I. Introduction
The social and political settings of Jesus' first-century life all-too-often go unnoticed in contemporary New Testament studies. As Christians seeking a deeper understanding of the gospel and its implications for our lives, we often imagine Jesus as a spiritual mentor teaching in a peaceful Galilean field. To the contrary, as the leader of a fledgling messianic movement, Jesus had to navigate the politically complex setting of first-century Palestine under Roman occupation. The terrible reminders of failed anti-Roman uprisings literally dotted the landscape as seen from Jesus' perspective from atop the Nazareth mountain range. The Jewish power-elite--taking their cues from the Roman occupiers--constructed the religious authority system to ensure the power of the Jerusalem elite. Jesus, a peasant from the peasant village Nazareth could not have led his movement without stepping into this dynamic and dangerous social terrain.
II. Domination and Resistance
In my research, I discovered two basic principles concerning the relationship between domination and resistance. Domination and resistance are connected to each other in the same way that two ends of a spring are attached to one another. Broadly defined, resistance is any force that pushes back against hierarchical rule. Resistance can also be thought of in terms of Newton's First Law of Motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The forces of occupation and domination inevitably create forms of resistance. This is evident in many forms of hierarchical authority structures: parents and children; supervisors and employees; and in the first century, the elite and peasant classes.
The second principle is that people living under oppressive power structures balance resistance with survival. Warren Carter writes:
Commonly, dominated peoples do not violently confront their oppressor because they know that the latter usually wins. Rather, the dominated combine various nonviolent forms of protest with acts of accommodation. (Carter, 24)
To most first-century peasants, overt resistance to occupation was not an appealing option due to the very real threat of crucifixion. Perhaps the most popular method of resistance to Roman occupation appeared to the Romans as submission. Carter carries this idea further:
...since direct confrontations that are violent or defiant provoke harsh retaliation, protests among dominated groups are hidden or "offstage." Apparently compliant behavior can be ambiguous. It can mask and conceal nonviolent acts of protest. Often protest is disguised, calculated, self-protective. It may comprise of telling stories that offer an alternative or conterideology to negate the elite's dominant ideology and to assert the dignity or equality of nonelites. (Carter, 12)
III. Roman Theology of Domination
The Roman Empire preserved its oppressive social structures ideologically using theology. According to this theology, the gods are divided into elite and non-elite classes. The role of elite gods was to rule and be served by the non-elite gods. Naturally, the role of the non-elite gods was to do manual labor in service of the elite. According to this theology, the stratification of the human world into elite and non-elite classes is natural and even divinely mandated. This theology mandated that people act according to the position of their god within the spiritual realm. One can already begin to see that a group of people claiming that there is one God who is sovereign over the whole world threatened the basis of Roman theology of domination.
IV. Non-resistance and Resistance in the Roman Context
It may seem self-evident that Jews living under Roman Occupation would have favored the option of resistance and insurrection, but this is not the case. The Jewish response to Roman domination is widely varied from non-resistance to resistance. Within each option lie many more sub-options. For my research of non-resistors and resistance movements, I used the following classifications:
Among those who did not resist the Roman occupation are traitors and collaborators. Traitors forsook their Jewish identity and directly served the interests of the Roman Empire at the expense of the Jews living in Palestine. Many others collaborated with the Empire for pragmatic reasons. Some believed it was better to serve Rome in order to enjoy its protection and relative stability while others rationalized collaboration theologically--asserting that the Empire was ordained by God to maintain order in the world.
The first group of resistors is the social bandits. These movements and their leaders are regarded as pre-ideological and pre-political, meaning that they had no political agenda other than taking whatever power and authority was immediately available for themselves and their bandit band. Bandits often operated in times and spaces where authority was ambiguous: in the border regions between provinces and kingdoms, and the periods of time when rule was being passed from a ruler to his successor. The most typical action of Social Bandits was the destruction of state palaces and summer homes of the wealthy. Most bandits were members of the peasant class. Their lack of influence among the ruling elite lead them to become outlaws because it was the most obvious way that they could achieve self-determination. Social Bandits often made claims to royalty--many leaders dressed in purple robes, wore crowns, and required their followers to address them as kings. Bandits were not trying to install legitimate kingdoms so much as they were performing a form of political theater that mocked the elite and allowed them to enjoy one of the aspects of life that was off-limits to peasants.
