Jesus' socially-acknowledged claims to religious authority, rejection of traditi onal formulations of honor and power, recruitment of and attempts

to mobilize a following across multiple social classes, and final days in Jerusalem show that his program sought to debase the Jewish religious elite and imperial Roman patr iarchy. He sought to spur enthusiasm for a Kingdom of God, and was perceived by so me as a messianic or kingly figure. Thus, he can be seen as a political and reli gious revolutionary.

In scholarship, an early treatment of Jesus as a failed, self-conscious political messiah comes from the fragmented writings of Hermann S. Reimarus. Rom an and Hellenic hegemony in first-century Judea caused many Judeans to expect th eir God would intervene to protect their ethnic and religious identity from outs ide domination, and the expectation that this intervention would take the form o f one anointed by God to liberate God's people was open for exploitation. Reimar us' interpretation presumes Jesus' conscious adoption of the messianic role. His treatment of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is worth quoting: ...[Jesus' disciples] promised to support and not to forsake him, even sh ould they die with him. So the attempt was ventured upon. Jesus takes his seat u pon the ass, he allows royal honours to be done to him, he makes a public entry, and as this appears in some measure to succeed, he goes straight to the temple, where the High Court of Justice was wont to be held; he lays aside his gentlene ss, begins a disturbance, and commits acts of violence, like one who suddenly co nsiders himself possessed of worldly power.... ...he delivers a sharp harangue against those Pharisees and scribes who sit on t he seat of Moses, that is to say, the members of the High Court of Justice, the magistrates' and the Synhedrion. He then publicly declares himself to be the Chr ist, and that he alone is their Lord and master... Now is not this inciting the people to rebellion? Is this not stirring them up against the government? Was no t this saying as much to them as Down with the senate, down with the magistrates. ..One is your master, even I, and you shall henceforth not see my face until you proclaim me the Christ who is come to you in the name of the Lord. (Reimarus: Fragments, Chapter II, Section VII)

Reimarus implies that Jesus' disciples' readiness to die for him (John 1 3:37) points to the disciples' interest in military acquisition of a worldly kin gdom. The presence of Simon the Zealot (Judas' Iscariot moniker may be a perversio n of Sicarius, implying his belonging at one point to a group of social bandits th e Romans called Sicarii (Cullmann 1970:9)) implies some within Jesus' core group may have expected him to acquire a worldly kingdom over which they expected to hold an elevated sway. Jesus seems to assure them of this in the Q gospel, verses 22:28-30, and in response to John and James' requests for preferential positions , he lays out the qualities requisite for candidacy: extreme humility and thorou ghgoing dedication to serving all members of the public (Mk 10:35-45, Lk 22:24-3 0). An echo of this ideal leadership is found in John 13:12-15. Apolitical inter pretation of the Q material would require accepting that Jesus' concept of the K ingdom of God was entirely figurative, since even rendering a meaning-ful religi ous judgement would have implied a power shift away from contemporary religious institutions that were intimately tied to Judean and Roman political bodies. Reimarus then uses Jesus' scripture-invoking entry into Jerusalem on a d onkey (as exclusively told in Matthew 21) to evidence Jesus' fulfillment of the king of Israel's prophesied arrival (from Zechariah), aligning himself with Davi dic Kingship. In Exca-vating Jesus: Beneath the Stones Behind the Texts, J. D. Cro ssan contests the plausibility of the donkey entry, citing immediate violent rep ercussions likely to be visited upon anyone who made such a flagrant display dur ing the tense time of Passover (Crossan 2001:261). Crossan goes on to explain th

