¹ The unanimity is to a large extent deceptive. Within can be given a wide variety of meanings; a useful selection of early opinions (including the surprising view of St. Gregory of Nyssa that it is another way of saying that man is made in the image of God) will be found in J. Maldonatus, Comment, in IV Evagg. (Paris, 1629), ad loc.

² To mention a few: Creed, Dibelius, Easton, Klostermann, Lagrange, Manson, Moffatt. With a little hesitation W. Bauer (in his Wörterbuch z. N.T., 3rd. ed.,) comes down on the same side. B. H. Streeter (to judge from a passing remark in The Four Gospels, p. 290) is the latest scholar known to me to keep to the old view.

³ This version is no less capable of a variety of meanings. Either the saying is regarded as eschatological (ἐστίν being an apocalyptic present) “Lo! the Kingdom is suddenly in your midst” or more simply and with less strain on the Greek as referring to the presence of Jesus and his disciples among the Pharisees. There are other shades of meaning; for these and for the pros and cons of the two views given above the reader may be referred to any modern commentary. A particularly detailed treatment of the passage with a citation of the views of earlier scholars will be found in an article by B. S. Easton in the American Journal of Theology for 1912, pp. 275 sq. I have found this helpful, though I dissent both from his interpretation of the Greek evidence and from his conclusions. To the view which I am here concerned to defend he only refers in connection with a passage from Tertullian (where I think he misconceives Tertullian's meaning: see below, note 20) and ignores the other Patristic evidence (the papyri which I quote later, were not, of course, then available).

⁴ The idea of a universal, indwelling spirit is certainly more congenial to Stoicism than to Judaism or Christianity; see the striking passage in Seneca, Ep. xli, 2 (Prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est. Ita dico, Lucili, sacer intra nos spiritus sedet …) and compare Epict. Disc. I, 14, 14 and M. Aurelius, III, 5: V. 10: XII, 1.

⁵ It is well remarked (H.D.A. Major, T. W. Manson, C. J. Wright, The Mission and Message of Jesus, pp. 595–7) that elsewhere in the Gospels it is man that enters into the Kingdom, not the Kingdom into man.

⁶ We may further note that when St. Luke wishes to say among he uses ἐντῷ μέσῷ which occurs 12 times in the Gospel and Acts; ἐντός is found in only one other passage in the whole of the N. T. (Mt. xxiii, 26).

⁷ Anab. I, 10, 3.

⁸ Hell. II, 3, 19.

⁹ Plummer in his commentary on St. Luke actually cites the following passage from Plato, Laws, 789A to illustrate the classical use of ἐντός meaning among: Ἀθ… τοῖς ἐντὸς τῶν αὑτῶν μητέρων τρɛφομένοις … Kλ. ἣ τοῖς Κνομένοισι φράζɛις; Ἀθ. ναί.

¹⁰ Grammatik II, 2, p. 539.

¹¹ On Symmachus, see H. B. Swete, Introduction to the O. T. in Greek, pp. 49 sq.

¹² For my knowledge of these passages of Symmachus I am indebted to Easton's article (quoted above) and his The Gospel According to St. Luke, ad loc. They will be found in Field's Hexapla.

¹³ See the immediately following paragraph. I should emphasize that for any references to Hebrew or Aramaic I am entirely dependent on the authorities quoted.

¹⁴ The Gospel of Luke (Macmillan, 1930), ad loc.

¹⁵ For this he quotes Rom. xiv. 17.

¹⁶ See note 5.

¹⁷ His dependence upon the Syriac would explain why Ephraim Syrus (whose knowledge of Greek was of the slightest) treats ἐντός as meaning among; he is the only Father to do so.

¹⁸ The letter was published in 1930 by Zereteli and Jernstedt as no. 1 of P. Ross. Georg. III — a volume with some unusual and interesting texts which has received comparatively little attention (I have not succeeded in tracing a review of it in any American or British periodical). For the background of the letter the introduction of the editors to this and the following letter (which comes from the same circle) should be read. They place both letters in the third century; for reasons which it would take too long to set out here, I think both can be dated on internal grounds to A.D. 270.

¹⁹ An instance of how far back this interpretation goes is provided by the Oxyrhynchus Sayings of Jesus. In one of these the saying recurs (P. Oxy. 654, 10) and in such a context that there can be no doubt it means within your souls (see H. G. Evelyn White, The Sayings of Jesus, p. 8 and for a particularly convincing interpretation of this passage W. Schubart in ZtNW, XX, pp. 215 sq.). This interpretation is approaching that which was placed on the saying by the heretical sect of the Naassenes, to judge from the passage quoted by Hippolytus, Ref. Haer. V. 7 (τὴν ἐντὸς ἀνθρώπον βασιλείαν οὐρανοῦ ζητουμένη), referring to man's esoteric nature.

²⁰ Adv. Marcionem, IV, 35. Easton, in the article already mentioned, attributes to Tertullian the meaning “within your power to put into your hearts.” All that Tertullian says is that it is within your power (i.e. to accept or reject), as though he had written penes vos est. Easton's comment that such a rendering as he puts into Tertullian's mouth is “beyond the pale of good exegesis” is fair enough, but beside the point. In passing it may be noted that intra (which is the rendering adopted both by the Old Latin and the Vulgate) is simply the dictionary equivalent of ἐντός and cannot itself be used (as is clear from the sentence just quoted) to determine the latter word's meaning. There is no parallel to this use of intra in classical Latin with the very doubtful” exception of Seneca, Medea 520 (and there it is probable that the correct reading is infra, not intra.

²¹ e.g. De Princ. I, 3, 6.

²² περὶ εὐχῆς 25, 1 (Koetschau p. 363).

²³ xxiv, 2.

²⁴ Homily on Exodus, ix, 4: cf. also homily on Luke, xxxvi (Rauer 215–6).

²⁵ Homily on Joshua, xiii, 1, p. 427: ibid, xviii, 2, p. 243: Homily on Jeremiah, xviii, p. 298 (where the kingdom is taken to mean the universal logos).

²⁶ Test, ii, 52.

²⁷ In Migne, PG, LXXII, Comment, in Luc. §368 (col. 841).

²⁸ So Maldonatus (op. cit.), following Cyril: qua poterant, si vellent, Christum recipere.

²⁹ Cf. Origen, Comment, in Joh. xix, 12: τούτοις δὲ ϕιλανθρώπως ὸ σωτὴρ ὑποδείκνυσι καὶ τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ βασιλεἰας, ἴνα μὴ ζητῶσιν αὑτὴν ἔξω ὲαυτῶν μηδὲ λέωσιν Ίδοὺ ὡδε ἣ ιδοὺ ὲκεῖ ϕησί γὰρ αὑτοῖς. Ή βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ὲντὸςὑμῶν ἐστι. καὶ δσον γε σὠζομεν τὰ ὲνσπαρέντα ἡμῶν τῆ ψυχῆ τῆς ὰληθείας σπέρματα καὶ τὰς άρχὰς, αὐτῆς, οὐδέπω ἀπελήλυθεν ἀϕ΄ ἡμῶν ό λόγος.

³⁰ Mk. x, 15.

³¹ Lk. xii, 31: Mt. xiii, 45.

³² Lk. xviii, 16: Mt. v, 3, 10.

³³ Lk. xi, 9 (cf. Mt. vii, 7).