Developments in Postexilic JudaismTheocracy and Eschatology. Otto Plöger , S. Rudman

Abstract

There are two reasons why the appearance in English of this work by the Heidelberg Old Testament scholar is timely. First, it presents material relevant to one of the stimulating theological efforts currently being undertaken, the so-called theology of hope. If, as Moltmann and others have stressed, eschatology has more than a peripheral role to play in faith, then Pl6ger has assembled some valuable data for this discussion from postexilic Judaism. Secondly, biblical scholarship has long observed that the postexilic period is particularly critical in respect to the faith of Israel. In this period adjustments and reformulations of the older traditions of Israel occur. Here we have the provisional attempts at a commonwealth, as well as various apocalyptic movements. In setting himself the task of looking closely at the limited textual data of this period, Plager is able to provide some suggestive interpretations of the tensions buried within the documents of this time. And since, for various reasons, light is badly needed on just these movements and on the documentary evidence for them, his work can be said to be highly welcome. The concern on which the book is focused arises from the Book of Daniel, but this specific interest leads to an examination of a wide range of material and to a broad hypothesis involving, besides the Book of Daniel, a considerable part of the postexilic period. The starting point for the work is a twofold problem: On the one hand, Pl6ger is convinced at the outset that the Book of Daniel is a product of the beliefs of the Hasidim, and his effort is to demonstrate this more clearly. On the other hand, it is necessary to elucidate who these men are who are called Hasidim, where they seemed to arise, and what their ideological basis is on the grounds of surviving textual data. Pl6ger sets his study before us, therefore, not as a full-scale work, but as a hypothetical reconstruction based upon a selection of representative texts.