Beginning with the End: the Place of Eschatology in the Messianic Jewish Canonical Narrative

A “canonical narrative,” as defined by R. Kendall Soulen, is “an interpretive instrument”—a hermeneutical tool—that orders the Bible’s complex story line so as to present it as “a theological and narrative unity.”1 While the Bible describes people and events set in the distant past, its narrative transcends that past. It includes prophetic and apocalyptic material, and even its accounts of historical events are told for the purpose of shedding light on the future. Therefore, our canonical narrative must deal with the future as well as with the past. The title and topi