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{"id":20054,"date":"2018-04-29T01:52:27","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T05:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=20054"},"modified":"2018-04-12T13:54:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T17:54:19","slug":"the-kingdom-is-within-you-not-according-to-luke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2018\/04\/29\/the-kingdom-is-within-you-not-according-to-luke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kingdom is within you? Not according to Luke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Kingdom of God is \u201cWithin your reach\u201d
\nby larryhurtado
\nIt\u2019s amazing how slowly the work of papyrologists influences the work of other scholars. Here\u2019s an example. In Luke 17:20-21, Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God will come, and Jesus responds exhorting that it doesn\u2019t come \u201cwith observation\u201d (a term used also for medical observation of symptoms) and by pointing \u201chere or there,\u201d for the kingdom of God is \u1f10\u03bd\u03c4\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f51\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd (\u201centos humon\u201d). <\/p>\n

The plural form of the pronoun (\u201chumon\u201d) is commonly recognized as calling into question the translation of the phrase in the KJV, \u201cthe kingdom of God is within you\u201d (as if in some sort of mystical sense.) So, commentaries now typically prefer something like, \u201cthe kingdom of God is among you\u201d or \u201cin your midst\u201d.<\/p>\n

But 70 years ago, C. H. Roberts pointed out that the expression (and variations of it) in papyri roughly contemporary with the NT writings more reasonably meant that something or someone was \u201cwithin reach,\u201d or \u201cto hand.\u201d (C.H. Roberts, \u201cThe Kingdom of Heaven,\u201d Harvard Theological Review 41, 1948, pp. 1-8). So, the phrase should probably be rendered: \u201cthe kingdom of God is within your reach,\u201d or \u201cnear to hand.\u201d (As commentators commonly observe, the statement here probably alludes to Jesus\u2019 ministry as the vehicle of the kingdom of God.)<\/p>\n

Commentators can be forgiven, I suppose, because even the important resource, the Bauer\/Arndt\/Gingrich\/Danker lexicon of the NT and early Christian literature, buries the reference to Roberts\u2019 article and its results well down into the entry for \u1f10\u03bd\u03c4\u1f79\u03c2.<\/p>\n

(The phrasing of the statement in The Gospel of Thomas (logion 3), \u201cthe kingdom is inside you and it is outside you,\u201d reflects the emphasis on interiority in this esoteric-leaning writing.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"