In my last post on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I mentioned Lee's view that John was John of Gisclala,
who was influential in a Jewish revolt against Rome that led to the
destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. According to Lee, John still had
dreams of a bloody end to evil when he was exiled on Patmos, which was
when he wrote the Book of Revelation, but John later had a change of
heart, as the Gospel of John reflects. John stopped expecting a bloody
end and embraced a realized eschatology that emphasized love, Jesus'
presence with the church, and Jesus' victory over evil on the cross.
One
question I have had as I've read this book is this: Was the John who
believed in realized eschatology more faithful to the teachings of
Jesus? Lee narrates that John certainly understood some of Jesus'
teachings differently when John became committed to realized
eschatology. For example, Matthew 10:23 says that you (presumably the
disciples) will not pass through all the tribes of Israel before the Son
of Man comes. According to Lee, John came to interpret Jesus' coming
here, not as a cataclysmic event that would bring a bloody end, but
rather as Jesus' coming to the church through the Holy Spirit.
As
far as what Jesus himself taught, Lee refers to scholarship that holds
that Jesus' message was not particularly apocalyptic, but there were
Christians who later added an apocalyptic layer. In light of that, Lee
appears to be arguing that Jesus himself had a realized eschatology,
which was reflected in the sources behind the Gospel of John. And yet,
in one of his narrations of the life of Jesus in this book, Lee presents
Jesus as one who proclaims a sort of Jubilee, which entails the healing
of the oppressed and sharing with the poor (page 228). How would that
fit within a realized eschatology? Or would it fit better within a
futurist (and yet imminent) eschatology, in which Jesus is seeking to
overthrow the present world system? Perhaps it could fit a realized
eschatology, as Christians continue to heal and show love to the poor in
the here-and-now, and hopefully that would lead to a widespread
Jubilee. (UPDATE: On page 344, Lee associates the Jubilee with Christians forgiving and people being forgiven.)