The problem of an 'overrealized' eschatology
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[I have moved this comment and the discussion attached to it from the Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ thread because, as so often happens, it takes us off down the long and winding road of eschatology.] Some very nice, sensible and eirenic reflections, Peter - not least with respect to this word ‘overrealised’. The problem with it, as I see it, is that it presupposes a normative measure of ‘realization’ that can be established independently of the interpretation of scripture and then applied to other interpretations. So my reading of the New Testament is faulted for falling too far to one side of some eschatological ideal, perhaps one that is captured by the peculiar ‘now and not yet’ principle. But where does such an ideal come from if not from the critical and open interpretation of scripture. You know, I keep coming back to this simple question: What is so strange about Jesus and the authors of the New Testament speaking, in the language of Old Testament prophecy, about events in the foreseeable future that would have a profound and decisive impact on Israel and the early church? Why should that sort of prophetic concern for the impending experience of a historical community be condemned as overrealized! As you point out, this realistic historical focus is not at all at odds with the belief that there will be a final resurrection, justice, defeat of the last enemies, renewal of heaven and earth, and vindication of the Creator God. |
Comments
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Peter, I was going to post a quick response to Andrew but then realized you already did so…and did a much better job than I would have.
Andrew does tend to play both sides of the fulfillment issue quite a bit, I hope because of his own uncertainties (and we all have them, don’t we) but I do notice a trend that folks who are in Andrew’s corner tend to follow, namely that they try to have it both ways as far as fulfillment goes. The huge problem with having it both ways is that there is no reason to even attempt to satisfy both a first century AND some distant, future fultillment. There is no linguistic, anthropological, historical…and even biblical reason to suggest that. The narrative climax was fulfilled. We are now in a post-climactic-relationship with the Creator and guess what, there is nothing written about it in any book out there. We just know that we are here for the "healing of nations" - we are the ones writing the story!! In a sense, many Christians are afraid to face that reality. I have no idea how Andrew feels about that.
Btw, Andrew, I am not attempting to offend you by any means…or try to psycho-analyze you. That’s really not my goal at all, but I strongly agree with Peter. Your position has far-reaching implications that we cannot just glance over in passing.
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Virgil wrote
The huge problem with having it both ways is that there is no reason to even attempt to satisfy both a first century AND some distant, future fultillment.
I alluded to this question in my last post on The Rainbow Over, in which I expressed a small doubt on the validity of assuming a multiple-fulfillment position.
But let me ask you Virgil, in the absence of convincing evidence for either position (and I think the absence of evidence that the church post 70 ad ever believed that Jesus had returned is a big weakness in your view), what do you / we do next? Suppose we all admit that we just don’t know for sure? Would you be willing to modify your position to accommodate that? What kind of focus could we all achieve to lead us forward with purpose if we were unable to answer this question either way? Perhaps I should ask Andrew too, though he seems less dogmatic on the matter, perhaps his position is less dogmatic simply because he is more aware of the difficulties? But your position is clearly more dogmatic, and, as I discussed with Roderick, such dogmatism seems to be in conflict with the concept of an open future (especially as defined by a belief that all Biblical prophecy has been fulfilled) itself. I don’t mean the term dogmatic in a negative way, by the way!
Desert
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
John’s vision in Revelation 21 is crucial because without that hope of an absolute creational transformation we would have to accept that wickedness and death have the final word in the story of creation and not God.
Unless, of course, you adopt a quasi-gnostic dualism that requires a complete redefinition of resurrection that is both foreign to first century Judaism and the Christianity that was born out of it and a mere acceptance of death - not unlike that found in paganism - dressed in sheep’s clothing; such threatening not only to our own understanding of the future and our relationship with God in the present, but how we interpret the nature of Jesus’ own resurrection. This, I fear, is the direction full-preterism, hyperpreterism, fully realized eschatology – whatever you want to call it – leads.
Largely post-eschatological or not, I think the church needs to firmly and quite realistically acknowledge the reality of death, injustice, and the infection of God’s good creation with forces contrary to YHWH and his people. If the church does that, the belief follows naturally that God will one day fix it all: defeat all tyranny, denounce all evil, uphold all good, serve justice to all, vindicate his people, and ultimately destroy death and renew the earth. Without such a hope, what does it even mean to reflect upon Jesus’ resurrection? What does it mean to call God both loving and just? What does it mean to be a world within a world?
