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"The fundamental study for this remains that of O. H. Steck, and I suspect from some of the reactions to further presentations of the theme that his work has remained unread. There is, however, more support for the overall hypotheses of a 'continuing exile', seen as a political and theological state rather than a geographical one [...]." (Ibid, s. 139).

 

"What then does 'exile' mean, in this continuing sense? Anser: the time of the curse spoken of in Deutoronomy and Leviticus, a curse that lasts as long as Israel is 'the tail and not the head', still subject to the rule, and often the abusive treatment, of foreign nations with their blasphemous and wicked idolatry and immorality, not yet in the possesion of the promised (even if laughably ambitious) global sovereignty. As long, in other words, as the condition of Israel is much like that in Egypt, they will be waiting for the new exodus. As long as Persia, Egypt, Greece, Syria or Rome are in charge, the 'exile' is not really over. And as long as that exile is not over, we are still in Deutoronomy 29, hoping and praying that Daniel's 490 years will soon be complete, that the Messiah will come at last, and that – in Daniel's majestic language – Israel's God will act in accordance with his righteousness, his faithfulness to the covenant." (Ibid, s. 150).

 

"Here is the dilemma: the prophecies have let us down, and though we are back in our own land the promises about being blessed in that land have not come to pass. Instead, 'its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us' (this is a direct reference to Deutoronomy 28.33, 51; in other words, the prayer is locating 'us' still firmly in the 'exilic' time-frame in the key prophetic passage). These kings 'have power also over our bodies and over our livestock and their pleasure, and we are in great distress' (verse 37). This cannot be the time that Isaiah 40–55 had in mind, or the great renewal spoken of in the last twenty or so chapters of Ezekiel. 'We are still slaves'; and slaves need an exodus, a fresh act of liberation, a new Moses, a victory over the pagan tyrants who still opress them. [...]. Yes, there had been a 'return from exile' – of sorts; but it had not been the real thing. The promises of Isaiah and the others (about the nations being converted, and the wonderful splendour of Jerusalem) had obviously not yet happened. Tobit is clear: we are living as it were between the times, having experienced a kind of 'return', but still awaiting the true 'return', which will come about when 'the time of times is fulfilled'." (Ibid, s. 151, 155).

 

"But the second-Temple texts themselves tell strongly against an 'otherworldly' salvation; against (that is) the notion that the ultimate aim of humans in general and Jews in particular was the escape of saved souls from their present embodiment and indeed from space, time and matter altogether. In the texts we have studied, and in particular in the continuous story we have been examining, the aim and goal does not have to do with the abolition of the universe of space, time and matter, or the escape of humans from such a wreckage, but with its consummation. [...]. Two things follow from this. First, it is massively misleading to bring to the texts the question 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?' in the sense that almost all modern western persons would understand it. In the gospels, of course, that question is asked by a second-Temple Jew, and as I and others have made clear it did not mean 'How can I go to heaven when I die?' but rather 'How can I be part of the coming age, the age to come, ha'olam haba?' As all the texts we have mentioned make clear, this 'age to come' was not much like the 'heaven of medieval and post-medieval western imagination, and much more like the liberated Israel, and perhaps the liberated world, of biblicial and second-Temple hope." Ib, s. 163f).

 

"One of the crucial points which Aams and Allison both seem to miss is one thas has emerged more and more clearly from recent scholarship on ancient Jewish 'apocalyptic' literature. 'Apocalyptic' is deeply political. Now of course one could say that it is 'political' to declare that the space-time universe is coming to a shuddering halt; that does indeed reduce to irrelevance otherwise impressive displays of earthly power. But this does not seem to be how 'political' is being used in recent studies. 'Apocalyptic' literature, whether in the second-Temple Jewish world or early Christianity, seems to be designed to give its hearers and readers an alternative frame of reference within which to live their lives, an alternative narrative to that which the world's power-brokers are putting out, an alternative symbolic universe to reshape their imagination and structure their worldview. People whose worldviews are thus realigned may not instantly form political parties or take up arms to march against enemies, but they will live differently. The ruling powers of the world will find them, at least from time to time, inconvenient and unco-ooperative. There can be no doubt that this was the effect which was created by the early Christians, not least by Paul, and we have a good reasion to think that their use of 'apocalyptic' language, exactly in the tradition of the second-Temple Jews, was a significant part of how this effect was generated. They did not expect the stars to fall from the sky. They did expect the creator God to do extraordinary things for which comets, earthquakes and other portents might be powerful and appropriate metaphors." (Ib, s. 175).

