews of Luke’s time (very late First Century) the earlier event could have been interpreted positively because the disappearance of the Temple and the resultant discrediting of its elite administrative class undoubtedly strengthened the de-centralized synagogue movement. You can make a case that the synagogue was the church’s incubator, although some passages in the gospels in which the Pharisees get the worst of it suggest that some facets of Jesus Judaism may have despised the synagogue. The gospels tend to associate the synagogue with the Pharisees.

The writer of Luke, like Mark and Matthew before her, connects the dread apocalyptic material that appears in Luke at 21: 25-28 with the parable of the fig tree (21: 29ff). The “sign” the fig tree exhibits (sprouting leaves)
suggests the purposeful passage of time and function that anticipates a consequence – in the case of the fig tree, figs. In the case of the astronomical signs and “distress among nations,” a consequential end of a time and day.

The probable interpretation is that Luke (and maybe Mark and Matthew) were saying to late First Century Jesus Jews and their Gentile co-religionists that, with the passage of time, fewer and fewer days and hours remained for people to make up their minds about whom and what they would follow. The fig tree’s blooms would flower and become ripe, edible fruit. Whatever Jesus Jews were or were not doing would likewise have commensurate results over time. It all sounds fairly dire, but Luke, whoever she was, was allergic to summary condemnation of the recalcitrant – see the parable of the prodigal son at 15: 11-32). Luke was part of that late First Century ferment during which anything must have seemed possible for both good and ill.

So even though this beginning of this passage evokes a kind of nervous anticipation (Luke uses the word “distress), it seems clear that what is anticipated by the time Luke employs the imagery is a good, not a bad thing. There is mention of “redemption,” which in this context means “release for ransom,” so while the signs are ominous, there is such a thing as a good omen.

Luke saw that good thing as the fulfillment of the divine promise to Israel that it should become the link between the first human (see 3:38) and Jesus who, in a religion beyond the Temple, would be perceived as the savior of the entire human race. How? Through the employment of his ethical teachings in human behavior.

© Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.