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The contemporary study of Jewish apocalypticism today recognizes the wealth and diversity of ancient traditions concerned with the "unveiling" of heavenly matters understood to involve revealed wisdom, the revealed resolution of time, and revealed cosmology in marked contrast to an earlier focus on eschatology as such. The shift in focus has had a more direct impact on the study of ancient "pseudepigraphic" literature, however, than in New Testament studies, where the narrower focus on eschatological expectation remains dominant. In this Companion, an international team of scholars draws out the implications of the newest scholarship for the variety of New Testament writings. Each entry presses the boundaries of current discussion regarding the nature of apocalypticism in application to a particular New Testament author. The cumulative effect is to reveal, as never before, early Christianity, its Christology, cosmology, and eschatology, as expressions of tendencies in Second Temple Judaism.
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David E. Aune University of Notre Dame “Reynolds and Stuckenbruck’s volume is another important step in the process of reclaiming the New Testament texts as an essential component of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and in the understanding of the early Jesus movement as a distinctive form of Jewish apocalypticism.” Gabriele Boccaccini University of Michigan “This volume brings a generation of scholarship on apocalypticism to bear on the interpretation of the New Testament. A long overdue book.” John J. Collins Yale Divinity School New Testament the Loren T. Stuckenbruck is chair of New Testament and SecondTemple Judaism at EvangelischTheologische Fakultät, LudwigMaximilians-Universität, Munich. His numerous publications include Angel Veneration and Christology: A Study in Early Judaism and in the Christology of the Apocalypse of John and a commentary, 1 Enoch 91–108. Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought Benjamin E. Reynolds is associate professor of New Testament at Tyndale University College in Toronto, Canada. He is author of The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John and coeditor of The Relationship between Biblical and Systematic Theology in the New Testament and Anthropology and New Testament Theology. “This stimulating collection of eighteen essays focuses on a neglected but arguably central aspect of apocalyptic tradition: the fundamental role played by the divine disclosure of hidden knowledge. This emphasis on the revelatory component of apocalyptic tradition, sketched out in the introduction, has been generally ignored by New Testament scholars in favor of regarding apocalyptic almost exclusively in terms of eschatology. Each of the essays in this collection apply one or more aspects of this thesis of the fundamentally revelatory character of apocalyptic tradition to virtually every component of the New Testament, strikingly confirming its hermeneutical utility. While this collection of studies convincingly affirms the value of reading the New Testament in light of the fundamentally revelatory character of apocalyptic tradition, it represents only an initial foray into the subject. Given the interpretive potential of this approach to the New Testament, I would highly recommend this book to all serious students of the New Testament.” Reynolds The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought Stuckenbruck Praise for Reading the New Testament through apocalyptic lenses The contemporary study of Jewish apocalypticism today recognizes the wealth and diversity of ancient traditions concerned with the “unveiling” of heavenly matters—understood to involve revealed wisdom, the revealed resolution of time, and revealed cosmology—in marked contrast to an