Until it is Fulfilled

Anders E. Nielsen presents a fresh look on New Testament eschatology by analysing the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. He first of all considers whether ancient literary expressions of farewell motif may or may not lead to an outlook of some sort of transcendental nature, which could play an active role in the composition of the text as read text. He concludes that in a fairly representative number of non-biblical as well as biblical farewell-addresses we do find transcendental outlooks with eschatological implications. Furthermore, these particular outlooks seem to be at work in close relation to the approaching death of the intended speaker of the addresses. Against this background the two major farewell addresses, the one of Jesus in Luke 22 and the one of Paul in Acts 20, are at great length analysed by means of a rhetorical and text-linguistic approach. Anders E. Nielsen divides his exegetical-theological findings into three main-points. First of all the traditional hypothesis of an imminent expectation of the parousia is seen as problematic, because the eschatology in Luke seems to be less a matter of chronology and more a question of quality. Secondly, some of the sayings in a hellenistic work like Luke-Acts may sometimes be free to express a vertical-transcendent aspect with individual-eschatological associations, while other phases are sufficiently vague to call up in the audience both individual and/or collective-eschatological connotations. Thirdly, all this put together suggests that Luke's religious language does in fact not play down eschatology. On the contrary, Anders E. Nielsen suggests that one can speak of some sort of applied eschatology in the sense that all the relevant expressions in the compositions examined suggest a far more parenetic or prescriptive semantic function than an informative one.