This is the fourth volume in the series containing papers of the regular meetings between the Department of Bible in Tel Aviv University, Israel, and the Faculty of Theology in the University of the Ruhr, Bochum, Germany. As usual, the purpose of the symposium, held in Bochum in 1995, was the scholarly discussion of a topic important for both communities of believers, starting with the Bible and tracking its role through the different stages of the respective tradition-histories. This time the theme was eschatology. The participants engaged in a lively discussion on messianism and Zionism, Qumran, Mishnah and Kabbalah, and on recent Protestant ethics and systematic theology. The volume concludes with the report of a panel discussion on the essence of eschatology in Jewish and Christian thinking: is it a spiritualized idea or a material expectation for the world?
