John Kilgallen, «Jesus’ First Trial: Messiah and Son of God (Luke 22,66-71)», Vol. 80 (1999) 401-414

Luke, according to the Two-Source Theory, read Mark. At the first trial of Jesus, that before the Sanhedrin, Mark has together, "Messiah, Son of God". Luke has intentionally separated the two titles. The present essay finds the explanation for separating Son of God from Messiah in the Annunciation scene of the Gospel. It is Luke’s intention that the reader understand Son of God in a way that admittedly the Sanhedrin did not. The laws of narratology indicate that Luke 1,35, a part of the Lucan introduction, be used by the reader to interpret Son of God at Luke 22,70.

        First, as argued earlier, the very structure of this trial hopes to make the reader remember the structure of the Annunciation, where one moves from the revelation about the Messiah to the revelation about the Son of God; by virtue of this structure the reader is asked to bring this sense of "Son of God"²¹ forward to this beginning point of the death of Jesus²². By this literary structural device Luke means to have the reader recall the fundamental revelation about Jesus, that he, Messiah (1,32-33), is at the same time significantly other than Messiah by dramatically presenting Son of God as a separate issue in the Annunciation of God.

        Thus, the structure invites one to think of Son of God in its individuality, as this is described in the Annunciation. And what the Annunciation offers as content for this structure is the revelation that Jesus is Son of God, not by adoption, but after the manner of procreation²³. Sonship is only adoptive where the Tradition about Messiah is concerned; thus, the meaning of "son of the Most High" (1,32) when the Angel means to identify Jesus as Messiah according to the Tradition. With Luke’s dramatic presentation of a second revelation, that of Son of God, Jesus is described as a person beyond all the meanings and expectations of Messiah which the Tradition