There is a huge amount in what you say that needs to be absorbed Andrew, and also much that is worth debating (in a positive sense), because such important points are raised.

I take as given the value of trying to get back into the mindset and historical thinking of 1st century Jews, as far as we are able to undertake such an exercise, and the groundwork for much of this task has already been laid.

It is also daunting when behind the clear thinking which you bring to the subject lies the even more daunting (eminence grise?) of Tom Wright, beside whom we are all minnows splashing around in a domestic garden pond. Can any questions be raised at all in the light of such formidable and extensive scholarship? I believe they should - even though there may be overwhelmingly convincing answers to be given.

Also I deliberately exaggerated (or rather simplified) what I took to be your position on the atonement in my attempted summary in a previous post (A pretty ambitious attempt etc). I subsequently wondered if I had got it wrong, but I don’t think so, in that you do suggest, as I see it, that the atonement is primarily for Israel, and only indirectly for the gentiles. This is as far as it is presented from the side of history given by the gospels, as a ‘coda’ to the Old Testament.

From the point of view of seeing history from that angle of approach, the far side of the glass door as it were, I’m not sure your position is the whole story, but I do believe we should undertake the imaginative exercise which you are embarking upon. The fuller picture is that a covenant-keeping God was planning to fulfil the covenant and deal with sin long before the covenant was expressed to a racial nation, Israel. This is obscure, but not hidden in the Hebrew scriptures. Before the exodus narrative, which is explicitly echoed in the atonement, there is the Abrahamic narrative, and the creation/fall narrative. How is it valid to confine the significance of who Jesus was and what he did to the immediate concerns and context of 2nd Temple/post exilic Israel, when post exilic Israel had the prophets and the entire pentateuch to inform them of their sense of identity and history? The full significance of their own scriptures and history may not have been apparent to them, but then there was much that was not apparent to them for which Jesus held them accountable, and culpable.

It may be arguable that in his teaching Jesus said little or nothing explicitly about the universal scope of his mission, but he set in motion a quite different way of viewing Israel’s destiny and understanding of her scriptures which made it, in my opinion, inevitable that a broader, worldwide understanding of their significance should arise. Here, it is not the view of Jesus’s contemporaries that we should heed, but the radical re-interpretation of their destiny which he offered.

That’s not to say that the teaching of Jesus was designed to inaugurate a new, worldwide religion based on timeless, universal truths. The value of Tom Wright’s perspectives has been to demonstrate that Jesus was engaged with the various ‘narratives’ that were on offer in Israel at the time, in a way that brought him into direct conflict with all the existing power systems and mindsets: he wasn’t wafting through an idyllic holy land with an other-worldly aura. Rather, he was fulfilling the purposes of a covenant-keeping God in history. His ‘spiritual’ significance was acutely political and contemporary.

But I believe it is misconceived to limit the significance of Jesus’s mission to his own immediate historical circumstances. I also think we are in trouble if we circumscribe Jesus’s teaching so radically. Where else are we to learn how to live our lives if not on the principles he gave to his disciples? To be sure, the teaching relates keenly to contemporary history and mindsets. But, to take an example from Tom Wright, it is limiting the timeless significance of the parable of the parable of the prodigal son if we take it purely as a paradigm of the exile and return of Israel. To be sure, such a perspective on the story gives it an acutely contemporary relevance. But the value of the story is that it applies in contexts throughout history. It speaks to us today because it presents so faithfully and astonishingly the character of God. And we learn even more about God’s character when we see and understand various aspects of the historical significance of details in the story. The value of the sermon on the mount is that it is a truly challenging picture of how we are to live our lives in all historical periods, and this notwithstanding its immediate relevance to a community which needed to be prepared for the obliteration of the temple and all that had popularly shaped Israel’s (mistaken)sense of self identity in the world.

There is huge value in the current historical approach as pursued by Wright and yourself. For instance, we are encouraged to see the Christian faith not as confined to some spiritual compartment of our lives, but as a challenge and alternative to prevailing values and power structures. If we aren’t making somebody worried, we might question what our faith means in the world. Likewise if we aren’t making some positive alternative contribution - or affirming that which reflects God’s values.

Another huge value of Wright’s (and your own) approach is in showing that the Christian faith is not simply a private concern between an individual and his maker, (although it is that), but a corporate affair - we join the community of God’s people. To be justified by faith is to wear the badge of membership of God’s people - not just to obtain entry into a spiritual salvation in a private and individualistic way. The significance of this has yet to be fully appreciated and unpacked in the church at large.

What I’m trying to put across in the light of my understanding of radically historical-relative presentations of Jesus, the gospels and the New Testament, is that the texts as we have them were far more tied into historical concerns than we have ever given then credit. On the other hand the texts have made their own transition to wider contexts than 1st century Israel, and I would argue on balance, successfully. (In that the knowledge of Jesus the messiah of the world as well as Israel has spread round the world, as it was intended to do).

On the other hand, there are some insights emerging which have a very important bearing on on our understanding and practice of the faith in this particular era in which we are living, which we urgently need to get hold of. But substantially, faith in Jesus will be what it always has been: life-transforming, and sustained by a living Spirit, at work in creation and in our lives, forming a people who will make a decisive impact on our world in ways that are both proclaimed and demonstrated.