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HAS THE HYPOTHESIS OF A SEDITIONIST JESUS BEEN DEALT A FATAL BLOW?

A SYSTEMATIC ANSWER TO THE DOUBTERS¿Ha sido refutada la hipótesis de un Jesús sedicioso?

Una respuesta sistemática

Fernando Bermejo RubioUniversidad Complutense de Madrid

A BSTRACT : A large number of objections have been raised against the hypothesisthat the Galilean preacher Jesus the Nazarene was involved in some kind ofanti-Roman seditious ideology and activity. It is usually contended that thoseobjections have dealt a fatal blow to the hypothesis, to the extent that the over-whelming majority of scholars take for granted that it is refuted and outdated.The present article identifies those objections, and systematically argues thatnone

of them is really compelling. This sobering conclusion challenges deep-rootedassumptions in the field, thereby providing a further cogent argument for theview of Jesus as a figure whose message had subversive political implicationsandwas not ultimately incompatible with violence. Keywords: Jesus the Nazarene, Roman Empire, sedition, objections, counter-arguments.

R ESUMEN : Contra la hipótesis según la cual el predicador galileo Jesús el Naza-reno estuvo implicado en algún tipo de ideología y actividad sediciosas opuestasal Imperio romano se han esgrimido numerosas objeciones. Suele creerse que

estas han asestado un golpe mortal a la hipótesis y, de hecho, la inmensa mayo-ría de estudiosos da por supuesto que ha sido refutada y está obsoleta. Este ar-tículo enumera una veintena de esas objeciones, y argumenta de modo sistemá-tico que ninguna de ellas es realmente convincente. Esta instructiva conclusióndesafía presupuestos muy arraigados en el ámbito académico, proporcionandocon ello otro argumento a favor de la visión de Jesús como una figura cuyomensaje religioso tenía implicaciones políticas subversivas y de que no era, enúltima instancia, incompatible con la violencia. Palabras clave: Jesús el Nazareno, Imperio romano, sedición, objeciones,contraargumentos.

«Do not find fault before you investigate. First examine,and then reprove» (Sirach 11, 7)

For Javier Alonso,libre de la metáfora y del mito



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The hypothesis that the Galilean preacher Jesus the Nazarene was ac-tually involved in some kind of anti-Roman resistance is far from being

an idiosyncratic view or aboutade : it is as old as the Leben-Jesu-Forschung itself, and has been intermittently proposed until today 1. Notwithstan-ding its pedigree, it certainly remains a minority position. Many articlesand books have been written to counteract that view as radical andmisguided, and even as definitely refuted 2. Nowadays, the view of aseditious Jesus is deemed to be outdated by the overwhelming majorityof New Testament scholars. Jesus is, accordingly, generally portrayed asa politically quiescent religious preacher, who was no threat whatsoeverfor the Romans3.

Truth and cogency of arguments, however, have nothing to do withthe number of scholars holding a certain stance. All the less convin-cing is the force of the majority, when there are very good reasons tosur-mise that the presence of ideological constraints might be at work. It isindeed a repeatedly proved fact that in the Christian-dominated field ofNew Testament scholarship and the historical study of Jesus, researchis too often distorted by theological prejudices4.

Spurned on by the recent discussion on the authenticity criteria, Ihave tackled again thisvexata quaestio in a series of forthcoming articles5,and I have put forward a case defending the idea that the hypothesisof a Jesus involved in anti-Roman activity is not only not outdated orrefuted,but it is perhaps the best hypothesis ever advanced to accountfor the textof the Gospels and to critically understand the historical figure of Jesus.

1. I am deeply grateful to Lena Einhorn, Tobias Hägerland, Ramiro Moar, JosepMontserrat, and Antonio Piñero, who attentively read an earlier draft of this paper andkindly made helpful suggestions and critical comments. My heartfelt thanks go also to

Jeff Morgan for his revision and improvement of my text. This article has been writtenin the framework of the Research Project entitled «250 años de investigación sobre el

Jesús histórico» (FFI-2009-09316: MICINN-MINECO). 2. The view «was dealt a fatal blow» (McKnight 1999: 229, n. 70). According toSean Freyne, there is no necessity to refute in detail the theory of a proponent (Bran-don) of that view «since there is large-scale agreement that it is far too one-sided, hy-pothetical and based on unfounded assumptions» (Freyne 1998: 223). This kind ofstatement is unfortunately quoted as Scripture by generations of graduate students andscholars. 3. «His ministry for the Kingdom was devoid of political, i.e., revolutionary inspi-ration. He had no anti-Roman bias» (Vermes 2003: 401); «The tradition of his words andworks in general do not indicate the slightest interest in changing the forms or structuresof temporal power, in replacing one system of government with another, or in questionastowhether those who ruled were believers or pagans […] Jesus does not question the author-ity of Rome’s client Herod Antipas […] does not question the authority of Rome’s col-laborators the Sadducean high-priests […] does not question the authority of the paganCaesar» (Bryan 2005: 50-51). According to this author, Jesus’ concerns were not «specifi-cally anti-Roman any more than they were anti-Jewish or anti-Parthian or anti-anythingelse» (Bryan 2005: 51). 4. See Sanders 1985: 23-58; Crossley 2006; Crossley 2008: 173-194; BermejoRubio 2009; Bermejo Rubio 2011. 5. See Bermejo Rubio (forthcoming a, b, c).




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data. Moreover, in light of this hypothesis, many other pieces of evidencemake sense, whilst otherwise they remain desperately«strange», «en-

igmatic», «very intractable material»10

. The remarkable thing is thatthe explanation of the extant evidence is thus made in a simple andunifying way.

A third argument lies in the unsound character of the other at-tempts to explain away the evidence. If one wonders how the above-mentioned pattern is accounted for by the scholars believing in a pacific

Jesus, one will easily check that, either the pattern is simply over-looked —too often, only a small portion of the items I have referredto is cited or discussed—, or an analysis of each passage is carried out

in order to prove that their apparent meaning must be discountedand replaced by another interpretation in which any violent and revo-lutionary meaning has been excised. This procedure does not carryconviction, not only because it entails an atomizing and compartmen-talizing approach to the evidence, but also because it systematicallyinvolves strained, even far-fetched interpretations, to the extent thatmany passages whose meaning is obvious enough (and even clearerin light of the pattern) become cruces interpretum . The need of suchconvoluted re-readings, always carried out in the sense of a blunt de-

politicization of Jesus’ preaching and activities, makes their reliabilityhighly suspicious, not to say simply incredible.The present article enhances the case for a seditionist Jesus byputting

forward a further argument, namely, that virtually every objectionraised against that hypothesis can be convincingly countered. It goeswithout saying that some of the arguments leveled against the cham-pions of the hypothesis are legitimate and contain fair criticisms: Ido not think everything in the works of authors advocating an insur-rectionist Jesus is valid, all the more so because this view has certainlysometimes fuelled sensationalistic and whimsical claims. For instance,there are many idiosyncratic and hardly defensible views in RobertEisler’sΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ 11, and this is just one example12. As far as Icansee, however, the main objections do not stand up to examination,either because their claims are dubious, or because they can be provedunsound. Below I am surveying and answering a whole battery ofthem.

«Die Hinrichtung Jesu, die wohl begreiflich wird, wenn er ein Rebell war, bleibt nun einvöllig unverständlicher Akt sinnloser Bösheit» (Kautsky 1908: 389). 10. This is often recognized —however in a muffled way— in scholarship. See e.g.Minear 1939. What G. Lampe says on one of those passages can be generalized: «Thatthe commentators have floundered in a morass of perplexity when faced with this notori-ously difficult passage is undoubtedly true» (Lampe 1984: 335). 11. Eisler 1929-1930. 12. That Eisler overstated and spoilt his case by pushing his conclusions too farthrough idiosyncratic moves is a widely recognized fact; see e.g. Brandon 1971: 48, n. 4.



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H A S T H E H Y P O T H E S I S O F A S E D I T I O N I S T J E S U S B E E N D E A LT A FATA L B L O W ? 2 3

Objection 1.The hypothesis of a seditious Jesus is the resultof ideological prejudices and/or is sociologically conditioned

It is often contended either that the proponents of the hypothesis of aseditious Jesus work with aprioristic assumptions13, or that their views arefatally conditioned, as they reflect «the spirit of the times»14. Bothrepro-aches aim, of course, at drawing the same corollary: whoever advancesthat hypothesis does not seek the truth in an independent and objectiveway, but simply and uncritically reflects his/her prejudices or a fashionprevailing in radical political circles.

Given that —as I have recognized— bias is often present in NewTes-

tament scholarship, prima facie this is a not unreasonable kind of ob-jection. Nevertheless, it shows its extreme frailty when one considersthat the hypothesis has been set forth in different epochs and by schol-ars coming from very different ideological and cultural backgrounds.Deists (H. S. Reimarus), Marxists (Karl Kautsky), contemporary Jews(Robert Eisler, Joel Carmichael, Hyam Maccoby, Zev Garber), and lib-eral historians (Samuel Brandon, Josep Montserrat) have put forwardversions of the hypothesis since the 18th century until the present15. Inthe 20th century, even some Christians have —at least partially— clungto that view16. Therefore its emergence or intermittent reappearance isnot simply due to a passing fashion or a restricted perspective.

In fact, such attempts at discrediting the hypothesis of a seditionist Je-sus overlook the basic fact that its starting-point is not an aprioristic (po-litical or philosophical) stance, but an attentive survey of the text of theCanonical Gospels17. On the one hand, the Gospel accounts are riddled—not to speak of the purely legendary material— with blatant inconsist-encies and puzzling improbabilities18, so that any rigorous consideration

13. For instance, Martin Hengel reproached to Brandon that his goal was not«toinves-tigate, sine ira et studio, but todemonstrate a preconceived opinion» (Hengel 1969: 235,emphasis original). 14. E.g. Wink 1969: 58; «It is not surprising therefore, at a time of enthusiasm forthe ‘theology of revolution’ […] that Jesus should be represented as a social and political‘revolutionary’» (Hengel 1969: 231). 15. The anthropologist Marvin Harris also endorsed this view in a famous book; seeHarris 1974: 177-203. 16. See e.g. Pike-Kennedy 1972; Carey 2009: 79-96. 17. This has been clearly stated by Brandon: «Serious ground for doubting the Gospelpresentation is actually provided by that presentation itself» (Brandon 1967: 2). Referringtothe Barabbas episode and the alleged custom of releasing a prisoner at the Passover, sus-pect on several grounds, he writes: «Mark’s presentation of the episode, as we have seen,is so manifestly absurd that it suggests some explanation other than that of lack of logic»(Brandon 1967: 4).

