" . . . the stories Jesus tells about a king or master who goes away for a while and leaves his subjects or servants to trade with his money in his absence were not originally meant to refer to Jesus going away and leaving the church with tasks to get on with until his eventual second coming, even though they were read in that way from fairly early on. They belong in the Jewish world of the first century, where everyone would hear the story to be about God himself, having left Israel and the Temple at the time of the exile, coming back again at last, as the postexilic prophets had said he would, back to Israel, back to Zion, back to the Temple. In their original setting, the point of these stories is that Israel’s God, yhwh, is indeed coming at last to Jerusalem, to the Temple—in and as the human person Jesus of Nazareth. The stories are, in that sense, not about the second coming of Jesus but about the first one. They are explaining, albeit cryptically, Jesus’s own belief, that what he was doing in coming to Jerusalem to enact both judgment and salvation was what yhwh had said in scripture that he would do in person." Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (p. 126). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 14:42:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015