Mt 24:34 —Research Only, None-Debate

[John Reece]

The purpose of this research thread is to survey — for Xena — comments by scholars re Matthew 24:34.

I request that this thread not be used for any purpose other than the posting of said comments by scholars.

If you wish to respond to any of the comments, please open another thread of your own to do so.

[Amazing Rando]

From the New Interpreter's Bible commentary on Matt 24:32-35 by Eugene M. Boring (goofy name, I know!)

New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. VIII, 445

NIV: 32"Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[d]is near, right at the door. 34I tell you the truth, this generation[e] will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

NRSV:‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33So also, when you see all these things, you know that he* is near, at the very gates. 34Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 35Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

This instructive analogy (not parable in the sense of 13:1-52) has two halves, the pictorial half that illustrates a reality in the corresponding historical half. In the picture half, the fig tree is an illustration of the sure sign of the coming of summer. Unlike most trees in Israel, which are evergreen, fig trees lose their leaves in winter. But unlike most deciduous trees, they do not usually bud at the beginning of spring, but at the very end. Thus while most trees indicate only that spring has begun, the budding of the fig tree indicates that spring is almost over and that summer is near. In the Markan apocalypse, the budding of the fig tree is a picture of the near approach of the eschaton, which could be discerned by the signs of the great tribulation and the desolating sacrilege. Given Matthew's emphasis that the parousia will come without signs (see above and in Reflections at 25:31-46), these same words in Matthew point to the certainty and nearness of the parousia, not to its calculability.

The fig tree and summer are elements of the pictorial side of the analogy, while "these things" and the end belong to the world of history and eschatology:

Picture: Fig tree produces leaves ------> summer is near

Reality: "all these things" happen ------> Son of Man is near

As the above exegesis indicates, for Matthew "all these things" are the climax of the great tribulation and the cosmic events that are part of the parousia itself, not this-worldly historical events that can be used as a basis for calculation of the end. (In this analogy, there is no correlation between the fig tree and Israel, as though the budding of the fig tree corresponds to the reestablishment of the state of Israel in 1948. This once-popular interpretation confused the two halves of the analogy.)

By combining Mark and Q, Matthew has rejected the idea that even attentive observers can perceive the precise eschatological timetable. What is clear for Matthew is that the parousia will happen in his own time, among the generation that experienced the presence of Jesus personally (24:34; cf. 16:28), and its certainty, since it is founded on the word of Jesus, is more enduring than the earth itself (24:35).

© source where applicable

[Dee Dee Warren]

Thank you so much John. You are helping me greatly in material that I am going to present to others on my site, so your research will reach others even far beyond this site.

[John Reece]

This comment was written by a staunch futurist (with whom I exchanged letters regarding his premillennial perspective in the 1990s) in The Expositor's Bible Commentary Volume 8:

34. "I tell you the truth" emphasizes the importance of what it introduces. "This generation" (see on 11:16; 12:41-42; 23:36; cf. 10:23; 16:28) can only with the greatest diffiiculty be made to mean anything other than the generation living when Jesus spoke. Even if "generation" itself can have a slightly larger semantic range, to make "this generation" refer to all believer in every age, or to the generation of believers alive when eschatological events start to happen, is highly artificial. Yet it does not follow that Jesus mistakenly thought the Parousia would would occur within his hearers' lifetime. If our interpretation of this chapter is right, all that verse 34 demands is that the distress of verses 4-28, including Jerusalem's fall, happen within it. Therefore verse 34 sets a terminus a quo for the Parousia: it cannot happen till the events of verses 4-28 take place, all within a generation of A.D. 30. But there is no terminus ad quem to this distress other than the Parousia itself, and "only the Father" knows when it will happen (v. 36). — D. A. Carson, Matthew.

[John Reece]

This is from the 1997 edition of the International Critical Commentary on Matthew:

34. [...] ‘All these things’ refers to the eschatological scenario as outlined in verses 4-31 and declares that it shall come to pass before Jesus’ ‘generation’ has gone. In favour of this is the imminent eschatological expectation of many early Christians (cf. especially 10:23 and Mark 9:1) as well as John 21:20-23,. which reflects the belief that Jesus would come before all his disciples had died. So most modern commentators. [...]

