In this thread have been arguing that Jesus was decidedly a revolutionary: he despised the current system (government) (both Roman and Jewish) and hoped for/anticipated its complete overthrow. But he was not in support of rebellion. That seems a bit odd, since most revolutionaries are precisely trying to incite either a violent or peaceful coup for a new system to be put in place.
Jesus was different precisely because of his apocalyptic views: governments were necessarily human institutions, the humans in power were part of a cosmic-wide network of evil and corruption, and the powers ultimately in control (above their human minions) could not be dismantled by human effort. Only
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I agree with your view that Jesus had little, if any, interest in economic matters as an independent concern. Nevertheless, he and his group of disciples conducted their ministry for a considerable period of time—although we do not know exactly how long—and the Gospel of John even states that Judas Iscariot was responsible for their common purse.
Perhaps Jesus himself was not particularly concerned with managing money or meeting day-to-day expenses, while his disciples must still have dealt with such practical realities. Even so, it is striking how many of Jesus’ parables involve money, debts, wages, property, or financial transactions.
This leads me to think that, although Jesus himself may not have been interested in acquiring wealth or managing money, he fully understood the powerful influence that money could exert over human beings as a poor carpenter from Nazareth.
I’m not sure the reference to Judas and the purse is historical. And yes, he certainly knew about poverty. And yes, a something like 40% of his parables deal with money. So it’s a big concern of his. But just what that concern is would be a different question.
Thank you, Dr Ehrman. Off topic, I wonder if you have had time yet to look at Tim Whitmarsh’s new book, ‘Rome’s Age of Revolution: Augustus, Empire and the making of Christianity’? I have it on order, but haven’t read it. It gets good reviews for taking a fresh look at early Christianity and seems to be saying that it was a more a product of the Roman Empire’s cultural infrastructure than of Judaism (my wording).
No, I’ve just seen brief summaries.
Bart, I questioned “indifference” on July 29, so I’ll leave that aside. This post makes your point clearer. Jesus expected the order to end, but believed God would bring that about, not human resistance or political reform.
My worry is that your wording may leave some readers with more than the argument shows: that Jesus cared little about this world, that politics and economics did not matter to him, and that Rome crucified him essentially by mistake. “Render unto Caesar” shows that Jesus did not use the tax question to call for resistance or revolt. But it does not by itself show that he opposed non-violent resistance, or that government and economics did not concern him.
The same goes for your claim that Jesus posed no threat to Roman rule. In your reconstruction he had no army and planned no uprising. But could someone who expected Roman rule to end and believed he would become king be a symbolic threat or a danger to public order at Passover? Perhaps the authorities misunderstood how he expected the change to happen without misunderstanding what his kingship meant politically. Would you distinguish between posing no immediate military threat and posing no political threat?
My sense is that the no-nonsense Romans simply tortured to death (crucifixion) anyone who claimed to be the real ruler, instead of them. They weren’t afraid of riots necessarily, so much as wanting to show anyone who had any ideas what they may lead to….
Thanks you, that helps. So on your view, Rome did not necessarily need to think Jesus was likely to start a riot. The claim to be the real ruler was enough, and crucifixion also served as a warning to others.
I’m curious how you would reconcile that characterization of Jesus with the amount of time he spends preparing followers for leadership in God’s kingdom.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus doesn’t merely tell his followers to endure the present age while waiting for God’s intervention. He repeatedly trains them in principles by which they’ll exercise authority: standards by which they judge, necessity of forgiveness, servant leadership instead of domination, faithfulness in stewardship, and resolving disputes. Paul later assumes this same trajectory when he reminds Christians they will judge the world (and angels).
The Sermon on the Mount strikes me as something more than a collection of private moral teachings. It reads like Jesus is authoritatively laying down the fundamental laws and values of God’s kingdom (standards by which its citizens and future rulers are to live/judge).
So when you describe Jesus as “indifferent to governmental policies and economic systems,” I wonder if that overstates the case. Certainly he wasn’t trying to reform the Roman Empire or lead a political revolt. But isn’t he deeply concerned with governance in another sense? It seems Jesus isnt simply teaching people how to wait for the kingdom; he is actively preparing them to lead it.
