Join host John Williamson in part two of an enlightening discussion with Tucker S. Furda about his new book, "Jesus and His Promised Second Coming, Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins." Furda, an associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, delves into the intricate topics of the Gospels, Eschatology, and early Christian beliefs.
Explore how historical figures like Paul navigated internal disagreements within the Jesus movement, and the widespread belief in Jesus's return. Furda addresses fascinating questions around the resurrection and shares insights from the Gospel narratives, particularly focusing on Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.
Discover Furda’s perspective on the ongoing scholarly debate about New Testament sources and his argument that evidence of Jesus's second coming traces back to Jesus himself. This episode also highlights the impact of Christian anti-Judaism on historical research, inviting listeners to rethink traditional interpretations.
Engage with thoughtful insights into early Christianity, informed by Jesus's teachings and prophetic traditions. This conversation is perfect for anyone interested in history, theology, and the modern implications of ancient texts.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:11 Music.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 Welcome to The Deconstructionist Podcast. I'm your host, John Williamson,
00:00:14 --> 00:00:18 and we're back with part two of my interview with Tucker S. Ferta.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:23 Tucker just released a brand new book called Jesus and His Promised Second Coming,
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:31 It's fantastic. The forward was written by another guest of the podcast, D.L.C. Allison Jr.
00:00:31 --> 00:00:37 Fantastic book, really interesting look into the second coming and the references in the Bible.
00:00:37 --> 00:00:42 But Tucker is an associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:46 His research interests include the Gospels, the Historical Jesus,
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 the History of New Testament Research, Second Temple Judaism,
00:00:50 --> 00:00:51 Eschatology, and Hermeneutics.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:56 His other publications include the book Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis.
00:00:56 --> 00:01:00 Check it out. We will have all the relevant links in the show notes.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:06 So, without further ado, here is the conclusion of my interview with Tucker Freakin' Furta.
00:01:06 --> 00:01:19 No church, tell me what made us think, that.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:20 Music.
00:01:19 --> 00:01:22 And that's probably surprising to some people because I know there's,
00:01:23 --> 00:01:27 you know, Paul is a kind of controversial figure within the New Testament.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 And, you know, a lot of people are like, well, Paul didn't even really know
00:01:30 --> 00:01:34 Jesus personally. And so how can he propose to represent, you know,
00:01:34 --> 00:01:38 Jesus' teachings and what Jesus actually intended and these sorts of things
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 versus disciples who actually walked alongside him.
00:01:41 --> 00:01:45 And so it becomes sort of, I would imagine,
00:01:45 --> 00:01:50 problematic from a historical perspective to kind of determine Paul's view on
00:01:50 --> 00:01:55 Jesus versus maybe Matthew or Luke or someone like that who actually knew Jesus
00:01:55 --> 00:01:56 and worked alongside him.
00:01:57 --> 00:02:01 Yeah, I mean, it is tricky. And I think that is my interest in Paul really is
00:02:01 --> 00:02:06 not so much what Paul himself has to say about the second coming of Jesus.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:11 It, I'm, that's important, obviously, but I'm really interested in kind of what
00:02:11 --> 00:02:16 we can infer about the wider Jesus movement based upon how he talks about this.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:20 So, because you just mentioned like, you know, he didn't know Jesus in the flesh,
00:02:20 --> 00:02:24 other people did, you know, and we know Paul's very divisive and he had to make
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 arguments about things that Christians disagreed about,
00:02:27 --> 00:02:31 like circumcision and how Gentiles are going to be included in this.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:36 There's lots of internal disagreement argument in the Jesus movement about those questions.
00:02:36 --> 00:02:41 Paul has to make arguments about it. It's striking to me that he doesn't really need.
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 To make arguments in his letters about the second coming.
00:02:45 --> 00:02:49 He can allude to it, allude to the return of Jesus or the judgment or things
00:02:49 --> 00:02:55 and kind of with, you know, brief turns of phrase that also assumes his readers
00:02:55 --> 00:02:56 on the other side of this exchange,
00:02:57 --> 00:03:00 know what he's talking about and then they can just assume this, right?
00:03:00 --> 00:03:04 So that is interesting, I think, in terms of, you know, in these early sources,
00:03:04 --> 00:03:08 I think the picture we get from Paul is that this was a common view.
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 There's a common widespread view that's not really controversial.
00:03:11 --> 00:03:15 It's not like it's Paul's unique thing, saying Jesus is going to come back.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:19 It's something he likely even tells us in 1 Thessalonians. It's something he
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 received from tradition, right?