 

"Within that, too, we must make the point that, even when it often seems obscure to a present-day reader, the context of a scriptural allusion or echo is again and again very important. Whole passages, whole themes, can be called to mind with a single reference. This point, naturally, has to be tested against individual passages, but when that is done the test regularly comes out positive. Those who studied scripture intensively, which of course includes Essenes and Pharisees in particular, knew the material inside out and could evoke a whole world of textual reference with a word or phrase. The rabbis continued this tradition." (Ib, s. 177).

 

"Philo has a remarkable statement of this doctrine of redemptive election: the Jewish people are to the world what the priest is to the state; in other words, they are on the one hand the people of prayer in the midst of the world, and othe other hand the people through whom the one God makes his will known to all people. This idea of Israel as the special people of the one God is woven into every strand of Jewish life; the Pharisees made it their business to embody it. The many-sided story we observed in the previous section of this champter, a story woven deeply into texts we may take to be Pharisaic but also visible more broadly, is of the one God calling Israel to be the means of putting the world to rights at last. Israel is, as it were, the advance guard, the part of the human family that the creator is sorting out ahead of the rest. 'Election' is a way of talking about Abraham, about the covenant, and not least about the Torah: Torah is God's gift, not indeed to the nations but specifically to Israel, to enable his people to know him and to live that genuinely human life of which Torah offers the outline. Torah thus marks out Israel as the chosen people of the creator God, as witnessed by the specific 'works of Torah' which the surrounding nations noticed as creating a wall between Jews and everybody else. [...]. We have thus approached, from the theological angle, the topic we discovered at the heart of our study of the narrative world of second-Temple Jews. If Israel is chosen to be the people through whom the creator will put the world to rights, what happens when Israel itself needs to be put to rights? The asnwer given by the Pharisees was reasonably clear: Israel needs to learn how to keep Torah, how to keep it properly this time. If Israel wants the covenant God to be faithful to his promises and bring the restoration they longed for, Israe has to be faithful to this God, to Torah, to the covenant. Plenty of evidence in scripture itself indicated that something like this was the right answer. Since Paul the apostle basically agrees with this answer, though providing a radical and shocking fresh analysis of what 'keeping Torah properly' and 'being faithful to God' now looks like, we may confidently conclude that this was what Saul of Tarsus, the zealous Pharisee, had believed aswell." (Ib, s. 182f).

 

"What is more, from Paul onwards the Christians did three things which in the ancient world would have been associated, not with 'religion', but precisely with philosophy. First they presented a case for a different order of reality, a divine reality which cut across the normal assumptions. They told stories about a creator God and the world, stories which had points of intersection with things that the pagans said about god(s) and the world but which started and finished in different places and included necessary but unprecedented elemens in the middle. Second, they argued for, and themselves modelled, a particular way of life, a way which would before long be a cause of remark, simtimes curious and sometimes hostile, among their neighbours. Third, they constructed and maintained communities which ignored the normal ties of kinship, local or geographical identity, or language – not to mention gender or class. We do not hear of people in the ancient world being thrown out of cities for practising mainstream 'religion'. On the contrary: 'religion' was what kept the wheels of the state (the city or country) turning in the right direction. We do hear, frequently, of civic authorities banishing philosophers, or even putting them to death: Socrates is the most obvious example. That is why the more likely translation of hetaeriai in Pliny's letter is not 'religious association' but (as in the Loeb translation) political associations. From this vantage point, it begins to look as though the entire 'history of religions' enterprise of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, at least in relation to Paul, a massive exercise in missing the point. To people of his day, he and his communities would have looked more like a new school of philosophy than a type of religion. A strange philosophy, of course, with unexpected and even disturbing features. But a philosophical school none the less.

What has happened, of course, is that in the western world for the last two hundred years the categories 'politics' and 'religion' have been carefully separated, each being defined negatively in relation to the other. 'Politics', for the modern west, is about the running of countries and cities as though there were no god; 'religion' is about engaging in present piety and seeking future salvation as though there were no polis, no civic reality. 'Philosophy', in the modern western world, has maintained an uncomfortable and complicated relationship with both 'politics' and 'religion' The discomfort and complexity have arisen not least because, like a marriage counsellor trying to help a couple who are not on speaking terms, the two conversations have had to proceed independently. So Paul has been studied in 'departments of religion', though neither in ancient nor in modern terms do his letters, or the communities which he founded, belong primarily in such a category. And since Paul's followers gave allegiance to Jesus as kyrios in a world where, amid many other kyrioi, one Kyrios stood out, namely Caesar, they formed groups that might well have been suspected of political insubordination." (Ib, 203f).