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
This, I fear, is the direction full-preterism, hyperpreterism, fully
realized eschatology – whatever you want to call it – leads.
Wow! What a load of pseudo-CRAP…dressed in sheep clothing, of course! :)
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
In the New Testament there appears to be envisaged a renewal of heaven and earth that entails a final defeat of death, the last enemy of the Creator. John’s vision in Revelation 21
is crucial because without that hope of an absolute creational
transformation we would have to accept that wickedness and death have
the final word in the story of creation and not God.
Andrew you are absolutely correct, but again, your expectations seem to be defining what happens in the post-narrative here. Your thesis is resting entirely on the assumption that physical death and physical decay/corruption was non-existant in a pre-Fall world, so I must ask: how is this justified scripturally? The story goes like this:
- Man was created, and placed in the garden, the place where God was.
- Man was given unfettered access to all the trees in the garden (including the tree of life) with the exception of one tree, the tree of knowledge.
- Man screwed up and ate from the tree not meant to eat from.
- Man was removed from the garden (from God’s presence) and access to the tree of life (a Christ type) was cut-off, therefore man died.
There is no mentioning anywhere in the story that man was created to be physically immortal, free of physical pain, that wickedness was not present in the world, or that physical death was not present before the Fall. Those are all assumptions most Christians read into the story because they have been conditioned to do so. :)
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Sorry I wasn’t more clear Andrew. You are correct in pointing out the expectations of the early church on a "cosmic" level. They were universal expectations - what we do not agree on is whether or not they were spiritual in nature, or physical as you understand them.
We do need to talk about Eden, because the beginning dictates the end. Access to the physical tree of life in Eden is analogous to our access to Christ at this very moment, the spiritual tree of life. As long as we are "in Christ" we live; Paul clearly saw this in spiritual terms. It was no different for Adam and Eve in the beginning. The scripture is clear: they were free to eat from all the trees (from every tree you can eat), with the exception of only one, not two, but one was the exception. Adding the tree of life to the list of banned trees goes contrary to what we read in Genesis. It is access to the tree of life in the garden which brought sustained and continuous physical life to Adam and Eve.
Consequently, the fall and subsequent cutting-off of all access to the tree of life brought about the eventual physical death of Adam and Eve, a clear symbol and type for the separation of man from God’s presence. The events in the garden are typologically relevant for the events we see taking place in Revelation. The tree of life has been restored in the midsts of New Jerusalem (Christ in his church), and the leaves of the tree provide for the healing of nations. Clearly, even a future reading of Revelation indicates that nations will still need healing, which contradicts your expectation of a future without death, pain and wickedness. Why would nations need healing if a post-parousia physical world is perfect and without pain and death?
It is not physical death which is the enemy of the Creator, Andrew. It was sin which separates us from the tree of life, sin which brings the kind of death that goes beyond flesh and blood. The destruction of the Jewish temple was the final blow to man’s separation from his Creator, the standing symbol of inadequacy, of animal blood atonement, of sin serving as a barrier between us and God.
As far as being rude, perhaps I should not have answered at all to enarchy; it is difficult to react kindly to accusations of gnosticism, paganism and the implication that I am being some sort of "wolf." Sorry, but I still believe what he wrote is crap, but I will apologize to the community here for the reaction.
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
From Vergil:
We do need to talk about Eden, because the beginning dictates the end.
That encapsulates for me the fundamental mystery of your view. Because if you adopt an open view of the world, then surely nothing dictates anything. This seems to be just another form of dispensationalism, placing rules on history about what can and cannot happen at some given juncture. And I would argue that it was a poor form of it because it assumes that primaeval history was real history, which is most unlikely to be the case. If you think it is real history then are you not numbering yourself amongst those who are searching for the real Eden somewhere, the lost rivers of Gihon and Pishon, the remains of the ark in Ararat, the Deluge, etc., etc? Because if those stories are real history, you must concur that they have intrinsic importance as such and can’t just be written off as story or used as object lessons.