I don’t see Jesus’ teachings as “leadership training.” It rather is instruction on how to live in ways God would approve so that it will be possible to enter the kingdom.
Do you think it’s appropriate to consider Jesus’s teaching is as “eschatological Torah”: instruction for God’s people in light of the coming kingdom?
Torah functioned as the foundational covenantal charter of Israel. Jesus doesn’t simply discard it- he brings it to its intended fulfillment. His repeated formula “You’ve heard…but I say” takes familiar commands and presses them toward their deepest purpose.
The difference is Jesus announces the arrival of a new age. The kingdom of God is breaking into history, and Jesus teaches his followers how to live according to the values of that kingdom. Love enemies, radical forgiveness, mercy, humility, generosity, and servant leadership aren’t merely prerequisites for gaining admission. They’re characteristics of life under God’s reign.
This explains why Jesus repeatedly speaks about greatness, authority, judgment, and future thrones. His disciples aren’t merely being taught how to become citizens of the kingdom; some are being prepared to participate in its rule.
Jesus isn’t simply as a moral teacher adding rules to Moses, but the one who reveals what Torah looks like when the kingdom toward which it pointed finally arrives.
The result is an eschatological people learning to live the life of the coming age in advance.
I don’t recall ever hearing that phrase before, but it is pretty much how I understand Jesus’ teachings.
I like this idea of placing Jesus above worldly concerns like civil or religious government. He was sent from heaven! By God Himself! On a mission!
But the effect of Jesus’s mission was that the Covenant of Moses got broken. Good News! It was no longer necessary for Jews to obey Torah as a result of the new atonement path that Jesus blazed. Non-Jews already were not required to obey Torah laws, so this change only affected Jews. The New Covenant was for Jews and non-Jews though, which reflected the Jewish Diasporan demographic in which Jews lived far from the Temple and were assimilated Hellenists, intermarried across ethnicities. In the process of assimilation, immigrants commonly practice elements of their culture for three maybe four generations, then it becomes nostalgia, except to the extent that the Old County still exists.
The Old Country picked a fight against Rome, the benevolent host where the majority of Jews resided. Diasporan Jews, for whom the NT was written (in Greek), did not likely side with extreme conservatives in the Old Country who resisted change. Jesus is a mythic literary character composed for the religious justification of Jews who had already ditched Torah.
“Only an intervention of God would resolve the world’s plight, and he would do so not through human initiative but in an act of divine judgment, to be brought by a cosmic figure, the Son of Man.“
Dr. Ehrman, was he talking about himself or someone else?
Do you think that a saying like “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” could go back to something that Jesus said more or less. It did take place in some context during his travels. But that context got lost a long time ago while the pithy saying continued. At some point someone decided to make up a narrative around the saying. The problem with that is that the original context might be important to understanding the meaning of the saying. Without it, we may be misinterpreting what Jesus said. What do you think?
Yup, I think it’s probably authentic.
In Zealot, Reza Aslan interprets “the things that are God’s” as the the Jewish lands themselves, since God gave them to the Jews. I’m guessing you beg to differ and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this interpretation.
Yup, I beg to differ. For one thing, it doesn’t make sense for him to tell Jews to give the land back to God. (He wasn’t talking to the Romans)
The New Testament presents Jesus as “the Son of Man” while Paul contrasts “the first man, Adam” with “the second man…from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:47). Later Gnostic texts, such as the Apocryphon of John, distinguish between Adam’s creator (the demiurge) and the highest God.
From a historical-critical perspective, what did the historical Jesus most likely think about Adam? Did Jesus understand the God who created Adam in Genesis to be the same God he called Father, or is there any evidence from Jesus’ own sayings that points toward a distinction between a creator god and a higher God? More broadly, how do scholars determine whether the Gnostic reinterpretation of Genesis preserves an earlier tradition or is instead a second-century theological development?
I’m pretty sure that Jesus, like most every other Jew of his day, thought of Adam as a literal figure who said and did exactly what Genesis indicates.
