Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.3
between the strands and the various expressions of that hope and to acknowledge
not least the tensions between the different strands of Second Temple Judaism
which expressed what may still have been a common hope rather differently. 89
One visionary's 'coherent story' is not easily synthesized with another's.
This should not occasion any surprise to those familiar with the Christian
tradition. A study of early Christian expectation gives an equally fragmentary
yield, a series of flashes of insight into what might be expected, which are
equally difficult to synthesize. 90 And Christians of successive generations have
been content to affirm a hope of heaven, even though the scope of that hope is
hard to articulate beyond a sequence of glimpses afforded in Christian tradition
— the parousia (return) of Christ, resurrection and judgment, no marriage or sexual
relations, a heavenly banquet, participation in the worship of heaven, and so
on — hardly a coherent story or grand narrative of life beyond death.
Insofar, then, as Jesus' kingdom talk 'plugs into' the Jewish expectation of
the time, we have to bear in mind the same question as to whether he and his
hearers operated with a single, comprehensive story. Or should we be prepared
for an equivalent series of glimpses of the beyond and flashes of insight, rather
than a coherent, complete story?
b. What Do We Mean by 'Eschatological'?
A second issue raised by this inventory of Second Temple Jewish expectation is
the extent to which or sense in which we can speak of this expectation as 'eschatological'.
This term has bewitched and befuddled the quest of the historical Jesus
for a century. The Greek word eschaton clearly denotes 'end'. But end of
what? The assumption since Schweitzer has been that what was in view was 'the
end of time, the end of history, the end of the world'. That would be fine, if the
expectation were clearly and consistently for a heavenly, eternal existence. But
89. T. F. Glasson with some justification criticized Schweitzer for claiming that there
was a common 'late Jewish view' of eschatology which Jesus' preaching of the kingdom could
assume, whereas he could briefly distinguish eight different types of teaching ('Schweitzer's
Influence — Blessing or Bane?', JTS 28 [1977] 289-302, reprinted in B. Chilton, ed., The
Kingdom of God [London: SPCK, 1984] 107-20 [here 108-12]). Chilton takes the point, but
also observes that 'it would seem imprudent not to acknowledge that the range of apocalyptic
literature, along with the Qumran scrolls, the earliest Targums and other intertestamental
works, present a common expectation, variously expressed, that God was to act on behalf of his
people in the foreseeable future' (Chilton's 'Introduction' 22).
90. I may refer to my Theology of Paul 314-15. Leivestad notes the consequences of accommodating
a messianic kingdom within the eschatology in Revelation: two wars (Rev.
19.11-21; 20.7-10); two triumphs over Satan; two judgment scenes; two resurrections; two
states of blessedness (Jesus 43-44).
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