534 A History of Judaism
and a constant sense of potential catastrophe heightened by memories,
still vivid, of the horrors of the Holocaust. Eschatological expectations
flourish, even if they express themselves in very different ways. In 2004
a group of seventy- one rabbis made an attempt in a meeting in Tiberias
to re- establish the Sanhedrin. The more that religious Zionist settlers
come under pressure in the occupied territories, the more they are
tempted to appeal not just to past divine promises but to future messi-
anic hopes. Will this indeed be the future of Judaism? Will the violence
which in recent decades has begun to characterize religious disputes
between Jews, especially in the State of Israel, escalate, or will it subside
as it has so often over the past 2,000 years into a grudging acceptance
of difference? The historian Josephus, who reckoned he knew the future
both as a prophet in his own right and through his readings of the book
of Daniel, nonetheless baulked at explaining to his Greek and Roman
readers the meaning of Daniel’s vision of the four empires, noting that
‘I have not thought it proper to relate this, since I am expected to write
of what is past and done and not of what is to be .. .’ Such reticence in
predicting what will happen in the next century is surely wise.^9