Jesus Victory of God V2: Christian Origins And The Question Of God

Rather, I suggest that Jesus was seen as, and saw himself as, a prophet; not a particular one necessarily, as though there were an individual set of shoes ready-made into which he was consciously stepping, but a prophet like the prophets of old, coming to Israel with a word from her covenant god, warning her of the imminent and fearful consequences

He rejects, rightly, any idea that what Jesus found amiss with Pharisaic teaching was ‘pettifogging legalism’. He offers, instead, a category which I would myself, in broad terms, endorse: Jesus was announcing ‘restoration eschatology’.

The ‘kingdom of [god’s] beloved son’73 is already a reality in which the Messiah’s people partake. They have already been created as ‘a kingdom, and priests’,74 precisely through the work of the Messiah. But we can now see what that present kingdom actually is. It is not simply a private, secret, ‘spiritual’ experience shared by believers. Nor is i

It is not surprising, therefore, that when Jesus came to Jerusalem the place was not, so to speak, big enough for both him and the Temple together. The claim which had been central to his work in Galilee was that Israel’s god was now active, through him, to confront evil and so to bring about the real return from exile, the restoration for which Is

The expectation of the restored land has become focused on restored human beings. Jesus offered people ‘inheritance’, and greater possessions than they would have abandoned; but he regularly construed this in terms of human lives and human communities that were being renewed and restored through the coming of the kingdom.233 The pearl of great pric

So too his miracles performed for Gentiles,185 and for a Samaritan,186 bear witness to the inclusion within the people of YHWH of those who had formerly been outside.

At that time there would be division between families and colleagues: one would be taken, another left. It should be noted that being ‘taken’ in this context means being taken in judgment. There is no hint, here, of a ‘rapture’, a sudden ‘supernatural’ event which would remove individuals from terra firma. Such an idea would look as odd, in these s

The most important thing to recognize about the first-century Jewish use of kingdom-language is that it was bound up with the hopes and expectations of Israel. ‘Kingdom of god’ was not a vague phrase, or a cipher with a general religious aura. It had nothing much, at least in the first instance, to do with what happened to human beings after they d

Chilton, indeed, argues that what Judas betrayed, and what Jesus was crucified for, was not his action in the Temple but his regarding of himself and his followers as a counter-Temple movement;96 but this simply confirms the current tendency, which I believe to be profoundly correct, to associate the Temple with Jesus’ death.

We should therefore be able to understand fairly well the mood of Galilean villagers when Jesus began his proclamation. When it became known that there was a prophet roaming the countryside announcing that YHWH’s kingdom was dawning, the reaction was entirely comprehensible. Many villagers would be thrilled to the core. Some would have been sceptic