Luke 11:29-30: No Sign?

This saying seems to contradict Mark 8:12 ("no sign will be given to [this generation]"): "no sign" does not seem to mean the same as "no sign except the sign of Jonah." Materially, however, there is little difference in sense between the two, as we shall see when we consider what the sign of Jonah was. In fact, we may be dealing not with two separate sayings but with two variant forms which the same original saying has acquired in the course of transmission. The form preserved by Luke was probably derived from the collection of sayings of Jesus which is conventionally labeled Q. Mark's form reappears in Matthew 16:4; the Q form is reproduced in Matthew 12:39. Both forms are amplified in Matthew's text and assimilated to one another.

According to Mark, the refusal to give a sign was Jesus' response to some Pharisees who, in the course of debate, asked him to supply "a sign from heaven." Jesus spoke and acted with evident authority; what was his authority for speaking and acting as he did? His practice on the sabbath day set at defiance the traditional interpretation of the sabbath law that had been built up over the generations; what was his authority for refusing to accept the "tradition of the elders"? Whereas the great prophets of the past had prefaced their proclamation with "Thus says the Lord," Jesus was content to set over against what "was said to the men of old" his uncompromising "But I say to you." What was the basis for this claim to personal authority?

How can such authority be vindicated? When Moses approached Pharaoh as the spokesman of the God of Israel and demanded that his people be allowed to leave Egypt, he demonstrated the authority by which he spoke in a succession of signs, such as turning his rod into a serpent and changing Nile water into blood (Ex 7:8-24). No doubt Pharaoh was the sort of person who would be impressed by such signs, but Moses' enduring right to be recognized as a prophet of the living God rests on a firmer foundation than such signs. When Elijah entered the presence of Ahab to denounce his toleration of Baal-worship in Israel, he confirmed his denunciation with the announcement of three years' drought (1 Kings 17:1). Baal, the rain-giver, was to be hit in the one place where he could be hurt--in his reputation. This particular sign was thus highly relevant to Elijah's message. If Moses and Elijah, then, had confirmed their authority as messengers of God by signs such as these, why could not Jesus confirm his authority in a similar way?

First, what sort of sign would have convinced them? External signs might have been necessary to convince a heathen Egyptian or an apostate king of Israel, but why should they be necessary for custodians and teachers of the law of the true God? They should have been able to decide without the aid of signs whether Jesus' teaching was true or not, whether it was in line or not with the Law and the Prophets.

Second, would the kind of sign they had in mind really have validated the truth of Jesus' words? Matthew Arnold remarked, in the course of a nineteenth-century controversy, that his written statements were unlikely to carry greater conviction if he demonstrated his ability to turn his pen into a penwiper. It may be suspected that it was some similarly extraordinary but essentially irrelevant sign that was being asked from Jesus. If, for example, he had thrown himself down in public from the pinnacle of the temple into the Kidron gorge and suffered no harm, that would have done nothing to confirm his teaching about the kingdom of God, even if it would have silenced the demand for a sign.

In the third place, what about the signs he actually performed? Why were they not sufficient to convince his questioners? One Pharisee, indeed, is reported as saying to him, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him" (Jn 3:2). Jesus himself affirmed that if it was by the power of God that he relieved those who were demon-possessed, that was a sign of the arrival of the kingdom of God (Lk 11:20). But some of those to whom these words were spoken chose to believe that it was not by the power of God but by the power of the prince of demons that he healed the demon-possessed. If the restoration of bodily and mental health could be dismissed as a work of Satan, no number of healing acts would have established the divine authority by which they were performed.

In his comments on the "pillar passages" for a scientific life of Jesus, P. W. Schmiedel included Mark 8:12 as the first of four such passages that had a special bearing on the miracles of Jesus. The saying "No sign shall be given to this generation" was an acutely authentic one, he maintained, and implied that the miracle stories of the Gospels weresecondary constructions. To this it might be said that, while the healing miracles did serve as signs of the kingdom of God to those who had eyes to see, they did not compel belief in those who were prejudiced in the opposite direction. The Pharisees mentioned in this incident may have wanted a sign that would compel belief, but can genuine belief ever be compelled? While the miracles served as signs, they were not performed in order to be signs. They were as much part and parcel of Jesus' ministry as was his preaching--not, as it has been put, seals affixed to the document to certify its genuineness but an integral element in the very text of the document. No sign would be given that was not already available in the ministry itself; to ask for more was a mark of unbelief.

What, now, of the sign of Jonah? Jonah, it is said, was "a sign to the men of Nineveh." How? By his one-sentence message of judgment. That was all the "sign" that the people of Nineveh had; it was sufficient to move them to belief and repentance. Schmiedel illustrates that there is no real contradiction between "no sign" absolutely and "no sign except the sign of Jonah" by the analogy of an aggressor who invades a neighboring country without provocation. When asked what justification he can give for his action, he replies, "I shall give you no other justification than that which my sword gives"--which is as much as to say "no justification." As Jonah's ministry in Nineveh was sign enough, so Jesus' ministry in Palestine is sign enough. No other sign would be given.

In the Q collection the refusal to give any sign but the sign of Jonah was followed by a comparison between the people to whom Jesus ministered and those to whom Jonah preached. Jesus' hearers shared the rich heritage of divine worship and revelation which had been enjoyed over the centuries by the people of Israel; Jonah preached to pagans. Yet Jonah's hearers made a swift and positive response to his message; the reaction on the part of the majority of Jesus' hearers was quite different. Therefore, he said, "The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here" (Mt 12:41; Lk 11:32). The "something greater" was Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God, which was more important and far-reaching than Jonah and his preaching. Yet Jonah and his preaching were enough to bring the people of Nineveh to repentance; Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom made no such large-scale impact on his generation. On the day of judgment, therefore, the people of Nineveh would compare very favorably with the Galileans to whom Jesus preached; indeed, they would serve as tacit, if not as vocal, witnesses against them. Whether these words of Jesus were spoken on the same occasion as the saying about the sign or on another occasion, their relevance to it is unmistakable.

Matthew, for his part, adds a further analogy between Jonah's situation and that of Jesus: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Mt 12:40). This is commonly supposed to be a later insertion among the Jonah sayings, but T. W. Manson has pointed out that no one after the resurrection of Jesus, which by common Christian consent took place on "the third day," would have represented him as being buried for a much longer period. In any case, it would be unwise to press "three days and three nights" to mean seventy-two hours, nei- ther more nor less. Jonah's experience in the Mediterranean was not a sign tothe people of Nineveh, any more than Jesus' resurrection on Easter Day after his entombment on Good Friday was a public spectacle. In Matthew 12:40 we simply have an analogy traced between two servants of God, who were both brought up by God "from the Pit" (Jon 2:6; see Ps 16:10, quoted with reference to Jesus in Acts 2:27; 13:35).

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M. Arnold, Literature and Dogma (New York: Macmillan, 1895), p. 95.

D. S. Cairns, The Faith That Rebels (London: Student Christian Movement, 1928), p. 25.

T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (1933; reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1979), pp. 89-90.