[greek]genea[/greek] plainly refers to Jesus’ contemporaries in 11:16; 12:39, 41, 42, 45; 16:4; and 17:17 as well as in the close parallel in 23:36, and the placement of our verse after a prophecy of the parousia is suggestive. If it be objected that this makes for a false prophecy and raises the issue of 2 Peter 3:3-4,. we can only reply that some of Jesus’ contemporaries were perhaps still alive when Matthew wrote, so he did not have the problem we do. In summary, then, the last judgment will fall upon ‘this generation’ just as earlier judgments fell upon the generation of the flood and the generation in the wilderness.

24:34 = Mark 13:30. accurately reflects the teaching of Jesus himself. Whether or not our saying was created out of the tradition behind 10:23 and Mark 9:1. or represents a separate logion, the best explanation for the church’s Naherwartung [expectation of an imminent event] and John 21:20-21. is that Jesus himself used the language of imminence.

— W. E. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew 19-28 (ICC).

[John Reece]

This is from the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries series:

34. The time of this catastrophic event is now even more closely specified, and the solemn Truly, I say to you marks this out as a pronouncement to be noted. Those who interpret this passage as referring to the parousia must therefore either conclude that it proved to be untrue, or that this generation does not here carry its normal meaning. It has, for instance, been taken to mean 'the Jewish race', or 'unbelieving Judaism'. It is unlikely that such an improbable meaning for the noun would have been suggested at all without the constraint of apologetic embarrassment! Nor can all these things easily be taken to exclude the events described in the immediately preceding verses. On the natural understanding of this verse either Jesus was wrong (or Matthew has misunderstood him), or the discourse has not yet taken up directly the question of verse 3b, the 'sign of your parousia and the close of the age', but has rather concentrated entirely so far on the first part of the disciples' question, 'When will these things (the destruction of the temple) be?' — R.T. France Matthew (TNTC).

[Mickey]

From Who Is This Generation? by Iver Larsen:

There are basically two possible interpretations of the meaning of the demonstrative in the phrase “this genea.” (1) Either it refers to the “people living now” in contrast to people living at another time in history or (2) it refers to something mentioned in the preceding linguistic context. Interpretation (1) is very difficult to reconcile with the basic meaning of the phrase 'ten genean tauten'and it also does not fit well with the context. First, there is nothing in the context which supports an idea of temporal contrast. Second, nowhere else can the word “this” possibly be understood as meaning “living now.” Third, and most important, in ALL instances of the phrase “this genea,” the demonstrative follows the noun. As mentioned in section 1 above, this means that the focus is on genea, not on “this.” If the expression had included a contrast between the generation of that time and any other generation, the word 'houtos' should have preceded 'genea' instead of following it. The second interpretation makes much better sense and is in accordance with the meaning attested to the words “this” and 'genea' elsewhere, that is, “this” is a reference to something in the preceding linguistic context, and 'genea'is a certain type of people.

[John Reece]

This is from The New International Greek Testament Commentary on Matthew:

Matthew reproduces Mark's language without significant change. He is happy to reproduce the emphatic 'Amen, I say to you', which he likes much [...]. When the phrase is taken with the following 'will not pass away' and 'until all ... [things] happen' ([greek]ewV an panta genhtai[/greek], which is translated in 5:18 as until it has all happened') a very significant set of words is repeated in identical Greek from 5:18; this one can add the close similarity between 'heaven and earth will pass away' in 24:34 and 'until heaven and earth pass away' in 5:18. What are we to make of this very powerful echo? Syntactically 'this generation' in 24:34 and 'my word' in v. 35 each take the place of the reference in 5:18 to the smallest detail of the law: Jesus asserts the fate of this generation as confidentially as he insists on the continuing validity of every detail of the Mosaic Law.

Matthew uses [greek]genea[/greek] here for the tenth time. Though his use of the term has a range of emphasis, it consistently refers to (the time span of) a single human generation. All the alternative senses proposed here (the Jewish people; humanity; the generation of the end-time signs; wicked people) are artificial and based on the need to protect Jesus from error. 'This generation' is the generation of Jesus' contemporaries. — John Noland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC).