This is the most common
translation of the Greek but commentaries sometimes offer, ‘The kingdom of God
is among you’ or ‘The kingdom of God is in your midst’. The problem with these translations
is that they don’t sit very well with the context. In Jesus’s teaching, the
kingdom of God was near and something individuals could enter—and this
teaching is widespread in the gospels. What we have here in Luke 17:21 is one
verse that has been taken to be saying something different. However, there is
evidence in the papyri of an idiomatic use of Luke’s Greek that is captured by
a translation something like “within your reach’. Jesus’ argument against the
Pharisees then becomes: ‘Don’t look for the kingdom of God because the kingdom
is within your power to enter’. The idea here is the familiar one of our having
a goal. We might say that ‘You have it in you to achieve your dream’.
Jesus’s point to the Pharisees is the same.
The textual basis for taking the
Greek underlying ‘within you’ to have the sense of ‘within your reach’ is set
out by C. H. Roberts in an article, “The Kingdom of Heaven (Lk. XVII.21)” (HTS
41 (1948): 1-8. The Greek εντος
is best translated ‘within’ rather than ‘among’ or ‘in the midst of’. The only
other use of this word in the NT (Matt 23:36 is “You blind Pharisee, first
clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it
may become clean also” (NASB). Equally, all eight examples in the LXX do not
support a sense of ‘among’ or ‘in your midst’ (1 Macc 4:48; Ps 38:4 (Eng.
39:3); 102:1 (Eng. 103:1); 108:22 (Eng. 109:21); Song 3:10; Sirach 19:6; Isa
16:11; Dan 10:16).
What kinds of use can we find for
εντος υμων? We don’t have to insist on
the second person pronoun in our examples; we just need to see if there is
usage ‘out there’ that conveys the sense of ‘within you’ as within your
power. Roberts cites E. Mayser’s grammar of the Ptolemaic papyri which
gives examples of εντος
meaning of ‘within a limit’ in addition to examples of ‘within a space’ and ‘within
a time’. He cites examples which give a sense of ‘in the hands of’ or ‘in the
control of’. We can see then that the task of understanding ‘within you’ falls
upon what Jesus is referring to in the Pharisees. And here the
suggestion of ‘within your power’ fits Jesus’ argument. Roberts concludes, “The
misconception to be removed is that the kingdom is something external to men,
independent of their volitions and actions; it is a conditional possession.” (Andrew
Perry, “Marginal Notes: Luke 17:21—‘The Kingdom of God is within you,’” Christadelphian
EJournal of Biblical Interpretation [October 2018]: 171-72)
