[ad_1]
Christ on the cross, Eastern Cape (Photo: Malibongwe Tyilo)
What Jesus did was plant the seed of the left perspective, the idea that society has a special duty of protection towards the most vulnerable, the poor, the sick, the young and the elderly. Along with his refusal to deny the world to compromise with authority, this has been the enduring political legacy of Jesus. His insistence that “last shall be first” has had volcanic reverberations throughout the centuries.
Yeshua ha Nozri – Jesus of Nazareth – lived a political-religious ferment marked by the birth of a violent independence party, periodic anti-colonial uprisings and the regular appearance of apocalyptic preachers who prophesied the end of days.
Over all aspects of Jewish life the shadow of the Eagle, the Roman standard. The lordship of a pagan power felt like an intolerable religious and national affront.
The seething discontent would reach its terrible climax in the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-73 CE, which left the Temple of Jerusalem in smoking ruins and a million dead. Sixty years later, the legions would savagely suppress another rebellion, led by the nationalist general Simon bar Kokhba.
Like the British in Africa, the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in AD 26-36 ruled through local patrons, including Herod, the puppet king of Galilee. The Sadducees, the Hellenized landowning elite who controlled the temple, were a buyer class that depended on Roman patronage.
The Romans had a monopoly on lethal force: only they could bear arms and only the prefect could execute, which he did at the first breath of sedition. The Jews paid for the imperial administration: taxes, from which Roman citizens were exempt, were a powerful grievance.
The result was a feverish millennial climate fueled by the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, an earthly king from the line of David who would liberate the Jews and eliminate their enemies.
The Zealots, founded in 6CE, called for armed struggle; the ultranationalist Sicarii carried concealed daggers to assassinate the Romans and their Jewish collaborators.
Pious scholars with popular followers, the Pharisees looked forward to the Messiah, but they were politically calm. Another sect, the Essenes, which included the Qumran monastic community that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, retreated into ascetic isolation to perfect themselves for the messianic era.
Some scholars believe that the Essenes were linked to John the Baptist, who immersed his followers in the Jordan River in cleansing preparation for the arrival of the meshiach, and who baptized Jesus.
The evangelists are quick to underscore John’s recognition that he is the subordinate and forerunner of the Nazarene. But it could have galvanized the ministry of Jesus. Baptism hints at Jesus’ desire for ritual purification and recognition of John’s antiquity. Otherwise, why submit to it?
Elsewhere, Matthew contradicts the claim that John knew that Jesus was the “Anointed One.” After Herod arrested him, the Baptist sent Jesus a message asking, “Are you the one to come, or should we expect another?”
Theologian, Alsatian philosopher and 1953 Nobel laureate Albert schweitzer He believed that both men were products of the political-religious ferment of the first century, apocalyptic preachers totally dedicated to proclaiming the imminence of the Kingdom of God on earth.
But they diverged in important ways. Historian and former Catholic priest John Dominic Crossan He argues that because the Jordan symbolized the boundary between the Jewish exile and the Promised Land, the Baptist’s use of it deliberately evoked Joshua’s crossing and conquest of Canaan.
“Presumably God would do what human force could not do – destroy Roman power – once a critical mass of purified people were ready for such a cataclysmic event,” writes Crossan. Certainly Herod, who beheaded him, viewed John as a political threat.
About 19th The exegetes of the century regard Jesus as a nationalist revolutionary, but it seems that he was not interested in an earthly kingdom or a political change.
Until he appears before Pilate, the Romans hardly appear in his ministry; in fact, he mixes with tax collectors, vilified because they served the oppressor. In the Gospel of John he tells Pilate that his kingdom “is not of this world.”
His followers misunderstood him: expressing the political dismay that followed the crucifixion disaster, the disciple Cleopas lamented: “We expected him to be the man to liberate Israel.”
Jesus’ famous retort on Roman taxes – “Give to Caesar …” – suggests that he accepted the taxes, but considered them irrelevant. To someone who believed so strongly in the impending “cataclysm of God’s eruption in human history,” as historian Michael Grant puts it, Roman rule may have seemed superficial and transitory.
