110 Apokatastasis: Four Meditationsof scriptural prophecy regarding things to come would be well
advised not to attempt to make sense of the book of Revela-
tion, in any but the most diffident and tentative way possible,
but to inquire instead into the eschatological language used by
Christ in the gospels. Here too, admittedly, it seems obvious
that those who take the so-called preterist view of much of
this language - that is, the view that a great deal of the gospels'
talk about a coming tribulation and judgment is most properly
understood as referring principally to the fall of Jerusalem and
the destruction of the Temple, and therefore to events that are
(for us) already long past, even though it is all expressed in
the venerable prophetic tropes of a coming epoch of divine
wrath and mercy-enjoy an almost unassailable hermeneu-
tical advantage over all other interpreters. If nothing else, the
dominical logia recorded in Mark (9: 1; 13: 30) and Matthew
(16:28; 24:34) do clearly promise that the "final" tribulations
and judgment predicted by Christ will come to pass within
the lifetimes of some of his contemporaries, and this appar-
ently caused the evangelists no great embarrassment. And it
has been noted often enough by attentive readers that a sig-
nificant number of Christ's prophecies in the synoptic gospels
consist quite literally in jeremiads-that is to say, it is Jere-
miah in particular, more than any other of the prophets, whose
voice seems at times to be resumed and amplified in the voice
of Christ. And just as Jeremiah-specifically in chapters 7,
19, and 31 to 32 of his book-invoked the language of divine
judgment and of "the Gehenna'' to prophesy the imminent
destruction of Jerusalem, followed by its divine restoration
and preservation "unto the Age" (31:40), so also Jesus warns
in the gospels of a ruin every bit as imminent and as terrible
as the one Jeremiah foresaw, also succeeded by a mysterious
restoration. One does not even have to believe, as New Testa-