The picture of Judaism that has emerged over the preceding two chapters is that of a religion with a considerable internal dynamism. Although surrounded by a powerful alien culture, it nevertheless reacted to this culture variously and vigorously. The many groups that we have looked at all sought a way forward through their present difficulties. What then did they look forward to?

Precise answers to this question cannot easily be given. In the first place such hopes are often far from sharply focused intimations of a future state that serve more to stir the will than to inform. A group may well be vigorously determined not to be defeated by the forces that threaten to overwhelm it; but this does not mean that it will therefore know precisely what is to come when the struggle is over.

And further, it is not easy to map specific and distinct sets of beliefs about the future on to each of the religious groups we have been considering. Certainly there are in the contemporary literature vivid depictions of future states that had their origin in a particular group. But such visions still owed a great deal to the general stock of images of the future current at the time and themselves then contributed to that general store on which members of all groups drew from time to time.