Sárospataki Füzetek 18. (2014)
2014 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Jacob J. T. Doedens: The Return of YHWH and the End of the Exile
Jacob J.T. Doedens Jerusalem temple has even been called a “inverted theophany”.110 Wright, thus, may be on the right track when he reads the New Testament from the supposition that, within the Second Temple literature and New Testament, the exile is viewed as an ongoing reality. However, the word exile gets, within this view, a more metaphorical sense, as Wright also admits.111 This view, when worked out further, has many consequences for New Testament exegesis and also for systematic theology, as Wrights magnum opus “Christian Origins and the Question of God” amply demonstrates.112 To name a few small or bigger consequences:- The parables about a landlord going abroad and then returning would have meant for the average listener of Jesus’ time a reference - not to Jesus’ ‘second coming’, but - to Yhwh, who will return to his people when the exile is over.- When the New Testament mentions ‘sin’, this mostly refers to collective sin of the people, as a consequence of which Israel was sent into exile. ‘Forgiveness’ means, thus, God’s faithfulness to his covenant. This might help to explain, for example, Rom 2: Paul does not speak about the sin of every individual Jew, but asks how it is possible that the Jews, who claim to be God’s chosen people, commit the same sins as non-Jewish people?- When reading Paul, monotheism and election will have to be regarded more than is usually done as the centre of the apostle’s theology.113- First century Jewish apocalyptical literature is not expecting the end of the world, but envisages in metaphorical language the restoration of Israel. This might extend to Christian eschatology in the New Testament.- The gospel has a political and public side, therefore, it cannot be considered as a private choice, without effects for the public world. What still could be researched more fully is the question how the prophetic promise of the return of the ten tribes from Assyrian exile fits within the picture the New Testament draws.114 Perhaps the mention of God’s trumpet at the gathering of the elect from the ends of the world in Matt 24:31 (cf. Isa 27:13) may be read as the New Testament fulfilment of Old Testament promises pertaining to the ‘lost ten tribes of Israel’. 1.0 So James R. Linville, "Myth of the Exilic Return: Myth Theory and the Exile as an Eternal Reality in the Prophets," in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and its Historical Contexts (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 301. 1.1 See N. T. Wright, "Grateful Dialogue," in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment ofN. T. Wright's "Jesus and the Victory of God." (ed. Carey C. Newman; Downers Grove, III.: Inter- Varsity, 1999), 259-260. 1.2 The following volumes of this series have already appeared: The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992); Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996); The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003); Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Book I and II) (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013). 113 Cf. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 149. 114 This is also the main critique of Brant Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of Atonement, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 31-40. 48 Sárospataki Füzetek 17. évfolyam I 2014 I 1
