Re: The Origins of Christianity
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 2:55 pm
Let us assume that the book of Daniel was written between 167 and 164 BC.neilgodfrey wrote:This actually coincides with the view of Daniel that the defeat of the Seleucids and independence of the Jews was the coming of the Son of Man to judgment and the establishment "forever" of the kingdom of the saints. There are many similar parallels to this sort of apocalyptic use of metaphors to describe historical events that to the outsider seem entirely earthly. The "wise" know that it all means and what is really happening.
We can assume that the author of Daniel was hoping for the defeat of Antiochus IV Epiphanes but what sort future he wants is much more difficult to ascertain. I would argue that the language of judgment, dominion over peoples and nations and everlasting kingdom is the language of the end of time. Even if you are correct and the author really meant a future Jewish kingdom on earth lasting for ever this does not mean that that meaning was understood like this after 37 BCE. Those reading the passage after 37 BCE I think would not be able to see the events in the 160’s BCE as the establishment of a permanent Jewish kingdom. Therefore like all such passages future generations will re-interpret the passage, in the same way that Christians have been doing for hundreds of years to the book of Revelation. Therefore by the time of Jesus Jews were re-interpreting their apocalyplic texts and I think did understand them in the context of a future end of time event.
Michael BG wrote:Paula Fredriksen who writes,Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews p 123-24This diversity of messianic figures … should not obscure the prime importance of the Davidic messiah. …The Messiah son of David is the best and most widely attested figure, cutting across sectarian as well as temporal lines: …
I do not think she is saying that the evidence is only the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact I would assume that when she says across sectarian lines she means within different traditions Old Testament and DSS. When she says across time lines I assume she means post-exile, Maccabee times, and Roman times.neilgodfrey wrote: There are no other references for her to turn to. There is no support for her assertion anywhere in existence. All that is available is evidence for other (later) periods that she must assume also applies to earlier periods. Biblical scholars too often betray their general reading public this way. They are merely repeating the prevailing ideological views on the assumption that they are so well accepted that they will never be questioned. I am sure Paula herself firmly believes what she asserts.
But the fact remains she makes no appeal to evidence beyond the DSS and no evidence for her assertion exists beyond the DSS.
Novenson, Hengel, Boyarin, Green, Thompson and others do cite evidence to argue their case that the standard popular conventional view that we find repeated by Fredriksen is false. But appeas to evidence to argue against a mainstream, long-held wisdom is often ignored by the mainstream for various reasons.
John N Oswalt seems to disagree and seems to see lots of evidence for an end of time event foreseen in the Old Testament – http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/ ... 1_JETS.pdf
Matthew V Novenson in Christ among the Messiahs states that Joseph Klausner lists “the Day of Judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the World to Come” in the “messianic idea”; “but in general you find it with these links and in the order mentioned” (Klausner p 385) p 36.
It would be helpful if you provide first names for these scholars and the books that discuss the issue of Jewish eschatology.
The odds are against me still be active here in two months time. Please send me a message with a link to the thread where you provide the case for your position on the use and meaning of apocalyplic language once you have created it.neilgodfrey wrote:I am currently in the process of (re)organizing all of my resources through zotero for easier ready reference. I'll be in a position to do justice to the topic then, in a few weeks, maybe another 2 months. Meanwhle, one passage I did come across that appears at the end of an article on the state of apocalyptic studies a few years ago:Michael BG wrote:
Hopefully I will be active here when you present the “wealth of scholarly material establishing the meaning of Mark's terminology within the understanding of the same terms in the OT” and this will include both sides of the argument.
That's by Adela Yarbro Collins, "Apocalypse Now: The State of Apocalyptic Studies Near the End of the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century" in the Harvard Theological Review, 104, 4, Oct 2011, pp. 447-457. Curiously many N.T. scholars when commenting upon the Synoptic Apocalypse slip right back in to their (long-accustomed?) habit of reading it as literally as Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.Because of the nature of the dreams and visions they narrate and the extraordinary character of their narratives, most scholars would now agree that an apocalypse is an imaginative response to a specific historical and social situation. Yet there is a significant minority in this country, whose presence is attested by the wide circulation of the "Left Behind" novels, for whom the canonical apocalypses are historical fact,
So we students of apocalypses still have our work cut out for us.
I tried to read Adela Yarbro Collins Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism but didn’t manage to read the first chapter. William E Arnal states in his review of the book (JSTOR)
Chapter 1’s argument in favour of historical contextualization … offers no especially convincing positive grounds for seek textual meaning in the historical context of the text’s production.