Something I’ve wondered about in this vein are Jesus’ words at Mark 14:7 when he’s being anointed with the perfumed oil and some people object. It always seemed incongruous to me that someone expecting an imminent reversal of fortune for the downtrodden would assume that the poor would still be poor, even in the Kingdom. Does this verse presuppose a later situation in the author’s time where apocalypticism is not as prominent in the Christian community, and the status quo is taken for granted, or is there an echo of that indifferent sentiment here that goes back to Jesus? What do you think might be going on here?
Thank you for all you do to bring New Testament scholarship to the layperson, Dr. Ehrman!
Good point — I suppose it could mean that. Or it could mean: the poor will be with you until the day of judgment coming very soon, so spending this amount of money on me, who is going away in a couple of days, is OK. You can help them when I’m gone, and then they will be ultimately reworded. Or something like that.
Ellis Rivkin, In “What Killed Jesus” 1991, Behrman House, suggest the “render” saying was not new to Jesus but well known to the three main groups:
“It is this doctrine of render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s that was the gut issue. It was a doctrine that the Scribes-Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes all subscribed to because it held out the hope of the preservation of the people of Israel as a people of God.“
I know that Brandon’s views on the Zealots has been rejected by Horsley and others but perhaps he had a point on the remark put into the mouth of Jesus in Mark 12 over the paying of tax to Rome.
Dr. Ehrman, is it possible that Jesus was portrayed in the Gospels as non-violent and peaceful so that Christians could distinguish themselves from the rebellious Jews? As you know the Jews were living in expectation that YHWH would one day destroy their enemies and restore the Kingdom of Israel and Judah. The Hebrew prophets all prophesied that YHWH was one day going to turn the tables on Israel’s gentile overlords not in a gentle way. I am not implying that Jesus went around stashing weapons and inciting rebellion. I am saying that Jesus could have taught that with the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, the Roman empire would be destroyed. How sure are we that the peaceful portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is accurate?
Sincerely,
Paul King
Yes, that’s possible, and no I do’nt think we can be certain the Gospel portrayal of him as a pacifist is accurate. But I think it’s the far more likely option.
Unwittingly, Ehrman has done some good preaching:
“Clearly in this passage “the things of Caesar” are the things that he owns and oversees – for example, the coinage that has his image on it. These are matters of indifference for those who focus entirely on God. What matters are the things that belong to Him. In the passage Jesus does not say what “the things of God” are, but it is not too difficult to understand. In contrast to the denarius with its stamp of Caesar, humans are made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27). You owe the denarius to Caesar. You owe yourself to God–your very existence and, so, your heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:4). That needs to be the focus of your life. The rest isn’t worth worrying about.“
Dr. Ehrman,
There were OT prophecies that described a military type Messiah, and prophecies that have been interpreted as a peaceful Messiah.
How could any one person pull off both?
THere have been lots of governmental leaders in modern times who want to be seen as real peace makers but who also want to start wars…
Brilliant! Thank you. I couldn’t agree more that Jesus was unconcerned with politics. As a “contemplative”I type, I would go even further. To me, the apocalypse itself is entirely internal. It is symbolic of the transformation from what you might call the egoic frame of reference, to the transcendent frame; the kingdom to be overthrown was not that of the world, but that of the illusion of the separate self. Jesus could not have cared less what government was in power. The Holy Land was not Judea, Galilee and Samaria, it was the realization of G-d. This is the meaning of the coming of the Kingdom of G-d- the illuminative understanding.
I’d suggest a different interpretation, one that sees this exchange as deeply political both for Jesus and his interlocutors. In each gospel the text reflects a fundamental rejection by Jesus of the legitimacy of Roman rule, as opposed to the ruling political authority of the Jewish god and His appointees. I see no other reading that is consistent with the conceptual identity of religion and politics. If so, then Jesus’ response is fully engaged with the political situation in the Roman Empire and in Judea. It is also fully consonant with Jesus’ full rejection of the Temple hierarchy as superannuated, and his explicit claims both that the Temple has lost its authority and that the new political order will be centered upon loyalty to a new kind of Jewish king and a new conception of citizenship in that king’s kingdom. It seems highly implausible to me that Jesus wasn’t engaged up to his pe’ot in the politics of his time. The alternative is that the Evangelists pictured Jesus and his followers as resting their hopes on some sort of “spooky stuff” – i.e. gaslighting themselves.