Jesus the ‘Revolutionary’…?

In a recent JSNT article also publicised in Newsweek, Dale Martin has argued that Jesus and his armed circle saw themselves as part of an earthly-heavenly war against the Romans and the Temple priests. The JSNT and Newsweek articles have provoked a detailed two-part response on this blog by Brian Pounds, related posts on this blog, and posts on other biblioblogs. Mike Bird, for instance, links to his 2006 article ‘Jesus and the Revolutionaries’ where, following people like N.T. Wright, he made arguments such as this:

Jesus’ use of the phrase “Son of Man” as a self-designation…may constitute another strand of polemic against a revolutionary theology…it may be a censure against the revolutionaries or those who want to usher in the kingdom through violence…Like the rabbinic tradition of Yohanan ben Zakkai who pleaded with the Galileans to follow Torah instead of revolution, Jesus similarly called the nation to forego its idolatrous nationalism and, importantly, to follow him as God’s agent of the kingdom.

Mike also refers to what he calls one of his very own ‘memorable quotes’: ‘[I]n supposing that Jesus was a zealot we are faced with a problem of historical discontinuity between Jesus and his followers that is roughly analogous to trying to explain why a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists have traded their guns for guitars and have established a hippie commune in down-town Manhattan.’

A commenter called ‘Deane’ helpfully provided a quotation from Johannes Weiss on Mike Bird’s blog: ‘To hope for the Kingdom of God in the transcendental sense which Jesus attaches to it, and to raise a revolution, are two things as different as fire and water.’

Simon Joseph, who has had much to say on this issue, including a recent book, has claimed in response to Dale Martin: ‘The Revolutionary Jesus hypothesis has long been rejected by most New Testament scholars…I have argued…that Jesus advocated and practiced a radical form of eschatological nonviolence.’

So the distinction between the (typically violent) ‘revolutionary’ and ‘non-revolutionary’ seems clear enough.  And yet…the relatively nonviolent Jesuses of Crossan and Wright are discussed in books which imply something about Jesus’ ‘revolutionary’ status: Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (Crossan) and The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary (Wright). 
 

So here we have a range of definitions or assumptions about what ‘revolutionary’ means (and whether it is a good or bad thing) in relation to Jesus depending on a given scholar: a zealot-esque leader might be ‘revolutionary’ (whether rejected or accepted as a plausible model for understanding the historical Jesus); the opposite behaviour of someone who latched onto the idea of a ‘transcendental’ kingdom; or someone whose radical ideas turned the world upside down. And notice that we can get scholars who argue that Jesus had radical ideas that turned the world upside down but was presumably not a ‘revolutionary’ and we can get a critique of ‘revolutionary theology’ versus Jesus teaching  which is a difference so strong that it requires an analogous contrast between al-Qaeda and a Manhattan commune.

But let’s confuse things a little further. In Pauline studies it is now, of course, obligatory to mention that philosophers like Jacob Taubes, Žižek, and Alain Badiou have given distinctive philosophical readings (Terry Eagleton has attempted something similar with Jesus, though his arguments are much more familiar in the history of historical Jesus studies). All three present Paul in revolutionary terms but do not really think about Paul as leading a violent uprising to overthrow Rome. Instead they construct Paul (and sometimes Jesus) in language unambiguously associated with some of the most popular contemporary understandings of ‘revolution’. For Taubes, Paul stands in a revolutionary Jewish Messianic tradition in constructing a new ‘people of God’ who overthrow all existing categories  while more so for Badiou who sees resurrection in Paul functioning as a revolutionary Event much like the French Revolution or May ’68. Žižek and Badiou even compare Jesus and Paul to Marx and Lenin? So does all this make Jesus and Paul ‘revolutionaries’? The authors think so.

Lenin and Marx not ‘revolutionary’ enough? Marxist exegete Robert Myles has shown how it is even possible for ‘revolutionary’ stories about Kim Jong Il to incorporate miraculous birth narratives.  

I could try and provide a definition of ‘revolutionary’ but instead I’m going to confuse things further still by returning to Mike Bird’s analogy between al-Qaeda and his Manhattan commune. This distinction might not be so clear cut. The historical and intellectual background to al-Qaeda and related groups is, of course, complex but Marxism played its part. As has long been noted, Marxist influences (e.g. revolutionary vanguard, anti-imperialism, terror, internationalism, and popular justice), as well as ideas concerning totalitarianism, are unsurprising given the prominence of Marxism in universities and the nationalist and socialist movements in colonial, postcolonial and neo-colonial contexts, including the Middle East, India and North Africa. Thus even Bird’s seemingly common sense distinction can start to break down. And if we are not fond of modern analogies, we might turn to passages from Josephus which suggest that even the distinction between prophet and physically violent subversive is not always clear cut (e.g. War 2.254-68).

I won’t give a serious solution to this problem but could we say that the idea of someone attacking economic inequality and promising a future where the first will be last (and vice versa) in a new world order, where the core group get an especially elevated position in what would eventually become or mimic the power it once opposed, sounds a bit like the clichéd pattern of the…revolution?

Update: Robert Myles has responded and critiqued one creator of a Revolutionary Jesus who once lived in a castle