18. «Nor is this merely the incoherence of an imperfectly remembered event;theincoherence is the result of dynamic factors —it is tendentiously incoherent» (Carmichael19953: 41). For surveys of the inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Passion accounts, seee.g. Winter 19742: 32, 78-82, 131-134; Brandon 1967: 2-10; Carmichael 19953: 5-29. Among them, let us remark the following: a) Precisely the person (Jesus) who is portrayed



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seditionist Jesus does not necessarily imply a maximalist view of him asa sort of army chieftain22; it only implies that his ideology entailed an

anti-Roman stance, and that he was indeed involved in some kind of se-ditious activity. Finally, the objection does not take into account that inheavily dominated peoples an art of political disguise takes place (what James Scott has called «hidden transcripts»); and this means that formsof resistance are very often expressed covertly and in an indirect way23.The lack of an open «call to arms» in the Gospels (but Luke 22:36 seemsto be exactly that!) would prove accordingly nothing.

The former objection, in fact, begs the question, as the actual politi-cal atmosphere of Jesus’ activities has been further altered almost out of

recognition by the agenda of the first Gospel writer, who establishedthe guidelines to be followed by the other evangelists. In light of theediting-process, the available material pointing to a seditionist stancehasbecome a set of disiecta membra , which must be gathered together inorder to produce a recognizable story. Moreover, that process involvedthe dropping or erasure of much relevant material, as it is proved bythefact that several Gospel episodes do not make real sense as they nowstand (the Temple incident and the arrest in Gethsemane being only themost obvious examples)24. In these circumstances, the claim that the am-

biguity or lack of clarity regarding the Roman rule in the rememberedteachings of Jesus proves that he was not interested in political issues orthat he had a rather otherworldly view of it wholly misses the point25.Given the obscuring editing-process, the significant thing is not that wedo not have more material, but that we have got indeed so much.

Objection 3: The hypothesis assumes that the Gospel accounts havebeen edited in order to drop embarrassing evidence of a seditionist Jesus, but this has not happened, because if it had been so, theevangelists would have done a very bad job26

Paradoxically, this objection is virtually the opposite of the former one:if there it was claimed that there is too little evidence supporting the

22. E.g.: «Jesus then was not a guerrilla leader» (Maccoby 1973: 158). 23. See Scott 1990. «Recent studies of modern peasantries have discerned that ac-tive protests and movements form only the historically visible small fraction of the farwider and deeper popular resistance that remains purposely hidden» (Horsley 2003: 53);see also Horsley 2004. 24. «Wenn erzählt wird, daß einer der Anhänger Jesu bei dessen Verhaftung bewaff-neten Widerstand gegen die Staatsgewalt leistet, müßte doch wohl auch eine Reaktion der‘Schar mit Schwertern und Knüppeln’ erzählt werden, denn es ist undenkbar, daß einesolche Reaktion unterblieb» (Linnemann 1970: 41). 25. This kind of «argument» is found e.g. in Bryan 2005: 47; among many others. 26. «One always wonders why the editors did not remove entirely any such refer-ences if they were embarrassing to them. Given their historical situation, did they not acuriously bad job of concealing Jesus’ relation to the Zealots, if indeed they had any desireto conceal it at all?» (Klassen 1970: 19).



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or the fact that he often spoke to the people on spiritual and moral to-pics,thereby accepting that he was more than a «mere seditionist»32. Hen-

cethe objection is misleading, because a seditionist framework for Jesusis, by definition, just a framework, not the whole picture. People enga-ged in nationalistic resistance need not be monomaniacs, so it would besilly to think that one could reduce all in Jesus to his anti-Roman stance.

We should realize that the hypothesis does not seek to call into ques-tion many well-assured results of Jesus Research, as the fact that he was anapocalyptic and charismatic preacher, with a fame of exorcist and healer,deep religious convictions and a spiritual commitment to his tradition (infact, the above-mentioned «pattern of recurrence» included references

to all these aspects); and, the other way around, his roleas a preacherdoes not preclude at all a seditious stance. This is to beexpected, becausereligion and politics were inextricably linked in first-century Judaism,and to the Jews «national liberty was not just a matter of politics; it wasalso of great spiritual significance»33. As other holy men in Jesus’ age, hewas able to do many things and address multiple concerns34.

Therefore, unlike the Markan Jesus himself and the scholarly tradi-tion seem to imply 35 , there is no contradiction at all between being aδιδάσκαλος and being a λῃστής36 . On the contrary, it was precisely the

intensity and seriousness of Jesus’ religious beliefs what led him to anopposition which caused his death sentence by the Roman governor. A last remark is in order. Given that there are thousands of books de-

voted to the spiritual dimensions of Jesus’ teaching and activities, it vergeson the unfair to blame those scholars focusing on political issues —whichare avoided by the overwhelming majority— for not tackling the whole

occupée par les idolâtres […] Réduire le procès du Christ à un épisode de la résistanceantiromaine en Palestine, c’est dénaturer radicalement les données historiques les plus sû-res» (Daniélou 1968: 118); «Disastrous onesidedness» (Hengel 1969: 235). 32. See Brandon 1967: 17, n. 4. He states that Jesus’ activities were motivated by hisdesire «to prepare Israel spiritually for the advent of the Kingdom of God» (Brandon 1967:342).Others remark that Jesus’ preaching and parables «raises him from the status of ablood-and-thunder ‘end-of-the-world’ revivalist» (Maccoby 1973: 154); «He was no or-dinary rebel, either, but a Prophet with a lofty vision […] he was a King-Messiah […] Atthe same time, he was a Rabbi» (Maccoby 1973: 209).

33. Maccoby 1973: 24.34. See Anderson 1994: 70-72.

35. Mark 14:48-49. «Jesus of Nazareth was not in any sense of the word aλῃστής.He was no revolutionary, prompted by political ambitions for the power of government;he was a teacher» (Winter 19742: 69); «The entire teaching material which is attributedto Jesus points away from his being a revolutionary in a way that would actually havethreatened Rome. Either the evangelists have not only invented the Jewish trial scenes,but also an enormously rich body of teaching material, while completely hiding Jesus’true views, or he was no revolutionary in the political sense of the word. The latter seemsoverwhelmingly the more likely hypothesis» (Davies-Sanders 1999: 670). 36. Let us recall the case of the two great Torah teachers (σοφισταί) who encouragedtheir disciples to cut the Roman eagle down from above the Temple gate as Herod lay dying(Josephus, B.J. I 648-651); and Judas the Galilaean is also called aσοφιστής (B.J. II 118).




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range of topics which are typical of the endless literature on the Galilean.Paradoxically, one-sidedness could be blamed on those scholars rejecting

the hypothesis, as they do not take seriously into account the evidenceand arguments on which that hypothesis relies.

Objection 5: Jesus could not be a seditionist since in his agethere wascomplete peace in Judaea37

It is well-known that, according to Tacitus, «sub Tiberio quies», butit isstriking that this global statement is used to refuse a priori the presenceof any subversive action in a period lasting several decades; unfortunately,this amounts to gross oversimplification38. Of course, it is quitepossibleto exaggerate the intensity and the extent of the spirit of revolt duringthe time of Jesus39, but the truth is that it is also possible to minimizeit.

On the one hand, Tacitus’ statement can and should be understoodonly in a relative way: in comparison with armed insurrection in variousregions, including Galilee, in the age of Sabinus and Varus, andthe gen-eral uprising leading to war in 66 c.e. (and even the risings of Theudasand the Egyptian in the 40s), Tiberius’ age seems to have been relativelypeaceful, but the qualification «relatively» is necessary. As to Josephus,although he does not refer to important upheavals or crucifixions inthis epoch, one should be cautious about using an argumentum ex silen-tio, which carries relatively little weight. Josephus’ silence is not conclu-sive: it may merely mean either that his sources did not supply him withdefinite information or that he did not think it essential to recordall theriots and petty rebellions that broke out from time to time. Thefact that Josephus fails to give any clear and concrete evidences of the activityofliberation movements between the time of Judas’ attempted revolt in6 c.e. and the reign of Agrippa I (44 c.e.) does not mean that they didnot exist40. Josephus implies the existence of a connection between Ju-

37. See Barnett 1975; Giblet 1974; Guevara 1985; Fast 1959: 53-54. 38. As Jonathan Price put it, «Pilate’s stormy term (26-37 [?] C.E.) belies Tacitus’famous judgment that ‘under Tiberius all was quiet’ (Hist. 5.9.2); the problem was a lackof information even in Tacitus’ day, although five serious disturbances under Pilate alone arerecorded in sources Tacitus did not consult. Pilate’s immediate predecessor, ValeriusGra-tus,deposed four high priests, indicating perhaps a lack of calm already before Pilate’sarriv al» (Price 1992: 6). Among the disturbances under Pilate, let us notice Pilate’s attackon the (armed) Samaritans at Mount Gerizim (36-37 c.e.). Besides, Josephus attributes thearrest and subsequent execution of John the Baptist to Herod Antipas’s fear of an uprising;political terminology is embedded in the reference to John:στάσις, μεταβολή and thephraseτί νεώτερον, an euphemism used to designate a rebellion (A.J. XVIII 118-119). 39. Some scholars maintain the view of a Palestine filled with persistent political un-rest and protests, movements, and outright revolts against the imperial Roman order (seee.g. Horsley 2003: 13, 35, 53-54; Maccoby 1973: 125, 147). 40. According to Josephus (B.J. II 118; A.J. XVIII 4), Judas «caused the people to re-volt (εἰς ἀπόστασιν)», and was the founder of a sect (σοφιστὴς ἰδίας αἱρέσεως). Presumably, thissect and its ideas did survive, since the circumstances which gave rise to it remained. More-



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das of Galilee’s activities and claims, and the Jewish War41; but whatever Josephus’ «Fourth Philosophy» called itself, this sect survived, continued

its opposition to the Romans, and was led by his descendants.On the other hand, the Gospels themselves give the lie to that alleged-ly idyllic picture: they make mention of Galileans «whose blood Pilatehad mingled with their sacrifices»42, mention an insurrection (στάσις) in Jerusalem about the time of Jesus’ arrival (Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19), andsome of them refer to other crucified men along with Jesus asλῃσταί43.In these circumstances, the claim that Jesus’ age was completely peacefuland calm is manifestly unfounded.

