In their theological constructions, the "zealots" relied on the Scriptures, which clearly told them that they were instruments of God's plan and were called upon to bring its realization closer. Like most Jews of his day, Saul read the Tanakh not only to find out how it would end, but he was deeply convinced that it was his duty to hasten the denouement. The situation was something like this. Israel was called to make a covenant with the Creator, to become His chosen one, a light that shone in the darkness, a nation in which Adam's sin would be atoned for. But Israel sinned and, as a result, was taken out of their land into captivity. Although geographically he has returned, the captivity continues. The temple has not yet been restored. The Messiah has not yet come. The Gentiles had not yet recognized His authority and had not "flowed" to Zion to receive the Torah. Israel is still in sin and vice.

And yet the Scriptures spoke clearly and convincingly of better times. These were not just scattered prophecies taken at random, the authors of which talk nonsense from a safe distance, passing it off as predictions of the future. The whole Scripture was read as a single story. Its hero was Israel, and now the plot was approaching a pre-established denouement. Very soon the day will come when the LORD will sit on the throne. Evil will be defeated once and for all. Israel, or at least its faithful sons, will once again become the true elect of the one true God.

These ideas, which fueled the "jealousy" of the Shammaites, can be summarized as follows. In the Jewish theology of that period, three main dimensions can be distinguished: monotheism, God's chosenness, and eschatology. There is only one God, the one true God who rules over the world; the one true God has only one people – Israel; a world ruled by one God has only one future, and it will come very soon: the days are approaching when the true God will reveal Himself, conquer evil, and liberate His people. Motivated by this faith, Saul made a sincere effort to act "according to the Scriptures." For him, the sacred texts were not a set of truisms, but a story with a good ending, which he had to bring closer.

"Zeal for the Torah" pushed the Shammites and their associates to the most decisive actions for the sake of fulfilling the prophecies. They did not want to sit idly by, they were impatient to rush into battle. This was the "zeal for God" for them, which Paul mentions in the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (Romans 10:2). What is happening around offends the one true God, the LORD. His glory demands that all pagans, idolaters, whoever they may be, receive what they deserve. THE LORD must again become the King of all the earth, and for this Israel must follow the Torah. Only faithfulness to it can hasten the fulfillment of prophecies. If God invades history right now, and Israel continues to depart from the Law, they will face the fate of the Gentiles. This means that reminders of the importance of the Torah are not enough: the stiff-necked people must be forced. Here again we have reason to reflect on the dangers of "repeating what has been passed"—is it not the same as the Jewish Orthodox of today, who not only call for the observance of the Sabbath, but, in order to back up the word with deeds, throw stones at the cars passing through their neighborhood on Shabbat, all for a holy purpose? Such is "zeal in action" – zeal for God, zeal for the Torah, zeal for the Kingdom.

One observation should be made in this regard. The portrait I have drawn is strikingly different from the ideas about the Jew Saul that I have been instilled with since childhood. I was taught, and accordingly I believed for quite a long time, that Saul thought in exactly the same way as many of my contemporaries: that the meaning of life is in the bliss of death in heaven, and that in order to get to heaven after death, it is enough to recognize and observe the universal moral law. I imagined Saul as a kind of "proto-Pelagian" who thought he could be "saved" by his own merits. He seemed to me to be a consistent supporter of what might be called "legalism" or "moralism"—the belief in the existence of timeless rules of good manners, the observance of which guarantees promised blessings, particularly "salvation" and "eternal life," in the sense of paradisiacal bliss after death.

Now I understand that I was equally unfair to the era (in the time of Saul no one thought this way) and to culture (the Jews do not think this way at all). Ed Sanders is quite right: if we regard first-century Judaism, and Phariseeism in particular, as an early form of the Pelagian heresy, we are making false accusations against it. It should be noted, by the way, that Sanders himself could not avoid anachronisms. He reduces Judaism to a pure "religion" and stubbornly refuses to see in it the political dimension to which I feel it necessary to point out.

Sanders follows the Mishnah and views first-century Judaism as a purely religious movement. In other words, he accepts Hillel's position.