00:03:21 --> 00:03:26 And so it takes us even a step back, a step closer back to the ministry of Jesus.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:31 Yeah, that's really telling from a historical perspective. If it's not something
00:03:31 --> 00:03:36 that comes up a lot in the sense that he feels a need to propagate this idea,
00:03:36 --> 00:03:41 it already exists within the communities, these early Christian churches.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 Talk a little bit about like, because you do mention in the book that there
00:03:44 --> 00:03:50 are some scholars who would argue that sort of after the death of Jesus,
00:03:50 --> 00:03:56 that the second resurrection was sort of a fabrication or something that was
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 kind of written into the story by the early followers.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 The story of his resurrection, you mean? Yeah.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 So I have, this is a complicated question that I intentionally,
00:04:08 --> 00:04:13 I try to claim as little as possible about this because I don't want it to distract from my argument.
00:04:13 --> 00:04:18 And I really don't think, I think there's many different arguments about the
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 resurrection that what many could, you could take many different angles on this
00:04:21 --> 00:04:25 and still appreciate kind of the bigger thing I'm trying to do with the second coming.
00:04:25 --> 00:04:30 So all I do with the resurrection of Jesus individually is just make the claim
00:04:30 --> 00:04:36 that the early followers of Jesus believed he was raised from the dead and that
00:04:36 --> 00:04:39 they connected that to the general resurrection of the dead.
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 And so, they believed, so they understood the resurrection of Jesus in an eschatological
00:04:44 --> 00:04:49 way, meaning they thought that, like, I think Paul's logic in 1 Corinthians 15.
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 You know, that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ
00:04:53 --> 00:04:55 has been raised. There's no general resurrection.
00:04:55 --> 00:05:00 I mean, he's making sense of the resurrection of Jesus in light of the general resurrection.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 I don't think that's Paul's own logic. I think there's other,
00:05:03 --> 00:05:07 that's a kind of wider thing, even though he's articulating it in that way.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:12 And so, it's an eschatological claim for early Christians to say Jesus has been
00:05:12 --> 00:05:16 raised from the dead, the first fruits of the resurrection is starting.
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 There's many ways we might explain why Christians are saying that,
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 and it's not really important for my argument to get into, like,
00:05:22 --> 00:05:25 was it because of the empty tomb or because of whatever?
00:05:25 --> 00:05:29 There's many proposals there. I'm just saying at a base level,
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32 Christians are claiming this, followers of Jesus are claiming this,
00:05:33 --> 00:05:34 that he's been raised again.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 Yeah so talk about you kind of go through the gospels one
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 by one and you start with with mark and i'm presuming because
00:05:40 --> 00:05:45 mark is generally argued to have been the first one written so what do the gospel
00:05:45 --> 00:05:50 starting with mark have to say what what do they tell us yeah i think the the
00:05:50 --> 00:05:54 typical thing that has happened in discussion of the gospels we see in like
00:05:54 --> 00:05:58 glasson and robinson's work that i talked about earlier is they cut they go
00:05:58 --> 00:06:00 immediately for like certain passages.
00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 Right and i talk about those passages too but
00:06:04 --> 00:06:07 i i want to put them in a bigger framework in the
00:06:07 --> 00:06:10 framework of the entire source of the entire gospel of
00:06:10 --> 00:06:13 mark and i don't think you know mark is
00:06:13 --> 00:06:18 not a systematic theology by any means but but you know before we talk about
00:06:18 --> 00:06:23 the historical jesus certainly and even before we talk about tradition before
00:06:23 --> 00:06:27 the gospels we need to like look at like what does mark think is going on with
00:06:27 --> 00:06:31 this tradition mark has decided whoever Mark wrote this gospel, decided to write up.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:36 And so I try to look at the whole sweep of the gospel to make the argument that
00:06:36 --> 00:06:43 the gospel of Mark is written for readers who believe that they are kind of
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 participants in eschatological time.
00:06:46 --> 00:06:51 Jesus lives before them, but there's stuff Jesus says in the gospel of Mark
00:06:51 --> 00:06:57 that is maybe fulfilled in their own immediate time, but also looks into their own future.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 And so I kind of look at the narrative of Mark, and it's a very sophisticated.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:06 Understanding of time you see in Mark, where it's assuming readers are looking
00:07:06 --> 00:07:09 at the story and saying, yeah, Jesus was a historical figure then.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 He's talking about, say, the destruction of the temple. Maybe that's like a
00:07:12 --> 00:07:17 current event, but he's also talking about things that have to be future events for Mark's readers,
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 like in terms of the whole source, the things about the judgment and so on,
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 things about entering into the kingdom of God and so on.
