Jesus and the Last Days.

The Interpretation of the Olivet Discourse

Charles E. Hill
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 1995,
pp. 359-361 (Review)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/earl/summary/v003/3.3.hill.html

Access Provided by Universitaetsbibliothek Leipzig at 09/02/11 2:11PM GMT

BOOK REVIEWS

359

"Family" (Ch. Munier), "Journeys-Lines of Communication" (P. Siniscalco),

"Painting" (V. Fiocchi Nicolai), "School" (S. Pricocothere is no other article on
"Education," not even an entry in the Index).
Texts and transmission: "Dialogue" (P. F. Beatrice), "Epigraphy, Christian" (M.

Guarducci), "Chronography-Chronology" and "Historiography, Christian" (P.

Siniscalco), "Manuscript Tradition" and "Paleography" (P. Canart), "PatrologyPatristics" (A. Hamman).

Christian life and worship: "Evangelization" and "Flight" (P. Siniscalco), "Fast-

ing and Abstinence" (P. Meloni and R. J. De Simone), "Gallican Liturgy" and
"Hispanic Liturgy" (J. Pinell), "Homily" and "Sermon" (R. Grgoire), "Sexuality" (P. F. Beatrice).

Languages and regions: "Coptic" (T. Orlandi), "Ethiopia-Ethiopic" (O. Raineri), "Georgian Language and Literature" (M. van Esbroeck), "Germany" (E.
Dassmann), "Ireland" (E. Malaspina), "Paleoslavonic" (I. Dujcev), "Syriac" (E
Rilliet).

This new encyclopedia, while it will by no means make earlier reference works
obsolete, is indispensable for any library which is serious about early Christian
studies. The gems it contains in unexpected places make it worth consulting at
leisure.

Michael Slusser, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

George R. Beasley-Murray
Jesus and the Last Days. The Interpretation of the Olivet
Discourse

Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993. Pp. + 518.

$29.95.

This book is the expanded and updated version of a work published previously in
two parts, as Jesus and the Future (1954) and A Commentary on Mark Thirteen
( 1962). The first of these, an in-depth review of the modern criticism of Mark 13 up
to 1953, comprises four chapters of the present volume and is supplemented by a
very long chapter (188 pages) analyzing scholarly work on that Gospel text since
the rise of redaction criticism up to 1991. The second, which presents the author's
own approach to the Olivet Discourse and his commentary, has been thoroughly

revised for the new work. The nearly forty years which have intervened have of
course been active ones for Beasley-Murray, with the appearance of, among many
other works, the New Century Bible Commentary on Revelation (1974) and Jesus

and the Kingdom of God (1986). One could scarcely dream of a more experienced
guide through Mark 13 and the scholarship it has engendered.
The modern critical discussion of Mark 13 begins with the horror of NT exe-

getes at Strauss's brutal skepticism as applied to the eschatology of Jesus (Life of

Jesus, 1835-36). Christian scholars came swiftly to Jesus' defense, but with no
little faltering while the best weaponry was being perfected. The religious motive is

unabashed in most of these early responses, even those which determined that the

360

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

integrity of Scripture could be sacrificed by assigning the offending portions to

Jesus' disciples, in order to remove the sins of Jesusthe sin not merely of a
mistaken eschatology, but of having an eschatology at all. Eventually Colani's

"Little Apocalypse" theory, which proposed that Mark 13 contains an independent Jewish-Christian apocalypse (in Colani's original version all the material from
v. 5 to v. 31) spliced in between the somewhat fewer threads of authentic Jesus-

material, emerged as the method of choice to liberate Jesus from the embarrassment of eschatology. By the early years of the twentieth century, when its origins
had all but been forgotten, the Little Apocalypse theory had become a "sententia

recepta of synoptic criticism" (Moffatt). It is, alas, no longer. Scholars never could
agree on the exact content of the supposed apocalypse; calling it an apocalypse was

itself problematic; and besides, as Beasley-Murray points out, "there is no clear

testimony to the parousia of the Son of Man in any pre-Christian Jewish apocalypse" (339). The probability of the gist of vv. 24-27 in particular being either preChristian Jewish or Christian but non-dominical is slight, according to BeasleyMurray.
As is the case with others who labor in the lush overgrowth of Gospel redactional theories, those who work the soil of the Olivet Discourse have been most