at the Gospel of Mark, generally understood to be the precedent for Matthew, doe s not include Jesus' entry in such a fashion and attempts to dispel association of Jesus with Davidic Kingship (Mk 12:35-37). His actions within the temple, rai ling against the Pharisees and Sanhedrin, bringing temple operations to a halt, Reimarus asserts, reveal revolutionary political ambitions in the core of Jesus' mission. I maintain that this is a valid argument; that Jesus sought to crystal lize public resistance to religious and political establishments during his life time either as or alongside an act of God seems probable. Group-forming, high self-esteem, subversive speech towards religious aut horities, and invocation of prophetic Jewish scripture were elements of Jesus' p raxis in the Gospels. In an ancient agrarian society with a non-separation of st ate and religion, rebellion against elite religious authority would have in itse lf been a de facto act of political dissent. Religious dissenters confronted a r eligio-political collusion which was managed by priests selected by Roman imperi al authorities. As such, distinguishing blasphemy from treason was an issue of only nominal importance: a threat perceived in either would elicit execution by the w atchful authorities. Early Christians had no problem believing this to have been the case for John the Baptizer, whom the Gospels recount as being rather frivol ously dispatched by Herod Antipas. Accordingly, the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Lu ke, and John all claim Jesus was executed by a dis-interested Roman governor (Po ntius Pilate) on what readers are to understand is a false political charge made by Jewish scholars and priests that he claimed to be King of the Jews. The histor icity of this narrative is dubious; neither Philo nor Josephus describe a Pilate likely to be so passive and impressionable, as Crossan cites (Crossan 2001:268) . Still, the entanglement of religion and politics that this narrative plays on speaks to the importance of puzzling out the nature and aims of Jesus' public mi ssion. James Charlesworth flatly states that the generally-agreed central point of Jesus' message was the dawning of the Rule of God. This idea, the coming Kingdo m of God, is multiply-attested in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Thoma s, and Q and is coherent with Jesus' claims regarding his own identity as its pr oclaimer (Charles-worth 2008:98). The justly-administered social state of total human harmony with God would have been recognized by 1st century Judeans as a fe ature of a final historical stage in line with the prophetic view of history (Mi c. 6:6-8, 7:18-20 Hosea 6:6): one after which no conflict would occur. This is a lso a central feature of the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus (John 12:44-50), which he differingly characterizes as an inner and/or social reality (Q 17:20-21, Th 3 , 113) and the enduring End after a gory cataclysmic apo-calypse in the synoptics (Mk 13, Mt 24, Lk 21). When and how Jesus imagined this final stage would begin (or if it already had begun, or if it always had been) is debated in scholarship . In Mark 9:1, Jesus seems to think it will occur within the natural lifetimes o f some of his disciples. In Mark 13:32, he admits only the father (God) knows, and offers in John 5:24 a present eternal life for all who believe in him, possibly indicating that the KoG had already dawned. The rendering in Mark is omitted in the later Matthew and Luke Gospels, presumably because by the time they wrote, all the original disciples had died and Jesus' reckoning would have appeared foo lish to those whom these writers sought to proselytize. Thus, according to the c riterion of embarrassment, Mark's account is probably correct. Reimarus accuses Jesus of exploiting a chronological ambiguity for the dawning to net followers hol ding diverse eschatological suppositions, yet he seems unaware of which gospels probably predate which (Reimarus 1774-1778:11). Albert Schweitzer accuses Reimar us of improperly exclusively applying the political notion of Son-of-David messi ahship to Jesus' self-consciousness (which Jesus would seem to repudiate in Mark 12:35-37) and offers a differing, thorough-going (ever-present) eschatology of mostly esoteric spiritual bent as Jesus' primary worldview/proclaimation (Schwei tzer, 1906:25). Douglas Oakman asserts that Reimarus' politically-conscious rend ering must continue to be a part of discussing the historical Jesus, and that Sc hweitzer's apolitical notion of this figure is incomplete (Oakman 2012:8,132). I generally share Oakman's interpretation, but on the matter of the Incident in t he Temple, the interpretation of which would seem to belie key points for and ag