00:07:24 --> 00:07:28 So I think we need to understand these isolated passages in light of that bigger
00:07:28 --> 00:07:32 thing that Mark is talking about, having Jesus talk about things that happen
00:07:32 --> 00:07:39 in the future for his own readers, and expecting a transformative reality for them, I think.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:44 And then I get into these kind of classic passages that are much debated, right?
00:07:44 --> 00:07:47 They appear at the end of Mark 8, at the end of Peter's confession,
00:07:47 --> 00:07:54 at the very end of the apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13, and then in the trial before Caiaphas in 14.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:59 And these are, for good reason, I think often read together because there's
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 a lot of similar imagery.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:07 All of these, I think, draw on Daniel 7. this Daniel 7 about the one like a
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 son of man who comes on or with the clouds of heaven.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:14 And we can go more into this if you want, but the punchline is I think all of
00:08:14 --> 00:08:18 these passages are best understood for Mark.
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 I'm not talking all about the historical Jesus, but for Mark,
00:08:20 --> 00:08:27 they're being presented as Jesus talking about a future return after a time of absence.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:32 And I think that in all of these as well, there is a sense of imminence here
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 though too. And this is important for my argument.
00:08:35 --> 00:08:39 I'm not claiming that, you know, Mark's gospel is expecting the history to continue
00:08:39 --> 00:08:41 for centuries and centuries.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 This is still a very imminent eschatology.
00:08:45 --> 00:08:49 And the line at the end of Mark 8, just to use an example where Jesus says,
00:08:49 --> 00:08:53 there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 of God has come in power, right?
00:08:55 --> 00:08:59 I don't think he's talking just about the transfiguration in Mark.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 I think he's talking about his, Mark is, Jesus is talking about his own return.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:06 And that's a very imminent, you know, frame of reference. Yeah.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:12 So yeah, so that I think I see all of those three key texts kind of landing
00:09:12 --> 00:09:13 in the same in the same place.
00:09:14 --> 00:09:19 Yeah, that's it's really interesting. And so I like how next you get into and
00:09:19 --> 00:09:20 you kind of path you a pair.
00:09:20 --> 00:09:24 I talking is hard at the end of the day, but you pair Matthew and Luke together
00:09:24 --> 00:09:25 for a particular reason.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:29 But then you kind of contrast it versus sort of what we learned from Mark.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:30 So talk about that a little bit. Yeah.
00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 Maybe I can do that and kind of anticipate a little bit or talk about the historical
00:09:34 --> 00:09:36 argument I make on the basis of this.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:41 So with Matthew and Luke, we can actually look at how they use Mark.
00:09:42 --> 00:09:47 So we can't do this very often in this kind of work. And so it's really important
00:09:47 --> 00:09:52 to help us understand kind of what these authors are assuming about tradition
00:09:52 --> 00:09:56 and how freely they can use tradition, right? And there's other traditions they're using too.
00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 It's not all just coming out of their own minds when they're receiving Mark,
00:09:59 --> 00:10:03 but it's a very crucial window into the origins of Christianity in this way.
00:10:04 --> 00:10:10 And so what I find in Matthew and Luke's use of Mark is that they maintain and keep.
00:10:11 --> 00:10:15 The general eschatological portrait you get in the gospel of Mark.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 So there's continuity, but there's also change.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:24 They are developing Mark in kind of a little bit different ways.
00:10:24 --> 00:10:31 And so I think Matthew, almost there's more eschatology, more details tied to the return of Jesus.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 A good example of this is in Mark 13.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 In Mark 13, Jesus talks about the coming of the of man.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:41 Matthew puts that at the end of his apocalyptic discourse too,
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 but adds some interesting details.
00:10:43 --> 00:10:47 He adds that at the coming of the son of man, all the tribes of the earth will
00:10:47 --> 00:10:49 wail, which is a line from Zechariah 12.
00:10:49 --> 00:10:53 And he also adds that there's going to be a trumpet. So Mark didn't have the
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 line from Zechariah 12 and Mark didn't have the trumpet.
00:10:56 --> 00:11:00 So there's clearly development in the tradition, but this is the crucial thing
00:11:00 --> 00:11:03 is it's development and change in kind.
00:11:03 --> 00:11:08 So those things, drawing on this day of the Lord passage from Zechariah and
00:11:08 --> 00:11:11 drawing on a trumpet imagery, which we know from other Jewish sources is connected
00:11:11 --> 00:11:16 to this idea of the eschatological ingathering of the tribes at the end time.