Crucially, Jesus also turned away from the Baptist, believing that he himself was inaugurating the kingdom of God, that it was a work already in progress.
Luke records it reading from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me … to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then, with all eyes on him, he added: “Today, in your audience, this text has come true.”
This typifies a pattern of thought alien to us but omnipresent in the Gospels: of “typology”, that events were foreshadowed in the past and foreshadowed the future.
Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, the judgment, and the Passion are full of Old Testament references, and he may have devised events to resonate in this way. His entry on a donkey, which he told his disciples to go find, is a clear fulfillment of the prophet Zechariah.
Similarly, Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant” typology (“He was pierced for our transgressions … by his scourging we are healed”) apparently fueled his growing conviction, not just that he would do die, but that he have to die for your mission to succeed.
His anguished plea for “pass this cup to me … but not as I want, but as you” speaks poignantly of the inner war between his apocalyptic fervor and the fear of the ordeal ahead.
The Gospels make it very clear that Jesus thought that the arrival of the full-blown Kingdom was near. He may also have come to think that his own death was the providential condition for his establishment.
After vividly evoking the wonders of the Last Day – the darkening of the sun and the moon and the descent of the “Son of Man” into the clouds of glory – he tells his disciples in Matthew that “the present generation will live to see it all.”
Twenty centuries later, it’s safe to say he was wrong, raising tough questions about his supposed divinity.
But there was more to his teaching than a wrong doctrine of ends. Nowhere does he describe the conditions of the Kingdom, but, as reflected in the Lord’s Prayer, he apparently saw it as a mystical dispensation in which the will of God would prevail “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Everyone could enter the Realm regardless of rank, if they submitted to metanoia, a radical change of heart and mind.
This “radical egalitarianism,” as Crossan calls it, implied a widely accessible itinerant ministry; “Open commensality”, where everyone ate together without social distinction; and a healing agency that welcomed the marginalized and ritually impure, including lepers and the mentally ill.
Such radically countercultural practices sustained Jesus’ confrontations with religious authorities. Accused by the Pharisees of ritual contamination for associating with sinners and tax collectors, he vilified them as “whitewashed tombs,” outwardly observing, but spiritually dead.
Similar concerns may have sparked the “temple cleansing,” the final straw for the religious establishment. The money lenders and animal sellers he incited performed the sacrificial functions of the Temple. But like Isaiah, Jesus may have felt that without spiritual renewal, “the stench of sacrifice is abhorrent to me.”
Equality of the elect also implied an unusually high status for female followers. Mary Magdalene and other women provided for him and his disciples “with their own resources,” according to Luke. Four women are registered at the crucifixion, while his male followers appear to have been in short supply.
Jesus’ message is presented as universal, but the Gospels strongly suggest that he did not see himself as a minister to the Gentiles. This shift in focus was largely accomplished by Saint Paul, a Hellenized Jew from Asia Minor who appears to have known almost nothing about Jesus as a historical figure.
There is no getting around two Gospel passages that underscore Jesus’ strong Jewish religious identity and the belief that Gentiles were not his concern.
In sending his apostles to spread the word, he warns: “Do not take the road to Gentile lands.” More specifically, when a Phoenician woman asks him to heal her daughter, he ignores her and then growls: “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” He only gives in after more pleading.
Some believe that the Sermon on the Mount’s call not to throw pearls at pigs is also related to Gentiles.
However, what Jesus did was plant the seed of the left-wing perspective, the idea that society has a special duty of protection towards the most vulnerable, the poor, the sick, the young and the elderly.
He did so by channeling the dozens of pro-poor spells in Isaiah and elsewhere in the Jewish Bible and transmitting them, with unique emphasis, to the emerging church, and from there to humanity at large.
The Dutch scholar Peter van der Horst points out that there was no concept of special help for the poor in the Greco-Roman world; in fact, poverty was seen as a mark of defective character and a predisposition to crime.
Significantly, the first organized charity in the ancient world, initially for widows, was among the first Christians in Jerusalem.
Along with his refusal to deny the world to compromise with authority, this has been the enduring political legacy of Jesus. His insistence that “last shall be first” has had volcanic reverberations throughout the centuries. DM / MC / ML
