Expectations of the End

Since a fuller range of Qumran sectarian and not clearly sectarian texts and recensions has recently become available to us, its implications for the comparative study of eschatological, apocalyptic and messianic ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament need to be explored anew. This book situates eschatological ideas in Qumran literature between biblical tradition and developments in late Second Temple Judaism and examines how the Qumran evidence on eschatology, resurrection, apocalypticism, and messianism illuminates Palestinian Jewish settings of emerging Christianity. The present study challenges previous dichotomies between realized and futuristic eschatology, wisdom and apocalypticism and provides many new insights into intra-Jewish dimensions to eschatological ideas in Palestinian Judaism and in the early Jesus-movement.

Albert L.A. Hogeterp, Ph.D. (2004) in Biblical Studies (New Testament), University of Groningen, is postdoc researcher at the Faculteit Katholieke Theologie, Utrecht. He published a monograph on Paul and God's Temple (Peeters, 2006) and various articles on eschatology in Qumran.

'This monograph aims to integrate the full evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls available since the 1990s into the comparative study of eschatological ideas in Second Temple Judaism and emerging Christianity. Hogeterp traces Qumran eschatology back to its scriptural bases and defines its setting in the Palestinian Judaism of the late Second
Temple Period. Focusing on the issues of resurrection, apocalypticism, and messianism, Hogeterp explores how both sectarian and non-sectarian Qumran texts illuminate New Testament traditions and their Palestinian Jewish roots. He emphasizes that the variegated Qumran evidence challenges recurrent contrasts between realized and futurist eschatology, wisdom and apocalyptic, as well as political-nationalistic and prophetic-ethical messianism'.