Jesus Before Christianity (Part 5 - Jesus "De-apocalyptized")

The next section of Albert Nolan's Jesus Before Christianity looks at Jesus and why He became such a target for both the Jewish leaders and for Rome. The author looks at the man Jesus without "apocalyptizing" Him and His teachings; in other words, Nolan is attempting to peer into how the people in Jesus' day would have understood Him and how He Himself understood things before His followers later interpreted His life and words through an "end-of-the-world" lens.

Chapter 13 looks at "politics and religion". The fact that Jesus of Nazareth was killed for high treason by Rome did not make Him unique, because many thousands of Jewish revolutionaries were crucified by the Roman rulers of that day. Although the revolution that Jesus wanted certainly involved liberation of the Jews from oppressive rulers, His greater concern was that Israel have a change of heart. "As Jesus saw it, the only way to be liberated from your enemies was to love your enemies, to do good to those who hate you, to pray for those who treat you badly. This is not a matter of resigning oneself to Roman oppression; nor is it a matter of trying to kill them with kindness. It is a matter of reaching down to the root cause of all oppression and domination: humanity's lack of compassion. If the people of Israel were to continue to lack compassion, would the overthrowing of the Romans make Israel any more liberated than before? If the Jews continued to live off the worldly values of money, prestige, group solidarity and power, would the Roman oppression not be replaced by an equally loveless Jewish oppression?..."

Unlike what many of us have been led to believe about the man Jesus, the men of His day would not have "thought of him as an eminently religious man who steered clear of politics and revolution. They would have seen him as a blasphemously irreligious man who under the cloak of religion was undermining all the values upon which religion, politics, economics and society were based...

"He disapproved of (Rome's) way of 'making their authority felt' and their way of 'lording it over their subjects'. But he envisaged changing this by changing Israel so that Israel could present the Romans with a living example of the values and ideals of the 'kingdom.'"

Chapter 14 deals with the dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders which was the turning point in Jesus' life: the Temple incident. The gospels are confusing concerning when this took place, but Nolan cites sources and proposes that it took place early in Jesus' public ministry as told in the gospel of John (rather than just before His death). Because of this angry demonstration by Jesus towards the economic exploitation of the people's devotion and piety by the Temple system (an example of this is the widow giving her last penny), Jesus and His disciples were forced to change their whole way of life because of the danger they were in.

Jesus had been preaching about the need for Israel's change of heart in order to escape the coming catastrophe (destruction of Jerusalem), but it was this confrontation in the Temple that made Him a figure of national importance and forced the leaders to make a decision about taking action concerning Him. They were further worried about the fact that He seemed to have great influence over the people. All of this caused Jesus to avoid going to Jerusalem and also to Galilee (Herod was after Him too) and when He did go to Jerusalem, it was under cover.

In chapter 15, the author proposes that there were two main temptations to violence for Jesus in the form of two particular incidents that Nolan views as attempts to get Jesus to take on the role of Messiah and lead an overthrow of Rome. (These would have been during the time of His hiding from and avoiding the authorities.) The first incident was the gathering of 4-5,000 men on the deserted hills near Bethsaida, which Nolan suggests may have likely been a gathering of men to persuade Him to lead them in a rebellion against Rome. (This gathering is typically known for the miracle of the loaves and fishes...)

The second incident was with Peter; a strong quarrel ensued over Jesus' talking about rejection and suffering while Peter saw the perfect opportunity to seize power and become Messiah. These were real temptations and while there were likely practical reasons why Jesus knew such a revolution would never work, there was a greater reason for not yielding: "To have accepted the kingship over a people who had not transferred their allegiance to the 'kingdom' of God and to lead such people in battle was to play into the hands of Satan. It would have meant accepting power from Satan over a 'kingdom' which was itself without any loyalty to the 'kingdom' of God and encouraging them to use violence against another, albeit more godless kingdom. Nothing could be achieved for God's 'kingdom' in this way...Jesus would presumably have been willing to be Messiah-king if Israel had changed its ways and the 'kingdom' of God had come. Messiahship would then not have been a title of honor, prestige and power but a form of service, and the Gentiles would then have been brought into the 'kingdom' not by the power of the sword but by the power of faith and compassion."

We'll cover chapters 16, 17, and 18 in the next post; these chapters continue to look at what made Jesus such a target in His day and why He was crucified.