Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T03:58:22.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Changing Ideas in New Testament Eschatology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Donald Joseph Selby
Affiliation:
Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina

Extract

Sooner or later every study of the New Testament must deal with the problem of its eschatology. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, the center of the New Testament is the messiah whom the earliest preachers identified as Jesus. While the term itself simply means, “the Anointed One,” by the time of the New Testament it had come to be inseparably associated with eschatological hopes. That these hopes were expressed in varied and often contradictory forms only adds to the problem. In any case, it is clear that the proclamation that the messiah is Jesus is inevitably an eschatological proclamation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1957

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 (New York, Scribners, 1936), pp. 49, 53.

2 The Apostolic Preaching, (New York, Harpers, 1951), p. 87Google Scholar.

3 Ibid, p. 93.

4 However, it is quite possible that this particular passage originated in Period B. The point is that it evidences that kind of imminent eschatology which characterized Period A and became the legacy of Period B.

5 I.e., Theudas and Judas, Acts 5:36 f; The Egyptian, Acts 21:38; et al.

6 Cadbury, , in Foakes-Jackson, and Lake, Kirsopp, Beginnings of Christianity, (London, Macmillan and Co., 1933), Vol. IV, p. 134Google Scholar.

7 Cf. opposite view in John 1:21. Note: The depicting of John in a coat of camel's hair and leather girdle aids the picture of an Elijah redivivus. Perhaps this description resulted from the belief that he was Elijah.

8 This whole section could aptly be entitled “A Christian Preacher's Handbook.”

9 Religious Development Between the Old and the New Testament, (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1914), p. 19Google Scholar.