The Restoration of Israel:

SBL's Bookreview services (www.bookreviews.org) announces some new reviews being published on their web site. Among these is a review of Fuller, Michael E.
The Restoration of Israel: Israel’s Re-gathering and the Fate of the Nations in Early Jewish Literature and Luke-Acts (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 138; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth. €91.59.ISBN 3110188961.
The reviewer is M. Eugene Boring, says in his introduction: "This informative study is a slightly revised version of the author’s 2005 Ph.D. dissertation
at the University of Durham, directed by Loren T. Stuckenbruck. The volume is a timely contribution to the current discussion of the theme of exile and restoration in early Jewish literature, regarded both in its own right and as context and background for themes of New Testament theology. E. P. Sanders, for example, has emphasized the importance of Israel’s ideas of restoration in studying first-century Jewish eschatology, the Pauline writings, and especially the historical Jesus, and N. T. Wright has declared the early Jewish understanding of exilic theology to be the mother of early Christian origins—in opposition to Ernst Käsemann’s dictum that apocalyptic played this central role. Although Fuller does not make his dissertation a direct challenge to Wright’s thesis, he claims that Wright has overstated the prevalence of the exilic model of restoration in the period of Second Temple Judaism and does not do justice to the diversity and complexity of this motif (10–11). Fuller divides the exile/restoration model of early Judaism’s selfunderstanding into three main motifs—Israel’s regathering, the defeat of the nations, and a new temple—devoting a chapter to each of the first two topics, but dealing with the
motif of a new temple only incidentally."

Concerning Philo, who is dealt with in chapter One, part 6 (The Return as Spiritual Journey; Philo of Alexandria:The UNiversal Pilgrimage to God, pp. 82-102), Boring says: "The chapter concludes with a discussion of Philo as representative of that Diaspora Judaism that did not find the Diaspora as such oppressive and did not anticipate a literal return of Israel to the land. Philo mostly ignores biblical references to restoration. When he does attend to them, he mostly spiritualizes them. Whatever lingering expectation of a literal return may be present in Philo’s writings is subjugated to this spiritual or allegorical aspect."

Philo usually keeps both to a spiritual and literal interpretations, and one might wonder if Fuller here underplays the literal view of Philo's view on the return of Israel; cf. here at least the famous statment in Praem 162-172. I wonder how Fuller interprets this passage.

You can find a link to the List of contents on this page.