Author: ppadmin

Horsley sketches the major problems in current discussions of the historical Jesus:  the apocalyptic Jesus and the Jesus of individual sayings (the results in a Jesus as wisdom teacher, and the separation of religion from political-economic life).  Horsley’s attempt is to show Jesus as a prophet generating a movement of renewal of Israel over against the rulers of Israel (p 5).

He presents a contextual Jesus, identifying the context of the historical figure; the particular historical situation, the situation of crisis, personal circumstances and qualities, role of leadership, leader’s interaction with the people, decisive confrontation of the leader with the dominant order.  Reading the gospels thus yields a multifactored historical situation (p 26).

Horsley sketches the renewal movements in Israel, elucidating Jesus’ mission, the roles he adapted and the movement that focused on him (p 83); he places Jesus in the role of prophet, pursuing independence from imperial rule and the renewal of Israelite society in justice under the direct rule of its G-d (p 94).  Horsley looks at the gospels, especially in Mark, to detail the contextual perspective. Jesus’ overall program was the renewal of Israel over against the rulers of Israel, and particular episodes of healing, exorcisms, controversies and confrontation were particular components of the agenda (p 103).

Horsley looks closely at the gospel accounts from the perspective of Jewish covenantal life. He sees the gospel stories as being full of conflict, as portraying Jesus carrying out a renewal of Israel, and as detailing a struggle between opposing powers (Herod, Caesar, high priests, temple system, unclean spirits and demons)(p1-3). He stresses the need to read the gospels as ‘whole stories’, to see the ‘individual sayings as components of speeches or of dialogue episodes on particular issue; to see that the conflict in the gospels is political-economic-religious (between Judaean, Hellenism and priestly) and details the ‘many resistance movements among the Judean and Galilean people against the Herodian and high priestly rulers as well as against Roman rule’ (p 8).

Horsley emphasizes the crucifixion as the key event that ‘transformed the power that was to intimidate and dominate in the power that inspired commitment and solidarity in forming an alternative social order’ (p 199).  Jesus’ renewal movement regenerated the  power of local solidarity, challenged the rulers publicly in Jerusalem(political/religious capital for Israelites and the Roman power in Judea (p 209).

The movement formed in response to Jesus’ mission provided an alternative society under the direct rule of G-d (the kingdom), expanded the movement in resistance to the power that sought to determine the conditions of their lives (demons, client kings, Roman forces). Horsley’s book emphasizes that Jesus’ followers continue their opposition to the imperial order (to the powers) in imitation of Jesus, so that the Roman instrument of terror became the way to see the Jesus way against the powers.

Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish studies in Vanderbilt Divinity school and a self described ‘Yankee Jewish feminist’, brings a Jewish interpretation to Jesus’ parables.  The parables challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives.

Through the centuries ‘the parables have been allegorized, moralized, christologized and otherwise tamed into either platitudes such as ‘G-d loves us’ or ‘Be nice’ (p 3).  Jesus’ first followers would have understood more of them; ‘they knew that parables and the tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way’ (p 4).  Levine points out that just as rabbis held that parables were a means for understanding Torah (scripture), so Jesus the Jew uses parables to help his followers understand the kingdom of heaven (p 8).

She points out that  we need to see them in Jesus’ own context, flowing out of his stories and conversations, not reduced to one-line zingers (‘what would the parables have sounded like to people who have no idea that Jesus will be proclaimed Son of G-d by millions, no idea even that he will be crucified by Rome’ (p 3)).  She emphasizes the temptation to tame the parables into screeds against Jewish practice, ethics or theology (p 278).  ‘The people who first heard him did not, at first, worship him, yet they paid attention’ (282).  She details rabbinic (Jewish) perspectives on the implication of Torah (scripture) on the central perspectives of the parables.  I found her work on the prodigals (Luke 15) and Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16) the most compelling.

This is a book that explores the troubling paradox of the United States appearing to be both imperial and Christian, living the gospel authentically while also being citizen in an imperial superpower, of being exiles in the empire.  Eighteen essays explore themes of a believers Church Conference held in September 2004.

For me, the key chapters are ‘Jesus’ Confrontation with Empire’, ‘Seek the Welfare of the Empire’, ‘A Personal Journey to Political Involvement, ‘Why Believers Might Conscientiously Abstain from Voting’, ‘Prayer by the Chaplain’.  Several chapters reflect the situation and gospel witness in Lithuania, China, South Africa and Vietnam.

For the United States to be both Christian and imperial is troubling from a missiological, ecclesiological, ethical and Christological perspective.  Metaphors express that hope, metaphors of permanence and transience, of homeland and pilgrimage (p 2-4).  Ted  Grimsrud mentions four connecting points in ‘Jesus’ Confrontation with Empire:  empire’s agents care more about coercive power than about truth (e.g., Jesus and Pilate), the empire’s violence toward any all threats, Jesus’ contrast with imperial leadership styles, the resurrection as an ultimate counter-empire statement’ (p 42).