Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls by C.A. Evans and P.W. Flint (review)

422 LEITERS IN CANADA 1997 Odysseus admits to Penelope that he can never know if someone else has usurped the bed. His 'quest' leads not to knowledge of Penelope's fidelity, but to the awareness of the need to trust Penelope because of his lack of any such knowledge. Odysseus is forced to admit that he could be fooled (or cuckolded) as easily as any other hero. For Lee, the olive-tree bed belongs to Odysseus, and Odysseus alone. But Odysseus's recognition that the bed could belong to anybody is central to the poem. This renders any notion of a successful reunion between husband and wife problematic. In short the Odyssey puts under the microscope the sort of gender essentialist belief in the complementarity of the sexes that Lee clings to. Overall, Lee's interpretations do not quite manage to do justice to texts that are darker- and far more interesting for it- than he acknowledges. (MARK BUCHAN) C.A. Evans and P.W. Flint. Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. xii, 176. us$2o.oo These are exciting times for students of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls are expanding our understanding in directions which we can scarcely anticipate; new publications and research tools now promise to make these treasures much more accessible. This volume reprints eightessays presented at the first public Symposium of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University. The tone of the session was set by John Collins, who spoke on the 'Expectation of the End in the Dead Sea Scrolls.' Israel's hope in God's promise and its repeated disappointment are recurrent themes in the Hebrew Bible; and these themes, as they appear in the literature from Qumran, define the focus here. One could perhaps wish that these themes were presented from a less overtly polemical Christian perspective. The present volume presupposes the messianic ideas of the Hebrew Bible and focuses, as we are told, on their development in the Scrolls; in fact five of the eight papers are principally concerned with New Testament texts and themes. The representation ofJesus as a second Moses is examined by Paul Hughes; Craig Broyles's study of the messianic ideal in Psalm 72 and the Gospels merits further discussion. The Daniel tradition and ascent to heaven are two further major themes which attract the attention of Peter Flint and Martin Abegg respectively.The remaining papers focus on messianic or eschatological themes in the New Testament. The stated purpose of this work is to further our understanding of eschatology and messianism in the days of Hillel, Jesus, and the early Church, as we are told in the introduction to the collection, through the new light which the literature from Qumran throws on biblical texts (canonical or otherwise), and also through the special contribution of the HUMAN[TIES 42J major 'sectarian' scrolls (the Rule, the War Scroll, and the Thanksgiving Hyrrms). Difficulties arise: certain scrolls may express 'minority opinions' rather than the collective views and values of the community. Nor can we expect a coherent, unified doctrine. Can the aim of achieving a deeper understanding be attained by the methods and approaches in evidence here? It is premature to abandon the search for coherence when useful methodologies are to hand in the social sciences and modem literary criticism. Perhaps we should look not for an explicit doctrine but for a 'structured world view' implicit in the text. Perhaps we can also identify key metaphors and core narratives, clearly articulated and recurrent symbolic structures which rmderly and shape these narrative traditions. These challenges and problems are well exemplified in Craig Broyles's study of the way in which some Psalms contribute to shaping the messianic ideal of the 'redeeming king' in the New Testament. According to Broyles, certain 'royal' Psalms present a picture of the king which is decidedly militaristic, whereas the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is decidedly nonmilitarisbc . But the common assumption that the Gospel portrait has no 'military' dimension cannotbe sustained; furthermore this dichotomy fails to do justice to the texts. It probably arises from the inappropriate application of a priori assumptions regarding the...