24 Thomas R. Hatina 9,1. Second, it unnecessarily raises the question why Matthew (par.16,28) would collapse the coming of the son of man with the coming of the kingdom into a single perspective on the eschaton (“there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom”). Moreover, Matthew must have viewed Mark 8,38 and 9,1 synonymously since both parallel verses (16,27 and 28) contain the construction “son of man” + a form of e[rxomai + ejn th/' + noun in the dative case + aujtou' (11). And third, an antithetical parallelism does not adequately explain why ejn dunavmei was added as a qualifier of basileiva tou' qeou'. This qualifier appears nowhere else in early Christian literature except perhaps for Rev 12,10 where it refers to the coming of God to do battle. The implication is that the earlier coming of Jesus along with the first appearing of the kingdom (1,14-15), which was hidden from most, was not ejn dunavmei (12). As is often pointed out, the closest that other texts in Mark, and in the Synoptic Gospels, come to this qualifying use of duvnami" is in the references to the future coming of the son of man (13,26; 14,62). Given Mark’s interest to directly link duvnami" with these son of man sayings in 13,26 and 14,62, one wonders why he is not consistent in 8,38. Why would he instead link duvnami" with the future coming of the kingdom? A plausible explanation is that the evangelist understood both the future coming of the son of man and the future coming of the kingdom with power as the same eschatological act of judgment, which would certainly echo the sense of the apocalyptic scenario in Dan 7,9-14, which seems to be an influence. I would like to suggest that a synonymous parallelism better preserves the literary sequence and raises fewer potential difficulties. Thus, the bystanders who will not “taste death” in 9,1 should not be identified with the faithful, but with those who are “ashamed” of Jesus and his words “in this adulterous and sinful generation” (8,38). To my knowledge, Etienne Trocmé comes closest to this reading of 9,1 when he argues that “some of those who are standing here” are to be identified with those who refuse to give their lives for the gospel as martyrs so that they might still be alive to see the parousia (13). Jesus’ (11) W.D. DAVIES – D.C. ALLISON, Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC; Edinburgh 1991) II, 677. (12) See also C.K. BARRETT, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (London 1966) 73. (13) A similar, albeit brief, suggestion is offered by BROWER, “Mark 9:1: Seeing the Kingdom in Power”, 34.