Objection 6: Jesus could not advocate any kind of violent resistanceagainst the Empire because he thought God was in charge,so any human activity would be superfluous44

Admittedly, the assumption entailed in this objection is probably correct.It is plausible that Jesus thought that the arrival of the kingdom wasin

over, Josephus states that the ideas of Judas and Saddok were enthusiastically received by thepeople: «When they heard their appeals, responded gladly (καὶ ἡδονῇ γὰρ τὴν ἀκρόασιν ὧνλέγοιεν ἐδέχοντο οἱ ἄνθωρποι), the plot to strike boldly made serious progress» (A.J. XVIII 6). 41. At the beginning of the 18th book of his Antiquities, the Jewish historian uses themetaphor of sowing and «planting the roots» ( ῥίζας ἐφυτεύσαντο) in order to establishthe relationship between this «fourth philosophy» and the ominous events which latertookplace for the Jewish people, including the destruction of the Temple (A.J. XVIII 8-10).Even if Josephus did not apply the term «Zealots» to the opponents of the Romans beforethe revolt, when he came to the events of the revolt itself he made a descendant of JudasofGalilee, Menahem, the leader of the Zealots; in Massada, the leadership was held byElea-zar ben Jair, another descendant of Judas. Moreover, the two sons of Judas were crucifiedby Tiberius Julius Alexander in about 46 e.c. (A.J. XX 102), so presumably the resist-ance went on in Jesus’ age. 42. Luke 13:1-3. Pilate’s action could repress an insurrectionary movement: «Es kön-nte freilich vielleicht auch irgendein früherer Zeloten-Aufstand gemeint sein» (Bultmann19708: 57). In Luke 13:4 there is also a reference to «those eighteen upon whomthe towerin Siloam fell». Robert Eisler associated the falling of the tower of Siloam withthe massacreof the Galileans, by arguing that the fall of the tower was not a natural calamity but a mili-tary operation. Other scholars have found this conjecture plausible (see Wood 1956: 263). 43. Mark 15:27; Matt 27:38. In a non-published paper («A Shift in Time: Parallelsbetween events depicted in the New Testament and later events depicted in the writingsof Josephus»), Lena Einhorn has advanced the idea that several parallels among the Jewishhistorian and the Gospels (and Acts) suggest a deliberate time shift in the New Testa-ment narratives, so the Jesus story should be dated in the mid-40s to early 50s and Jesuswould be possibly identical to the messianic leader Josephus calls «the Egyptian». I re-main, however, unconvinced by her bold arguments. 44. «In the thought of Jesus this political hope and this idea that political measureswere necessary in order to bring about the establishment of the kingdom appear to becompletely absent. For Jesus, the kingdom was not a political order whose realizationcould be furthered by political manipulation and aggression. Neither was it an idealisticsocial or economic order which men by their own efforts could evolve or establish […]It was God’s supreme gift to man and its coming was in the Father’s own hands [Luke13:32] » (Fast 1959: 86); Fredriksen 2000: 244; among others.



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enemies of Israel, at whose head stands a nation called «Kittim», assistedby Belial and the powers of darkness under his authority48. In fact, the

congregation seems to have ended up fighting against the Romans, whodestroyed the community’s settlement as they swept through Palestineduring the First Jewish-Roman War.

Furthermore, the objection does not take into account that severalproponents of the hypothesis of a seditionist Jesus explicitly assumethat Jesus seems to have thought that the coming of the kingdom dependedon God’s will49. This fact further proves that the objection is not a neces-sary corollary of that assumption.

Objection 7: It is not right to speak about the Anti-Roman activityof Jesus because his target seems to have been the priestly caste,the religious and political ruling class in Judaism50

Admittedly, according to Mark, Jesus’ primary conflict was with the high-priestly rulers in Jerusalem, and it is highly probable that Jesus includedthe Jerusalem elite among the «unrighteous rulers» whom God will judge.The objection, however, presents two weak points. The first one is thatit blithely downplays or overlooks the fact that at least a part of the evi-dence (the crucifixion, the mocking by the soldiers, the issue of the tributewith the reference to Caesar —and, in Luke 20:20, to the governor—, thetitulus crucis , the mention of a cohort in John 18:351, the comparison of

Jesus’ movement with that of Theudas and the Egyptian in the Bookof Acts…) unmistakably points to a conflict with the Romans. Interest-ingly, both the saying about «taking up the cross» (Mark 8:34-35;seeMatt 10:38/Luke 14:27), and John 11:47-50 imply a direct connectionbetween choosing Jesus’ way and a violent Roman intervention. This

48. See e.g. 1QM; 4Q491-496. On the non-pacifist stance of the Qumran commu-nity, see Batsch 2004. 49. «Jesus was first and foremost an apocalyptist: he believed in the miraculous char-acter of the coming salvation […] Again and again he described its sudden, miraculous ap-pearance» (Maccoby 1973: 157-158). 50. See e.g. Hengel 19762: 346, n. 3 (Jesus’ attack was addressed «nicht gegen dierö-mische Oberherrschaft sondern gegen die religiös und politisch herrschende Schicht im Judentum selbst»). See also Blinzler 19694: 75f.

51. The term «cohort» (σπεῖρα), which according to the Fourth Gospel is the forceresponsible for arresting Jesus, appears in Mark 15:16 to describe the set of soldiers whomock Jesus. Quite a few scholars opt for the historicity of the Johannine picture: «Laten-dance philoromaine étant, dans le quatrième Évangile, plus accentuée encore que dans lesSynoptiques, il est impossible de supposer que la cohorte et le centurion ont été introduitsdans le récit par Jean» (Goguel 1932: 453). See also Cullmann 1970: 49-50; «It is likelythat the editor exaggerated the strength of the detachment and the rank of the officer incommand of the troops, but not that he freely invented the report of Jesus’ arrest by theRomans» (Winter 1974 2: 61, n. 4). It is much easier to imagine why other Gospel writerswould have dropped it. See also Bond 1998: 197.




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is all the more revealing because our sources seem to have been deeplyinterested in muffling as far as possible the clash between Jesus and the

Empire.The second problem is that resistance to Rome is not only expressedin the above-mentioned items, but also in the (historically reliable)criticism towards the chief priests. Given that the attitude of the highpriests was one of political pliancy rather than of resistance —thehigh- priest owed his appointment to the governor and was in fact littlemore than a tool in his hands—, outraged national feelings would bedirected in the first place against the indigenous supporters or collabo-rators of the invading power, perceived as quislings by those longingfor

freedom. It is therefore most natural that a nationalistic patriot wouldhave turnedagainst them with even more vindictiveness than againstthe Romans themselves. The fact that Jesus pronounced God’s judgmenton the Jewish and Jerusalem rulers is understandable in the light of thefact that they were the face that the Roman imperial order presented tothe people of Palestine. Therefore, an attack against them implied anattackagainst the Romans themselves. This indirect action has also beena typical procedure of certain twentieth century anti-colonial movements(e.g., the Mau Mau in Kenya or EOKA in Cyprus), and in fact that was

a well-known behavior in First Century Palestine: theSicarii targetedprivileged power-holders of their own society who were collaboratingin imperial rule, rather than the alien rulers themselves52.

Objection 8: Jesus’ disciples had no relationship with Zealotism

It has been often proposed that the nicknames of several of Jesus’ disci-ples —«Qananaios»/«Zealot», «Barjona» and «Iskarioth»— betray theirbelonging to anti-Roman resistance53. Other scholars, however, have ar-gued that those etymologies do not hold (and even that they might beanachronistic)54, thereby denying the existence of a relationship of thedisciples with political rebels. From here they conclude that a seditiousstance in Jesus’ group must be excluded.

Nevertheless, this objection overlooks further Gospel evidence. Evenif the proposed etymologies of the nicknames of Simon and Judas were

52. «Insofar as Roman imperial rule in Judea worked through the high-priestly

rulers in the Jerusalem Temple, moreover, the Sicarii may have thought they were alsostriking symbolic blows against the empire» (Horsley 2003: 43). 53. See respectively Mark 3:18/Luke 6:15-Acts 1:13; Matt 16:17; Mark 3:19, 14:10 and par. See e.g. Brandon 1967: 203-204, 243-245. «These disciples retained their Zealotnicknames even after joining Jesus, which suggests there was no fundamental disparity be-tween Jesus’s aims and those of the militant Zealots» (Maccoby 1973: 159). The presenceof Zealots in the disciples was also held by Cullmann 1961: 9-12; Cullmann 1970: 22-23. 54. Hengel 19762: 55-57; Morin 1975; Brown 1994: 1413-16; Mézange 2000;Bockmuehl 2004: 65-66; Taylor 2010.



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wrong (and this is still a debatable matter), the violent disposition of atleast some disciples chosen by Jesus is well attested in the tradition. The ti-

tle «Boanerges», «Sons of Thunder», given to James and John (Mark 3:17), strongly suggests a rowdy reputation. Whilst «Boane-» may representbĕ nē , the Hebrew word for «sons of», the rest of Mark’s transliterationseems to come from a word for «excitement» (rgz), for «commotion» and «anger» ( rg š ), or for «quaking» ( r‘ š )55 . In any case, it probably hints atnegative aspects of some prominent disciples, and particularly tothehot temper of the sons of Zebedee, which will be later significantlydisplayed in Mark 9:38, and more harshly in their desire to resort toviolenceagainst a village of uncooperative Samaritans (Luke 9:51-56).

This last point is highly significant, especially when the informationabout several of Jesus’ followers —precisely those three who are portrayedas his most intimate companions—56 giving the undertaking to die withhim is taken into account: Peter (Mark 14:29.31/Luke 22:31-33) and theSons of Zebedee (Mark 10:38-39). Such an offer seems to make senseonly in a seditious atmosphere.

Be that as it may, it would be a gross mistake to assume that anti-Roman violent resistance was restricted to groups such as Zealots andSicarii57. Biblical models as Phineas and Elijah were influential inshaping

the resistance to direct Roman government, in which resistance apromi-nent figure was Judas of Galilee; but there is no evidence that this sectorganized all the resistance to the Romans58. Even if one assumes that Jesus’ disciples had no connections with organized anti-Roman groups,this fact by itself proves accordingly nothing.

Objection 9: Jesus was deeply different from his disciples, and anyviolence conveyed in the Gospels should be attributed only to them

Since, as we have seen, there are hints in the tradition at the violentproclivities of some disciples, a very frequent device consists in drawinga systematic and neat dividing line between the disciples —who couldbe sometimes aggressive and short-sighted— and an utterly pacific Jesus,who appears to be beyond their violent logic and unconnected withex-ternal turbulences59.

