Attestation
As Klinghardt has shown (Matthias Klinghardt,
Das älteste Evangelium und die Entstehung der kanonischen Evangelien, 2 vols. [Tübingen, 2015] I 974-82), Jesus’ answer in
*20,34-36 is well attested by Tertullian, although it shows significant
differences compared to Luke.
Klinghardt also points at important variant readings which he reckons to derive
from the precanonical Mcn.
English translation
20:34
So Jesus said to them, “The people of this age are born and give birth, 20:35
But those who the God of that age regards worthy of the heritage and the
resurrection from among the dead neither marry nor are married, 20:36
because neither do they die anymore for they will be like angels of this God
and made sons of the resurrection.” 20:39 In response some of the
scribes said, “Teacher, you spoke well.”
Introduction
In this small pericope
Jesus is presented with his answer to the question of ‘some Sadducees’ who, in
contradicting the idea of a future resurrection, challenged this concept with
the example of the seven brothers who, following the advice of levirite
marriage (based on Deut. 25:5-6 and Gen. 38:8) all married the same woman,
so that the question arises, who’s wife she would be in the resurrection.
Jesus’ answer is reported in our pericope under discussion here.
Commentary
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Mcn
20:34-39
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Luke 20:34-40
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20:34 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς
ὁ Ιησοῦς, ᾿Οἱ υἱοὶ τούτου τοῦ αἰῶνος γεννῶνται καὶ γεννῶσιν, 20:35 οὓς δὲ κατηξίωσεν ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐκείνου κληρονομίας καὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως τῆς ἐκ νεκρῶν οὔτε γαμοῦσιν οὔτε γαμίζονται·
20:36 οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀποθανεῖν
ἔτι μέλλουσιν, ὅμοιοι γὰρ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις τοῦ θεοῦ εἰσιν καὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως υἱοὶ ποιηθέντες. 20:39 ἀποκριθέντες δέ τινες τῶν γραμματέων εἶπαν, Διδάσκαλε, καλῶς εἶπας· |
20:34 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς
ὁ Ἰησοῦς· οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ
αἰῶνος τούτου
γαμοῦσιν καὶ γαμίσκονται,
20:35 οἱ δὲ καταξιωθέντες τοῦ
αἰῶνος
ἐκείνου
τυχεῖν
καὶ
τῆς
ἀναστάσεως
τῆς ἐκ νεκρῶν οὔτε γαμοῦσιν οὔτε
γαμίζονται·
20:36 οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀποθανεῖν
ἔτι δύνανται, ἰσάγγελοι γάρ εἰσιν καὶ υἱοί εἰσιν θεοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως υἱοὶ ὄντες. 20:37 ὅτι δὲ ἐγείρονται οἱ νεκροί, καὶ Μωϋσῆς ἐμήνυσεν ἐπὶ τῆς βάτου, ὡς λέγει κύριον τὸν θεὸν Ἀβραὰμ καὶ θεὸν Ἰσαὰκ καὶ θεὸν Ἰακώβ.
20:38 θεὸς δὲ οὐκ ἔστιν νεκρῶν ἀλλὰ ζώντων, πάντες γὰρ αὐτῷ ζῶσιν.
20:39 Ἀποκριθέντες δέ τινες
τῶν
γραμματέων
εἶπαν·
διδάσκαλε, καλῶς εἶπας.
20:40 οὐκέτι γὰρ ἐτόλμων ἐπερωτᾶν αὐτὸν οὐδέν.
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Mcn
20:34-39 Translation
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Luke
20:34-40 Translation
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20:34 So Jesus said to
them, “The people of this age being born and giving birth,
20:35 But those who
the God of that age regards worthy of being heirs and of the resurrection from among the dead neither marry nor are married,
20:36 because neither do
they die anymore for they will be like angels of this God and made sons of the resurrection.” 20:39 In response some of the scribes said, “Teacher, you spoke well.” |
20:34 So Jesus said to
them,
“The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 20:35 But those who are regarded worthy of that age and of the resurrection from among the dead neither marry nor are married,
20:36 because neither can
they die anymore for they will be like angels and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
20:37 But even Moses revealed that
the dead are raised in the passage about the bush, here he calls
the Lord the God of Abraham and God of
Isaac and God of Jacob.
20:38 Now he is not
God of the dead, but of the living, for all
live before him.”
20:39 Then some of the experts in
the law answered, “Teacher,
you have spoken
well!”
20:40 For they did not
dare any longer to ask him anything.
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Tertullian complaints
in his reading of this passage in Mcn
about one thing only, Marcion’s answer to the question of the Sadducees with his
reference to ‘the God of that age’. According to Tertullian Marcion presented
Jesus’ answer by making a distinction not only between two different ages or
aeons, but also by attributing the present aeon to the ‘Creator’, and the
future aeon to ‘another god’, namely ‘the God of that age’:
[7] ... They have seized upon
the text of scripture, and have read on like this: ‘Those whom the god of that
world has counted worthy’. They attach ‘of that world’ to ‘god’, so as to make
out that there is another god, ‘of that world’. Whereas it ought to be read,
Those whom God has counted worthy, so that by punctuating after ‘God’, ‘of that
world’ belongs to what follows, that is, Those whom God hath counted worthy of
the inheritance of that world, and of the resurrection.[3]
It becomes clear from
Tertullian’s report that Marcion read this passage by referring ‘of that world’
to ὁ θεός. Instead, Tertullian does not refer to the
canonical version of Luke that we know of where ὁ θεός is
missing, but suggests a different punctuation of the sentence, so that τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐκείνου would
be a genitive that refers to the following κληρονομίας.
