Introduction: Beyond Preterism and Futurism
The interpretation of the New Testament has long been divided between competing eschatological systems. On one side stand futurists, who insist that the major prophecies remain to be fulfilled in a distant future—often mapped onto political nationalism or dispensational charts. On the other side stand preterists, who argue that nearly all prophecy was fulfilled in the first century, climaxing in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Both systems flatten the covenantal texture of the biblical story.
I write as neither a futurist nor a preterist, but as what I call a Fulfillment Covenantal Realist. This framework affirms that decisive fulfillments did occur in the first century—the cross, resurrection, Pentecost, the transfer of the Temple to His body, and the reconstitution or solidification of a ‘partially hardened’ Judaism at Yavneh. Yet it resists both the preterist closure that collapses hope into the past and the futurist postponement that suspends hope into a distant spectacle. Instead, Fulfillment Covenantal Realism insists that covenant history has ruptures that signal a continuity: fulfillment is real, but the consummation and an often overlooked reconciliation remains ahead.
This essay proceeds in three movements. First, I will highlight how rabbinic polemics about Yeshu haNotzri, the witness of the Desposyni (Jesus’ family), and the exclusion of the Nazoreans at Yavneh reveal the true covenantal ruptures of the first century.
Second, I will argue that Paul’s vision of the third heaven and the New Testament’s “Jerusalem above” provide the proper horizon of destiny, against both preterist closure and nationalist reductions.
Third, I will revisit Albert Schweitzer’s dictum that Jesus “threw himself upon the wheel of history,” and show that the urgency of Jesus and Paul is not failed apocalypticism but the enduring missionary engine of covenantal realism.
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I. Yeshu haNotzri, the Desposyni, and Yavneh
1. Rabbinic Polemic: Yeshu haNotzri
Rabbinic literature preserves a fragmented, polemical memory of Jesus under the name Yeshu haNotzri. I argue this is not the record of Jesus of Nazareth. The b. Sanhedrin mentions his execution on the eve of Passover for sorcery and leading Israel astray (Sanhedrin 43a). This is perhaps what is the occasion of the little overlooked book of Jude found right before John’s Apocalypse. Nevertheless conflations and misrepresentation evovled into distortions in the medieval text the Toledot Yeshu which depict Jesus of Nazareth as illegitimate or a deceiver. Scholars such as Peter Schäfer have shown how these stories emerged polemically to counter Christian claims.^1
Rabbinic literature preserves a fragmented, polemical memory of Jesus under the name Yeshu haNotzri. I argue this is not the record of Jesus of Nazareth. The b. Sanhedrin mentions his execution on the eve of Passover for sorcery and leading Israel astray (Sanhedrin 43a). This is perhaps what is the occasion of the little overlooked book of Jude found right before John’s Apocalypse. Nevertheless conflations and misrepresentation evovled into distortions in the medieval text the Toledot Yeshu which depict Jesus of Nazareth as illegitimate or a deceiver. Scholars such as Peter Schäfer have shown how these stories emerged polemically to counter Christian claims.^1
Yet these texts are not mere inventions; they are negative witnesses. The designation Notzri itself suggests one “detached” from the covenantal chain (shalshelet). Jewish tradition, however, preserved another stream—the Teliya YeShU, which some scholars identify as an earlier form of counter-narrative, closer in time to the first century. The distinction is crucial.
The rabbinic Yeshu haNotzri reflects the polemical detachment of Jesus from Israel’s tradition, while the New Testament insists on his deep embeddedness in Torah and covenant. Nevertheless, again, as have argued that the story is conflated and distorted from textual evidence like The Epistle of Jude and deeper Rabbinical textual inquiry. This ‘majority report’ has only spoiled the vast amount of the last millenniums cultural or ethnic jewish populations — of course Christianity’s hegemony has not helped
A Fulfillment Covenantal Realist thus refuses to accept the rabbinic caricature at face value, but also refuses to ignore it. The very hostility of the texts confirms that the Nazorean movement was real, threatening, and deeply entangled in 2nd Temple Jewish life because of false messiahs from the house of David and perhaps in Jesus family.
