Koch on Apocalyptic

Abstract

‘(Jesus’ audience) thought that the Kingdom would be a place like the old kingdom of David, with armies and a king’s throne. Jesus knew that it was not a place, but the action of God ruling over our hearts.’ So John Hargreaves, though it is perhaps unfair to pick on him, for similar pronouncements can be found in hundreds of popular, and indeed scholarly, theological writings. It is the way most of us were brought up to think. Perhaps it is the right way of thinking, but there are, I think, increasingly good reasons for feeling unsure about that. When the Jews talked about ‘the kingdom’ (without further qualification) they certainly were not thinking of some invisible operation: they meant the Roman Empire. The ‘Kingdom of God’ on the lips of Jesus may well have referred to something equally tangible—to a world order, not a concept. He may well have been speaking not of the invisible activity of ‘grace’ in the ‘soul’, but of a kingdom, however spiritual, with visible, material attributes. A recent writer on the Fourth Gospel, for instance, has interpreted the scene before Pilate in these terms:Jesus’ kingship is not ‘unworldly’. Instead one of the characteristics of the Johannine treatment of the trial and of the events that lead up to it is that the political implications are emphasized. In 11, 48 a specifically political motivation is injected into the plotting of the Jewish authorities. John alone mentions the presence of the Roman soldiers (he spaira kai ho chiliarchos) at the arrest of Jesus. In the trial itself, the political-realistic element is introduced by the Jews at 19, 12: ‘If you release this man you are not Caesar’s friend; anyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar’.