As Tertullian argues, his suggestion was not based on style or grammar, as,
indeed, both options are grammatically possible and given that the following
noun (ἀναστάσεως)
carries a genitive that follows it, Marcion’s option seems stylistically even
to be the more natural reading, yet Tertullian argues with reference to the content
of the passage and its theology:
[8] For the question he
was asked was not about the god of that world, but about its conditions, whose
wife the woman was to be in that world, after the resurrection. So again, on
the subject of marriage, they misrepresent his answer, so as to make out that,
The children of this world marry and are given in marriage, refers to the
Creator's men whom he allows to marry, whereas they themselves, whom the god of
that world, that other god, has counted worthy of the resurrection, even here
and now do not marry, because they are not
the children of this world—although it was the marriage of that world he was
asked about, not this, and the marriage he said there was not, was that about
which he was consulted.[4]
Tertullian’s quote of Mcn and his paraphrasing complaint that
Marcion is distinguishing between the two aeons which he allocates to the
Creator god and the ‘other’ god, ‘the god of that age’ does not seem to be a
polemical retrojection only, but seems to reflect one of the major contentions
that Marcion’s text provided here. In fact, Klinghardt’s reconstruction of Mcn which, as shown above, is well
attested for this passage by both Tertullian and Epiphanius, makes a clear
difference between not only ‘the sons of this age’ and the chosen sons of the
resurrection of that other age to come, but also between ‘this age’ to which no
divine authority is allocated, and the other age where ‘the God’ is the active
agent who choses people whom he makes like his angels and sons of the
resurrection, hence makes them to heirs. With reference to heritage (κληρονομία), the text hits one of the core elements of
the Sadduceeic question, as levirite marriage was not only about creating an
offspring to secure future life beyond the death of the childless man, but it
was also about passing on his heritage rights.[5] Tertullian’s criticism
relates to his attempt to deny the existence of ‘the God’, Marcion’s God of the
other age to come, and to show that both ages are handled by the very same God,
hence, is eminently theological by nature. In this respect, he challenges
Marcion’s emphasis in his answer on ‘the God’ who, indeed, appears twice in
Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees, first when Marcion introduces the difference
between the two ages, and again, when he explains the heritage and the elected
becoming like angels of ‘this God’. Marcion’s stressing of this God and the
title ‘the God of that age’ Tertullian sees as both a misrepresentation and an
evasion of answering the Sadducee’s question, when he states that Jesus ‘was
asked ... not about the god of that world, but about its conditions, whose wife
the woman was to be in that world’. That Marcion related in his answer to the
future aeon where no longer people were giving birth and were born, married and
were married, was, however, a clever move to qualify the Sadducees as people of
an aeon which was not that of the supreme God. Or put the other way around,
only people who look for a short termed heritage in a world of birth and death
could come up with an example like the one presented by the Sadducees. As it
seems, Tertullian had a firm grasp of how Marcion wanted this passage to be
understood, and the only way to get away from Marcion’s reading of it, was a
grammatical shifting of the genitive object (τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐκείνου).
Now it is interesting
to see that Luke displays a parallel
tendency to that of Tertullian. He first keeps close to the question of the
Sadducees and speaks in v. 20:34 of ‘the people of this age’ who ‘mary and are
given in marriage’, not, as Marcion of being born and giving birth. More
importantly, the title ‘ὁ θεός’ is not present in Luke 20:35. Thus the subject of judgement is suspended, and yet the
remaining ‘but’/δέ of the opening of v. 20:35 still maintains
some kind of hiatus between ‘this
age’ and ‘that age’, an age where there is marriage and another where there
will be no more marriage. As the title ‘ὁ θεός’ is not present, so is the determined title of
god not present in v. 20:36. Instead, we read that the worthy people in that
age will ‘be like angels and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection’. All
the more one is surprised that in the example that is given in Luke (missing in Mcn) reference is now made to Ex.
3 and the topic of God’s name and title, in order to explain ‘that the dead are
raised’. Mose, so Luke, ‘calls the
Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’, and in v.