But if you agree with me that they are in fact literary devices, then you are not comparing like with like here: what you should be saying is that the literary beginning dictates the literary end. That however, doesn’t help because we are interested in the real end. We already know (probably) roughly what the real beginning was (i.e. in an evolutionary setting) but I doubt if anyone would be satisfied by some statement that Christ’s return in judgement on the world or the resurrection was merely a literary ending, a metaphor or a symbol, and that we could expect nothing more in the real future other than a liberal type of self-determined happy or even victorious feeling.
In an openness context, Andrew’s view makes much more sense. (Though I don’t like the term post-eschatalogical).
Desert
p.s. I did read you post at eight o’clock before sending this.
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Desert, we might be using the same words in different contexts here. What exactly do you mean by an "open view?"
Again, the reason for which I pointed out the beginning is because (as Andrew wrote a couple of comments above) a proper understanding of the beginning dictates a proper understanding of the end. I pointed out that there are assumptions which Andrew is reading into the story, such as man not being able to eat from the tree of Life, when in fact we know from the story that Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from the tree of life.
Now I am not saying that the story of creation, the fall and the flood is a literary device only, but it does serve a double meaning to readers in that it tells the same story outlined throughout the scriptures, climaxed by God’s deliverance of mankind from sin through the flood. For example, Andrew should know very well that Noah’s flood did not have the intention of literally and physically destroying and re-creating the entire world; water (and fire) has always served as a cleansing device in ancient literature and the flood serves as a type for baptism and cleansing, for what happened with Israel’s system of animal sacrifices and temple worship, when the covenant world was likewise cleansed by fire and thus “renewed” into what God intended it to be. During the flood, God’s covenant people were saved…and the wicked were washed away, taken by the waters of the flood.
Interestingly, John the Baptist made the same observation I am making, namely that Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3). Based on Andrew’s view of the end, the baptism of fire predicted by John the Baptist will involve the actual, literal destruction of the physical universe and the re-creation of it. Unless I am misunderstanding Andrew, this view seemingly overlooks the typology of flood/baptism, water/fire, and the cleansing, non-destructive nature of such baptism.
Re: Fire, flood and new creation
I agree that, on the face of it, the healing of the nations motif looks out of place in that final vision, but when the theme of martyrdom is so significant in Revelation and the imagery of a final destruction of death so emphatic, I would sooner question the assumption that the ‘healing of the nations’ statement (22:2) implies the continuing presence of ‘death, pain and wickedness’. For a start, the image of the healing leaves could readily stand for the fact that the nations have been healed (there is no verb and therefore no tense).
What about some of the Old Testament passages that envisage the righteous ruling over the nations? In particular, I’m reminded of a passage in Wisdom: “They [the post-resurrection righteous] will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever” (Wisdom 3:8). Who are these nations that are in need of rule? They’re differentiated from the righteous, but they do not appear to be the wicked.
Maybe in connection, John Goldingay points out in Daniel a promise for the wicked “not [of] eternal physical pain but eternal shame” (Daniel 319). Does not 1 Enoch, also, imagine the righteous reigning over the wicked?
Perhaps, then, John imagined a sort of post-resurrection ethnic distinction. The people of God (made up of Jews and Gentiles) reign from New Jerusalem as ethnic Israel once reigned from (old) Jerusalem, while the rest of the nations (the Gentiles) live outside the gates. The difficult question to ask then is, Who are these nations?
Maybe, more realistically, John puts the healing leaves in the context of the consolidation the people of God receive through resurrection, so that they are almost equivalent with the results of new creation (immortality, the absence of pain and death, and so on). You pointed out the absence of the verb. Or maybe what is intended is a sustaining of life by virtue of being in the presence of the trees of life (as Adam and Eve appeared to be sustained until they were removed from the garden).
Those are just some observations I’ve been playing around with and I thought they would be worth pointing it.
Re: Fire, flood and new creation
I would argue that this theme surfaces in the New Testament in the belief that those who suffer and die for the sake of Christ during the birthpangs of the new age will be raised and will reign with him - Revelation 20:4 being the clearest instance of this.