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 Like Mark is interested in both of those things too, in other places.
00:11:20 --> 00:11:24 So it's change, but it's a change in kind, right?
00:11:24 --> 00:11:29 And so it's not, we don't find Matthew and Luke turning Mark's Jesus into a
00:11:29 --> 00:11:34 totally new thing. And that's important for me to try and chart the nature of the tradition.
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 And it also makes me a little skeptical of my own ability to say,
00:11:37 --> 00:11:41 Jesus said and did this thing because I can see the change, right?
00:11:42 --> 00:11:46 And I don't assume that it was any different from Mark in using whatever sources
00:11:46 --> 00:11:48 Mark had. I would assume there would be change as well.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:53 I'm just thinking it's more likely we have change in kind rather than change
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 into something totally different.
00:11:55 --> 00:11:59 Yeah, absolutely. And so we kind of get through the first three gospels and
00:11:59 --> 00:12:03 often referred to as the synoptic gospels.
00:12:03 --> 00:12:07 And often in conversation about those three books, we talk about the fact that
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 they do have a lot in common.
00:12:09 --> 00:12:14 And again, going back to that sort of common source that they may have pulled from.
00:12:14 --> 00:12:18 But then you've got, as you mentioned, you've got the gospel of John that people
00:12:18 --> 00:12:24 sort of hold at a slightly more distant arm's reach, because it is very different
00:12:24 --> 00:12:26 in a lot of ways. It's very poetic, whoever wrote it.
00:12:26 --> 00:12:31 And so what can we derive from the Gospel of John and sort of John's own way
00:12:31 --> 00:12:34 of kind of describing the teachings and the mission of Jesus?
00:12:35 --> 00:12:40 Yeah. I mean, there's a huge thing, a huge development in New Testament studies
00:12:40 --> 00:12:45 right now that we're kind of living through that I tried to write without picking
00:12:45 --> 00:12:47 a team, even though I have some opinions about this.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:51 But the sea change kind of thing is, it used to be pretty common to think John
00:12:51 --> 00:12:56 was independent of the synoptic Gospels. and so historical Jesus scholars could
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 be interested in John because they think hey here we got some into independent
00:12:59 --> 00:13:00 tradition that could get us back to Jesus.
00:13:01 --> 00:13:05 Fewer and fewer new testament scholars are thinking that now and they're seeing john is,
00:13:06 --> 00:13:10 maybe not like slavishly copying from the synoptics but is dependent on them,
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 to greater and lesser degrees you know so i talk about
00:13:14 --> 00:13:18 john kind of looking at it in its own terms and not really trying to make a
00:13:18 --> 00:13:23 big deal about that debate so i'm not arguing john's independent i think it's
00:13:23 --> 00:13:27 possible john is like has access to some other traditions that were not known
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 to the synoptic gospels but i'm really not i'm looking more kind of in john's
00:13:30 --> 00:13:31 world like what is going on.
00:13:31 --> 00:13:35 Now, there's been and still is a really popular interpretation of John that
00:13:35 --> 00:13:43 sees basically everything in the other Gospels that is a future orientation is a realized thing.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:48 So, this is the jargony terms realized eschatology in the Gospel of John.
00:13:48 --> 00:13:53 You know, a good example of this would be when Jesus, for the raising of Lazarus,
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 you know, he goes up and meets family.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:59 We know he will live again on the resurrection on the last day.
00:13:59 --> 00:14:04 And so they say something about the future and the response is,
00:14:04 --> 00:14:05 I am the resurrection and the life.
00:14:06 --> 00:14:10 And so it's a kind of realizing that hope that can be experienced now.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:16 Some people think that that realized eschatology is so extensive that there's
00:14:16 --> 00:14:19 really nothing left in the gospel of John for any future hope,
00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 which would include the future coming of Jesus.
00:14:22 --> 00:14:26 And I disagree with that interpretation. So I agree that there's a lot of realize
00:14:26 --> 00:14:30 eschatology in John that goes far beyond anything in the synoptics,
00:14:30 --> 00:14:35 but it's not true that John has no expectation for the future.
00:14:35 --> 00:14:39 I think there are things in John, there are references to the final judgment,
00:14:39 --> 00:14:43 there are references to being raised up on the last day, which refers to the
00:14:43 --> 00:14:47 general resurrection of the dead, and then it's specifically in the so-called
00:14:47 --> 00:14:52 farewell discourses later on in John, we get some language of Jesus talking about leaving.
