The Pastoral Purpose 87 in Q 13,35 independently of the Markan tradition. The tradition here speaks not of external judgment being visited upon Jerusalem, but of the city’s barrenness arising from its unwillingness to be receptive to the coming one. The perspective is futuristic, but it is an inceptive future perspective which depends on a change of attitude to bring about a future state of blessing. Viewing Q 13,34-35 primarily as a wisdom saying, Robinson sees the ultimate rejection of Jerusalem as a self-inflicted fate stemming from its own rejection of the prophets. Here the withdrawal of Sophia is put into apocalyptic context of the future judgment by Jesus the son of humanity at his parousia. The judgmental apocalyptic context has appropriated the Deuteronomic view of history as consisting of the repeated rejection of the prophets until in the end Israel is itself rejected (24). Robinson helpfully highlights the Deuteronomistic element in this saying, but it is less clear whether it is a bleak prophecy of inescapable judgment, or whether there is a more open attitude to the possibility of repentance for the inhabitants of Jerusalem before the final judgment. While this Q passage provides little reflection on how such sentiments relate to contemporary believers, it does exhibit a sense of triumphalism in relation to the certainty of the fate of Jerusalem as being linked to its response to the coming one. 4. The Future Son of Man Against this wider context of Son of Man statements that relate to the earthly ministry and the preliminary survey of the portrayal of the figure described as the coming one, it is possible to investigate Son of Man sayings that have a future aspect. These occur in three blocks of Q material: (i) the exhortation to fearless preaching, Q 12,2-12; (ii) the unexpected return of the Son of Man, Q 12,40; and (iii) the apocalyptic discourse, Q 17,23-35. Set in a juridical context, the first future reference to the Son of Man is in relation to this figure’s reciprocal confession or denial in the eschaton of those who either confess or deny Jesus in their present situation. While both Bultmann and Tödt argue that this saying creates a distinction between the figures of Jesus and the Son of Man (25), Fleddermann critiques this interpretation for failing “to deal adequately with the parallelism of the saying” (26). Moreover, there is a further parallelism between the act of confessing or denying Jesus in Q 12,8-9 and the action of speaking against the Son of Man in the immediately following Q 12,10. The most natural way to read this complex of sayings is by identifying Jesus and the Son of Man as the same figure. Hence public commitment to Jesus during one’s life leads to a saving commitment to that individual by Jesus himself in the eschatological age. Thus it appears that the author of this tradition viewed the existence of his audience on two horizons. (24) J.M. ROBINSON, “Jesus as Sophos and Sophia: Wisdom Tradition and the Gospels”, HEIL – VERHEYDEN (eds.), The Sayings Gospel Q,128. (25) R. BULTMANN, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford 1963) 112, 128, 151- 152; H.E. TÖDT, The Son of Man (London 1965) 55-60, 224-226, 339-344. (26) FLEDDERMANN, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary, 591.