The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God Book 1)

by N.T. Wright

It should be clear from this that the idea of ‘god’s righteousness’ was inextricably bound up with the idea of the covenant.115 These beliefs, which grew naturally out of the combination of monotheism and election, led to the characteristic shape of second-temple Jewish eschatology. Monotheism and election thus result in what has been appropriately called ‘restoration eschatology’.116 Not until YHWH acted decisively to change things and restore the fortunes of his people would the exile be at an end. At the present time, the covenant people themselves were riddled with corruption, still undeserving of redemption. One major result was that Judaism always contained a tradition of fierce criticism-from-within, which stretched back to Moses and the early prophets. Such criticisms were a regular and classic feature of Judaism, and their appropriation by John the Baptist and Jesus (and, arguably, the early church) is paradoxically a sign, not of rejection of Judaism and all that it stood for, but of fidelity to one of Judaism’s central traditions.