00:14:53 --> 00:14:57 Being separated from his disciples and then coming to them again.
00:14:57 --> 00:15:03 And I think that for the readers of John, this operates on kind of two levels.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 On the narrative level, as Jesus is talking to his followers,
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 that makes sense as like he's talking about the resurrection, maybe, you know?
00:15:11 --> 00:15:15 But I think for hearers, they hear this in a slightly different key because
00:15:15 --> 00:15:17 John wants to say this also applies to them.
00:15:18 --> 00:15:23 And so, the going away of Jesus and coming back and coming again to take them
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 with him makes the most sense in light of these traditions we find all over
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 in the early Jesus movement about his return in the future.
00:15:29 --> 00:15:34 And so I think that John maintains the general hope you find in the synoptics,
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 even if the realized eschatology is much more intense.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:42 What's interesting, too, is it just occurred to me that if you follow the general
00:15:42 --> 00:15:46 or if you believe the general timeline, even give or take a decade or so,
00:15:46 --> 00:15:51 in terms of when the Gospels were written and thinking that Mark is the earliest
00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 and assuming John was the latest,
00:15:53 --> 00:15:59 over that period of time, that would also probably inform whoever the writer
00:15:59 --> 00:16:03 or writers were in terms of how they viewed this sort of future coming.
00:16:04 --> 00:16:07 That's right. And I think, you know, there's been some great work done on this
00:16:07 --> 00:16:09 very thing in Luke's gospel.
00:16:09 --> 00:16:15 There was a really popular interpretive kind of camp in the mid-late 20th century
00:16:15 --> 00:16:22 that sees Luke as all about kind of responding to concerns about the delay in the return of Jesus.
00:16:22 --> 00:16:27 And I think in some cases that makes sense. With some passages, I think you can see that.
00:16:27 --> 00:16:32 And there is some of the more future-oriented predictions of Jesus as they're
00:16:32 --> 00:16:37 presented and Matthew and Mark, they have a more kind of massages the language
00:16:37 --> 00:16:40 a little bit to give them a more realized kind of immediate application.
00:16:40 --> 00:16:44 But I don't think, again, that it like takes, there's still a really important
00:16:44 --> 00:16:49 future hope in Luke and Acts that you're, we're just, we're reading the sources
00:16:49 --> 00:16:54 selectively if we're only looking at the realized things and missing the kind of bigger picture.
00:16:55 --> 00:16:58 Yeah one of the things i wanted to ask you about too and kind
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 of skipped over this one so i'm going to go back up but you talk about and
00:17:01 --> 00:17:05 this made me kind of harken back to my my younger years my dad you know i grew
00:17:05 --> 00:17:10 up my dad is a elca lutheran pastor you know and so you know very traditional
00:17:10 --> 00:17:14 in the sense that you know we recited every week the nicene creed or the apostolic
00:17:14 --> 00:17:18 creed one of the creeds and there's this famous line that i have memorized to
00:17:18 --> 00:17:21 my core you know and it includes that famous line,
00:17:21 --> 00:17:23 and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
00:17:24 --> 00:17:28 And you make, you remark in the book that, you know, what does that even exactly
00:17:28 --> 00:17:31 mean? Because like, when will he come?
00:17:32 --> 00:17:36 You know, we don't really have a clear response in terms of like timeframe.
00:17:36 --> 00:17:39 And as we've been talking about, it hasn't happened yet that we're aware of,
00:17:40 --> 00:17:41 and it's been centuries.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 And then also, you know, to judge the living and the dead, what,
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 you know, it doesn't really give specifics in terms of exactly what that means.
00:17:49 --> 00:17:56 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think where you can see the logic of the creedal formulation
00:17:56 --> 00:17:57 there in terms of exegesis is,
00:17:58 --> 00:18:02 I mean, you really see this in Paul, that the return of Jesus is closely tied
00:18:02 --> 00:18:06 to like the judgment and these other kind of climactic eschatological events
00:18:06 --> 00:18:10 thought to happen at the close of history in a serious way.
00:18:11 --> 00:18:15 So, So the logic of that makes sense, you know, even if it's not spelled out
00:18:15 --> 00:18:17 exactly kind of what, you know, what that's going to look like.
00:18:17 --> 00:18:24 I think, you know, the question of when is, this is where, to be honest,
00:18:24 --> 00:18:28 John, this is like something where I don't really know what I think about the
00:18:28 --> 00:18:31 theological implications of this.
00:18:31 --> 00:18:36 I felt like, as a historian, I just wanted to be honest with the evidence I
00:18:36 --> 00:18:39 found and kind of follow it where it was leading and conclude. mood.
