Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine

217 Pages·2014·7.82 MB·English

by  Richard A. Horsley

Jesus and the
Politics of
Roman
Palestine

Jesus
and the
Politics
of
Roman
Palestine
Richard A. Horsley
The University of South Carolina Press
© 2014 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horsley, Richard A.
Jesus and the politics of Roman Palestine / Richard A. Horsley.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-293-5 (hardbound : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-61117-294-2 (ebook) 1. Jesus Christ—Historicity.
i. Title.
BT303.2.H675 2013
232.9'5—dc23
2013015100
contents
Preface vii
1. Getting the Whole Story 1
2. Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine 26
3. Jesus and Imperial Violence 54
4. Illness and Possession, Healing and Exorcism 80
5. Renewal of Covenantal Community 108
6. Conflict with the Scribes and Pharisees 128
7. The Crucifixion as Breakthrough 154
Notes 169
Bibliography 187
Index 199

Preface
The core chapters of this book are expansions of the 2010 Hall Lectures at the
University of South Carolina and associated institutions. The Nadine Beacham
and Charlton F. Hall Sr. Lectureship in New Testament Studies and Early Christi-
anity, sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Arts and
Sciences at the University, was established by alumnus and Columbia businessman
Charlton F. Hall Jr. in memory of his father and mother. I am deeply grateful for
the opportunity to have delivered these lectures and for the opportunity to have
become acquainted with the donor, Charleton Hall. I am also specially grateful to
Professor Donald Jones for arranging the Lectures and for his and the university’s
warm hospitality.
The overall theme of the 2010 Hall Lectures was “Jesus and Empire.” The
particular lectures were titled:
I. “Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine”
II. “Jesus’ Healing and Exorcism”
III. “Jesus and the New World (Dis)Order”
Insofar as new research in several related areas is challenging the standard as-
sumptions of historical Jesus studies and the standard approach has come to a pro-
cedural dead end, it is necessary to explore new possibilities that take the recent
research into account.
Violence and Jesus’s response to it are issues that were debated long before
serious attention was given to political economic dynamics in the Roman imperial
world. Recent books on Jesus, however, have almost avoided the subject. More
critical and candid recent treatment of Roman military practices by Roman histo-
rians, on the other hand, suggests that imperial violence may have been more of a
factor in the context in which Jesus worked than previously recognized.
Jesus’s conflict with the scribal “retainers,” including the Pharisees, continued
to play an active role in the politics of Roman Palestine under the rule of Herod
the Great and the high priestly aristocracy, contrary to the recently influential hy-
pothesis that they had withdrawn from politics to emphasize piety. Recent books
on the historical Jesus have almost avoided the conflict between Jesus and the
Pharisees that is so prominent in the Gospel sources.
viii PrefaCe
Since crucifixion played a key role in the politics of Roman Palestine, it seemed
not only appropriate but also important to discuss the Romans’ crucifixion of Je-
sus, which is often not dealt with in books on the historical Jesus. The crucifixion
of Jesus in the historical context is considered in connection with Jesus’s mission
of renewal of the people in opposition to the rulers.
Readers will find the assumptions, approach, analysis, and discourse in this
volume to be different in many ways from what has been standard in investigation
of the historical Jesus. For this I should deliver an apology, in the double sense that
I apologize to readers for being “out of step” and presenting “revisionist” history
and that I offer an explanation of what I am doing.
Coming from undergraduate study of history into New Testament studies and
other subfields of theology in divinity school (in the 1960s) required some “reori-
entation.” Here was a field of ostensibly historical study in which the sources were
read and studied piecemeal, verse by verse, with a good deal of “word study.” Peo-
ples, the state, movements, historical actors, and events were (and are) dissolved
into “-isms,” such as “Judaism,” “Hellenism,” and “apocalypticism.” Diversity and
dynamics were dissolved into theological constructs and schemes. Focused on a
quest for doctrines, such as “christologies” or “soteriologies,” New Testament
scholars neglected the overall narratives of the Gospels and their contingent his-
torical contexts as irrelevant for the ideas they were abstracting from texts.