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2. The Desposyni: Jesus’ Family as Covenant Witness
The Desposyni (from Greek desposunos, “those belonging to the Master”) were the family members of Jesus who continued to lead in the earliest church. Hegesippus, preserved in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, records that relatives of Jesus—James the Just, Jude, Simon, and later grand-nephews—remained leaders of the Jerusalem community and were even interrogated by Roman authorities under Domitian.^2
The Desposyni (from Greek desposunos, “those belonging to the Master”) were the family members of Jesus who continued to lead in the earliest church. Hegesippus, preserved in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, records that relatives of Jesus—James the Just, Jude, Simon, and later grand-nephews—remained leaders of the Jerusalem community and were even interrogated by Roman authorities under Domitian.^2
James the Just, “the brother of the Lord,” was widely revered, and his martyrdom in the 60s was remembered by Josephus as one cause of the city’s judgment.^3 The Epistle of Jude shows the family’s voice resisting lawless intruders and urging covenantal fidelity: “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). These writings situate Jesus’ family firmly within Israel’s scriptural and covenantal frame.
The continued existence of the Desposyni after 70 CE undermines full preterism. If the resurrection were past and the kingdom consummated, why would Jesus’ own family continue to live as persecuted remnants within Israel? Their very survival testifies to covenant continuity, not closure, perhaps witnessing the ‘partial hardening’ instituted.
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3. Yavneh and the Birkat haMinim
The destruction of the Temple in 70 was catastrophic, but the Council of Yavneh was in some ways even more decisive. Under Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, the Pharisaic sages reconstituted Judaism around Torah study, synagogue liturgy, and halakhic authority. The Amidah was standardized, and the Birkat haMinim was inserted—a curse against the minim (heretics), likely including the Notzrim (Nazoreans).
The destruction of the Temple in 70 was catastrophic, but the Council of Yavneh was in some ways even more decisive. Under Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, the Pharisaic sages reconstituted Judaism around Torah study, synagogue liturgy, and halakhic authority. The Amidah was standardized, and the Birkat haMinim was inserted—a curse against the minim (heretics), likely including the Notzrim (Nazoreans).
As Jacob Neusner and Daniel Boyarin have argued, Yavneh marked the moment where Judaism redefined itself without the Temple and simultaneously drew boundaries against followers of Jesus.^4 To be a Nazorean was no longer simply a sectarian option within Judaism; it was now to be excluded from synagogue fellowship.
Thus Yavneh, more than AD 70 itself, represents the real parting of the ways. Preterists often focus on the Temple’s destruction as the eschatological hinge. But covenantally, the deeper rupture was the liturgical excommunication of the Desposyni and their communities like the three groups of Ebionites. Fulfillment Covenantal Realism insists that this moment cannot be flattened into “prophecy fulfilled”; it must be understood as a contested reconstitution of covenant identity and fidelity among those that call upon the name of the LORD.
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4. Works of the Law and Religio Licita
The NPP scholarship is valid and important insofar as it recovers the Jewish texture of Paul’s world and challenges caricatures of Judaism as a religion of merit. But I part ways with their attempt to resolve Paul’s arguments beyond the law vs. grace dichotomy that shaped post-Reformational covenant theology into Christendom, here we must go back and see the Jewish trajectory.
Within that legal framework, Judaism had imperial recognition and exemption. To be circumcised was to belong to a protected category. Gentiles joining the Jesus movement faced a question: must they adopt these markers to gain legitimacy? Paul said no. To require them was to compromise the gospel. His insistence that Gentiles were justified by faith in Messiah, apart from works of the law, was not an attack on Torah’s goodness but a refusal to collapse covenantal identity into Rome’s categories of legality.
That said, this is also where Paul’s citation of Deuteronomy 21:23—“cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:13)—takes on sharp political and covenantal meaning. Rome weaponized crucifixion as a public curse, branding the crucified as outlaws beyond covenant protection. By embracing this curse in Messiah, Paul subverted both Rome’s power and the law’s curse logic: Christ bore Rome’s ultimate shame to redeem Israel and the nations.
In this light, Paul’s letters expose the inadequacy of both preterist and nationalist readings. The gospel cannot be reduced either to past prophecy-fulfillment or to present political recognition. It is a covenantal announcement that transcends both.
Paul’s polemic against “works of the law” (erga nomou) is best understood not in Protestant categories of legalism, but as a critique of boundary markers—circumcision, dietary rules, and calendar observances—that defined Jewish communal belonging. As E.P. Sanders, James D.G. Dunn, and N.T. Wright (NPP) have shown, Second Temple Jews did not believe they “earned salvation” by works, but that these practices marked them as covenant insiders.^5 Yet these markers carried more than theological weight: in the Roman world, they also functioned as signs of belonging to a recognized religio licita. Josephus records how Julius Caesar confirmed Jewish rights to assemble, send contributions to the Temple, and follow their ancestral laws (Antiquities 14.213–216), while Philo likewise appeals to Roman decrees that guaranteed Jews freedom to practice circumcision, Sabbath, and dietary separation (Legatio ad Gaium 155–158). To adopt such practices, therefore, was not merely to take on covenantal identity but to gain political legitimacy and protection under Roman law. Gentiles who embraced circumcision or kosher observance were effectively entering a legally sanctioned status group. Paul’s rejection of imposing these works upon Gentile believers was thus both theological and political: requiring them meant turning Messiah-faith into a strategy for status and security under Rome rather than embracing the new covenantal identity of the Spirit, which transcended the guarded borders of religio licita.