00:18:40 --> 00:18:43 I, I personally, I don't know if you want to get into this, but I personally
00:18:43 --> 00:18:47 make sense of this along the line, because I am, I'm, you know,
00:18:47 --> 00:18:50 proud to be a participant in this movement and invested in this.
00:18:50 --> 00:18:55 And, you know, I, so I personally make sense of this as a, in light of the incarnation,
00:18:56 --> 00:19:00 you know, that this is part of, you know, for me, it's part of my own human
00:19:00 --> 00:19:04 existence, at least, like not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow and having
00:19:04 --> 00:19:09 questions about the future is like really important for kind of daily experience of life.
00:19:09 --> 00:19:13 And so I think it's not, I'm not trying to explain it all away.
00:19:13 --> 00:19:17 I think it raises really challenging questions, but I think that there are resources
00:19:17 --> 00:19:20 in the Christian tradition to help make sense of this.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:26 And I remember a while ago, I was reading an article from a modern scholar who
00:19:26 --> 00:19:31 cited Cyril of Alexandria, who is one of the kind of really significant figure
00:19:31 --> 00:19:35 in writing about high Christology, the Chalcedonian Christology.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:41 And he says something, Cyril says something about, like, I'm gonna butcher the
00:19:41 --> 00:19:44 language, but it's something like, out of love for us, he did not neglect to
00:19:44 --> 00:19:48 assume, like, all of who we are, included in which is ignorance.
00:19:49 --> 00:19:52 You know and that's i mean that's really profound right that
00:19:52 --> 00:19:55 is really profound and i don't think cyril would cyril probably would
00:19:55 --> 00:19:58 not like my book and he would probably not like some other
00:19:58 --> 00:20:01 stuff happening in historical jesus research but there
00:20:01 --> 00:20:03 the point is that there are some resources in the
00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 tradition i think to wrestle with some of these some of
00:20:06 --> 00:20:09 these questions that we have yeah absolutely one of
00:20:09 --> 00:20:12 the things that i love that you have in the book because i'm a
00:20:12 --> 00:20:15 visual person and so you have this diagram that i thought was
00:20:15 --> 00:20:17 awesome because it really makes me think deeply about
00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 a lot of different parts of the new testament really and it's
00:20:20 --> 00:20:23 this sort of cyclical diagram where you kind of
00:20:23 --> 00:20:26 show how one thing informs another and
00:20:26 --> 00:20:29 how it becomes cyclical so cyclical so you talk
00:20:29 --> 00:20:33 about the coming of jesus is connected to the coming of god on the day of the
00:20:33 --> 00:20:38 lord which draws from israel's scripture and traditions and further informs
00:20:38 --> 00:20:42 the coming of jesus and it goes around and round so talk about like what you're
00:20:42 --> 00:20:47 trying to convey there but also it makes me think of sort of where oftentimes,
00:20:47 --> 00:20:49 especially in the Gospels, in the New Testament, we see things that are sort
00:20:49 --> 00:20:54 of confirming things that were sort of foretold in the Old Testament and how
00:20:54 --> 00:20:56 those things sort of form that connection.
00:20:57 --> 00:21:02 Yeah. So, thank you for mentioning my one diagram that I was so proud of and
00:21:02 --> 00:21:05 took me so long to figure out.
00:21:05 --> 00:21:09 And then I gave it to Erdman's and they fixed it and made it way better than
00:21:09 --> 00:21:11 it was even in my original version.
00:21:11 --> 00:21:15 But yeah, so this emerges in the fourth part of the book. So,
00:21:15 --> 00:21:19 this is part of my trying to make an argument about the historical Jesus.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:24 And the big thing I'm wrestling with here is that it's just the frank acknowledgement
00:21:24 --> 00:21:30 that the literary sources we have are deeply engaged in exegesis,
00:21:30 --> 00:21:35 close reading of the scriptures of Israel in various different forms, right?
00:21:35 --> 00:21:40 And back to the great example of this is, you know, Matthew's rewriting of Mark
00:21:40 --> 00:21:43 13 and all the tribes of the earth will wail, right?
00:21:44 --> 00:21:52 You can see there like scripture had a generative function in early Christian theologizing.
00:21:52 --> 00:21:56 People are going to the scriptures and finding and learning more about Jesus
00:21:56 --> 00:21:59 and bringing that has shaped the way the gospels are written.