ainst Jesus' status as a popular revolt leader, I side with J. D. Crossan's symbo lic destruction interpretation over Oakman's cleansing (Crossan & Reed 2001:263). T hough the historical accuracy of this pericope is disputed, it presents a portra it of a purportedly publicly-witnessed, politically empowered Jesus that pre-war Christians in Judea accepted as valid. That some Judeans affirmed Jesus' author ity to deny the legitimacy of the temple speaks to a lasting impression left by his presence in Jerusalem on at least that segment of Judean public politics. The synoptic gospel accounts place Jesus at the dinner table, time and t ime again publicly gobbling up the honorific authority of his Pharisaic and scho larly interlocutors, then appealing his message of actively-inclusive non-violen t resistance to a present audience (Mk 2:15-17, 7:1-23, Mt 15:1-20, Lk 7:36-50). In the constant closeness of Jesus, his disciples, Pharisees, and other parties , rivalry for authority, not outright enmity, is the basis of their conflicts. E ach of these groups had vested interest in advancing their own interpretation of how to best to enact purity because they each believed the con-tinued prosperit y of Israel depended on it (Malina 2001:171) and because the social affirmation of their collective claims to honor were based on public acknowledgement their i nterpretation of man's relationship to God (the top of the honor structure) as a uthoritative (Malina 2001:46). By promoting purity of the individual through emp hasis on independent agency (Mk 7:20, Th 14:5, Mt 15:11), Jesus may have at once sought to establish a political constituency while subverting a brokered relati onship with divine power (through the institutions which upheld traditional food purity definitions) that resulted in a widening wealth gap in Israel. His numer ous enactments of healing, which E. P. Sanders lists as one of his undisputed fac ts about Jesus (Sanders 1985:11), work to this effect as well, and can be seen as subversive. The story of the feeding of the multitudes also ties miracle (God's power through Jesus) with redefinition of food purity practices together in a d isplay of new forms of social cohesion through God's bounty affirmed in Jesus' a uthority to enact it. Suffice it to say, his religious proselytizing also served a political purpose and, to the extent that it was successful, crystallized opp osition to existing religio-political authority. Douglas Oakman's analysis of 1st century Galilean peasantry includes a m odel by Henry Landsberger of factors leading to agrarian conflict (Oakman 2012:3 9). As a part of the Roman empire, subsistence-level Galilean peasants would hav e been subject to a cyclical trend (which I will paraphrase as a cycle of debt) in which exposure to larger market forces generated peasant debt, enrichment of lo cal elites through increased landholdings, peasant unrest and banditry visited u pon said local elites, and increases in security which lead to increasing market exposure and wider integration. Another one of E. P. Sanders' almost indisputabl e facts regarding the historical Jesus was that he was a Galilean (Sanders 1985:1 1). The agricultural and fish-related metaphors which pepper his speech reflect an association with this region, and it is in this area that much of his ministr y takes place (Mk 1:17, 4:3-8 & 26, J 15:1, Mt 13:47, Th 8, 21). It is also from Galilee that the hypothetical Q gospel is thought to originate (Miller 2010:259 ). Q and the Gospel of Thomas 54 share Jesus' dedication of heaven to the poor, with Jesus in Q going on to congratulate the downtrodden and damn the rich and w ell-fed (Q 6:20-26). Taken alone, this might signal a call for peasants to revol t, which was not an uncommon notion in Jesus' time. However, immediately after, in Q 6:27, a call to love one's enemies is issued (consistent with Kingdom within in social interaction) and a primary dif-ference between Jesus and other subvers ive peasant groups is made clear: Jesus is non-violent and extends his message t o those who would most violate it. Amidst the violent programs of other groups w ho sought to mobilize disgruntled peasants (revolt leaders, social bandits) Jesu s' call to peaceful non-compliance would have gone against the grain. Unlike Joh n the Baptizer, Jesus and his disciples brought their mission outward to those t ied to the land. From the Q gospel (Lk & Q 11:2-4, Mt 1:25) and Mark (1:25) come Jesus' appropriation of the deuterocanonical book of Sirach's call to ask God t hrough prayer to Forgive our (debts/sins), since we too forgive everyone in debt to us. This linkage between praising God as proclaimed by Jesus and being forgive n debts religious and economic would not have been unwelcome to the structurally

