Part II Chapter 5 - Old Testament insights

Chapter 5 sees the beginning of the second part of the book and looks at the way the bible views the end days. Polkinghorne suggests that that the credibility of eschatological hope rests ultimately on the faithfulness of God and goes on to illustrate how biblical insights point to a god who is indeed faithful.
He goes on to talk about the way in which life and death are portrayed and spoken of in the Old Testament. He explains the lack of concern about the afterlife in Israelite history and talks about how the people of Israel centred their hopes on justice, prosperity and honoured old age, attained in the course of the life of this world. Polkinghorne uses references from a host of Old Testament prophets to illustrate his point as well as referring to Psalms such as Psalm 88.
This is not to say however that the Hebrew bible does not mention the possibility of an afterlife and Polkinghorne expresses this clearly in reference to excerpts from the book of Daniel and the Prophet Isaiah.
“Your deeds shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy ! For your dew is a radiant dew and the earth will give birth to those long dead “(Isaiah 26 : 19)
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the Earth shall awake, some to everlasting light, and some to shame and contempt” (Daniel 12 :2)
Polkinghorne suggests that rather than the influence of Persian beliefs influencing the Israelites in their shift away from an absence of afterlife solely, it is more likely the uncertainties of the fate of the martyrs from the Maccabaen revolt played an influential role also.
There is then a shift away from the old testament and Polkinghorne enters a transition phase linking the Old Testament to the New, explaining through the use of the thoughts of Walter Brueggemann how the Jewish experience in the hope of adversity, of promise held onto at the centre of contradiction, to the Christian experience of Easter.
There is a brief explanation as to the position apocalyptic writing play in eschatological thinking before moving into the way in which the Christian church has utilised old testament thinking in their validation of Jesus as the messianic hope for the world and his use of the title “Son of man”
On the whole this chapter spoke strongly to me of the historical evolution of the way in which God reveals himself to his people allowing sufficient knowledge of what is to come to enable there to be hope within his people, whether that hope be based on ideas of prosperity and justice in this life or in the some future existence in a heavenly realm.