Paul in Acts: Preacher of Eschatological Repentance to Israel

The ‘enigmatic ending’ of Acts continues to baffle the exegetes. Not the least of its difficulties is the status of ‘the Jews’ after Paul's peculiarly solemn pronouncement of Isa 6. 9–10 against a ‘closed’ and ‘hardened’ people (Acts 28. 26–27). Coming as it does as a climax to the equally ponderous pronouncements of judgment in Acts 13. 46 and 18. 6, for many scholars the cumulative, three-fold impact of this indictment resounds a note of finality, of foreclosure upon Israel which consequently consummates an era and looks ahead almost exclusively to a Gentile church. The two leading clusters of opinion expressing this understanding are those associated with E. Haenchen – viz., that repentance for Israel by the end of Acts is de facto now over, with Gentiles replacing Jews as the people of God – or with J. Jervell – that a core of repenting Jews constitutes a restored Israel which, along with increasing numbers of Gentiles, by the end of chapter 28 has completed its mission to unrepenting Jews who no longer have a right to the name ‘Israel’ or ‘people of God’.