55. On the Hebrew and Aramaic words from which «Boanerges» may have been de-rived, see Rook 1981. 56. See Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33; cf. 13:3. 57. Let us note that the Zealot party played only a minor role in the war against Rome. 58. See e.g. Smith 1971: 18. 59. This device is all-pervasive in Christian quarters, but it is also found in e.g. the Jew-ish scholar Paul Winter. He recognizes that several sayings exemplify the politicalconcern ofthe disciples (19742: 193), and that «the little group that gathered around Jesus clearly hadpolitical-revolutionary tendencies» (196). But he adds: «Yet they do not prove anythingabout Jesus himself […] All the same, as Jesus was crucified on the ground of acharge of tu-




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Admittedly, Jesus was a charismatic preacher who seems to have hada strong personality and some idiosyncratic views, so one can surely as-

sume that there were differences between him and his disciples (just asthere were probably differences within the group of his disciples them-selves). Several problems arise, however, when it comes to establishinga yawning chasm. Jesus was the leader and master of his group, and itwashe who commanded and gave orders, so his guidelines must have beenfollowed. And it was he indeed who chose the group which becamehis discipleship, who held them as his disciples along his public life, andwho sent them to preach as missionaries in his name60, so he musthavechecked that they were not too obtuse61. This means that there musthave

been continuity between the ideas of the master and those of his disciplesduring his lifetime. To think otherwise means attributing to Jesus a degreeof lack of realism which does not fit what the tradition recountsof him.

Moreover, although only the disciples are portrayed as carrying andusing swords, it was Jesus who uttered the sayings on taking the cross,on bringing a sword on the earth (Matt 10:34), and on acquiring swords(Luke 22:36), and it was he who nurtured their hopes to become leadingfigures in Israel (Matt 19:28). It was he who, according to the sources,provoked an incident in the Temple entailing forcible activity, and who

had royal ambitions. To claim that political aims and violence onlyconcerns the disciples is extremely unlikely from a psychological andahistorical point of view62. In fact, that claim seems to depend on thetheo-logical myth of Jesus’ uniqueness.

Therefore, what the disciples wanted and did must have agreed, atleast in general terms, with Jesus’ own goals and expectations. This meansthat, if the disciples waited for an integral redemption of Israel, Jesusmust have expected it too; and that, if they were armed with swordsandeventually used them, violence was not ultimately incompatible with

Jesus’ view63.

mult or sedition, his activities must have had a political aspect for some people even beforehis death had taken place. But this does not in any way mean that he himselfput forwardpolitical claims, or asserted his messiahship, i.e., his vocation to become Israel’s ruler[…] The sayings in Acts 1, 6; Mt 19, 28 and Lc 19, 27 are evidently ‘Gemeindebildungen’[…] they in no wise afford information concerning Jesus himself » (193, emphasis original). 60. See e.g. Mark 6,7-12; 9, 14-18; Luke 9,1-10.52; 10,1-17. The principle of thedisciple being like the master (Matt 10,24-25; Luke 6:40; 10:16: «Whoever listens to youlistens to me»; John 13:16; 15:20) must have been in effect, so that to join in Jesus’ ministryimplied repeating to some extent what he proclaimed; see Riesner 1981: 453-475. 61. See the perceptive remark by Irenaeus of Lyon: «Why did the Lord send thetwelveapostles to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, if these men did not know the truth?»(Adv.Haer. III 13, 2). 62. «If Jesus had been leading a nonviolent revolution he apparently selected a non-cooperative group» (Buchanan 1984: 247). 63. The attribution of misunderstanding to the disciples appears in the Gospelsthemselves —e.g. in the so-called Markan «messianic secret» (which has the disciples not



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Objection 10: Jesus’ message was innocuous,but it was misunderstood in a political sense64

The idea that Jesus was misunderstood, both by his followers and othercontemporaries, is often maintained in the field. It partially overlapswiththe former objection, but it is more wide-ranging: Jesus would havebeenmisinterpreted not only by his disciples, but also generally by his othercontemporaries, especially by Pilate. This «explanation» has been usede.g. to deny that Jesus held an apocalyptic outlook, but particularly tocounter the obvious implications of Jesus’ crucifixion by the Romanpower: Jesus would have been a harmless man, but was tragically mis-

construed.Surely no one doubts that different sectors of Jesus’ audiences reacheddifferent conclusions about him65, but the idea of an overall misinterpreta-tion becomes implausible through even a cursory scrutiny.To start with,such a claim might perhaps be convincingly argued if we had onlya fewitems of the above-mentioned pattern at our disposal. In the light ofso many pieces of evidence pointing to a seditionist Jesus, however, asystematic misunderstanding is exceedingly unlikely.

Furthermore, this claim assumes either that Jesus’ message was es-pecially complex, or that he was a total failure as a teacher, or both.Nevertheless, there is no ground for accepting in the least any of theseassumptions. On the one hand, the preaching of the impending kingdomof God and the ethical teaching of a Galilean craftsman do not seemtohave been particularly intricate, sophisticated and abstruse so as hav-ing been misunderstood66, especially if Jesus was uneducated and didnotholdscribal literacy67. On the other hand, even discounting some of whatthe tradition said about an exalted Jesus, the image of him conveyed bytheevidence is that of a skilful preacher and communicator, not that ofa slow man, unable to transmit his message.

As to the contention that Jesus was misunderstood by Pilate, this couldbe plausibly made if we only had the fact of the crucifixion at our dis-

grasping the truth about Jesus before Easter); see also e.g. John 12:16—, but there is eve-ry indication that it is, to put it bluntly, a blatantly apologetic device. 64. «Seine Verurteilung wegen Zelotismus ein Justizirrtum war. Das Wesen seinereschatologischen Einstellung wurde von den Heiden nicht verstanden und konnte vonihnen wohl auch nicht verstanden werden» (Cullmann 1970: 51; see also 48f, 54); «ImHinblick auf die römische Besatzungsmacht darf man von einem politischen Mißver-ständnis im unmittelbaren Sinn reden» (Kuhn 1982: 735). For many other examples, see Allison 2010: 155, n. 557. 65. See Luke 11:53-12:1; 13:17; John 7:47-52. 66. It should not be ruled out that the idea of a misunderstood Jesus is conditionedby the belief in his special ontological nature, or a projection onto his message of the sub-tleties of the Christian theological thinking. 67. The conclusion of a recent careful monograph on the topic is that Jesus mostlikely did not hold scribal literacy, but managed to convince many in his audiences thathe did (Keith 2011: 26, 187-188).




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posal. Nevertheless, we have got a lot of further evidence: Jesus had beenpreaching a coming kingdom, made royal claims —and made them also in

Jerusalem at the delicate period of Passover—68

, opposed the payment oftribute69, was surrounded by a group of men armed with swords70, ready touse them (and perhaps he also organized some disturbance at the gatesof Jerusalem and in the Temple implying forcible activity, in which casethings would have been even worse). In light of the whole evidence, I findthe argument based on Pilate’s misunderstanding to be utterly implausi-ble71: it can be rather considered an objection mounted from desperation,and forwarded only to allow many scholars to discount texts and evi-dence which have quite embarrassing implications for their views of Jesus.

Objection 11: Jesus was not a seditionist, as he enjoyed freedomof movement in Galilee, and was only arrested after some timeof activity in Jerusalem72

It is undoubtedly true that, according to the available sources, Jesus wasnot killed by the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. The problem with this ob-jection lies, however, in the fact that «freedom of movement» enjoyed by

Jesus in Galilee must have been, at best, rather restricted, as the scholarsadvancing this objection must avow. The Gospels witness a consistent,antagonistic relationship between Jesus and the tetrarch Herod Antipas73,who —according to the convergent witness of Josephus and the Gos-pels— killed John the Baptist, was keeping a watchful eye on Jesusand hisfollowers, and «would fain kill» Jesus74. Jesus feared Antipas —the facethat the Roman imperial order presented to the Galilean people— and

68. On this point, see the careful arguments in Allison 2010: 233-240. 69. On this aspect, seeinfra, Answer to Objection 14. 70. See Mark 14:47 and par.; Luke 22:36.38.49. 71. This is also the reason why I do not consider the comparison with the Baptist’sfate convincing. Perhaps Antipas (according to Josephus) let John be executed only be-cause he hypochondriacally feared that the Baptist’s entourage would become dangerous,but there is every indication that Pilate had serious reasons to act. 72. «The relative freedom of movement Jesus enjoyed» in Galilee «denotes that hedid not organize a band of Roman resisters» (Cohick 2008: 130); «Antipas never arrested Je-sus, nor […] did he ever try to halt his mission […] what would he have done with some-one actually claiming to be the Messiah? Jesus would have been executed long beforereaching Jerusalem» (Fredriksen, 2010: 216-217). Let us notice that Cohick speaks about«relative freedom of movement». 73. Jesus disparagingly called him «that fox» (Luke 13:32), and warned his disciplesabout him (Mark 8:15). «The reed shaken by the wind» of Matt 11:7 might have been anironic reference to Antipas (see Theissen 1989: 26-41). In Q 9:58, Jesus seems to haveusedveiled allegory to refer to Antipas (the «fox») and the elites of Sepphoris. 74. Luke 13:31. Antipas must have been perceived as a client ruler, not only becausehe was brought up in Rome and owed his position to the beneficence of the Roman over-lord, but also because he walled Sepphoris and Beth Ramtha, renamed them in honor of theImperial House (Autokratō r, Livias/Iulias respectively), and built Tiberias in honor of Tiberius.



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repeatedly fled from him75. Therefore, the fact that Jesus was not killedby the tetrarch proves nothing: it is highly probable that Antipas did not

kill Jesus simply because he did not manage to do it76

. Furthermore, if Jesus did not lead a whole army, but rather a small band of followers—and it is precisely that which the sources recount—, he would havemore easily passed unnoticed.

As to the relatively late arrest in Jerusalem —assuming that oursources are to be trusted—, it can be explained in several ways. Onceone discounts the hagiographic nature of the Gospels, which are proneto tell about crowds hailing Jesus 77 , it is rather probable that Jesus’followers and supporters could pass unnoticed for a time (especially if the

narrated events took place in the Passover period, when Jerusalem wasovercrowded). Besides, several passages in Mark describe preparationsand Jesus’ activities in Jerusalem which presuppose secrecy and caution,clandestine connection with supporters within the city, and even theuseof some kind of password 78 . In light of all this, the fact that Jesus’ arrestdid not take place immediately, even if he was carrying out seditiouspreaching or activities, becomes quite understandable.

Objection 12: Jesus could not endorse an anti-Roman stance, becausehe clearly rebukes violence in the episode of the arrest, according toMatt 26:52-5379

The idea of a pacific, harmless Jesus, whose conception of the kingdomwas purely apolitical, is very often grounded in Matt 26:52-53, where Jesus is depicted as scolding one of his disciples for resorting to arms.