My generation of New Testament scholars began casting about for alternative
approaches during the 1970s and 1980s, often reverting to approaches learned in
our undergraduate majors. New approaches began emerging in the field, such as a
more sophisticated literary criticism and various kinds of social scientific analysis.
But this usually meant reading the Gospels as if they were modern novellas or bor-
rowing structural-functional anthropological or sociological models that had been
abandoned in those fields a decade or so earlier. With the give-and-take of critical
discussion, however, several “criticisms” gradually gained in sophistication as New
Testament studies diversified (and splintered). During the past few decades, more-
over, research proceeded into areas that had not even been imagined before, such
as oral performance and scribal practice. The emergence of diverse “criticisms”
and specializations in New Testament studies, however, has meant that specialists
do not stay abreast of developments in other specialties.
The study of the historical Jesus that developed in the 1980s and expanded
in the 1990s built largely on standard previous criticisms, especially form criti-
cism. And as interest in the historical Jesus mushroomed, “Jesus scholars” worked
mainly at developing increasing sophistication in the already familiar criticisms,
for example in refining the criteria by which the “authenticity” of the separate say-
ings of Jesus were evaluated. Studies of the historical Jesus, moreover, continued
to work within the general Christian theological scheme of Christian origins ac-
cording to which Jesus was a unique individual revealer who addressed individuals
PrefaCe ix
who withdrew from “Judaism” and organized a movement (“the church”) after his
resurrection. Interpreters generally accepted the modern Western assumptions
that Jesus was a religious figure who dealt with (“Jewish”) religious matters, such
as “the Torah/Law” and “the Temple” and “synagogues” and “religious leaders.”
And they continued to work within and perpetuated the standard synthetic con-
structs of New Testament studies, such as “(early) Judaism,” “(early) Christianity,”
“apocalypticism,” “wisdom,” and “miracles.”
This scheme and these general synthetic constructs, however, tend to obscure
historical particulars, including diversities and complexities.
Like many others, I was never comfortable with the standard assumptions,
constructs, and procedures in the field. In my own historical investigations over
nearly a half-century I criticized and abandoned many of the standard concepts
and modern assumptions in the field as they appeared to obscure the diversities
and complexities and dynamics evident in primary sources. In this volume I draw
upon these previous investigations on various interrelated fronts and refer to them
for further discussion of analyses, procedures, and the new assumptions based on
close examination of those sources in historical context.
For example, “Judaism” had been discussed as “sectarian,” with the fourth
of the “sects” identified as “the Zealots,” a long-standing “party” that advocated
revolt against Roman rule. Closer reading of Flavius Josephus’s histories, however,
indicated that such synthetic concepts were hiding a number of movements that
had taken different social forms and pursued different agendas.1 Many in the field
came to acknowledge the diversity of movements (and the inapplicability of the
construct “the Zealots”). Few scholars of Jesus and the Gospels, however, have
recognized the other main point about those diverse movements, the difference
between popular movements of villagers (led by “kings/messiahs” or “prophets”)
and the protests by dissident circles of scribes, who had no wider following among
the people.2
My ensuing investigation into the historical Jesus, attempting to discern how
Jesus’s mission would appear if he were no longer contrasted with the historically
false foil of “the Zealots,” also led to criticism and abandonment of other standard
scholarly constructs and procedures.3 The differences between elite scribal culture
and protests and popular culture and movements—what anthropologists called
the contrast between the “great tradition” and the “little tradition”—led to the
recognition that the “apocalyptic” and “wisdom” texts produced by scribal circles
were not good sources for the views of popular movements and leaders such as
Jesus. It was also evident in that investigation that apocalyptic texts were some-
times being misread or misrepresented, for example, as attesting an expectation of
a rebuilt Temple (as subsequent study of those texts have shown).
More important, however, my initial investigation into the social context
evident in the content of Jesus’s teachings led to the recognition that Jesus was