But Saul of Tarsus was not interested in the timeless rules of salvation or in the "works of righteousness." Nor was he interested in religion as, to use Sanders's terms, "getting in" and/or "staying in." He wanted only one thing – for God to save Israel. Moreover, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, Saul sought mainly confirmation that this would happen. He could be compared to those Jews of various persuasions (their texts have been partially preserved) who, in times of the greatest historical, political, and cultural upheavals, called on God to intervene in history and take their side. This is so important that for those who still have doubts, I will repeat once again: Jews like Saul of Tarsus were not interested in abstract, timeless, ahistorical salvation. They didn't even really care if they "went to heaven after death," as we would say today (they believed in the resurrection, that God would raise them up to eternal life in a renewed Israel and a renewed world, but their "eternity" was very different from the common Western idea of "heaven"). They needed only the salvation that they believed the one true God had promised to his people.

This hope had one very important feature. As is clear from the Tanakh and some later texts, the Covenant did not mean that God chose Israel as his people, and that he did not care about the fate of the rest of mankind. On the contrary, it was that by choosing Israel, God granted salvation to the whole world. Abraham's calling crossed out Adam's sin. However, the Babylonian captivity showed that Israel itself needed redemption: the one sent to proclaim salvation was eager to hear the message. The doctor had to heal himself. As already mentioned, most first-century Jews still felt themselves in captivity. The temple was not properly rebuilt, the Messiah was still delayed, the general resurrection never happened, the Torah was not observed, and the Gentiles did not flock to Zion to hear the living God. As long as things remain as they were, God's plans and promises will not be fulfilled.

All of the above allows us to clarify the meaning of two rather "dark" terms. First, what does "justification" mean in this context? To begin with, in the Jewish mind, this legal concept referred to the most important of all trials, at which God would judge all nations, and first of all those who rebelled against Israel. God will be on the side of His chosen ones: He will condemn the Gentiles and save His people. Thus, "justification" was understood, on the one hand, as future redemption and salvation as it was seen in the context of the covenant (Israel is God's people) and as a judicial process (God's judgment was presented as a judgment of cosmic proportions at which Israel would be justified), on the other. In order to understand how a Jew who lived in the first century perceived the world, it is necessary to learn to see any event through the prism of these most important concepts for him.

Legal metaphors were necessary to reveal the meaning of the covenant. The covenant was needed because a sin had been committed, and any sin or evil deed (at least as the Jews believed) should be brought before a judgment that would condemn the guilty and "acquit," that is, acquit or defend the righteous. Thus, it is quite natural that such a significant event as the final division into "lambs" and "goats" should be described in legal categories. God executes judgment, the evildoers (i.e., the Gentiles and apostates among the Jews) will be condemned and punished, the faithful (Israel, or at least the true people of Israel) will be raised up and justified. Redemption, which would be visibly and tangibly expressed in the political liberation and rebuilding of the Temple, would become, they believed, the greatest of all judicial verdicts, a worthy victory recognized by the judge. Several possible scenarios for future events were contained in the book of Daniel, in particular in chapter 7. No wonder this book was so loved by "zealots".

The second basic term, which we also have to deal with, is "eschatology." Most dictionaries define it as "the doctrine of death, judgment, hell and heaven" or something like that. However, in scientific usage, in relation to Judaism and Christianity of the first century, it is understood somewhat differently. It describes the common view among Jews and Christians that the history of Israel, and therefore the history of the world, is moving towards the final moment – the final and final division. (It should be emphasized that people, as a rule, do not understand that when talking about the "end of the world", Jews and Christians do not use these words in the literal sense. They do not mean that the world and history are really approaching the end. "dizzying" consequences.) Thus, by "eschatology" we mean, first of all, the idea that history is approaching, and perhaps has already approached, its highest point, to the greatest turning point. The term "apocalyptic" can be used in the same sense, but it has recently been dragged so far that some scientists prefer to abandon it altogether.

Now let's try to combine both concepts ("justification" and "eschatology") and see what comes of it. If by "justification," that is, the decisive moment of salvation, we mean the fulfillment of the covenant on the one hand, and the verdict of the supreme judgment on the other, then it acquires an eschatological character: Israel's centuries-old aspirations have finally been fulfilled. At the same time, it becomes clear that Israel's eschatological hope was nothing more than a hope of justification, a hope that God would eventually raise up his chosen people.

However, one can count on a final acquittal only under certain conditions. If each individual Jew observes the Torah with all his inherent zeal, he has a pretty good chance of becoming one of the "true sons of Israel." I am going to talk about this in more detail in Chapter Seven.