(On Mark 13; the Significance of A.D. 70)
"When the gospel is announced, says Paul, God's righteousness is unveiled." (Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire)

"One of the main reasons, I suppose, why the obvious way of reading the chapter has been ignored for so long must be the fact that in a good deal of Christian theology the fall of Jerusalem has had no theological significance. This has meant not only that Mark 13 is found puzzling, but also that all the references to the same event elsewhere in the gospels -- even where it stares one in the face, as in Luke 13:1-5 -- have been read as general warnings of hellfire in an afterlife, rather than the literal and physical divine-judgment-through-Roman-judgment that we have seen to be characteristic of Jesus' story." (Jesus and Victory of God, pp. 343-344)

"the word "gospel" carries two sets of resonances for Paul. On the one hand, the gospel Paul preached was the fulfilment of the message of Isaiah 40 and 52, the message of comfort for Israel and of hope for the whole world, because YHWH, the god of Israel, was returning to Zion to judge and redeem. On the other hand, in the context into which Paul was speaking, "gospel" would mean the celebration of the accession, or birth, of a king or emperor. Though no doubt petty kingdoms might use the word for themselves, in Paul's world the main "gospel" was the news of, or the celebration of, Caesar." (Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire)


(On the "Israel of God")
"We can be virtually certain that Jesus, like other leadership prophets of the first century, thought of his followers as the true people of Israel, who would survive the coming moment of crisis and form the renewed people of the covenant God." (JVG, p.321)


(On the "End of the World")
"Within the mainline Jewish writings of this period, covering a wide range of styles, genres, political persuasions and theological perspectives, there is virtually no evidence that Jews were expecting the end of the space-time universe. There is abundant evidence that they knew a good metaphor when they saw one, and used cosmic imagery to bring out the full theological significance of cataclysmic socio-political events. There is almost nothing to suggest that they followed the Stoics into the belief that the world itself would come to an end; and there is almost everything to suggest that they did not." (NTPG 333)

"To the list of sources there in favour of the position advanced should be added Horslet 1987, 138f., 337; and (cited by Horsley) Wilder 1959. Among many passages which could be cited, the three which Allison 1985, 89 quotes, against the drift of his own argument (on which see above, 209 n. 38, and the next note, below), will do for a start: Ps. - Philo 11.3-5; 4 Ezra 3.18-19; and bZeb. 116a." (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 321f.)

"If Jesus and the early church used the relevant language in the same way as their contemporiries, it is highly unlikely that they would have been referring to the actual end of the world, and highly likely that they would have been referring to events within space-time history which they interpreted as the coming of the kingdom. It will not do to dismiss this reading of 'apocalyptic' language as 'merely metaphorical'. Metaphors have teeth; the complex metaphors available to first-century Jews had particularly sharp ones." (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 321)


(On the Resurrection)
"The early Christian hope for bodily resurrection is clearly Jewish in origin, there being no possible pagan antecedent. Here, however, there is no spectrum of opinion: Earliest Christianity simply believed in resurrection, that is, the overcoming of death by the justice-bringing power of the creator God. " (The Resurrection of Resurrection)


(On King Jesus/Caesar Cult Controversy)
"What is the immediate significance of this Jesus-and-Caesar contrast? It was of course a challenge to an alternative loyalty. Jesus is the reality, Caesar the parody."

"The most exciting developments today in the study of St Paul and his thought are not, I think, the recent works on what is usually called Paul's Theology. I would highlight, rather, the study of the interface and conflict between Paul's gospel, the message about the crucified Jesus, and the world in which his entire ministry was conducted, the world in which Caesar not only held sway but exercised power through his divine claim. What happens when we line up Paul's gospel with Caesar's empire?"

"The evidence now available, including that from epigraphy and archaeology, shows that the cult of Caesar was not simply one new religion among many in the Roman world. Already by Paul's time it had become the dominant cult in a large part of the Empire, certainly in the parts where Paul was active, and was the means whereby the Romans managed to control and govern such huge areas as came under their sway. Who needs armies when they have worship?"

"Theologically, it belongs completely with Isaiah's ringing monotheistic affirmations that YHWH and YHWH alone is the true god, the only creator, the only sovereign of the world, and that the gods of the nations are contemptible idols whose devotees are deceived, at best wasting their time and at worst under the sway of demons. Politically, it cannot but have been heard as a summons to allegiance to "another king", which is of course precisely what Luke says Paul was accused of saying (Acts 17.7). Practically, this means that Paul, in announcing the gospel, was more like a royal herald than a religious preacher or theological teacher."

"What the older history-of-religions argument failed to reckon with was the Jewish understanding that, precisely because of Israel's status within the purposes of the creator god, Israel's king was always supposed to be the world's true king. "His dominion shall be from one sea to the other; from the River to the ends of the earth" (Ps. 72.8). "The root of Jesse shall rise to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope" (Isa. 11.10, cited Rom. 15.12). Paul endorsed this train of thought, and he believed it to have been fulfilled in Jesus." (Paul's Gospel and Ceasar's Empire)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jesus and the Victory of God" (Fortress Press, 1996). Referring to the 13th chapter of Mark and the parallel Gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke, where Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, Wright observes (pp. 343-344): "One of the main reasons, I suppose, why the obvious way of reading the chapter has been ignored for so long must be the fact that in a good deal of Christian theology the fall of Jerusalem has had no theological significance. This has meant not only that Mark 13 is found puzzling, but also that all the references to the same event elsewhere in the gospels -- even where it stares one in the face, as in Luke 13:1-5 -- have been read as general warnings of hellfire in an afterlife, rather than the literal and physical divine-judgment-through-Roman-judgment that we have seen to be characteristic of Jesus' story."

Wright goes on to note that today's scholars, preachers, and laymen tend to read Jesus' apocalyptic discourse on the Mount of Olives, where he makes his fall-of-Jerusalem prophecy (Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21) as an account of the end of the space-time universe and of Jesus' downward travel to earth in a cloud. But Wright rejects this view as anachronistic -- that is, as totally out of sync with the time and place of Jesus' 1st-century ministry. Wright points out (pp. 345-346): "We must...stress again: as far as the disciples, good first-century Jews as they were, were concerned, there was no reason whatever for them to be thinking about the end of the space-time universe. There was no reason, either in their own background or in a single thing that Jesus had said up to them at that point, for it even to occur to them that the true story of the world, or of Israel, or of Jesus himself, might include either the end of the space-time universe, or Jesus or anyone else floating down to earth on a cloud."

"The disciples WERE, however, very interested in a story which ended with Jesus' coming to Jerusalem to reign as king. They WERE looking for the fulfillment of Israel's hopes, for the story told so often in Israel's scriptures to reach its appointed climax. And the 'close of the age' for which they longed was not the end of the space-time order, but the end of the present evil age...." Jesus' apocalyptic discourse on the Mount of Olives therefore has to do with his "'coming' or 'arrival' in the sense of his actual enthronment as king, consequent upon the dethronement of the present powers that were occupying the holy city."

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