The NPP scholarship is valid and important insofar as it recovers the Jewish texture of Paul’s world and challenges caricatures of Judaism as a religion of merit. But I part ways with their attempt to resolve Paul’s arguments beyond the law vs. grace dichotomy that shaped post-Reformational covenant theology into Christendom, here we must go back and see the Jewish trajectory.
The post - Reformational framework, inherited from Luther and Calvin, eventually imposed a binary foreign to Paul’s covenantal context. Nevertheless, I affirm its trajectory as a vaild proclamation theology over systemic Reformed Biblical Theology as is often framed or juxtaposed to ‘Dispensationalism’ as both are product of modernity. The true issue from the context of the NT was not abstract “grace versus works,” but whether Gentiles needed to adopt Jewish boundary markers to be counted as members of the covenant within the Roman system of religio licita.
Within that legal framework, Judaism had imperial recognition and exemption. To be circumcised was to belong to a protected category. Gentiles joining the Jesus movement faced a question: must they adopt these markers to gain legitimacy? Paul said no. To require them was to compromise the gospel. His insistence that Gentiles were justified by faith in Messiah, apart from works of the law, was not an attack on Torah’s goodness but a refusal to collapse covenantal identity into Rome’s categories of legality.
That said, this is also where Paul’s citation of Deuteronomy 21:23—“cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:13)—takes on sharp political and covenantal meaning. Rome weaponized crucifixion as a public curse, branding the crucified as outlaws beyond covenant protection. By embracing this curse in Messiah, Paul subverted both Rome’s power and the law’s curse logic: Christ bore Rome’s ultimate shame to redeem Israel and the nations.
Ironically, this very dynamic undermines the New Perspective’s attempt to make Paul simply about Jewish boundary-marking, for Rome itself exploited Torah’s curse language to delegitimize Jesus and his followers. The Pauline gospel thus resists being reduced to either Protestant law/grace dichotomies or NPP boundary-marker models: it proclaims the Messiah who transforms the curse of Rome’s tree into covenant blessing for the nations and the indivdual believer.
The NPP is right to recover the Jewishness of Paul, but it misses that Paul’s midrashic use of Deut 21:23 goes far beyond boundary-markers. In Jewish midrash (Mishnah Sanh. 6; Sifre Deut.; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan; b. Sanh. 46b), hanging on a tree marks ultimate covenantal curse — blasphemy, idolatry, defilement of the land, shame even reflected on God. Rome weaponized that perception against Jesus. Paul reclaims the very text and its rabbinic resonances to declare: Messiah bore the curse so that the blessing of Abraham might extend to the nations (Gal 3:13–14). This is not simply about ethnic identity markers, but about the deepest covenantal wound and its eventual healing.
In this light, Paul’s letters expose the inadequacy of both preterist and nationalist readings. The gospel cannot be reduced either to past prophecy-fulfillment or to present political recognition. It is a covenantal announcement that transcends both.
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II. Resurrection and the New Jerusalem
1. Paul’s Vision of the Third Heaven
In 2 Cor 12:2–4 Paul speaks of being “caught up to the third heaven … to Paradise.” Jewish sources describe multiple heavens—sometimes three, sometimes seven, even ten. Paul’s third heaven fits this spectrum. 2 Enoch 8–9 locates Paradise in the third heaven with the Tree of Life; the Testament of Levi 2–3 describes Levi’s ascent to the heavens and the holy temple above.
In 2 Cor 12:2–4 Paul speaks of being “caught up to the third heaven … to Paradise.” Jewish sources describe multiple heavens—sometimes three, sometimes seven, even ten. Paul’s third heaven fits this spectrum. 2 Enoch 8–9 locates Paradise in the third heaven with the Tree of Life; the Testament of Levi 2–3 describes Levi’s ascent to the heavens and the holy temple above.
