Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.6
cern) some sort of projection into the future. 470 That is the character of hope. 471
It gets things wrong, sometimes 'hopelessly' wrong, for the future is always unknown
and can be known only when it has already become the present and the
past. Yet we still hope, for hope is the only way we can cope with the future
which might be crippling through the fear and dread which it otherwise inspires.
More to the point here, prophetic hope was not hope in the future per se, but hope
in God for the future, with concomitant concern for how that hope should determine
living in the present. 472
Now it would be impossible to enter into prophetic psychology at this point.
But I cannot help wondering whether at the time of Jesus there was more conscious
reflection on this feature of prophetic hope than has been allowed for. 473
The question is whether Jesus or his first followers took such considerations into
account when they made their own forward-looking eschatological statements. Or
rather, whether it is not the character of prophecy to make such firm predictions
and the responsibility of the hearer, aware of the tradition, to recognize that its affirmation
of old images and aspirations for the same ends should not be valued
more highly than any element of prediction. Given my understanding of the fundamental
role of hearing and receiving in the tradition process, the two-sidedness
of oracles uttered-and-received and valued as prophecy means that no prophetic
utterance, however clear and outspoken, should be considered on its own without
any qualification which the hearing-receiving-retelling involves. Without anticipating
subsequent discussion too much, this mediating but also qualifying role of
the tradition was no doubt one of the reasons why the 'delay of the parousia' was
evidently of relatively little significance for first-generation Christians. 474
470. This is the element of validity in B. J. Malina's otherwise overpressed contrast,
'Christ and Time: Swiss or Mediterranean?', The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels (London:
Routledge, 1996) 179-214. Note also Talman's observation cited below (chapter 15 n.24).
471. In contrast, apocalyptic eschatology is born more of despair for the present and can
only depict the future in bizarre symbols, since little or nothing in the present gives substance to
hope.
472. Cf. Bultmann: 'The essential thing about the eschatological message is the idea of
God that operates in it and the idea of human existence that it contains — not the belief that the
end of the world is just ahead' (Theology 1.23); Crossan and Reed: 'Like our contemporary "we
shall overcome", the certainty of its what and that is not accompanied by an equal certainty of
its how and when' {Excavating Jesus 75).
473. As there certainly was on the concomitant problem of false prophecy (see above,
§8.2). Caird is confident that 'Luke and Paul did not expect their language about life after death
to be taken with flat-footed literalness' (Language 248). 'It did not occur to the first Christians
to repudiate the predictions of Jesus on the ground that they were not immediately fulfilled'
(Meyer, Aims 248).
474. E.g., already in Mark's version of the apocalyptic discourse we hear the
clarificatory qualifying note added: 'but the end is not yet' (13.7).
482