R. Steven Notley

Once while listening to some people praise the grandeur of the Temple, Jesus remarked, "The days are coming when there shall not be left here one stone upon another stone" (Lk. 21:6). Those who heard his sober remark could not help but to ask, "When will this be, and what will be the sign when this is about to take place?" Jesus' answer to these questions is found in Luke 21:8-9, 20-24 and 28-31.

Often Christians have missed the thrust of Jesus' concluding parable about the fig tree (Lk. 21:29-31), because it includes a sophisticated Hebrew wordplay and is intricately interwoven with first-century Jewish ideas. Here, I hope to shed light on both the ingenuity of Jesus' answer to the questions about the Temple's demise and the meaning of his message of hope.

In verses 8-9 Jesus responded, "See to it that you be not misled; for many will come in my name saying, '...The time is at hand!' Do not go after them. And when you hear of wars and disturbances, do not be terrified... the end does not follow immediately." The two words in italics above have been translated into English from the Greek words kairos (time) and telos (end). Assuming that Jesus was speaking in Hebrew, I surmise that beneath both of these Greek words was the single Hebrew word ketz.

Hebrew readers of the Dead Sea Scrolls know that in Jesus' day ketz meant both "time" and "end." Moreover, this same word appears in Amos 8:1-2 as part of a Hebrew wordplay that God once made with the similar-sounding word kayitz. The Hebrew kayitz means both "summer" and "summe