00:22:00 --> 00:22:03 So, part of the cyclical nature of this diagram is acknowledging that,
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 like, this is really important historically.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:10 We need to account for the fact that we're looking at the end result of a process
00:22:10 --> 00:22:14 that is a kind of spiraling process, and so we need to be careful about when
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 we find something in the sources just immediately tying it to Jesus, right?
00:22:18 --> 00:22:25 But my historical argument here is that we also need to explain kind of where the impulse came from.
00:22:26 --> 00:22:30 To read scripture in this kind of way, right? Any historical argument about
00:22:30 --> 00:22:33 Christian origins, you can't just be like, well, I don't have an explanation for that.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:37 If you don't have an explanation for that, it says something about the weakness of your own proposal.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:42 Like you could say early Christians are reading these texts in new ways and
00:22:42 --> 00:22:44 it has nothing to do with the historical Jesus. That'd be, it's a claim.
00:22:44 --> 00:22:47 Now we need to see, is that a probable claim?
00:22:47 --> 00:22:51 Is there a better explanation, you know? And so what I'm trying to argue is
00:22:51 --> 00:22:55 that early Christian sources are very interested in Daniel 7.
00:22:56 --> 00:23:00 They're very interested in the son of man figure and many other things that
00:23:00 --> 00:23:03 are happening in there about, you know, that Jesus has a saying about,
00:23:04 --> 00:23:07 you know, that his disciples sitting on thrones, judging the tribes of Israel.
00:23:08 --> 00:23:10 There's all this giving and bestowing language you find.
00:23:10 --> 00:23:13 There's many things we could look at that draw on Daniel 7.
00:23:14 --> 00:23:17 And there's lots of stuff in our sources about the day of the Lord.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:23 So linking the future to prophetic expectation in the scriptures about the coming day of the Lord,
00:23:23 --> 00:23:27 which I argue also in the book already by the first century was connected to
00:23:27 --> 00:23:32 the kingdom of God or expectations about the reign of God in the future.
00:23:32 --> 00:23:38 So I'm not making any claims in this book about Jesus said this thing that goes
00:23:38 --> 00:23:42 back here, but I'm trying to argue that with Daniel 7 and with the day of the
00:23:42 --> 00:23:45 Lord stuff, this spiral is so.
00:23:46 --> 00:23:51 Pervasive in all of our sources, and it's so hard to figure out why it would
00:23:51 --> 00:23:56 have ever begun if it doesn't have its genesis in something the original figure
00:23:56 --> 00:23:58 in this movement was doing, right?
00:23:58 --> 00:24:02 So that doesn't mean I can say Jesus said this or that, but I am trying to say
00:24:02 --> 00:24:07 like in general, this historical figure, the most probable reconstruction to
00:24:07 --> 00:24:12 account for these different postures of scripture reading has to go back to this figure in some way.
00:24:13 --> 00:24:17 So I know we're running low on time, so I want to give you an opportunity to
00:24:17 --> 00:24:19 kind of lay it out there for folks.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:23 After kind of combing through all these different resources and kind of sharing
00:24:23 --> 00:24:27 what other scholars have said historically, what does Tucker Furter think?
00:24:27 --> 00:24:31 I'm confused, mostly, about lots of things. Me too.
00:24:32 --> 00:24:39 I mean, I think the big takeaway in terms of the argument is that I am arguing
00:24:39 --> 00:24:42 that the second coming hope does go back to the historical Jesus,
00:24:42 --> 00:24:46 and that explains why it is everywhere in the sources specifically.
00:24:46 --> 00:24:51 And it's the most probable reconstruction, I think, to explain the sources as we have them.
00:24:51 --> 00:24:55 But I'm also arguing that all of this happens in an imminent frame.
00:24:55 --> 00:24:58 We need to account for the fact that, you know, in Paul's letters,
00:24:58 --> 00:25:02 especially his early letters, he seems to be writing under the assumption that
00:25:02 --> 00:25:02 he's still going to be around.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:07 And that has to tell us something about the nature of the original Jesus movement as well.
00:25:07 --> 00:25:11 And that also is not totally on, you know, we have other sources to help us
00:25:11 --> 00:25:16 understand first century Judaism. we could see and understand why this kind of thing would happen.
00:25:17 --> 00:25:21 So that is kind of the big argument side of things in terms of Jesus.
00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 There's also, I would highlight again, the reception history component that
00:25:25 --> 00:25:29 I'm really trying to hold up, which is I'm trying to make the case that the
00:25:29 --> 00:25:33 severing of the second coming hope from Jesus, as much as, and I'm not saying
00:25:33 --> 00:25:35 like modern scholars are doing this, like N.T.