Unlike the social bandits, insurrectionist movements had clearly defined political agendas, typically freedom from Roman oppression and independent rule for the Jewish people in their historic homeland. The most famous of these movements is the Zealots. The Zealots were a religio-political movement whose membership consisted largely of non-elite priests. The Zealots staged several violent revolts which, in the long term, proved to be unsuccessful. One such revolt took place around 4 B.C.E. in Sepphoris, the Capital of the Galilee and home of the wealthy elite, only four kilometers from Nazareth. The revolt was crushed by the Romans; hundreds of people were crucified or sold into slavery. Since Nazareth was a thoroughly peasant village, it is likely that at least some Nazarenes were sympathetic to the revolt and perhaps even participants with the Zealots. This event took place during Jesus' childhood and certainly would have been a traumatic part of the people of Nazareth's collective memory.
A third brand of resistance was prophetic apocalypticism. Prophetic individuals attracted followers by using symbolism from Jewish liberation history to preach the imminence of the restoration of Israel by divine action. One such prophet lead his followers from the wilderness to Jerusalem where he promised that by marching around the city, God would act on their behalf and overthrow the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. The prophet sought to re-enact the people of Israel's journey from slavery to freedom and Joshua's triumph over Jericho to provoke similar divine action on behalf of first-century Jews living under occupation.
John the Baptist was another such figure. John used Baptism in the Jordan River to symbolize the purification of the people of Israel and their re-entrance into the promised land. He preached universal repentance and re-purification as a means to the restoration of Israel.
V. Jesus of Nazareth
To undertake an honest reading of the life and teaching of Jesus, we need to take this social and political context into consideration. Against this backdrop, Jesus' message regains its original scandal--for Jesus to say what he did, he put himself at risk of being "dealt with" in the same way as others who had come before him. But what is it that made his message so scandalous? I argue that like other resistance leaders, Jesus' claim to authority directly rivaled that of the Jewish religious elite and the Roman Empire. This fact is evident as early as the narrative of Jesus' birth.
In the Gospels, the infant Jesus is given several titles. They sound innocuous enough to our twenty-first century ears, but they are anything but benign names given to a special child. Jesus was called Son of God and King of the Jews. These are not original names. The head of the Roman Empire, Augustus, had the distinct title Son of God before Jesus was even born. Before Jesus was called King of the Jews, another man bore that title: Herod the Great, the Roman client king of Judea. Even in his childhood, Jesus is set up as a rival to the most powerful man in the world, Augustus, and the most powerful man in Palestine, Herod.
Jesus began his public ministry by teaching in his home-town synagogue in Nazareth. In his sermon, he highlighted three things that would mark his ministry: Good news for the poor, recovery of site to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. Taken out of its first-century context, this message loses some of its potency. His audience was not made up of people who merely struggled with spiritual poverty or spiritual captivity--as Galilean peasants, they understood real poverty and the oppression of the Roman occupation. Based on these early words of Jesus, I wonder if some in the audience in the Nazareth synagogue suspected Jesus of fomenting a revolt.
The final story that I will highlight is the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Jesus entered the city riding on the only form of transportation available to peasants, a donkey. As he entered, the people greeted him by proclaiming "Hosanna, blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!" The idea of a triumphal entry was not original to Jesus. In Jesus' day, kings and generals entered newly-conquered cities on their war horses, proudly displaying the banners and images that attest to the ruler's greatness. Jesus acted out the same scene but turned it upside-down by riding on a donkey, the symbol of peasant humility. Jesus was greeted by masses of people proclaiming his inauguration of the reborn kingdom of David. It is likely that the ruling elite--watching this spectacle from their palaces next to the Temple--feared that Jesus was going to lead a popular revolt against their rule.
VI. Was Jesus a Resistor?
Today, many Western Christians understand the kingdom of God to be a spiritual state that influences our personal choices rather than a political reality that competes with and contradicts modern kingdoms. Jesus' positive vision for the kingdom of God placed him firmly in the position of a resistor. His understanding of God's kingdom compelled him to sharply criticize and, in some cases, condemn the rich and powerful elite. Jesus' resistance to Rome and its servants was unique. He didn't aim to simply replace one set of elites with another, but to develop a kingdom where social stratification collapsed into equality and servanthood. This brought Jesus into direct conflict with those who benefited from the oppressive power-structures of his day. Like many others who threatened the elites' authority and monopoly over power, he was executed between bandits and mocked as a royal pretender. In Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, the limit of Rome's power was put on full display. Jesus demonstrated freedom for the oppressed in the midst of Roman occupation. The kingdom of God does not need to destroy other kingdoms; it can exist anywhere under any circumstances. While the kingdom of God does not need military force to make room for its rule, it represents a political reality that directly challenges the legitimacy of unjust worldly empires and those who benefit from them.
Danny Yoder served as a volunteer at Nazareth Village for one year. Danny was responsible for web development and IT services. He took serveral distance-learning courses from Eastern Mennonite Seminary and studied Arabic. Danny is from Greenwood, DE, and is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite University.