A pericope in Luke (unique in the canon) has Jesus responding to some Pharisees: “The kingdom of God is in your midst.” Or so the line appears in all the most popular translations — with the notable exception of KJV/NKJV that has it: “The kingdom of God is within you.” The others generally include a footnote stating that the word they translate here as “in your midst” can also be “within” or “inside.” In fact the one other time the word is used by Jesus is in a Q pericope (interestingly, also in a remonstrance of some Pharisees) when he advises: “first clean the inside of the cup.”
This is, of course, no small matter. While “in your midst” comports with orthodox doctrine and “within you” is clearly problematic for it, the latter is entirely consistent with a number of sayings in Thomas. Indeed, both Lk 17:21 and Mt 23:26//Lk 11:39 are independently attested in that non-canonical work! I realize that the surviving copy of Thomas is in Coptic, not Greek. Nevertheless, does this leave any room for the more customary “in your midst” reading in Luke?
What’s also interesting is that the logia in Thomas that are shared w the cannonical gospels appear sometimes in more expanded forms; if they all borrowed from Q, it begs the question of which gospels reflect what is closest in form to the source? What’s interesting about Thomas is that, like Q, it is just a sayings gospel, and the writer didn’t feel the need to contextualize the logia with a narrative. Which tells me, the origin of Thomas might be quite early, even if much later on, other sayings got added.
Now some of the added sayings reflect gnostic beliefs, and may not go back to Jesus. One way a scholar I follow (Lewis Keizer, check him out) decides if it does, or at least to his earliest community, is by looking for Jewish ideas found nowhere else in the NT, that are unlikely to have been made up by Christian monks in other countries. Like the “five trees” parable, two of which are referenced in the book of Genesis.
And if we look at the “kingdom is within you” logion, its apparent from the expanded form in Thomas that Jesus is talking about an immediate, non-spatiotemporal mystic realization. Does this conflict with an apocalyptic reading of Jesus? I think we need to ask ourselves is, if Jesus was an apocalypticist, was his view necessarily the same as that of the Dead Sea Scrolls or other contemporary literature? Its maybe a bit misleading to say he thought the world was coming to an end in the near future; Perhaps, one could say, the ‘end of the world as we know it.’ I think he was, but I don’t discount the idea that the kingdom being something within was also relevant to his project; it needed to be brought out, through our efforts. God would respond by granting mankind a utopia, and perhaps, as was true of the exorcisms he performed, the evil spirits that had taken over needed to be cast out. Even if God’s intervention was necessary, it was up to us to make the first move, facing resistance in the form of all the cataclysmic events Jesus lists. These are tests of our resolve. But God’s kingdom is already ‘within’ us in this sense.
The confusion concerning the proper interpretation of the bible involves the ignorance of many to the fact that an orange is not equal to an apple. Well, this one was easy because they were both in the same dimension.
Now throughout all existence there are only 2 dimensions, good and evil, physical and spiritual etc etc. Some people like to use the term duality, even though it is a man made term, and can mean many different things depending on the context.
Now according to sesame street, there are things that go together and things that do not go together. This sets the foundation of our entire discussion about the kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of God is a spiritual term and when it is said that the kingdom of God has come down to earth – it means that God has entered man. Well, those who have become saved. If God dwells within them and we also know that God dwells not in temples or houses made with men’s hand but in places built with his hands. We actually are the temple of the living God.
This topic is very academic and only need a cursory reading of the bible to understand it. Even a 10 year-old could understand it. But only one problem, the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit is needed to keep you on the straight and narrow pathway into truth.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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