Since his recent death, the Hengel industry has been in 'drive', with his passing noted on a number of theology and culture websites and blogs.
This lead me to re-read an article by him published in Christianity Today in 2001 (v. 45, n. 8, p. 78), entitled The Genesis of Our Woes.
Hengel makes a number of wonderful statements in this article, notwithstanding his entertainment of the contradiction between biblical 'creation' and contemporary materailist conceptualisations.
I'll quote the introduction.
"The most realistic and hopeful prophecies for our era come not from Daniel or Revelation but from the opening chapters of the Bible.
The breathtaking progress of the natural sciences and new technology has created modern prophets. On the one hand, these prophets dream up new human paradises that include the hope for never-ending life. On the other hand, they predict apocalyptic diasters. Some promise to conquer the aging process or incurabe diseases; others predict self-destruction of humanity by nuclear conflict or biological warfare.
Of course, they are not inspired by the Spirit of God but by the spirit of our time. Their hopes and fears are their utopias and their nightmares. They do not preach from public square or ecclesiastical pulpits. Their stage is the media, from newspapers and magazines to television and the World Wide Web. Sometimes they reflect a pretentious sort of intellectual moneymaking entertaining or high-brow showbiz, which have overtaken the role of the former revival preachers, expecially for upper-class society.
We Christians of the new millennium do not need such modern, sensationalistic prophesies and messages. We have no need of their predictions of abundant well-being or of universal mischief, because we live with the promises of God. In the first pages of the Bible, in fact, we possess prophesies that help us understand our exciting but overbearing world and thus point implicitly to God's promises for his church."
