Simply Jesus - Chapter 12a "At the Heart of the Storm"

Having attempted to help the reader gain some understanding of the Jewish worldview and of how the people of Jesus' day would have heard His teachings and interpreted His miracles and actions, in chapter 12 Wright returns to the "perfect storm" metaphor that he began the book with so that we keep in mind that there were three powerful forces at work that came together at the time of Jesus' earthly public career. As a reminder, these three forces were (see more details surrounding this in my posts on chapters 4 & 5):
1)  the buildup of pressure from the Roman Empire (western wind)
2)  the thousand-year hopes of Israel (northern wind)
3)  God's strange and powerful purposes (the hurricane/cyclone)

The fact that Rome was being recognized as the latest and worst in "a long sequence of pagan overlords stretching back half a millennium to Babylon and, a millennium before that to Egypt...simply increased the high-pressure system of Jewish hopes, since the great Exodus story...reminded Israel that when the tyrants did their worst, God would win the victory, liberate his people, and come to live among them once more."

The Jews assumed that God would back them up and reinforce the high-pressure system of their hopes. How convenient it would have been for them if He were to just validate their national hope the way they pictured He would when He came to establish His government on earth! Repeatedly the prophets had warned that things would most likely not be so neat and that God would not act as they expected, but they couldn't grasp this and continued with their own expectations of how it would all play out.

John 18 & 19 presents these three forces clearly in Pontius Pilate's (west wind) discussion with Jesus (God's hurricane), with the Jewish chief priests (north wind) adding their opinions to the conversation. "It seems to be, in theory, a kind of judicial hearing, but the conversation constantly threatens to lapse into a sharp-edged discussion about worldviews..."

The rest of the chapter presents key places in scriptures where the "perfect storm" seemed to be anticipated and prophesied.

On part b of this post I will present the bare bones of Wright's elaboration of these portions of Scripture. The three outstanding Old Testament portions that he covers are Isaiah 40-66, Daniel, and Zechariah (with some references to parts of Ezekiel and of course the Psalms).