Luke's Jewish Eschatology

Finally, a volume that appreciates Luke's ongoing interest in the salvation of the Jewish people, continuing concern for the promises to David, and both the particularistic and universalistic implications of Jewish theology. Oliver offers not only a brilliant corrective to the anti-Jewish implications of much of Luke-Acts scholarship but also an engagingly written, fully documented historical analysis. * Amy-Jill Levine, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University * Isaac Oliver presents a powerful and well-substantiated reading of Luke-Acts as a Jewish text where the restoration of Israel as a collective and concrete event is never out of sight. Luke-Acts is seen as expressing eschatological hopes for all Israel and all creation, that is, explicitly Jewish hopes for the universal dimension of God's intervention. Isaac Oliver convincingly argues that the resurrection of the Davidic Messiah Jesus is not the climax of this intervention but a stage in the eschatological events, with all Israel and all of creation living in hope and anticipation of what is still to come. An indispensable reading for scholars and students alike, this study paves a substantial pathway for further conversations over interpretations of these first century texts of Jewish tradition. * Kathy Ehrensperger, University of Potsdam, Germany * What Isaac Oliver did for Luke's legal reasoning in his 2013 Torah Praxis after 70 CE, he now does for Luke's eschatology in this excellent book: He makes sense of it within the Judaism of that crucial period between the destruction of the temple and the ascendancy of the rabbis. Oliver shows how Luke-Acts, despite its manifestly being a piece of Graeco-Roman literature, speaks fluently the language of ancient Jewish restoration eschatology. A welcome addition to a conflicted field of research. * Matthew V. Novenson, University of Edinburgh *