John Topel, «What Kind of a Sign are Vultures? Luke 17,37b», Vol. 84 (2003) 403-411
The only consensus about the meaning of Jesus' proverb in Q, Matthew or Luke is that it is enigmatic. But closer attention to the trope itself and its literary context may give clues to its meaning in Luke 17. The two principal preoccupations of exegetes are 1) whether aetoi means eagles or vultures, and 2) how to define the literary context in which the proverb is to be read: does it refer to the coming day of the Son of Man (17,22-34) or of the last judgment (17,34-35)? This paper argues that aetoi here must mean vultures and the appropriate context for the interpretation of the proverb is the whole speech, for which its serves as the conclusion. There is a curious interplay between the Pharisees' "When" (v. 20) and the "Where?" (v. 37a) of the disciples. Attending to the polysemic possibilities of the proverb provides a meaning which knits the whole speech together.
B. The Fathers and exegetes up to the twentieth century, usually construing the context from where the proverb occurs in Matt 24,28, either allegorized sinners as the body and the Son of Man come in judgment as the vultures, or took the Son of Man as the body and the vultures as the elect gathering around him. In either case, they were uncomfortable with the identification of Jesus5.
In the twentieth century, commentaries on Luke took as the context of the proverb the whole eschatological discourse, with its emphasis on the Son of Man as judge6. Following on the disciples' question, "Where?" it denies the relevance of the question7, denies that the coming of the Son of Man can be observed beforehand8, or denies a specific locality for the event9. Sometimes commentators shade the denial into a slightly more specific meaning: when the conditions are fulfilled, the Son of Man will be revealed10; judgment will occur where it is required11, or even when it is required12. For the plurality of recent commentaries, when the Son of Man appears the disciples will be as sure of where he is as vultures are sure of the place of the cadaver, i.e. they will no more need a special sign than do the vultures13.
2. The Vocabulary of the Proverb
Sw=ma here means dead body, corpse, as it had done in Greek literature from the time of Homer to the New Testament14. The vexed word is a)etoi/, which can mean eagle or vulture, just as does r#$n, the Hebrew word it always translates in the LXX (KB, 641; BAGD, 19). Scientific treatises, such as Aristotle's Historia Animalium distinguish the eagle (a)eto/j) from the vulture (gu/y)15, as do the technical biblical lists of clean and unclean birds (the LXX