If the prospect of the new age extends beyond the destruction of Jerusalem – if the destruction of Jerusalem is only to give birth to more birthpangs – then in what way does the destruction of Jerusalem constitute Jesus’ parousia and the end of the age? This is one of the issues I tried to raise in my thread “End”>http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/1572>End of the age.”
You mention, specifically, the saints reigning over the nations in the context of the vindication of the church over imperial Rome (simultaneous with the first resurrection). But Jesus imagines his disciples sitting on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Mat 19:28). How are we to make sense of this if vindication was to come to the disciples some time in the future after the destruction of Jerusalem? If God had already judged the twelve tribes of Israel in AD 70, how would Jesus’ disciples – who at that time had not yet been resurrected to reign – sit in judgment?
I’m trying to understand how the destruction of Jerusalem, victory over imperial Rome, the martyrs reigning over the nations, and the inauguration of the new age all coherently link.
I am more inclined to think that it is the martyrs who dwell in the city that descends from heaven, having been with Christ at the right hand of the Father until that moment. Those who people the new earth are those whose names were found written in the book of life, but it seems likely that the martyrs are not included in that judgment.
So is there a distinction between the martyrs already living in the city and the rest of the dead written in the book of life? In other words, is it possible John envisages the martyrs receiving special priority in new creation – living in New Jerusalem while the rest of the dead inhabit the rest of the earth? Or does living outside the gates automatically equate to condemnation and destruction (the second death) or eternal/age-lasting shame (as in Daniel)? If so, does that mean there was hope of their being healed by the trees hanging over and waters flowing out from within the city? Perhaps these observations will help make better sense of the leaves healing the “nations” (whoever those are).
Re: Fire, flood and new creation
Okay, I understand more or less what you are saying, but there are two other things on which I need clarification.
He uses the Son of man motif to speak about the immediate and urgent historical situation of a faithful group within Israel which would be rejected and persecuted by official Judaism; he speaks about the vindication of that group.
First, is vindication, in this context, uninvolved with resurrection? As far as I know, the destruction of Jerusalem, according to your understanding, did not correspond with a resurrection of the faithful, first century martyrs; that would come later with the victory over imperial Rome. So was the destruction of the Temple in and of itself a vindication of the first century disciples? Did the apostles need not be physically resurrected to sit in judgment against Jerusalem, so to speak? If so, why is physical resurrection so integral to the later vindication of the church over imperial Rome?
Second, in which context does Paul fit? Is Paul’s parousia an event separate from the destruction of Jerusalem or just part of and extending beyond it? Moreover, who would be the ones who would be caught up – Paul says “we”, but later sees the possibility of dying first, which has led some to dismiss him altogether – when would they be caught up, and what exactly would it look like? Those who were alive at the time Rome was Christianized were not changed and escorted to meet the Lord in the air (or were they?).
I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself, but the whole thing is confusing to me.
On your last point, I certainly don’t see that being outside of the New Jerusalem equates to damnation or the ‘second death’. There is a strong case to be made, I think, for supposing that the martyrs descend with the city, perhaps continuing in their function as ‘priests of God’ (Rev. 20:6), and that the new world outside the city is populated by those whose names are found in the book of life following a judgment according to what they have done.
Two observations.
First, the city’s “gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there” and “They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (Rev 21:26). This suggests the new earth’s capital will be open to the outside world, the “nations” who will be blessed from New Jerusalem and its glorious properties. In other words, those (the nations?) who inhabit the new earth will flock to New Jerusalem freely (since the gates are open).
Yet, “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Rev 22:15). With parallels in the gospels where Jesus describes the wicked being cast out to wail and gnash their teeth (suggesting either the process of destruction or conscious grief of exclusion – I’m not sure which), this seems to suggest the ungodly will be locked outside the city. This appears to paint New Jerusalem as an earth or world all by itself – the one and only place those written in the book of life will dwell. But the gates are open and the nations inhabiting the rest of the earth (if John really suggests they exist outside New Jerusalem) are supposed to come in, so how can this be?