indebted peasants of Galilee. Among the 12 disciples, Simon the Zealot sticks out as the one most like ly to have been a zealot at some point. Whether Zealot refers a loosely-structured social stratum associated with redistribution of wealth through banditry or an organized political faction, both are associated with violence and Jesus does no t seem to have belonged to either group. Oscar Cullmann, in Jesus and the Revolut ionaries offers two main points in support of this distinction: the Zealots (or b andits or Sicarii) were known to operate by force, which Jesus and his group wer e not, and that while the Zealots (the political faction) proposed to reform the temple and install a new order, Jesus neglected to do the latter (Cullmann 1970 :18). Jesus' dining with tax-collectors (Mk 2:13-17, Mt 11:16-19, Lk 7:31-35) an d his sympathetic attitudes towards Samaritans (Jn 4:4-26) and gentiles (Mt 8:510) would also have not sat well with the Zealots' more traditional notions of h uman purity (Cullmann 1970:23). A politically-minded Jesus may have chosen to di ffer from and undermine membership to the bandits in order to foment a more stab le, non-militant social revolution capable of growing even under tight supervisi on by Roman and Judean troops. An eschatologically minded Jesus perhaps had coop eration with and mimicry of an essentially peaceful God in mind. Since Judean po litics and religion cannot be neatly separated, I will venture that Jesus sought to save two birds with one stone. Sayings exalting the poor (Th 54, Mt 5:3, Lk 6:20), helter-skeltering th e first and the last members of society (their status differentiated in Jesus' conte mporary kingdom and the Rule of God (Mk 10:31, Q 13:30, Th 4)) worked in tandem wi th Jesus' appropriation of divine power to heal and forgive sins towards the dua l ends of fostering general social harmony through modeling forgiveness and subv erting the priestly/scholarly brokerage of Israelites' relationship with God. So cial justice being a requisite condition of God's Rule, Jesus also may have tran sferred this association to indicate it was a pre-requisite for causing God to e nact the end-times. Unlike John the Baptizer, Jesus' ministry was characteristic ally itinerant. He brought his teachings out to those tied to the land, and from the Q gospel (Lk & Q 11:2-4, Mt 1:25) and Mark 1:25 come Jesus' appropriation o f the deuterocanonical book of Sirach's call to ask God through prayer to Forgive our (debts/sins), since we too forgive everyone in debt to us. This link between praising God as proclaimed by Jesus and being forgiven debts religious and econ omic would not have been unwelcome to the structurally indebted peasants of Gali lee. It satisfies the criterion of coherence and would have fit within Jesus' Pa lestinian Jewish setting in its allusion to Sirach 28:2. Reports of activity by Jesus during Passover appear only in the canonica l gospels. There is general agreement in scholarship that the earliest appearanc e of the Cleansing of the Temple is found only in Mark. Mark's framing of the temp le incident with the smote fig tree is a clear indication that his Jesus wants s omething to die and believes that if his onlookers spiritually commit themselves (to move mountains), it will. Luke and Matthew, blending Mark with the Q gospel in which John the Baptizer theoretically said (3:10) ...every tree not producing choice fruit gets cut down and tossed into the fire, both chose not to frame the temple incident with the fig tree story. Why? Perhaps because Mark wrote before and, they, after the First Jewish-Roman War in which the temple was toppled by Romans, not by the prayer/resistance of Jews. This would have been mass-ively em barrassing, but an example of harnessing power through spiritual devotion would still have been useful and a wholesale redaction of the fig-tree story might hav e been even more embarrassing for Matthew and Luke readers who were already fami liar with Mark to encounter. The limited scope of this paper has addressed a few points which point t o a historical Jesus that can be considered a political revolutionary. That Jesu s had a foll-owing and was executed by Pontius Pilate on a Roman cross is solidl y attested in the works of Josephus, Tacitus, and all canonical gospels. William Herzog interprets Jesus trial as a show trial: something like a kangaroo court in w hich the object of the proceedings is to make a public display of the political prisoner's pre-determined condemnation (Herzog 2005:216). According to this inte rpretation, not only are the crowds who condemn Jesus not the same ones who acco

mpanied his entry to the city but have been conditioned to elicit a guilty charg e. In this light, the charges against Jesus are basically irrelevant since he ha s been deemed a threat and the objective of the show trial is to utterly shame him and all that he represents (Herzog 2005:220). The apparent disinterest of Pilat e in executing Jesus serves the purpose of highlighting the impotence of the Jew ish courts to deal with him by forcing Caiaphas and the high priests to defer thei r authority and appeal directly to Pilate in order to do anything about Jesus an d his challenge to their authority. Thus the gospel accounts of court trial may also be seen as having been used show how the Jewish elite were shamed and Roman power consolid-ated. Dominic Crossan's explanation differs: He attributes the e mphasis on the Judeans' responsibility for Jesus' death to oral transmission dur ing the 40s, when Herod is said to have persecuted a number of the Apostles (Cro ssan 2001:269). In either case, it is evident that the radical change Jesus advo cated and publicly demonstrated was determined to be significantly threatening t hat he was used as an example of what would come to would-be political leaders i n Roman Palestine. He would have so been remembered in his time as a kind of rev olutionary. Materials cited Sanders, E. P. 1985 Jesus and Judaism Philadelphia: Fortress Press Reimarus, H. S. 1879 Fragments from Reimarus, Volume 1 London: Williams and Norg ate Cullmann, Oscar. 1970 Jesus and the Revolutionaries New York: Harper and Row Pub lishers Schweitzer, Albert. 1906. The Quest of the Historical Jesus Great Britain: A. & C. Black, Ltd. Oakman, Douglas E. 2012. The Political Aims of Jesus Fortress Press Herzog, William. 2005. Prophet and Teacher: An Introduction to the Historical Je sus Westminster John Knox Press Crossan, J. D. and Jonathan L. Reed. 2001 Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers Malina, Bruce J. 2001 The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropolo gy 3rd ed. Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Charlesworth, James H. 2008. The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide Nashville: Abingdon Press Miller, Robert J. Editor. 2010 The Complete Gospels 4th ed. Salem, Oregon: Poleb ridge Press Hanson, K. C. and Douglas E. Oakman. 1998. Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Socia l Structures and Social Conflicts 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press