Rabbinic literature preserves the same idea. b. Ḥagigah 12b states: “In the heaven called Zebul are the Jerusalem and the Temple, and Michael the great prince stands and offers there.” Midrash Tehillim 122:3 interprets Yerushalayim ha-benuyah (“the built-up Jerusalem”) as the city where Jerusalem below is joined with Jerusalem above. b. Taʿanit 5a teaches: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said: I will not enter the Jerusalem above until I enter the Jerusalem below.” Exodus Rabbah 35:6 says Moses was shown the heavenly sanctuary, the archetype of the earthly one.
Second-Temple apocalypses echo this. 4 Ezra 7:26 proclaims: “The city which is now hidden shall appear.” 2 Baruch 4:2–6 insists the heavenly Jerusalem was prepared from the beginning to be revealed at the end.
Thus, when Paul calls Jerusalem “above” (Gal 4:26) and Hebrews 12:22 calls it “the city of the living God,” he is not speaking metaphorically. He is drawing on a well-established Jewish tradition: the Jerusalem shel Maʿlah, the heavenly city, exists already, awaiting union with the earthly city at the end. Revelation 21 confirms: the New Jerusalem descends at the consummation.
This vision relativizes both earthly Jerusalem and Rome. True destiny is not tied to the Old City nor to Yavneh’s liturgy, but to the New Jerusalem, descending from the third heaven.
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2. Hymenaeus and Philetus: Proto-Preterists
Paul warns Timothy against Hymenaeus and Philetus, “who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened” (2 Tim 2:17–18). Rabbinic Judaism likewise considered denial of resurrection a grave heresy.
Paul warns Timothy against Hymenaeus and Philetus, “who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened” (2 Tim 2:17–18). Rabbinic Judaism likewise considered denial of resurrection a grave heresy.
m. Sanhedrin 10:1 teaches that all Israel have a share in the world to come, “except he who says there is no resurrection from the Torah.” b. Sanhedrin 90b–91a offers prooftexts for bodily resurrection. The daily Amidah praises God as Mechayyeh ha-Metim (“Who revives the dead”). b. Ketubot 111a–b vividly depicts embodied restoration in the land.
For both Paul and the rabbis, resurrection is future and bodily. To collapse it into 70 CE or spiritual metaphor is to repeat the gangrene of Hymenaeus and Philetus.
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3. Sadducean Nationalism and Modern Zionism
The Sadducees denied resurrection and angels (Acts 23:8). Their hope was earthly: Temple, aristocracy, Roman collaboration. Rabbinic tradition remembers them as heretics who rejected the world to come (b. Sanh. 90a). Their sect perished after 70 or did it?
The Sadducees denied resurrection and angels (Acts 23:8). Their hope was earthly: Temple, aristocracy, Roman collaboration. Rabbinic tradition remembers them as heretics who rejected the world to come (b. Sanh. 90a). Their sect perished after 70 or did it?
This Sadducean impulse resurfaces in secular Zionism, which equates redemption with sovereignty. As Moshe Halbertal has noted, this redefines covenantal hope as nationalism.^6 Dispensational Christianity, though opposite in form, makes a similar error by tying destiny to national restoration or a rebuilt temple.
A covenantal realist resists both. Covenant destiny is not secured by politics or sovereignty, but by resurrection and the Jerusalem above.
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4. The New Jerusalem as the True Telos
Revelation 21–22 depicts the New Jerusalem descending after judgment, radiant with glory, without a temple, with Israel’s tribes on its gates and the apostles on its foundations.
Revelation 21–22 depicts the New Jerusalem descending after judgment, radiant with glory, without a temple, with Israel’s tribes on its gates and the apostles on its foundations.
Rabbinic motifs resonate. b. Bava Batra 75a–b envisions Jerusalem enlarged with gates of precious stones. Midrash on Zechariah 2:9 pictures God as a “wall of fire” around the city. Midrash Tehillim 122 insists the true city is the joined Jerusalem above and below.
Together, apocalyptic and rabbinic traditions affirm: the archetypal city exists now in heaven and will be revealed at the end. This undermines preterism (the city is not yet manifest, for we still die and weep) and relativizes nationalism (the telos is not modern Jerusalem, but the heavenly city joined with the earthly).
Fulfillment Covenantal Realism thus reads both Paul and the Jewish Hazal (authority) as converging: history matters, but destiny is resurrection and the New Jerusalem of the third heaven.
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III. Missionary Urgency as Covenant DNA
1. Schweitzer’s Dictum
Albert Schweitzer claimed that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who threw himself upon the wheel of history and was crushed by it. For him, Jesus expected the imminent end, was disappointed, and died under that illusion. James Tabor and others have echoed this view, seeing Jesus and Paul as mistaken visionaries whose apocalyptic urgency failed.