Re: Death, life and gnostic tendencies
Paul writes in Romans 8:35: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of the Christ? Affliction or distress or harassment or hunger or nakedness or peril or sword?’ He is talking about real death here, and his confidence is in a real resurrection as a victory over death - otherwise their faith is in vain (cf. 1 Cor. 15:12-18).
Is it not possible that Paul saw in death a safety – in addition to the prospect of vindication through resurrection – that would ensure conscious peace in the Lord until resurrection (an intermediate state), similar to the author of Wisdom’s mention of the righteous souls being “in the hand of God … at peace” (3:1, 3)? Personally, I do not care for a doctrine of a conscious intermediate state because it seems fairly pointless to me, but it appears to be taken for granted by Paul. For example, Paul elsewhere says Jesus “died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him” (1Th 5:10). Moreover, in the prospect of death, Paul expects to be present with the Lord (Php 1:23; perhaps also 2Co 5:8).
I thought I’d point that out because it seems resurrection is not Paul’s only hope in the face of death. We may sometimes push resurrection unto Paul in places where it was not in the forefront of his thought. What do you think?
To be honest, I think I am beginning to understand enarchay’s concern about gnostic tendencies.
Thank you. I think we need to acknowledge the reality and evil of death; when we fail to do so, chances are we’re headed toward a Platoism in which we despise creation and wish to escape it.
Re: Death, life and gnostic tendencies
I’m not at all convinced by this argument. Where is Christ associated with the ‘tree of life’?
Andrew, it is for a reason that Jesus taught his disciples to "eat my flesh and drink my blood." The very design of the Garden of Eden is an illustration of man’s relationship with God.
If you are going to involve gnosticism (which I think it’s the easy way out) because I see the resurrection of the dead as being not of physical bodies, I will simply respond with Jesus’ own words: Truly, truly, I say unto you, he who hears my word, and believes in him who sent me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
Btw, did you have a chance to take a look at my question about the Genesis tree of life assumption? Where is God commending man to not eat from the tree of life? In Genesis 2:16 God told man "From ANY tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree (singular)of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die"
Eve also repeats the command whem tempted: From the fruit of the treesof the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree (singular) which is in the middle of the garden, God said…"
It is evident from scriptures that man was allowed to freely eat from the tree of life, so one can easily see the parallelism between Eden and the New Jerusalem. They both have a tree of life, they both have God’s presence, rivers of life, etc. Yet the first has a cherubim denying entrance while the second has gates which are wide open - this is what Jesus facilitated for mankind, direct access into God’s presence.
Furthermore, in Revelation, Jesus is being presented in many ways…he is a lamb, he is a tree of life, he is on a horse with eyes like flames of fire, he is a king, etc. We are dealing with symbolic language here - why can Jesus be a lamb and cannot be a tree of life, especially when he was crucified "on a tree" and asked his followers to "eat" him in order to live?
So the tree of life reference from Revelation is not just an allusion to Ezekiel, it is also connected to the Jewish understanding of the torah being the tree of life, with the menorah in the temple being the personification of the torah itself.
Andrew, it seems like the interpretation of the tree of life in Revelation 22 being an actual wooden, physical tree from which people eat fruit is the least likely possibility. :)
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Incidentally, while I’m not sure I agree with enarchay’s argument that preterism has latent gnostic tendencies, I don’t think it deserves to be dismissed as ‘a load of pseudo-CRAP’. Why is it that the only people who are that rude on this site are preterists?
I didn’t mean to suggest that (full) preterism or preterism hermeneutics alone lead to a form of gnosticism, but that when one throws out all future hope for resurrection, judgment, and new creation, it is likely he or she will go in the direction of some sort of Platonic dualism. Some Gnostics, for example, interpreted resurrection as enlightenment that would ensure an exalted state in the afterlife. This is dangerous, in my opinion, because if we start redefining resurrection or throw it away as a concrete future hope, among other things, what is stopping us from redefining Jesus’ own resurrection? For example, N.T. Wright’s worthy defense of the resurrection is fairly dependent on its definition, which he goes to great lengths to establish; he notes much later (second to third century) mutations of the concept that are threatening to Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but bear no importance to what first century Jews and the early (proto-orthodox) church believed.
