First-century Jews certainly believed that their god, being the creator of the world, could and did act in ways for which there was no other obvious explanation. But that he was normally absent, allowing his world and his people to get on with things under their own steam—if there were Jewish writers who believed this, I am unaware of them. The puzzle that faced some writers, namely, why their god was not acting as they wished him to, was solved, as we have seen, in quite other ways, not least through wrestling with the concept of the divine covenant-faithfulness.41