75. See Mark 6:31f; 6:45; 6:53; 7:31; 8:10.22.27; 9:2.30.33; 10:1. «There are in-dications that Antipas was an active enemy from whom Jesus was compelled to flee […]The Markan, and hence the Synoptic, outline of the career of Jesus can most naturallybe seen as a chase and flight. The itinerary of Jesus can, in its broadest outline, be ac-count ed for as a flight from Antipas» (Tyson 1960: 239-240). Interestingly, many scholarstry to downplay the obvious implications of that flight; see e.g. Hoehner 1972: 201-202;«Nodrastic action was taken» (Freyne 1998: 223). 76. Strangely, this possibility is also contemplated in passing by Fredriksen 2000: 165. 77. On the probably rather modest size of the crowd accompanying Jesus’ entry, andthe probability that it did not attract Roman attention, see e.g. Kinman 2009: 411-415;«Perhaps the event took place but was a small occurrence which went unnoticed. Per-haps only a few disciples unostentatiously dropped their garments in front of the ass[…] whileonly a few quietly murmured ‘Hosanna’» (Sanders 1985: 306). 78. See Mark 11:1-6; 11:11.19; 14:12 ss. «The statement […] that, on the day ofthe triumphal entry, Jesus had gone into the Temple, and having ‘looked round about onall things’, left without comment or action, is curious. Wasπεριβλεφάμενος πάντα an actof reconnoitring for action on the morrow?» (Brandon 1967: 9, n. 4). 79. Cullmann calls this passage «das Wort, das alles Zelotentum verurteilt» (1970: 24). «If we can take Matt. 26:52-53 as authentic dominical utterances […] Jesus dissociatedHimself absolutely from political zealotry» (Black 1984: 293). Jesus «refused to strike a blowin defense, either of Himself or of His cause, and […] did not even allow others tostrike ablow in His behalf» (Fast 1959: 102). See also Klassen 1970: 17.




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Either scholars claim that the passage is authentic and proves that Jesusrebuked violence, or they assert that it faithfully reflects Jesus’ renun-

ciation of violence80

. A basic problem lies in the fact that we are not sure in the least thatthe utterance containing a quasi-proverbial saying —«Put your sword backinto its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword»— 81 really comes from Jesus. In fact, Mark records no response on Jesus’ partto the disciple’s act of resistance, which indicates that the utteranceof Matt 26:52 might be a later interpolation; it is hard to believe thatMark would have overlooked that rebuttal in such a crucial moment, sothere are good reasons to think that the sentence is a pious addition 82 ,

aimed at countering the scandal of Jesus’ impotence83

.But even assuming, for the sake of the discussion, that the sentencecomes from Jesus, it is not necessarily a «pacifistic» utterance. As Brandonrightly observed, it is obviously untrue as a general statement, insofar asexperience teaches that the compensatory justice contended in it does notalways happen84. Moreover, the sentence does not entail a general rejec-tion of violence; in fact, it could convey a mere opportunistic pragma-tism: it would make sense if pronounced in a context in which a leaderrealizes that any armed resistance would be doomed to failure, for in-

stance due to the overwhelming superiority of the opposing forces85

.Therefore, the widespread claim that this passage supports the image ofa non-violent Jesus is unwarranted.

Matt 26:53 has Jesus saying that he could call down «more thantwelve legions of angels» to bring him aid. Although this passage does notenjoy multiple attestation, I will accept its authenticity for the sake of thediscussion. Admittedly, Jesus rejects the assistance of angels, but the merefact that he envisages the possibility to command angelic armies is quitesignificant by itself. Moreover, the actual rationale for not resorting toviolence significantly lies here only in that such option would frustratethe divine plan (Matt 26:54: «But how then should the scriptures beful-filled, that it must be so?»), not in a rejection of violence as such86. In

80. According to Martin Hengel, these sayings «zwar spätere Ausmalungen, geben aberdie Intention des Gewaltverzichts Jesu grundsätzlich richtig wieder» (Hengel 1974: 18-19). 81. See Rev 13:10. The saying in Matthew is probably a quotation from TargIs 50, 11;see Kosmala 1960. 82. «Rhétorique édifiante» (Guignebert 1969: 478); see Brandon 1967: 306-308. 83. «The verse resolves the scandal of the Son’s impotence —it is, in accordancewiththe resignation of Gethsemane, voluntary —and makes him a moral model: the pacifisticMessiah eschews holy war» (Allison 2004: 486). 84. Many scholars, however, consider the saying as a valid and general law on violence. 85. The history of the interpretation (e.g. that of Luther and other Reform thinkers)confirms this point. 86. For perceptive comments on this passage, see Puente Ojea 1992: 83-84: «El Na-zareno está manifiestamente formulando aquí, no una condena incondicionada de la vio-lencia (que aparece como entrevista y no excluida a priori mediante el envío de guerreraslegiones angélicas, al modo esenio), sino más bien la exigencia de que se cumplan las pre-



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fact, given the extent of the distortion operated in Jesus’ tradition, weshould not rule out several possibilities: that Jesus hoped the angels

would join him, but not at that moment; or that Jesus did indeed hopethe angels would join him, but somebody decided that he did not 87 .There are many scholars who, while assuming that the exact word-

ing of Matt 26:52-53 may be secondary, think that the passage infactcap-tures the allegedly pacifistic attitude of the historical Jesus. Theproblemis that such radical non-violence and harmlessness seem to be nothingbut aprioristic claims88, whose reliability is radically called into questionby quite a few pieces of evidence —the episode of the driving out of themoney-changers, the sayings in Matt 10:34, the counsel to his disciples

to acquire swords (Luke 22:36), the armed resistance in Gethsemane,and so on—89. Jesus’ message does not seem to have been incompatibleatall with violence90. In fact, his alleged pacifism seems paradoxically tobethe result of a literary campaign aimed at disguising the real reasons ofhis crucifixion91.

Objection 13: The message of «love of enemies» (Matt 5:38-48)puts Jesus beyond the political antagonisms of his age92

This typical objection to any hypothesis of a seditious Jesus was alreadycountered by Robert Eisler almost a century ago, by arguing that there

visiones proféticas —las cuales han sido, a su vez, manipuladas para legitimarex eventu un desastre inesperado». 87. Elsewhere in the Gospels we have denials of what may well have happened. Forinstance, Luke 19:11 suggests that the disciples (but not Jesus) were wrong as they ex-pected the kingdom to appear at once. According to John 21:23, Jesus did not say thatthe end would precede the death of all his disciples (but this contradicts Mark 9:1). Thesetexts seem to be secondary rationalizations, thereby lacking historical plausibility. MaybeMatt 26:53 is the same sort of thing —somebody remembered or preserved a sentence whichrevealed that Jesus hoped that the angelic hosts would join him, but that person thoughtthat it could not be true, and tampered with it in such a way that it meant the opposite. Iowe this suggestion to Dale Allison (personal communication by e-mail, October 1st 2012). 88. See e.g. Green 2001: 96. The alleged «harmlessness» of Jesus is restated timeandagain by Fredriksen 2000. 89. As even some Christian scholars avow, an analysis of the evidence shows that Je-sus «zu Gewaltanwendung kein prinzipiell negatives Verhältnis hat» (Berger 1996: 127a). 90. As Maccoby wrote: «Any money-changer on whose shoulders Jesus’s whipdescended would be justified in regarding Jesus as an odd kind of pacifist. Are we tounder stand that Jesus was a pacifist only towards Romans, and not towards Jews? […]Clearly Jesus was not a pacifist at all» (Maccoby 1973: 144). 91. It is Brandon’s thesis that Matthew and Luke «elaborated the Markan portrait of Jesus into that of the pacific Christ, which became the established tradition of Christianity»(Brandon 1967: 285). Moreover, the thesis of a Jesus involved in some kind of anti-Romanresistance and who was not a pacifist does not imply that his aim was war as such or that hewas an especially bellicose man. Undoubtedly, Jesus probably longed for an age and a state(the «Kingdom of God») where violence and human conflict would be definitely wiped out. 92. Cullmann 1970: 24; Hengel 1970: 20-22; Bryan 2005: 53f; Balz 1970: 32;Merkel 1984: 143-4; Klassen 1970: 21.




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are several reasonable answers. One of them is, put simply, that religiousvisionaries are not usually consistent93. Such an answer, however, is ad-

mittedly easy, and it can be used in the most diverse ways. Anotheroneis that, if one finds a contradiction between Matt 5 and —for instance—the sayings about the swords, and decides to drop the latter as secondary,then one could also, and maybe with better reasons, to drop the sayingon love to enemies as secondary and inauthentic94.

Another —more convincing— possibility for explaining the wholeevidence is to state the idea of a spiritual evolution in Jesus95. There aretwo interrelated reasons to think so. Firstly, Jesus appears to be a sedi-tionist most clearly in the closing stages of his life96. Secondly, suchas

Eisler remarked, texts as Luke 22:36 seem to witness a shift in Jesus’attitude97. This idea is all the more reasonable because there are severalGospel passages indicating that, as the decisive moment in Jerusalemap-proached, Jesus underwent some critical situations and adopted seriousdecisions.

A further possibility lies in not finding contradiction at all betweenMatt 5:38-48 and an anti-Roman stance98. In fact, the two closing antith-eses of the Sermon on the Mount have been interpreted as making sensenot (or not primarily and specifically) in the political realm, but ratherin a context of local social interaction, and more probably in conflictsthatwould have been related to the economic difficulties of communitieswhich are disintegrating precisely because of the rigorous taxationbyRoman client rulers, so indirectly because of Roman imperialism99. If thisreading is correct100, the «love of enemies» saying would not beaddressedto political enemies, but would paradoxically express a form of resistanceto oppressive foreign rule through constructive social relations charac-terized by mutual assistance and a spirit of solidarity101.

93. Eisler 1929-1930, II: 257 (see also Sanders 1998); «Millenarian prophets arecon-sistently inconsistent» (Allison 2001: 91). 94. Eisler 1929-1930, II: 256. 95. This possibility was endorsed by Eisler 1929-1930, II: 259-266. 96. «Die Gewaltsamkeiten im Wirken Jesu häufen sich anläßlich seines Kontaktesmit Jerusalem» (Berger 1996: 119a). 97. «Hier ist zunächst deutlich die Zeit der ersten Aussendung der Jünger von einem‘jetzt’ (ἀλλὰ νῦν) unterschieden» (Eisler 1929-1930, II: 267). 98. See Puente Ojea 1991: 89-94; Piñero 1993: 289-293. 99. «Jesus addresses conflicts rooted in such economic pressures with the principle‘Love your enemies’. From the context indicated in the content of the ensuing focal instanc-es we can see that local conflicts are addressed, not relations with Roman soldiers, whowould not have been on the scene as an occupying army in any case» (Horsley 2003: 118). 100. «Whether it can be transposed to the social or political realms is a matter of on-going debate» (Harrington 1991: 88). 101. «Instead of imitating the imperial patterns in which ‘great ones’ wielded powerover others, those who would provide leadership must become servants of others. Therenewed covenantal community that Jesus advocated and enacted also forms a striking con-trast with frequent modern interpretation of his teachings. In the context of covenantre-newal, ‘love’ refers not to a feeling or an attitude, but to concrete economic practices in



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It is worthwhile remarking that the main answers which have beenoffered present an interesting explanatory advantage. If both the violent

and quietistic features as transmitted in the Gospels go back to thehistorical Jesus (because of a certain inconsistency in the character, orbecause of a shift of attitude, or because they were not really contra-dictory, or even because of the fact that his statements had differentaddresses...), it is easier to account for the later process of ascribing hima purely«pacifist» stance. It would not have involved a complete replace-ment of a violent character by an entirely different one, but only a processof selection and reinterpretation.

