Rabbinic Eschatology and Self-Reflection in Late Antiquity

• In Event: Eschatology and Divine Justice

Abstract

Classical rabbinic literature of the third to sixth centuries CE is not primarily concerned with eschatology, and precious little scholarly attention has been given to rabbinic eschatology. But rabbinic eschatology provides an important window into the worldview of the rabbis, its limits, and the ways in which it finds expression in their literature. Moreover, the function of eschatology for the rabbis appears, at times, to have been profoundly different from its functions in many early Jewish and Christian texts, so this investigation may yet broaden our view of eschatology generally, particularly as a social and political discourse.

Rabbinic eschatology is interesting not because of its doctrines or associated practices, but because of the ways in which the rabbis USED discourse about eschatology. One of the functions of eschatology in rabbinic literature was to afford freer play with ideas that were too daring to be set in this-worldly terms. This includes challenges to standard rabbinic ideas of Jewish specialness, non-Jewish damnation, and ancestral merit. The eschaton is discussed at times not as the realm in which the most profound problems are resolved, but in which they’re further complicated. Thus, in their confrontation of the problems of eschatology as they conceive of it, rabbinic narratives contribute to a complex understanding of both themselves and others.

author

• Jenny R. Labendz, Drew University