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Andrew, I was going to say, before my computer crashed -
thank you for your reply.
a final defeat of death,
I can only agree with your sentiments. But like many, I experience a poignant perplexity when reading these verses because there are obvious indicators that they are intended to refer to the church today. Perhaps, like Ezekiel’s vision of the temple, this is is intended to be aspirational, even critical but even so, if it is aspirational then, taking a best case scenario (for a change) we ought to be able potentially to avoid death now. Hence the only interpretation I have ever been confident enough to teach is that the absence in the church of death refers to the fact that its members will attain the resurrection and therefore our hope and outlook is vastly different from those outside the church. There are still weaknesses with this view but I can live with them on the basis that our lives are eternal from conversion on, even though death intervenes. Since resurrection is a certainty, that certainty impinges backwards into the present. That’s getting back though to older forms of eschatalogical jargon (the presence of the future) that are perhaps less welcome for other reasons (but I don’t know). For myself, I don’t think so much of the presence of the future as just one of simple faith. It’s not especially a future hope at all, after all openness shouldn’t, to be consistent, speak much of the future anyway, (because on full openness principles the concept of the future is self-defeating as such a thing doesn’t exist). It’s thus no different from God determining to carry out a plan involving the nation of Israel. Faith dictates he will do it because he has promised and not because of some pattern in the past (see my last post to Vergil). So the concept of the presence of the future is misleading, what it should be is the presence, by faith, of the promise. That’s how I unsatisfactorily resolve the issue.
Desert
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
Desert, there are many things we do not know or understand, and I am always open to admit so. It is OK to not know. I do not know what happens when our sun will go out and will cease to give out light and heat. Perhaps Jesus will return and re-make the world as Andrew suggests. Perhaps by then we would have conquered other planets in far aware places. I do not know. But I do see, to the best of my ability that the Scriptures do not teach an imminent/at-any-moment return of Jesus or a remake of the physical universe, the atoms and molecules of this creation. The physical creation seems to be a picture of a spiritual reality, not vice-versa.
Why Hyperpreterism can never be systematic
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Re: The problem of an 'overrealized' eschatology
Vergil wrote:
If you are going to involve gnosticism (which I think it’s the easy way out) because I see the resurrection of the dead as being not of physical bodies
Doesn’t the first 14 chapters of John contend against this point? The so-called signs gospel has Jesus proving his teaching with miracles. The very same problem arises in evangelism today: there is no reason we can give to non-believers why they should believe the Jesus story any more than the Buddha story or the Mohammed story or the atheist story. Jesus seems to have understood exactly that need: "If you cannot believe me when I speak of earthly things, how will you believe me when I speak of heavenly things?" Or, "To prove that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you rise up and walk!" Anyone can say what you are saying and no one could prove them wrong. And for exactly that reason, it is unsatisfying.
Desert
Re: Mark Driscoll, the church and the supremacy of Christ
The use of the term ‘realised’ (‘fully’; ‘partly’; ‘over’ or whatever) does, I think, have a limited value in helping to locate perspectives on eschatology. In this sense ‘fully’ is almost synonymous with ‘over’. I think it’s only the term ‘over-realised’ that conveys a value or normative judgement.
Your question - ‘What is so strange about Jesus and the authors of the New Testament speaking, in the language of Old Testament prophecy, about events in the foreseeable future that would have a profound and decisive impact on Israel and the early church?’ - seems innocent and reasonable enough, but is perhaps slightly disingenuous, Andrew. Your theological perspective has far more wide-reaching implications than this.
If you take a different perspective, that the central determinative events of the NT were not judgement on Jerusalem or Rome, but the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is borne out by the emphasis given to them in gospels and letters, a very different landscape comes into view, besides which the fall of Jerusalem and even the Roman empire pale into relative insignificance.
There is a great deal to suggest, in the enacted language of the immediate historic and local context, that these events (the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus), were providing a fulfilment not simply of Israel’s history, but of the narrative in which Israel’s history itself was embedded, and of which it is only a part.
But we’ve been there and done that so many times - let’s not get onto the treadmill again. I do think at the very least commentators on your thinking should pay you the courtesy of having read what have to say on the subject!