Objection 14: Jesus was not a seditionist, as he recognizedCaesar’s rights and acquiesced in the payment of tribute to Rome102

It is certainly true that legions of scholars through the centuries haveclung to a reading that sees Jesus as approving the payment of tribute (andthereby opposing a «Zealot» view). Nevertheless, a reading of Mark 12in the sense that nothing whatever is owed to Caesar103 —Jesus gave avery clever, crafty response which entails frontal opposition to the taxeswhilst not openly recognizing it— makes very good (and perhaps eventhe best) sense of the account and of its inner articulation104. Further-more, that Jesus did not endorse the payment is strongly supported byLuke 23:2 (where witnesses accuse Jesus of forbidding the payment oftaxes to Caesar —a charge which shows no sign of having been invented).

This reading is all the more convincing when the consequences of thetwofold pressure of the tribute on the Palestinian population —religiousand economic— are contemplated, and Jesus’ deep concernabout socio-economic inequality is taken into account105. Moreover, this is consist-

village community, such as canceling debts and generous mutual sharing of resources»(Horsley 2003: 127). 102. See e.g. Cullmann 1970: 64-65; Jossa 1980: 252-266; Bruce 1984: 249-263;among many others. 103. For scholars arguing that Jesus rejected the payment, see e.g. Kennard 1950; Bran-don 1967: 345-348; Brandon 1968: 66-68, 146; Maccoby 1973: 132-133; Horsley 1993:306-317; Herzog 2000: 219-232; Puente Ojea 1992: 108-114; Oakman 2012: 127(«Je-sus had, in fact, been alē stē s in advocating rearrangements of debts and tax resistance»). 104. It explains: a) the fact that the question was put to Jesus «to entrap him in histalk» (Mark 12:13.15a; see Luke 20:20: «so that they might hand him over to the powerand authority of the governor») implies that the questioners knew his position on thematter, and that it was opposed to the payment;b) In Jewish ears, the answer «Renderto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s» would nothave been adouble entendre insofar as pious Jews thought all things belonged to God;c)The fact that Mark 12:17 says that the inquirers «were amazed at him» makes full sensebecause, through his answer, Jesus avoids being trapped, opposing the payment withoutsaying it explicitly. 105. See Stenger 1988: 136. For a reassessment of Jesus’ aggressive stance towardstherich, see Crossley 2006: 35-74.




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ent with Jesus’ claim to be «king of the Jews», with his being considered byhis disciples as the redeemer of Israel, and with his having been crucified.

All in all, by far the most convincing reading of the available evidenceisthat Jesus did indeed oppose the payment of tribute to Rome, in the sameline and with the same rationale as Judas the Galilean106.

Objection 15: Jesus was arrested and crucified alone, and his disciplesand followers were left unharmed, but this does not correspondto the usual Roman procedure against seditionists107

The answer to this question has its starting-point in that the objectionitself is badly framed, as it assumes the reliability of the statement «Jesuswas arrested and crucified alone». There are, however, strong reasons formaintaining that this assumption is unwarranted 108 . Firstly, the Gos-pelsassert that Jesus was crucified along with two λῃσταί; even if theGospel writers do not say a word about the possible relationship of thesemen with Jesus (they rather try to make a clear distinction between tho-se λῃσταί and the alleged non-λῃστής, between the allegedly innocent Jesus and the allegedly criminals), such disconnectedness is highly im-probable, because the simplest explanation for several men being cru-cifiedtogether is that they were interrelated (the Gospels do not speak ofpeople crucified in separated groups, but only of a unified group).

Secondly, the four Gospels witness that Jesus was crucified in thecenter of those men, and the most natural explanation for that is thathe was their ringleader. In fact, the charge on which he had been con-demned was inscribed on his cross: the claim to be «king of the Jews».This claim, which was intrinsically insurrectionist, in all probability cor-respondsto Jesus’ own self-understanding109. The contention that Jesuswas placed amidst the other crucified men because they were his support-ers —whether in a narrow or a loose sense— is made even moreplausiblewhen the fact that crucifixion (as other Roman punishments) had an in-trinsic mimetic character, aimed at deterrence, is taken into account110.

Thirdly, there are several hints pointing to the fact that the discipleswere also persecuted, and that they deeply feared facing the same deathas Jesus: a) the disciples’ flight, including the story in Mark 14:51-52;

106. The idea that Jesus clung to the conviction of Yahweh’s lordship finds supportin several sayings; see Mark 12:29, Matt 4:10 (Luke 4:8), and Matt 6:24 (= Luke 16:13). 107. See e.g. Hengel 1970: 16; Sanders 1985: 304-305; Theissen-Merz 1996: 403;Bond 1998: 204; Bryan 2005: 62. 108. For a thorough treatment of this issue, see Bermejo Rubio (2013b). 109. It is not plausible in the least that the formulation of the inscription, whichstems neither from proof from prophecy nor from Christological interests, and which hasa decidedly political ring, is the result of a historicization of a dogmatic motif. See Dahl1991: 36-37; and especially Allison 2010: 233-240. 110. See Marcus 2006.



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b) the story of Peter’s denial, obviously out of fear111; c) according to John 18:19, «the high priest asked Jesus about his disciples». Again,the

most natural explanation of these fears is that they were caused bythe seditious activities of the group, and the simplest explanation for theenquiry by the high priest, which betrays some apprehension regarding Jesus’ followers, is that they could be politically dangerous.

All this indicates that, despite the impression which the Gospelwriters try to convey, the disciples worried the authorities, and in allprobability Jesus must not have been arrested alone, but rather arrestedand crucified along with several followers112, —or at least people re-latedto him through a shared ideology and/or activities—. But even if one

clings to the cherished belief that Jesus was crucified ‘alone’, it shouldbe acknowledged that this assumption cannot be legitimately upgradedto the status of a cogent objection against the hypothesis of a sedition-ist Jesus: perhaps all that happened is that Jesus’ followers managedto flee. The widespread notion that Jesus could not be involved in sig-nificant anti-Roman activity because his followers were not crucifiedwith him is nothing more than a paralogism.

Objection 16: If Jesus had been involved in seditionist activities,his followers would have been searched out, but the Romans did notpersecute the movement after his death113

This objection is basically the same as the former one, but applied to thelater history of the Christian groups. It also presents several problems.The first one is that if, as I have argued, the Christian tradition has proba-bly dropped evidence pointing to the search for Jesus’ disciples, it couldalso drop further evidence regarding later developments. Accordingly, tostart with, one should not forget the biased nature of our sources.

More importantly, even taking for granted that there was no fur-ther persecution, this can be easily understood. If Jesus and his follow-ers had reserved the use of arms for the moment when the eschatologi-cal irruption of God took place, it would be understandable that, oncehaving checked that Jesus’ hopes had been unfulfilled, his followers

111. Even if the details of this story were to be deemed unhistorical, its kernel showsthe extent of a disciple’s fear. It is significant that, in this episode, Peter is told: «Surelyyou also are one of them» (Ἀληθῶς καὶ σὺ ἐξ αὐτῶν εἶ ); the plural pronoun presupposesthat the people arrested constituted a group. 112. That the other men crucified with Jesus were possibly members of his ownmovement has been advanced by several scholars: See e.g. Eisler, 1929-1930, II: 525-526;Brandon 1968: 103; Maccoby 1973: 218; Montserrat 2007: 142-143. 113. «Perchè non c’è restato traccia di una persecuzione romana del cristianesi-mo nascente in Giudea, ma solo di una persecuzione ebraica (Stefano, Giacomo)?» (Sac-chi 1968: 454);Fredriksen 2000, 9; «The Romans played no role in the persecution of themovement after the death of Jesus» (Sanders 1985: 285; see Sanders 1985: 318); Hen-gel 1969: 237.




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immediately renounced the use of weapons and limited themselves towait for his glorious return; in fact, the crucifixion itself seems to have

acted as a deterrent for a recourse to arms. In these circumstances, thefact that they were not persecuted by the Romans is not especially in-triguing.Probably the Romans tended to limit their intervention to theoccasionswhen the threat was real —when people were armed, or whenthere were big crowds involved114. If the Romans had persecuted thesympathizers of every alleged messiah and/or king, they would havehad to kill hundreds or thousands of Jews every year. It is probable thatthe authorities did not see Jesus’ followers as posing any threat once theirleader andself-styled king (and probably some of his supporters) were

crucified, especially if the Nazarene sect did not organize open messianicdisturbances, and it did not115.Perhaps there was a brief interval of persecution (Mark and Matthew

keep record of the disciples going to Galilee), and when the leadersof the new movement established themselves in Jerusalem the dangerwasgone. Therefore, the fact that the Nazarene sect, which rapidly becamean apolitical messianic group, remained active in Jerusalem is not neces-sarily a valid argument against the involvement of Jesus in anti-Romanactivities116.

Moreover, even if, when we come to know of persecution by the Ro-man government —the earliest stages of intervention on the part of theRoman government are particularly obscure to us—, the chargefamiliarto us is that of simply «being a Christian» (they were punished «for theName», thenomen Christianum ), the Roman system of criminal prosecu-tion tended to be accusatorial, not inquisitorial 117 . Before the «partingof the ways» developed, the Nazarenes were a sect within Judaism, sothey were protected under the aegis of the Synagogue 118 . The other Jews would have not presumably informed against their Nazarene core-ligionists to the Romans.

114. «If […] the disciples fled to Galilee on the night of Jesus’ arrest, and if therewere only twelve of them, they may have been difficult for the Romans to track, and thelatter may have quickly reached the conclusion that to try to do so was senseless, sincethe revolutionary ferment seemed to have been nipped in the bud by Jesus’ crucifixion»(Marcus 2007: 423). 115. According to Josephus, A.J. 20.1.1, Cuspius Fadus put an end to brigandage bymaking an example of a few; some Roman authorities in first-century Palestine seem tohave considered preemptive killing of the leaders of a trouble-making group to be suffi-cient to quell the disturbance and stir up fear among the followers. 116. As far as I know, after the incidents at Waco Siege and David Koresh’s death in1993, the Branch Davidians were not violently persecuted by the U.S. government, evendespite the fact that some of them returned to Mount Carmel Center. 117. When Pliny the Younger writes to Trajan for advice (Pliny 10.96), the Emperoradvises him not to seek out Christians for prosecution («conquirendi non sunt»). 118. The available evidence of the primitive Jewish Church of Jerusalem indicatesthat the members of that community remained closely integrated with Jewish religiousand social life in Judaea until 70 e.c.



