The Political Aims of Jesus

Preface

xi Preface After even a casual visit to a trade bookstore, the reader might ask why another book about Jesus is necessary when so many others are already available. To this very reasonable question several considered replies can be given. Few contemporary books on Jesus focus directly on his political activity in the Galilee of Herod Antipas. While politics has long been a regular aspect of the discussion about the historical Jesus, in fact since the work of H. S. Reimarus in the eighteenth century, few contemporary books focus precisely on Jesus’ attitude or intentions toward first-century power and politics. In general, during the last thirty years, several major developments have necessitated new attempts to depict his political interests and aims. The so-called Third Quest of the historical Jesus, ongoing since about 1980, has supplied a richer variety of pertinent historical materials and has crafted a more refined criticism of the Jesus traditions. (The First Quest was largely a nineteenth-century German effort. The Second [New] Quest was conducted in the 1950s by students of the influential German scholar Rudolf Bultmann.) Still, too many recent treatments of Jesus continue to treat him as merely a “religious” figure, so that Jesus is only arguing about Judean theology or religio-cultural issues, without clear conceptions of his social or political interests. These approaches can be remedied in part by placing Jesus within wider contextual frames (archaeology, Roman Galilee, the Roman Empire). Even more importantly, the emergence of self-conscious social-scientific study of the Bible has provided important models and theoretical resources for speaking about the politics of the first century and of the historical Jesus. Overcoming theological anachronism, working with a refined tradition criticism, and incorporating social-scientific models and thinking—these are paramount reasons for pursuing this present study. Chapter 1 contextualizes the political focus in modern scholarly discussion of Jesus by returning to the eighteenth-century scholar Reimarus and tracing things down to the present. Reimarus is the starting point of all modern historical treatments of Jesus. Albert Schweitzer, for instance, began his history of xii Preface the “quest of the historical Jesus” with Reimarus but followed him only in certain respects. Reimarus, I argue, was correct in contending that Jesus’ aims were materially political and essentially different from those of his disciples after his death, but Reimarus’s view needs to be reformulated and restated today in the light of social-scientific criticism and other investigative developments. In chapter 1, I selectively review more recent modern scholarship in order to indicate the necessary themes of the present book. Chapter 2 proposes models based in comparative social and political theory that guide my assumptions and arguments. Chapter 3 depicts the Herodian political context of Jesus, and how Jesus the peasant artisan acted within the provincial Roman political economy as well as what he had in mind in his use of the term Kingdom of God. Two central metaphors grounded Jesus and his group, namely, God as King and God as Father: I try to show their close interrelation. Chapter 4 explores the relationship and differences between “the tables” of the bankers (which I use as shorthand to refer to agrarian indebtedness under conditions of imperial patronage politics and Mediterranean commercial interests) and “the table” of Jesus (by which I refer to Passover freedom and its material connection to the necessities of life). Jesus understood God as a gracious patron, I argue, and Jesus was happy to broker the power of the Overlord. Chapter 5 turns to what happened to Jesus’ aims after his death and considers the reformulated, domestic, and apolitical salvation religion of the New Testament and the early Christian movement. A number of ironies are discovered here. Chapter 6 summarizes my main conclusions and the importance of both revisiting and revising Reimarus. The Concluding Postscientific Postscript gives several reasons for thinking that Jesus’ political concerns may yet have relevance for today. I have been at work on reconstructing the historical Jesus for over thirtyfive years. My honors thesis at the University of Iowa (written for George W. E. Nicklesburg in 1975) dealt with master and slave parables of Jesus. My doctoral work focused on New Testament studies, the historical Jesus, and the social sciences . The published dissertation, Jesus and the Economic Questions of His Day, appeared in 1986. A variety of my publications since then have thrown various lights upon Jesus within his social context. This book therefore represents the culmination of a line of...