Ferda, Tucker S. Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins. Foreword by Dale C. Allison, Jr. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2024. xxvi+538 pp.; Hb.; $69.99. Link to Eerdmans.
Tucker S. Ferda is associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He previously published Jesus, the Gospels, and the Galilean Crisis (LNTS 601; Bloomsbury, 2018) as well as several articles on Jewish eschatology. In his foreword, Dale Allison Jr. says this book significantly contributes to recent research on Jesus of Nazareth and early Christianity.
How did the expectation of Jesus’s imminent return emerge in early Christianity? In this book, Ferda argues that the idea came from Jesus himself. His interest is historical, and this book contributes richly to Historical Jesus studies. He is not interested in making theological claims. Ferda comes at the topic backward. Most scholars are interested in determining the authentic words of Jesus using various criteria; once this pool of authentic sayings is recovered, differences between Jesus and the early church emerge. Since sayings implying an interim after his resurrection before his return as the eschatological judged are usually deemed as non-authentic, scholar assumes the early church created them as they developed ways to deal with the shocking death of their leader.
In Part One, he begins with the pervasive idea in scholarship that Jesus was not interested in eschatology, nor did he expect to be killed, resurrected, and then, after an interim, return to earth as the eschatological judge. Since Jesus is assumed to be non-eschatological, scholars then argue that anything implying Jesus thought he might go away for a time and then return after an interim is a later addition by the early church. In Part Two, he suggests reasons for this pervasive rejection of an eschatological Jesus in Historical Jesus studies. In Part Three, Ferda outlines early Christian expectations of the return of Jesus. He begins with the apostle Paul and moves to the various layers of the gospel tradition. Only after establishing the early church belief in an imminent return of Jesus does he examine the words of Jesus (Part Four).
Very few historical Jesus scholars think Jesus predicted a return after his death. Ferda begins part one by examining two studies on the return of Jesus.: T. Francis Glasson, The Second Advent (originally published in 1946, third edition, 1963; reprinted W&S, 2009) and J. A. T. Robinson, Jesus and His Second Coming: The Emergence of a Doctrine (Abingdon, 1957). Although it might be objected that these books are more than 60 years old, it is true that most scholars in the last half of the twentieth century did not think Jesus predicted a second coming. More recently, N. T. Wright suggests the entire Olivet Discourse is symbolic of the fall of Jerusalem.
Referring to nineteenth-century scholars, Ferda says older critics fought an eschatological Jesus who was far too carnal, unspiritual, and, in their words, “too Jewish.” In most of these studies, there are assumptions about Jesus’s ethical teaching and the caricature of Judaism. The evangelist misshaped Jesus’s words. “But it does not bode well for the overall plausibility of a historical hypothesis if it requires us to conclude that Jesus was so roundly misunderstood by those who came after him” (37).
Later theological trends problematize eschatology, even a simple “second advent hope” (to say nothing of the eschatological weirdness described by Norman Cohn, for example). Earlier critics wanted to separate Jesus from Jewish eschatological ideas. Ferda charts Christian eschatology over the centuries in part two of the book. The vast majority of church history did have eschatological hope. Even though there has always been vigorous debate about when the Parousia would occur or what its nature might be, “the Parousia of Christ has been a hope for a real change of scenery” (63). Few denied that Jesus’s second advent would happen.
Ferda calls this early second advent hope a “painful thorn” for Historical Jesus scholars. An enlightened Jesus, as defined by nineteenth-century Protestant liberals, would not predict his return, so eschatology gets downplayed in scholarship. “They had assumed that suggesting the second coming hope had anything to do with historical Jesus with something only a Christian apologist would do” (93). Or worse, I would add, it is something only a dispensationalist would do! Why removed eschatological hope from the historical Jesus? First, most scholars have a disparaging attitude towards popular-level eschatology (premillennialism, dispensational theology). Second, mini scholars site to distance Jesus from “Jewish messianism.” Although this is associated with Strauss and Remarius and their predecessors, anti-Jewish Jesus began early in the church, developing, especially after Constantine. However, Tertullian once observed that “Christians expect Jesus to do exactly what Jews hope their Messiah will do” (cited 108-09).
Ferda begins to outline early Christian eschatology in part three of the book. It is generally agreed that the earliest Christians were expecting Jesus’ future to appear (133), or they were trying to make sense of hope. This is not an isolated belief of a few early Christ followers; it is pervasive in the New Testament. Beginning with Paul’s letters and moving chronologically through the synoptics, he surveys what these texts say about second hope. (Ferda assumes Markan priority and some form of Q, but this is unimportant for the overall argument.) “The general hope for Christ’s return was a fundamental element of Paul’s kerygma” (167). After carefully examining 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15, he observes that in Mark, “we see a good deal in common with what we found in Paul” (194). The present state of things for Jesus’s followers is incomplete in his absence. They live in a time when the “bridegroom is taken away” (195). He carefully examines how Mathew and Luke wrote with Mark as a source.
Although Matthew and Luke’s Jesus do not say exactly the same thing as Mark’s Jesus, there is still hope for Jesus’s return in these later Gospels (implying that the hope for an imminent return of Jesus is not fading away at the end of the first century). All three Synoptic gospels are informed by well-known messianic texts from Isaiah, Daniel, etc. (255). Ferda compares the use of Daniel 7:13-14 in Mark 14:62, Matthew 26:64, and Luke 22:67-69 and concludes that both gospels see a future return, even if this is about a future enthronement. “Everywhere else we look, we find widespread agreement and creative development, wherein expansion and invention accentuate what the sources already contain” (232). This is true, even for the gospel of John. He argues that John does not represent a totally realized eschatology, nor does he see this as a “cooling” eschatological hope. Ferda examines the farewell discourse in John with parallels to the Synoptics. “John’s Jesus, too, talks about his future coming” (249), even if this language has been “stripped down” (250).
In part four, Ferda argues that the most plausible explanation for this early and pervasive second advent hope is the Historical Jesus. By the time 1 Thessalonians was written (the earliest book in the canon), the return of Jesus was already raising questions, and by 2 Peter (the last book written in the canon), it was an object of mockery! Ferda does not engage in recovering the actual words of Jesus as if that were possible. Instead, he suggests, “Jesus said things like this…” A second advent hope makes sense in the light of what the followers believed and in the context of the Second Temple Judaism (259). Although he is certain writers reframed traditions, “deeschatologiclization is not the key to understanding the development of early Christianity” (268, citing J.C. Paget). For Ferda, Jesus himself used Daniel 7 eschatologically and as a self-reference (375). If Jesus thought he might die, he likely expected an interim between his resurrection and his second advent (427).
Conclusion. In Jesus and His Promised Second Coming, Tucker Ferda significantly contributes to the study of Historical Jesus. Picking up threads from recent studies of an apocalyptic Jesus and reception history, he makes a clear case that the simplest explanation for the early and pervasive hope that Jesus would return as the eschatological judge of Daniel 7 is that Jesus made these kinds of claims. I have long thought that the best way to understand Jesus’s eschatology, as well as that of the early church, is to understand Jewish eschatology in the Second Temple period. Ferda examines the issue from the other direction, suggesting that modern scholarly consensus bracketed out this evidence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I suspect many Historical Jesus scholars will remain unconvinced, but Ferda opens the possibility that Jesus thought he would return sometime after his death.
NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.