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Objection 17: The hypothesis of a seditionist Jesus is inconsistentwith later Christian developments and emphases, which proceeded

in the direction of pacifism.This objection unfortunately ignores the kind of inverting processes andsurprising shifts which take place in the history of religions, away fromthe goals of founders (or allegedly founding figures). It also ignoressignificant developments in Jesus’ own movement. For instance, Jesus’mission was exclusively directed towards the (lost sheep of the) houseof Israel, not towards the Gentiles (about whom Jesus did not have aflattering opinion119). This fact —which has caused a lot of headaches

and embarrassment to Christian scholars— did not prevent people re-ferring to Jesus as their Lord from transferring the Tanak’s promises tothe Gentiles. If this innovation succeeded, why could not others havetaken place? And if Jesus the Jew was rapidly thought of as not being a Jew at all, and was even transformed into a kind of anti-Jewish figure,and if a flawed Galilean man aware of his limits (see Mark 10:18) wastransformed by his followers into a blameless and divine being, whyshould we rule out the possibility that an anti-Roman seditionist wasturned into a wonderful pacifist120?

Let us take the example of Paul. How could the apparently pro-Ro-man Paul preach and honor an anti-Roman Jesus121? The answer to thisalleged objection lies in the character of his faith, and in some generalconsiderations of religious psychology. As far as we know, Paul wasnot an eye-witness of Jesus’ deeds, neither one of his companions orkinsfolk. He was an enthusiast who derived his ideas about Jesusnot onlyfrom tradition but also from ecstatic visions, out of which Paulgranted Jesus superhuman status, and interpreted his death as a saving event. Inthis sense, Paul’s interest in Jesus’ life must have been rather selective.When human beings seriously hold religious beliefs which are comfort-ing and meaningful for their lives, and especially when they refer to abeing deemed to be divine, quite a few concrete data —all the moreso when they are potentially embarrassing— are dropped or becomeirrelevant.

119. See Mark 7:26-27; Matt 5:47; 6:7-8.32; 15:22-26. 120. According to a variant of the objection, the vindication of Jesus as exalted Mes-siah presupposes that his death was unjust, but to state such an injustice would be strangeif Jesus had indeed been a seditionist (I have not found this objection in scholarly work,but, as far as I can remember, it was advanced by an anonymous writer on a blog discus-sion). This, however, overlooks the fact that, for his early followers and many other Jews, Jesus’ crucifixion was, by definition, unjust, because it was carried out by the occupyingand hated Roman forces, whilst Jesus, precisely because he had been a pious Jew and hadresisted the power of Rome, was a kind of hero; likewise, from the standpoint of the Gos-pel writers, Jesus had been an innocent victim at the hands of his Jewish adversaries. 121. Let us notice that Paul’s political stance has been (and still is) a much debatedissue, with contrasting conclusions. On Paul’s ambivalence toward the discourse and set-ting of the Roman Empire, see e.g. Lopez 2008; Stanley 2011.




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Objection 18: Jesus’ reported fellowship with «tax collectors»—deemed to be a kind of quislings and collaborators with the

Romans— proves that he opposed any anti-Roman stance122

Although it has become a virtual consensus that Jesus did in fact consortwith tax collectors, and even that this fellowship was the most distinctiveaspect of his ministry, there are several problems with allthat. Firstly, theevidence for Jesus’ supposed association with toll collectors is scant andproblematic indeed, as the very scholars making those claims point out123.

Secondly, the Synoptic Gospels (the Fourth Gospel preserves no ref-erence to Jesus associating with tax collectors) preserve traditions which

suggest that Jesus held a highly disparaging view regarding taxcollectors.Sayings as Matt 5:47, 18:17, and 21:31-32 assume a derogatory evalua-tion of toll collectors (the same disparaging evaluation as that held by Jesus’ addressees), thereby not betraying a receptive attitude towardsthatgroup124.

Thirdly, the references to intimate contacts between Jesus and taxcollectors take, for the most part, the form of accusations by his opponents,and the charge does not seem to have been viewed as true in the sayingsthemselves. Matt 11:18-19/Luke 7:33-34, which present Jesusas «afriend of tax collectors and sinners», also present him as «a glutton

anda drunkard» 125 ; this last statement is, however, obviously polemical,and does not seem to be reliable126. Even clearer is the unreliability oftheaccusation, in the same passage, that John the Baptist «has a demon».

Fourthly, there are several possibilities for the basis of the charge,which do not require extensive or intimate contact of Jesus with tax col-lectors. For instance, there may have been something about Jesus’eatingand drinking habits which provoked the charge, since he apparentlywasnot overly punctilious regarding the prescribed fasts; or perhaps Jesusdid indeed refer to tax collectors in his preaching, not in any positivemanner but simply to emphasize the obstinacy of his critics; or maybethe phrase «a friend of tax collectors and sinners» was used in somewhat

122. «The tax-gatherers, considered to be outside the pale by Jesus in Mt 18, 17b,are in other passages (Mk 2, 15; Mt 11, 19; Lk 7, 34 and 18,9-14) represented as personswith whom he entertained cordial relations […] We are here provided with evidence that Jesus adopted a friendly attitude towards a class of people whom ‘nationalistically-minded’ Jews despised» (Winter 19742: 194); Hengel 1970: 19-21; Cullmann 1970: 63; Ryan2005: 25; Catchpole 1970: 51; Edwards 1972: 58; Klassen 1970: 16-17. 123. There are only two passages in the extant evidence which actually report that Jesus did hold table fellowship with tax collectors, and both of those passages can plausiblybe regarded as editorial constructions rather than historical accounts. For this aspect andthe ensuing discussion, see Walker 1978: 221-238; Horsley 1993: 212-217. 124. Such traditions appear particularly, but not exclusively, in Matthew. See Walker1978: 224-229; «Lukas denkt letztlich nicht viel anders» (Michel 1969: 104). 125. «It is not at all clear that these accusations are based upon fact» (Walker 1978: 230). 126. On Jesus’ probable asceticism, see Allison 1998: 172-216; Bermejo Rubio 2010:50-54.



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the same disparaging way as «nigger-lover» was used in the UnitedStates;and so on127.

Fifthly, even if Jesus did associate intimately with tax collectors (thiscannot be ruled out, since, as an eschatological prophet, he aimed atencompassing all Israel), such behavior would not necessarily contradicthis involvement in anti-Roman ideology and resistance, as it ishighlylikely that he expected them to renounce their previous commitmentsupon following him128 or joining his band129: they were regarded asstand-ing in need of repentance. This is made clear in the story about Zaccha-eus, in which Jesus speaks of him as one of «the lost», and he does infact repent130.

A close survey of the evidence proves that the question of the asso-ciation of Jesus with tax collectors must, at least for the present, remainopen, as also its meaning. And this, in turn, cuts the ground from underone of the usual objections against the picture of a seditionist Jesus.

Objection 19: The hypothesis is unnecessarily complicated to explain Jesus’ death. A simpler explanation is to be preferred, because, giventhe arbitrariness and harshness of Roman rule, almost anything

would have sufficed as a ground for the condemnation of a Jew to becrucified131

This objection presents several problems. Firstly, it takes too slightlythelogic of the Imperium. Even if a ruler was ruthless and carried out trialsby cognitio extra ordinem —or simple interrogations— to allow him

127. For these and other perceptive comments and suggestions, see Walker 1978:230-231. 128. This is all the more probable if, such as Horsley, claims, «there is no clear evidencethat they would have been viewed as ‘quisling’ collaborators with the Romans in the con-text of Jesus’ ministry» (Horsley 1993: 212). 129. Note that the specific identification of one of the Twelve as a tax collector is, tosay the least, problematic (Walker 1978 234-237); but even if he was, it is most probablethat he abandoned his activity in order to follow Jesus. 130. «The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector and the story of Zacchaeuscannot, therefore, be used to show that Jesus was sympathetic to or associated with taxcollectors without explicit ‘repentance’ on their part» (Walker 1978: 229). 131. «Jesus could have been one of those innocent victims who are picked up by po-lice action at a time when peace-keeping has become difficult and the forces of law andorder are over-stretched, and then arbitrarily put to death» (Harvey 1982: 16); Sanders1985: 304-305; «It is customary to assume that a significant event must have a significantcause […], but the death of Jesus was only significant in retrospect, and it might well nothave been the consequence of anything much (the Temple incident might well be enough,or Jesus’ insolence during the audience with Pilate). Jesus’ execution was hardly worth asecond thought by Pilate» (Meggitt 2007: 406); «So far as the governor was concerned,he would have seen sufficient reason for ordering the crucifixion if he had come to feelthat Jesus’ itinerant preaching tended to excite the masses to expect the end of the existingorder» (Winter 19742: 206-207); among many others.




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greater flexibility, he must have had serious reasons for crucifying aman (and, a fortiori, a group of men)132. Pilate was a rather competent

prefect, as he held his charge in Judaea for over ten years. He knew thathe had to answer the emperor, and that arbitrary crucifixions could in-cur the hatred of many people against him. Perhaps Pilate did not carein the least about being hated, but he surely cared a great deal aboutthe eventual consequences of that hatred. This means that the prefectwould have much preferred to have powerful reasons for crucifying agroup of Jews133. Therefore, the more reasons there are, the better; andthe stronger the reasons, the better. It is extremely unlikely that Pilatecarried out a (collective) crucifixion over a trifle; in fact, we do not have

more evidence of Pilate having crucified other Jews.Secondly, and by far more importantly, although the fact of the cruci-fixion is a crucial factor supporting the hypothesis of a seditionist Jesus, itis not at all the only piece of evidence (as I have argued above). The cur-rent explanations of Jesus’ crucifixion, by excluding that hewas involvedin anti-Roman activity, are systematically compelled to conjecture aboutthe reasons which prompted the Roman prefect to crucifyhim, with theresult that they are usually far-fetched, and too often nothing but purespeculation134. But not everything can account for Jesus’ crucifixion,andall the available evidence must be taken into account and weighed up.

The hypothesis of a seditionist Jesus has nothing to do with the na-ivety of assuming that a significant event must always have a significantcause, or that a sentence always presupposes the existence of guilt. Jus-tice can miscarry, and judicial murder occurs everywhere, so the Gospelview of an innocent Jesus is not intrinsically improbable on a cursoryreading135. It is, however, exceedingly implausible when it is thoroughlysurveyed. Admittedly, the simpler explanation is to be preferred, butwhen the whole evidence is assembled, the simplest explanation is pre-cisely that Jesus was crucified because he was a seditionist. In the lightof evidence, the claim that almost anything would have sufficed as aground for crucifying Jesus is both unwarranted and misleading.

