Reading Wright, NTPG, Chapter 10

This week I continue in The New Testament and the People of God with chapter 10 (pp. 280-338) as Wright discusses the hope of Israel. In Wright’s three-prong monotheism, election, and eschatology, this chapter focuses on the eschatological expectations of first-century Judaism.

Wrights spends a good portion of the chapter describing the apocalyptic genre. What is important is that much of the genre is not to be taken literally, but literarily. To put it differently, descriptions of stars falling, sun not shining, and earthquakes are a way of describing in vivid imagery a disaster that isn’t literal. The fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, with the destruction of the temple, is a sample of this kind of event (and in fact, as Wright will cover in his second book, is likely what Jesus is referring to in Matthew 24). We use such vivid descriptions in our own language to describe present-day events. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 might be described as an earthquake, a country-shaking event of monumental proportions—for some, like the sun was darkened and the moon refusing to shine; for others, as if the sun had broken through the clouds. All of this is to suggest that such descriptive wording is sometimes—and may actually be more normatively—not a literal description of what is or will occur. Many of the apocalyptic passages in the book of Daniel were taken as exhortation for the people to resist the pressure from pagan nations to compromise their covenant faithfulness (p. 294).

Wright argues that “The fundamental Jewish hope was for liberation from oppression, for the restoration of the Land, and for the proper rebuilding of the Temple.” (p. 299) But this expectation had no concept of a world-ending cataclysmic event into an entire newly created earth. Jewish creational-monotheism—God created this world—and election—God chose this people—drove expectations—liberation and future existence will be in this world with this people. Expectations of resurrection drove those who strove to maintain their faithfulness even to death. God will be king, Israel will be redeemed (because God is faithful to his covenant), and humanity will be renewed. To put it in Wright terms, Israel will be vindicated/justified (p. 334).

What matters in the present, for the first century Jew, is to be faithful despite the pressures surrounding them. As stated previously in earlier chapters, what this faithfulness looked like varied by group. I hope by now you can start to sense terms and ideas that are picked up in the New Testament by its authors. This is no accident. It is in this space that Jesus walked and the New Testament is written. And that is the subject of Wright’s next part of the book, which we turn to next.