Yet this reading collapses urgency into disillusionment. It misses the covenantal dimension: Jesus’ urgency was obedience, not error.
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2. Jesus’ Urgency
Jesus proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). His warnings of judgment, his symbolic temple action, his decision to go up to Jerusalem—all reveal a profound sense of eschatological pressure.
Jesus proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). His warnings of judgment, his symbolic temple action, his decision to go up to Jerusalem—all reveal a profound sense of eschatological pressure.
But this urgency was not a failed timetable. It was covenantal vocation. Jesus enacted the suffering servant’s obedience, embodying Israel’s calling, and was vindicated in resurrection. His urgency was fidelity, not delusion.
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3. Paul’s Urgency
Paul writes, “The appointed time has grown very short … the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:29–31). He insists, “The night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12). This urgency fueled his missionary zeal.
Paul writes, “The appointed time has grown very short … the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:29–31). He insists, “The night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12). This urgency fueled his missionary zeal.
For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was the dawn of the new age. The nations must be gathered before the consummation. His urgency was not failed apocalypticism but the realism of mission.
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4. The Problem of Historicizing Urgency
Modern scholars rightly note the intensity of Jesus and Paul’s eschatology but wrongly historicize it into disappointment. By treating urgency as error, they sever it from covenantal continuity.
Modern scholars rightly note the intensity of Jesus and Paul’s eschatology but wrongly historicize it into disappointment. By treating urgency as error, they sever it from covenantal continuity.
But the New Testament itself interprets this urgency as missionary calling. Acts ends not in closure but with Paul preaching unhindered in Rome (Acts 28:31). Jude urges believers to contend for the faith. Revelation ends with the missionary prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Urgency is the DNA of covenantal mission, not a failed timetable.
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5. Fulfillment Covenantal Realism and Mission
Fulfillment Covenantal Realism reframes Schweitzer’s dictum. Jesus did throw himself into history, but he was not crushed—he was raised. Paul did live with urgency, but not in vain—his urgency was missionary realism. The Desposyni continued to witness, Jude resisted distortions, and the church inherited the same urgency.
Fulfillment Covenantal Realism reframes Schweitzer’s dictum. Jesus did throw himself into history, but he was not crushed—he was raised. Paul did live with urgency, but not in vain—his urgency was missionary realism. The Desposyni continued to witness, Jude resisted distortions, and the church inherited the same urgency.
This urgency remains today. Not because we expect a failed timetable, but because we live between fulfillment and consummation. The resurrection has begun, the Spirit is poured out, the nations are being gathered, the city above awaits.
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Conclusion: History Matters, Covenant Endures, Destiny Is Above
Why am I not a full preterist? Because full preterism collapses the covenant story into the past, denies the resurrection hope, and ignores the continuity of Israel is various aspects. Why am I not a futurist nationalist? Because such schemes collapse hope into earthly politics and deny the city above and ultimately are stuck in the past.
Why am I not a full preterist? Because full preterism collapses the covenant story into the past, denies the resurrection hope, and ignores the continuity of Israel is various aspects. Why am I not a futurist nationalist? Because such schemes collapse hope into earthly politics and deny the city above and ultimately are stuck in the past.
I am a Fulfillment Covenantal Realist. I affirm the ruptures and fulfillments of the first century: the cross, resurrection, Pentecost, AD 70, Yavneh, the exclusion of the Nazoreans. I affirm covenantal continuity through the Desposyni, Paul’s mission, and Rabbinic reconstitution yet reject their ‘majority report’ as part and parcel of a ‘partial hardening.’ And I affirm the realism of future hope: the resurrection of the dead and the descent of the New Jerusalem from the third heaven.
History matters. Covenant endures. Destiny is above. Until the city descends, the urgency of mission remains.
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Endnotes
1. Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
1. Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
2. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.19–20, citing Hegesippus.
3. Josephus, Antiquities 20.200.
4. Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973); Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
5. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977); James D.G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013).
6. 2 Enoch 8–9; Testament of Levi 2–3.
7. Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
8. For Talmudic rabbinic material: m. Sanh. 6:4–5; Sifre Deut. 21; b. Sanh. 90b–91a; b. Ḥagigah 12b; b. Taʿanit 5a; Midrash Tehillim 122; Exod. Rabbah 35:6; Tanchuma P’kudei; b. Ketubot 111a–b; b. Bava Batra 75a–b; Avot de-Rabbi Nathan A, ch. 5; 2 Baruch 4:2–6; 4 Ezra 7:26.
