construct here depends at every point on the detailed exegesis of many texts which I have offered elsewhere and now am pulling together as best I can into a larger picture. This is an explicitly Jesus-based reading of Israel’s Scriptures, following the New Testament writers in their retrieval of many ancient themes, some of which were prominent in some Second Temple circles and some of which—so far as our evidence allows—seem not to have been. It should be noted that I am not saying that “all Jews