Introduction
I think the broad scholarly consensus is that the notion of the pre-existence of Jesus is not to be found in the Synoptic Gospels.[1] Certainly these gospels do not include any narrative of events that occur before Jesus’ birth, nor any saying of Jesus describing his consciousness of such a time, nor any explicit statement equivalent to “Jesus pre-existed”.
This same scholarly consensus would identify pre-existence in the Pauline epistles (usually dated prior to the Synoptics) and the Gospel of John (usually dated later than the Synoptics).[2] There is an interesting incongruity in the chronology of this evidence, which would seem to disrupt simplistic ideas of Christological development.[3] Such incongruity might be resolved if one allows that Paul did not, in fact, hold that Jesus pre-existed. More on this below. An alternative is that the Synoptics do, in fact, presuppose the pre-existence of Jesus. Though this view is not wildly held amongst scholars, it is worth exploring before moving to the more controversial question of pre-existence in the writings of Paul.
Pre-existence in the Synoptics
I will focus in this section on the proposals of Simon Gathercole who has given the most cogent defence of the claim that the Synoptics presuppose the pre-existence of Jesus. His thesis centres on the claim that the “I have come” sayings of Jesus give the “clearest indications” of pre-existence within the Synoptics, though he does consider some other indicators.[4] He rejects attempts to find Wisdom Christology within the Synoptics as a “blind alley”.[5]
Gathercole identifies ten “I have come” sayings within the Synoptics: Mark 1:24 (par. Luke 4:34), Matt 8:29, Mark 1:38 (cf. Luke 4.43), Mark 2:17 (par. Matt 9:13; Luke 5:32), Matt 5:17, Luke 12:49, Matt 10:34 (par. Luke 12:51), Matt 10:35, Mark 10:45 (par. Matt 20:28), and Luke 19:10.[6] He argues that this formula (“I have come” + purpose) implies a deliberative act of coming from somewhere to do something.[7] He draws parallels with the “I have come” sayings used by angels to announce purpose of visit,[8] where the implication is that the angel was previously in heaven and was sent to Earth for a specific purpose. Gathercole argues that when Jesus uses the “I have come” formula he is announcing the purpose of his life’s work and indicating that he has come from somewhere.[9] He concludes,
“…there is a consistent use of the ‘I have come’ + purpose formula which is not conventionally used in early Judaism by human figures to describe the totality of their life’s work. Instead, the formula refers to the totality of the heavenly figure’s earthly visit, and to the purpose of that visit”.[10]
Whilst the implication of the “I have come” sayings is not directly about pre-existence, in the case of Jesus coming from heaven, it would entail pre-existence. Gathercole also argues that “I have been sent” sayings probably argue in the same direction, though these could also be prophetic statements.
Gathercole addresses and dismisses several alternative explanations for the “I have come” sayings. For example, the proposal that “I have come” is a declaration of a prophetic advent is dismissed given the lack of examples of the formula being used in this way. 1 Samuel 16 is rejected as not referring to the prophet’s advent; Pesikta Rabbati 20 is rejected as not being explicitly about prophets.[11] Similarly, Gathercole rejects the proposal that the “I have come” sayings have messianic connotations (“the coming one”), arguing that the emphasis of the “I have come” sayings is on the purpose, not on the coming. He summarizes,
“…the messianic interpretation falls foul of the same problem as both of the prophetic interpretations: they rely heavily on ‘coming’ being a technical or semi-technical term as opposed to referring to a coming from ‘a’ to ‘b’”.[12]
This thesis rests on two ideas. Firstly, that “I have come” + purpose had become idiomatic by the time of the composition of Synoptics. Secondly, that the “I have come” sayings of Jesus are more naturally understood as coming from a location rather than any other sense. The first of these ideas is plausible enough, though “I have come” sayings are not reserved for heavenly beings (cf. Luke 13:7). Yet the second idea flounders on the fact that the concept of coming is used in other senses with reference to Jesus. Mark’s gospel begins with John the Baptist proclaiming “after me comes he who is mightier than I” (Mark 1:7; cf. Matt 3:11; Luke 3:16). Presumably John does not mean come from “a” to “b” because John himself did not come from Nazareth (cf. Mark 1:9) and, though Jesus does come to the Jordan, he only remains there temporarily (cf. Mark 1:12). So in what sense did Jesus “come”? The “after” implies that John (or Mark) is thinking temporally[13] rather than geographically. It also implies that John considers himself to have come in respect of a time, but Mark does not present John as having pre-existed.
