Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.6
Nor is this a conclusion I would wish to resist on my own part. I do not
think the conclusion can be easily escaped that Jesus expected the kingdom to
come with final outcomes which have not appeared; some may want to say not
yet appeared. But there is still more to be said.
Too little attention has been paid to the character of Jewish prophetic hope.
The prophetic tradition learned to live with the failure of prophecy without denigrating
the prophecies themselves. 457 We have already observed how Psalm 89
wrestles with the failure of the promises to maintain the Davidic line. Jeremiah's
depiction of Judah's expected devastation as a return to chaos (Jer. 4.23) was not
regarded as a false prophecy because the end of the world did not come. 458 Hab.
2.3 provided a cue for post-biblical Judaism's wrestling with the problem of delay.
459 In emphasizing that many Jews were still in exile, it is easy to pass over
the fact that such beliefs could be held only because the earlier hopes for return
from exile had not been fulfilled — or should we say not completely fulfilled?
The resulting 'dissonance', according to Robert Carroll, 'gave rise to hermeneutics',
including the transition from prophecy to apocalypse. 460 The hermeneutics
included what he calls 'adaptive prediction' (citing Jeremiah and Ezekiel) and realized
expectation (Ezra inspired by the preaching of Second Isaiah). 461
More to the point, however, is the fact that the failed prophecies also gave
rise to renewed prophecies. 462 For example, Jeremiah fully expected that after
seventy years exile both Israel and Judah would be restored to the land and would
prosper under a restored Davidic king. 463 That hope was only partially fulfilled,
and the absence of complete fulfilment caused perplexity for Zechariah (Zech.
457. Schnackenburg, e.g., mentions texts which speak of a 'near expectation' — Isa.
13.6; 51.5; 56.1; Ezek. 7.1-13; 12.21-25; 30.3; Joel 2.1; Zeph. 1.7, 14-18 (God's Rule 201
n. 65). See also Meyer, Aims 245-49. 'The re-interpretation and adaptation of prophetic promises
had always been a staple of Jewish religion, indeed a positive theological asset rather than a
liability' (M. Bockmuehl, This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah [Edinburgh: Clark, 1994] 101).
458. Caird, Language 258-59.
459. A. Strobel, Untersuchungen zum eschatologischen Verzögerungsproblem auf
Grund der spätjüdisch-urchristlichen Geschichte von Habakuk 2,2ff. (NovTSup 2; Leiden:
Brill, 1961).
460. R. P. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed: Reactions and Responses to Failure in the
Old Testament Prophetic Traditions (London: SCM, 1979) 124-28, 212. Carroll draws on
L. Festinger, et al., When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group
That Predicted the Destruction of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1956), and
L. Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1957). Texts indicative
of the problem of delay include Isa. 10.25; Hab. 2.2, 3; Joel 1.15; 2.1 (168-72).
461. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed 172-77, 180-82.
462. In what follows I draw particularly on C. L. Holman, Till Jesus Comes: Origins of
Christian Apocalyptic Expectation (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996).
463. E.g., Jer. 25.12-13; 29.10-14; 30.3, 8-11; 31.1, 5-14; 32.36-41; 33.10-22.
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