00:25:35 --> 00:25:41 Writer folks, but historically, in centuries before, we have to account for
00:25:41 --> 00:25:48 the fact that Christian anti-Judaism was really significant in the history of research on that thing.
00:25:48 --> 00:25:50 And that has not really been narrated in a way.
00:25:50 --> 00:25:53 And I think that's really important for our understanding of Jewish-Christian
00:25:53 --> 00:25:56 and relations through history and the reception history of the Bible.
00:25:57 --> 00:26:00 And then I guess if I could say one more thing, I would say as someone who is
00:26:00 --> 00:26:04 a participant in this movement and teaches at a seminary, I think there's a
00:26:04 --> 00:26:08 real value, even if I don't know, like, what the theological implication is of this.
00:26:09 --> 00:26:14 You know, I just think there's importance of being honest and asking questions
00:26:14 --> 00:26:19 and pursuing questions and dealing with other scholars and people you disagree
00:26:19 --> 00:26:22 with with charity and trying to understand kind of where they came from.
00:26:22 --> 00:26:26 I see that as like, that's also a deeply Christian thing, I think, right?
00:26:26 --> 00:26:30 And so, I don't know exactly, like, how to make sense of it all and put it all
00:26:30 --> 00:26:33 back together, I don't really lose sleep over that because for me,
00:26:33 --> 00:26:38 that's not why I'm a Christian, is because I get all the answers for everything from the Bible.
00:26:38 --> 00:26:43 I personally am into this because of the people I meet and what I encounter
00:26:43 --> 00:26:45 about the divine, I think, and people I meet today.
00:26:46 --> 00:26:51 I hope that there are Christians, I don't want people to be afraid of historical
00:26:51 --> 00:26:57 Jesus research or kind of shy away from asking and pursuing questions like this.
00:26:57 --> 00:27:01 I love that. That's a beautiful takeaway. And I would wholeheartedly agree.
00:27:01 --> 00:27:05 I think that's been the most life-giving part of even doing this podcast is
00:27:05 --> 00:27:07 the people that I get to meet through doing it.
00:27:07 --> 00:27:10 And as we've said often throughout the years of this podcast,
00:27:10 --> 00:27:14 you don't have to agree with everything someone says to agree with something they say.
00:27:14 --> 00:27:19 I think even the guests that we've had on over the years would not even 100% agree with one another.
00:27:20 --> 00:27:24 But the fun part about it all is just having the conversation and the friendships
00:27:24 --> 00:27:28 that have grown through, through doing this. So I, I completely agree with that.
00:27:29 --> 00:27:32 Well thank you very much it was really i really enjoyed chatting with you
00:27:32 --> 00:27:35 this is great you too thank you so much for coming on before
00:27:35 --> 00:27:38 i let you go where can people go to stay up on top of what you're up to and
00:27:38 --> 00:27:41 ultimately get a copy of the book which again is called
00:27:41 --> 00:27:45 jesus and his second his promise second coming jewish eschatology in christian
00:27:45 --> 00:27:52 oregon yeah so i'm not on social media but i do have i think i didn't think
00:27:52 --> 00:27:58 this i think you're the one then the rest of us probably but i I do have a faculty
00:27:58 --> 00:28:00 webpage at Pittsburgh Seminary,
00:28:00 --> 00:28:03 and there's some things there about stuff I've written.
00:28:03 --> 00:28:08 I do have an academia page, so academia.edu, which it should come up,
00:28:08 --> 00:28:13 and there you can actually download some things and find some articles and things.
00:28:13 --> 00:28:16 And then in terms of the book itself, I would direct you to Erdman's website,
00:28:16 --> 00:28:21 and I think they do have, like around this time of year, they have a kind of discount on the book.
00:28:21 --> 00:28:24 So yeah, there, or Amazon, I'm going to SBL here this weekend,
00:28:24 --> 00:28:27 and so they're going to have a they're gonna have it there hopefully on sale
00:28:27 --> 00:28:30 as well but yeah we'll put the links
00:28:30 --> 00:28:34 in the show notes people go check it out it's fascinating book especially if
00:28:34 --> 00:28:37 you're like me i know we've got a lot of fellow fellow history nerds out there
00:28:37 --> 00:28:42 who really enjoy this sort of uh research and again just having these types.
00:28:42 --> 00:28:46 Of conversations is just so fun and so thank you so much again for coming on
00:28:46 --> 00:28:49 uh really appreciate your time thank you john it's great.
00:28:50 --> 00:33:45 Music.