132. In the correspondence between Pliny the Younger and Trajan (Pliny, Ep. 10.30),concerning two slaves discovered among army recruits, the emperor says: «de quibuscog-nosci oportebit, an capitale supplicium meruisse videantur»: even though they wereslaves,a cognitio or investigation is needed, if they are to be executed. 133. «The Romans, one doubts, executed Jesus for a crime for which the evidencewas nil» (Allison 2010: 238); «Justice can miscarry, so that punishment falls upon the in-nocent. Yet if Jesus had repudiated the accusation of kingship, Pilate presumably wouldhave spared his life, or at least crucified him for some other crime» (Allison 2010: 239);«The least convoluted explanation for the political charge against Jesus is that it corre-sponded in some way to his self-perception» (Allison 2010: 239). 134. According to Meggitt 2007, the Romans executed Jesus because they thought hewas a deluded lunatic. 135. This point was explicitly recognized, for instance, by Brandon 1967: 2.



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Objection 20: If Jesus had been a seditionist, the Jewish historianFlavius Josephus would have mentioned it, but he has not recorded

anything of it136

This objection is reliant upon the passage on Jesus in Antiquitates Ju daicae XVIII 63-64, better known asTestimonium Flavianum . The firstproblemwith this objection, however, is that one should be cautious about thattext, given that its authenticity and nature is a debatable issue. There isevery indication that it has been tampered with by Christian interpo-lators, probably during the second half of the third century. Thus, theoriginal text might have had a different assessment of Jesus than that

conveyed by thetextus receptus.In fact, against the widespread claim that a «neutral» reconstructionof the Testimonium Flavianum is the most compelling one, severalscholars from different ideological backgrounds (R. Eisler, W. Bienert,S.G.F. Brandon, E. Bammel, G.N. Stanton, G.H. Twelftree…) have ad-vanced the proposal that the original form of the text was hostile to Jesus, and that it presented him as a rebellious leader137. There is indeedan a priori contention supporting this reading: Josephus did not feel anysympathy for popular messianic claimants. Now, we can be sure thathe knew the messianic claims made by and about Jesus138, and also theconnectionbetween this claim and political subversion139, all the more sobecausehe explicitly states that Jesus was crucified. All this must havebeen enough for Josephus taking a critical stance towards him. There-fore, it is prima facie extremely hard to believe that a «neutral» assess-ment of Jesus by Josephus is the more likely possibility.

I have recently reassessed the contemporary discussion on Josephus’text in order to ascertain which is the most plausible hypothesis regard-ing the nature of itsVorlage, and I have drawn the conclusion that theoriginal text must have been at least implicitly negative140. On the onehand, none of the arguments provided by the proponents of a neutral

136. «Why is it that Josephus does not portray Jesus as a villain of the same kind asTheudas, the Egyptianet alii, if indeed he was an anti-Roman insurrectionist?» (TobiasHägerland, in a personal communication: e-mail, October 7th 2012). 137. See e.g. Eisler, 1929-1930, I: 46-84. «This pro-Roman Jewish historian equated Jesus with the many other Zealot leaders and Messianic pretenders, whose activity he de-plores as leading the Jewish people into fatal contest with Rome» (Brandon 1967: 363);«It seems that Josephus understood Jesus to be a messianic pretender misleading or de-ceiving the people and being part of the causes of the trouble in his homeland» (Twelftree1985: 310). 138. Even if Josephus did not mention the term «Christ» in the original text, he knewthat Jesus had made messianic claims: this can be inferred from AJ XX 200 and from hisuse of the term Χριστιανοί. 139. The equivalence of Messiahship and kingship in some quarters is attested inMk 15:32 and Lk. 23:2. According to y. Ta‘an. 4:8 and Lam. Rab. 2:2, R. Akiba ac-claimed Bar Kokhba as messiah by saying:י ח ש כ מ ל ו מ . 140. See Bermejo Rubio (forthcoming b).




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version is compelling enough. On the other hand, I have shown that thehypothesis of a somewhat negative text provides the best explanation

for a large amount of data: 1) the fact that several phrases in thetextusreceptus —and even in the allegedVorlage, such as reconstructed bythe proponents of a «neutral» text— have negative overtones141; 2) thepresence of the pronounτις afterἸησοῦς in some manuscripts of Euse-bius’ Historia ecclesiastica; 3) the context of the passage (it is embeddedin a sequence of events under Pilate whose term in office is reported asa series of disturbances: A.J. XVIII 55-89)142; 4) the fact that the textseems to have been tampered with143.

Given the hotly-debated issue of the historicity and reliability of the

Testimonium Flavianum144

, the wisest procedure is to use this source,at most, to confirm the results which have been independently reached,and not to build far-reaching cases from it. To do otherwise seems tobemethodologically unsound. But if one insists in using this text, then,ironi-cally, the evidence pointing to its probably negativeVorlage might beused as further evidence for the hypothesis that the Galilean preacherwassomehow connected to the anti-Roman resistance ideology, in the wakeof the Fourth Philosophy.

Conclusions

It is a remarkable phenomenon that, whenever the hypothesis of a seditio-nist Jesus is put forward, the prevailing reaction in both the literature andpublic opinion, even before having weighed up the reasons supporting itand evaluating its explanatory power, is not only to raise one’s eyebrowsbut also to raise whatever objection which comes into one’s head. Infact,I have enumerated and answered a score of such objections, tryingto

141. «Ici affleure une mise en perspective discrètement polémique, que complète labanalisation résultant des rapprochements que nous avons pu effectuer avec les noticesdes multiples agitateurs […] Et le terme deΧριστιανοί a vraisemblablement pour effet deconforter cette impression. Pour un lecteur de culture et de religion gréco-romaines, leterme, à cette époque, ne peut évoquer qu’une seule réalité: des groupes d’agitation qui,peut-être déjà sous Caligula, et de toute façon sous Claude et Néron, se sont fait remar-quer dans les grands centres urbains de l’empire» (Bardet 2002: 176). 142. The passage follows immediately after the account of Pilate’s suppression of thedisturbance caused by his using Temple funds for building an aqueduct in Jerusalem(A.J. XVIII 60-62); the last word before the passage on Jesus isστάσις. After dealing with Jesus, Josephus records the troubles which happened to the Jews in Rome, by using theverbθορυβεῖν: καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦς αὐτοῦς χρόνους ἕτερόν τι δεινὸν ἐθορύβει τοὺς Ἰουδαὶους; seeNorden 1973: 30-33. 143. The simplest and most probable explanation for the text having been edited isnot that it was neutral, but rather that the Christian interpolator(s) did not like what (t)he(y) found, because (t)he(y) found it disturbing or offensive. 144. Let us notice that the authenticity of the passage regarding the Baptist has beenrecently called into question. See Nir 2012: 32-62 (although I have not found this articlecompelling enough).



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be as exhaustive as possible in their assembling145. Although the piling upof objections is quite impressive at first sight, their unconvincing nature

becomes rather obvious when one takes the trouble to think eachofthem through. Then one gets the impression that most objectionshavebeen too hastily and tendentiously formulated (to the point that, some-times, they even neutralize each other). In these circumstances, the highnumber of objections suggests not so much how flimsy the hypothesisis as how great is the need of many scholars to convince themselves ofsuch alleged flimsiness146.

The fact that every objection can be convincingly answered is ex-ceedingly sobering, and reveals that everybody who has claimed that the

hypothesis of a seditionist Jesus has been dealt a fatal blow has cometopremature and unwarranted conclusions. That claim is, I am afraid,nothing but wishful thinking. The worrying thing is that it is preciselythe above-mentioned set of objections (or even just a portion of it) thatworks for many scholars as an excuse not to weigh up the arguments ofthe hypothesis, and to consider it definitely outdated.

Forty years ago, Samuel Brandon thought that a notable advancehad been achieved, as it was «generally recognized by most of the criticsthat the extant evidence concerning Christian Origins is of such a na-ture historically that other interpretations, besides the traditional one,can be legitimately drawn»147. Constructive criticism is welcome by anyresponsible scholar seeking improvement, but when one notices howoften and how easily outright dismissal of the hypothesis of a seditionist Jesus takes place in scholarship, one can legitimately doubt that such anadvance has occurred. Good history seeks the truth regardless of howit makes us feel, but too many in the field seem to be prone to opposeembarrassing ideas at all costs, even at the expense of consistency.

Although this means that we should not be particularly optimisticabout progress in the study of the historical Jesus —many theologically-

145. Some authors draw far-reaching conclusions from Matt. 8:5-13/Luke 7,1-10,with a story on the healing of a centurion’s servant (Bryan 2005: 46-47). Leaving asidethe fact that this seems to be an isolated and extraordinary episode (Luke makes clear thefaith and the pro-Jewish stance of the man) and that the healed person is presumably a Jew, this did not take place in Judaea but in Galilee, which at the time was a nominallyindependent kingdom of Antipas. Moreover, it is doubtful that the centurion was a Ro-man: «All that can be definitely said is that the centurion in Matthew was a Gentile: hisactual ethnicity cannot be determined» (Saddington 2006: 142). 146. The idea that Jesus was somehow involved in anti-Roman resistance, and thathis crucifixion (and, presumably, that of others) was the result of his insurrectionistpreaching and activity is extremely upsetting for too many people, who see it as an af-front to their most cherished beliefs: «The very asking of the question will cause offenceand suggest a distressing scepticism about that which is sacred» (Brandon 1967: xiii). Wecould also cite here what Maurice Casey once wrote, referring to the study of the histori-cal figure of Jesus: «A significant function of scholarship has been to ward off anythingtoo uncomfortable» (Casey 1991: 171). 147. Brandon 1971: 51.




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driven scholars will presumably carry on dismissing or repressing themostplausible and explanatory hypotheses—, at least we can quite well un-

derstand why any reconstruction which blithely overlooks the evidencefor a seditious Jesus, however seemingly sophisticated and erudite, lacksscholarly rigour and soundness.

REFERENCES

Allison, D. C. (1998), Jesus of Nazareth, Millenarian Prophet , Minneapolis:For-tress.

Allison, D. C. (2001) «A Response», in R. J. Miller (ed.),The Apocalyptic Jesus.

A Debate, Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, pp. 83-105. Allison, D. C. (ed.) (2004), Matthew. A Shorter Commentary Based on the Three-Volume International Critical Commentary by W. D. Davies and D. C. Alli- son, London: T & T Clark.

Allison, D. C. (2010),Constructing Jesus. Memory, Imagination, and History,Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Anderson, G. (1994),Sage, Saint and Sophist: Holy Men and Their Associates inthe Early Roman Empire, London: Routledge.

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