20:38 he adds, that ‘God, however, is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for all live before him’. As Klinghardt has already noticed, scholars had some
difficulty to explain this enthymatic syllogism.[6] Yet, they have missed that
the shift in Luke’s strategy from
focussing on an answer to the Sadducees which started off by the distinction
between two aeons, one in which there is marriage and another in which there is
none, and then digressed (indicated by another ‘but’/δέ in
the opening of v. 20:37) into the example taken from Ex. 3 where it is question of God’s title, God being mentioned
thrice as the ‘Lord’s’ name, ‘the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of
Jacob’. This emphasis on God’s title did not only serve to counter-balance the
just suggested distinction between the two aeons, emphasising that Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob are ‘dead’ – having lived in this are – who have been ‘raised’,
hence as chosen ones been made alive in ‘that age’, combining those ages by the
statement ‘for all live before’ God, but the stress on God’s title is easily
understood to be a reaction to Marcion’s answer to the question of the Sadducees,
just as Tertullian focussed on God’s title. If this were so, then Luke should not only be read as giving
an answer to the problem that was put into the mouth of the Sadducees, but also
as an answer to Marcion’s text which reserved ‘ὁ θεός’ for the God of the age to come.
When one compares both
versions, that of Mcn and Luke, one notices the systematically
stringent division of the text in Mcn
and a rather loose organisation of arguments in Luke which becomes visible precisely where Luke and Mcn textually
deviate. In Mcn we have the clear
antithesis between the two ‘aeons’ with their two forms of ‘sons’ and specific
denotations, the first aeon termed as ephemer, the next as angelic ‘heritage’
where ‘no further dying’ takes place, the first without a divine figure
mentioned, the second reigned by ‘the god’. And, again, in Mcn, the denotation of the future aeon is twofold, it is the
heritage and the resurrection from the dead, explained in v. 20:36 twofold as
becoming like the angels of ‘this god’ and becoming sons of the resurrection.
In Luke, the structure is ambiguous,
as we have seen before, beginning with differentiating between two aeons,
although then in need for combining them through an overachring life before a
God of the living, encompassing past, present and future. The answer of ‘some
of the scribes’ in v. 20:39 is identical in Mcn
and Luke, although they have both a
different meaning in the light of the different narratives. While in Mcn the verse is a criticism predominantly
of the Sadducees (as rightly seen by Tertullian), and also of the scribes, as apparently
even only some of these grasped the meaning of what Jesus was proposing, in Luke it is rather astonishing that, after
Jesus’ has given scriptural evidence from writings which were acknowledged by the
Sadducees and the scribes, only some of the latter praised the teacher Jesus. Although
only a nuance, but the ‘some’ is a hint that Luke has adopted a text without fully harmonising it with his insertion
of vv. 20:37-8.
Now it is interesting to
see that despite the reconstruction of the text of Mcn by Klinghardt, mainly based on Tertullian and Epiphanius, and despite
the clear setting out of Marcion’s reading of this passage by Tertullian, Klinghardt’s
translation follows the suggestion of Tertullian how one should read this passage,
rather than his explanation to how Marcion has understood it. What we have, apparently,
is a Mcn-text, but with a translation
that is informed by a Lukan, Tertullian,
and hence a traditional understanding of this pericope. That such kind of a reading,
then, leads to the conclusion that this passage was not written by Marcion, but
that Marcion has only adopted an older Mcn
text, seems to me to be the result of a circular argument.
[1] TSUTSUI 120. Already
HARNACK 229* followed Tertullian to some extent, when he suggested to read
τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐκείνου
τυχεῖν (καὶ?) τῆς ἀναστάσεως τῆς ἐκ νεκρῶν: If one deletes καί, then τυχεῖν would
refer to τῆς ἀναστάσεως τῆς ἐκ νεκρῶν (‘those of that aeon are regarded worthy
of achieving the resurrection from the dead’). This reconstruction is, however,
contradicted by Tertullian who witnesses several times the presence of the
crucial et/καί, as Tsutsui (ibid.) righly highlights.
[2] In a footnote, he adds that C.M. Hays, ‘Marcion
vs. Luke: A Response to the Plädoyer of Matthias Klinghardt’,
ZNW 99 (2008), 213-32, 217 had suggested (following Harnack) that Marcion
had made a theologically based textual alteration.
[3] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 38,7: Nacti enim scripturae textum ita in legendo decucurrerunt: Quos autem
dignatus est deus illius aevi. Illius aevi deo adiungunt, quo alium deum faciant
illius aevi; cum sic legi oporteat: Quos autem dignatus est deus, ut facta hic
distinctione post deum ad sequentia pertineat illius aevi, id est, quos dignatus
sit deus illius aevi possessione et resurrectione.
[4] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 38,8: Non enim de deo, sed de statu illius aevi consulebatur,
cuius uxor futura esset post resurrectionem in illo aevo. Sic et de ipsis
nuptiis responsum subvertunt, ut, Filii huius aevi nubunt et nubuntur, de
hominibus dictum sit creatoris nuptias permittentis, se autem, quos deus illius
aevi, alter scilicet, dignatus sit resurrectione, iam et hic non nubere, quia
non sint filii huius aevi; quando de nuptiis illius aevi consultus, non de huius,
eas negaverat de quibus consulebatur.
[5] T. Frymer-Kensky, ‘Tamar: Bible’ (2009).
[6] See Wolter, Lk 658ff z. St.; vgl. bereits K. Berger, Die Auferstehung des Propheten und die
Erhöhung des Menschensohns (1976), 386.