Elsewhere in the Synoptic tradition John the Baptist asks Jesus if he is “the one who is to come” (Matt 11:3 / Luke 7:19) and, though Gathercole dismisses this example, presumably it is rooted in this same tradition of John speaking about one who was to come ‘after’. So, in these sayings of John we have a clear example coming used in the sense of a temporal advent of a significant figure. More than that, by introducing his gospel with John predicting the advent of the one who was to come Mark contextualises Jesus’ “I have come” sayings with a clear temporal marker; Jesus was the one to come after John.
There is a response to this and it is as follows: John the Baptist is identified as the Elijah who was to come (Matt 11:14, 17:10-12; Mark 9:11-13) and given the common belief that Elijah was in heaven and would come at some significant moment then John’s talk of Jesus coming after would be consistent with the idea that Jesus had come from heaven. However, this response rests on the assumption that John and/or the synoptic evangelists regarded the Baptist literally as Elijah. It is evident that Luke did not.
Luke describes the circumstances of John’s conception, without any whiff of incarnation or pre-existence. He omits the saying of Jesus that John was the Elijah to come, instead including the prediction that John would go before Jesus “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17). The other two synoptic evangelists are coyer about John’s origins, though again there is no indication that they consider him to be literally Elijah. Rather the impression is given through the events of the transfiguration that Elijah is someone separate from John. When Jesus speaks of the “Elijah who is to come” that very qualification indicates that he is not talking about the person of Elijah but the role of Elijah in prophetic expectation. So the coming of John, even in the context of his being Elijah, does not imply a coming from heaven but an advent at a specific moment in time.
Conclusion
So, whilst Gathercole is correct that there does not seem to be strong precedent for the use of “I have come” in the context of prophetic or messianic advent, I think there are strong reasons for thinking this is the way this formula is used in the Synoptics. Consequently, I do not think there are any compelling reasons to think the synoptic evangelists presupposed the pre-existence of Jesus.
[3] See Bart Ehrman’s statement “How could Paul embrace ‘higher’ views of Christ than those found in later writings such as Matthew, Mark and Luke? Didn’t Christology develop from ‘low’ Christology to a ‘high’ Christology over time? … And I simply did not get it, for the longest time” (B. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 251-2). He concludes that Paul and the Synoptics held different Christologies, which were contemporary.
[4] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 18.
[5] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 19.
[6] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 84. He dismisses as red herrings Matt 11:19a (par. Luke 7:34), Luke 9:55 and Mark 1:45 (as per the reading of J. K. Elliott). Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 88-91.
[7] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 87.
[8] Dan 9:22-23; Dan 10:12, 14, 20; 11:2; Tobit 5:5 Sode Raza, Apocalypse of Moses 16:2; 4 Ezra 6:30; 7:2; 2 Baruch 71:3; Testament of Isaac 2; etc. Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 119-137. He also explores the traditions about the coming of Elijah (Mark 15:36; b.Berakoth 4b; Midrash Mishle 9; etc.). “It is noteworthy that here again there is an eschatological ministry that is envisaged as having a cosmic scope, which, again, is difficult to imagine outside of a coming from heaven” (Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 138).
[9] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 117.
[10] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 145-6.
[11] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 102-106.
[12] Gathercole, Pre-existent Son, 108.
[13] [ED AP]: This is a coming within the purpose of God and not a locational coming as Gathercole needs for his reading.