reluctant to allow a pair of Ockham's pruning scissors near the premises. Where a
penchant for complex thickets prevails, Beasley-Murray's own planting is compar-

atively sparse. This is partly due to his higher than usual regard for the essential
authenticity of the material in Mark 13. He quite rightly stresses that significant
parts of it at least were known already to Paul in 1 Thess. 4.15-5.11, though he
rejects the idea that the elements as assembled by Mark bear much resemblance to
any single "discourse" of Jesus. Instead, Mark has brought together formerly freefloating sayings and "units of tradition" (some of which had already been grouped
together in the church's catechesis), appended them to Jesus' prediction of the
temple's destruction (Mk. 13.1-2), and added connective and instructional material of his own.

Beasley-Murray believes the notices of false Christs and false prophets (vv. 6,
21-22) reflect Mark's own situation, one not unlike that which precipitated the
crisis behind 2 Thess. 2. But this does not mean that Mark has simply manufac-

tured the warnings. Mark has collocated these scraps of Jesus' teaching and published them in a timely fashion just when false hopes were being stirred in his own
Christian community. Beasley-Murray views the middle of the Jewish war with
Rome as providing the likeliest backdrop for the publication of Mark 13 and,
therefore, the whole Gospel. But the prophecy of doom for the temple and city is
neither an invention of the evangelist nor a vaticinium ex eventu. Agreeing with

Hengel, he says with reference to 13.14-20 that "there is not a syllable which
reflects knowledge of events which took place in the Jewish War, still less of the
actual destruction of the city and temple" (407). As evidence, both note that the
admonition to flee from the city into the mountains would at that time have seemed
an invitation to run into the hands of the Romans or the Sicarii, and that people

actually fled into Jerusalem from the countryside rather than vice versa.
The original question of the disciples as Mark gives it has to do only with Jesus'
prophecy of the temple's overthrow. Jesus answers with more than was requested,

BOOK REVIEWS

361

however, because superseding in importance even the razing of the temple and city
is the ultimate parousia of the Son of Man, vv. 24-27. Like most, Beasley-Murray

affirms these two eschatological foci in the discourse as we have it. The problem is
in how they are related to each other. "Truly, I say to you, this generation will not
pass away before all these things take place" (13.30). Do the "these things" encompass also the preceding description of the parousia in vv. 24-27, as assumed by
Strauss and so many since? Beasley-Murray, who admits his mind has changed on
this matter, says no. He helpfully elucidates the theophanic nature of the parousia
in 24-27. The theophanic phenomena recorded there "are consequences of the
stepping forth of God into his creation, not precedents of his appearing. If they are
represented as accompaniments of his coming they are understood as manifestations of his presence" (307, his emphasis). Thus they do not belong with the
premonitory "signs" requested by the disciples (13.4) but are instead indications
that the end has finally arrived in the person of the Lord. Mark, whose arrangement
of the fragmentary material is something less than tidy, thus "will have expected his
readers to recognize that the tauta [of v. 29, but likewise for the tautaoiv. 30] must
represent forerunners of the end and not the end itself" (436-7).

The book does not highlight the connections between the NT Gospels and the
non-canonical literature of the early church. Such was not its design. It is nevertheless a book of prodigious learning which achieves great success in its aim to illuminate both a great text and the vicissitudes of scholarly attempts to come to grips
with it.

Charles E. Hill, Orange City, Iowa

Robert M. Grant

Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early

Christian Literature

Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993

Pp. + 180. $17.00.

Grant is at his best when his attention is focused on problems which many of us
have looked at in pieces but have neither gathered together nor expressed with his
clean prose and sharp wit. The audience this book can most help includes scholars
who look with disdain on the "pre-critical" winners of early Christian struggles
and Christian fundamentalists who know that "criticism" is the devilish invention

of the Enlightenment or the not-so-enlightening creation of the Devil. As might be

expected, however, those of us in between will be its most avid readers.
The thesis is clear: Christians who became known as "heretics" had by the

second century employed the critical tools of Hellenistic scholarship on the texts of
the Christian tradition, particularly its emerging canon. But by the end of the
second century, Clement of Alexandria had used those tools in more "orthodox"

projects. Later Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria and Jerome, as well as others,

continued the process until both "lower and higher" criticism were commonly
applied to the Bible.