The Story Retold :Conclusions

Part 1: PAUL AND HIS WORLD
PAUL AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD
Chapter TWO LIKE BIRDS HOVERING OVERHEAD:
THE FAITHFULNESS OF THE GOD OF ISRAEL


(ii) The Continuous Story

(e) The Story Retold: Conclusions

This brief summary of multiple retellings of Israel’s story as a whole or in parts prompts several reflections. First, there are considerable and obvious differences between the examples we have studied. Had they been all more or less alike (and had the New Testament writers simply picked up on such a common tradition) one might have regarded the whole thing simply as a topos, a kind of boilerplate, reach-me-down retelling which had been worn smooth and whose particularities made little difference. Anything but: the widely differing ways in which the story was told demonstrates that out of the hundreds of features that were in principle available every writer could pick and choose to press his own points. And, along with the differences of narrative selection and highlighting, there goes the obvious point, which I and others have frequently made: there is no single picture of ‘the Messiah’ which emerges even from these narrative texts, let alone from any wider consideration of the Jewish evidence.254 I shall return to this presently...