Corpus-Paul

[Ronald Troxel <rltroxel AT facstaff.wisc.edu>]

>I'd like to come back to Bob Bayer's earlier question.
>How is it possible to go from the existence of apocalyptic texts to any
>assumption of the *prevalence* of these ideas in the Jewish community?
>Presumably these texts had an audience, but how can we gauge its size?
>Josephus gives us no hint that these ideas were prevalent.

Obviously there is no way to quantify the popularity of this strain of
thought in the first century.  But at least one intriguing hint as to the
attraction such movements held is the fact that John the Baptist (whose
depiction an as a prophet with heightened eschatological expectations is
generally accepted as historical) was able to attract a following,
including Jesus.  And the same is attested by other "pied pipers" Josephus
reports led people into the desert.  The Yahad of Qumran is another
evidence of the attraction this construction of reality had for some
people.  Is it possible to show beyond such anecdotal hints anything of the
range of adherents such thinking attracted?

BTW, Dale Allison has a nice chapter on the features of such ideologies in
his recent *Jesus of Nazareth* (Fortress, 1998):  78-94.  I prefer,
incidently, his designation of such groups with heightened expectation as
"millenarian" rather than "apocalyptic."

Ron Troxel

Ronald L. Troxel, Ph.D.
Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies
1340 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI 53706