Messianic movements prove God’s presence

YOUR correspondent Observer notes in his/her letter (Write Back, December 13), in reply to Rev Craig Cooney (Saturday Review, December 7), that God was not silent for the 400 years between Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, and the letters of St Paul, the earliest writings of the New.

This is certainly true, in that the whole Jewish Apocalyptic literature, the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, date from this time, as does the Book of Maccabees, which used to be included in Protestant Bibles until about 1825 and can still be found in Catholic Bibles.

Maccabees recounts the genocidal war against Antiochus IV in 167 BCE, when Judaism faced its greatest crisis since the Babylonian exile. It is now widely accepted among historians of the Bible that the Book of Daniel was also written about 163 BCE in response to this Antiochene crisis, although it draws its setting from the earlier existential crisis of the Babylonian exile to which the new crisis is thereby likened and people given hope by knowing that the religion had survived and revived before.

Daniel is situated among the other apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple period. It was this literature which proved particularly influential among the first century Jewish population, fuelling the ascetic revivalism of John the Baptist.

Numerous messianic movements, besides Jesus’, also were inspired at this time by this literature.

It contributed to the Jewish revolt, which led to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE and to the revolt in 132 CE, which led Hadrian to exile the Jews from Judea and rename it Palestine.

DR NICK CANNING Coleraine, Co Londonderry