Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.3
icance'. Warnings of imminent judgment 'were intended to be taken as denoting
. . . socio-political events, seen as the climactic moment in Israel's history'. 113 To
reduce the reality envisaged to the terms of the metaphor itself would be to mistake
its character as metaphor. This is the mistake of those who interpret such
apocalyptic language as predicting the actual end of the time-space complex. Its
proper function, rather, is to invest current events with 'theological significance'.
But Wright's treatment is less clear as to whether all the items listed in § 12.2c are
metaphorical in the same way (or to the same extent). He has the elements of
apocalyptic eschatology primarily in view. But is the grand narrative of Israel's
return from exile and Yahweh's return to Zion equally metaphorical ('the grand
metaphor' perhaps)? Or in this case are we to expect a closer correlation between
the terms of the metaphor and the reality in view? 114
One way of tackling such an imponderable issue is to ask how Jews of Jesus'
time would have understood the hopes indicated in § 12.2c. Would they have
looked for literal fulfilment or at least a close correlation between hope and reality,
or might they have understood the hopes as 'metaphorical'? The beloved traditions
of the exodus would certainly have encouraged many to look for visible
divine intervention. We know, for example, that two of the would-be prophets of
deliverance around Jesus' time acted on that assumption, seeking for a repetition
of the miracles of crossing the Jordan dry shod and the fall of Jericho's walls
(Joshua 3-4, 6). 115 And the memory of Samaria's deliverance from the Syrians
(2 Kings 7) and Jerusalem's deliverance from Sennacherib's army (2 Kings 19)
would hardly discourage such a realistic hope, as must have inspired many
Zealots in the final days of the 66-70/74 revolt against Rome. So should a Christian
expositor be comforted by the fact that the Baptist's expectation of judgment
can find such a high degree of literal fulfilment in the catastrophe which engulfed
Israel forty years after Jesus' mission?
On the other hand, the disappointingly ill-fulfilled hope of return from exile
(as in Isaiah 43.1-44.8; 54-55) would surely have raised questions in the
minds of others. And would there not be those who shared Philo's recognition
that the Jews were so populous that no one country could hold them (Flacc. 46)
so that hope for a wholesale return of the diaspora to the land of Israel would
have been seen as unrealistic? Alternatively, one might have expected that in order
to count as fulfilled, return from exile would have involved some measure of
diaspora Jews returning to Palestine; and return of Yahweh to the Temple (as-
113. Wright, Jesus 96-97; see also above, §4.7 at n. 177. Similarly Kaylor, Jesus 77-78.
114. See also the questions raised by Allison, Jesus of Nazareth 153-64; also in his critique
of Wright, 'Jesus and the Victory of Apocalyptic', in C. C. Newman, ed., Jesus and the
Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999) 126-41, with response from Wright (261-68).
115. Josephus, Ant. 20.97-98, 167-70.
402