EABS Call for Papers: Historical Jesus and Revolution!

The Study of the Historical Jesus session at the European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS) is under new ownership for this year after the expert chairing of Tobias Hägerland: myself and Fernando Bermejo Rubio. And the topic for this year? Revolution! Here is the Call for Papers for the 2015 EABS conference in Cordoba (July 12-15th):

‘Revolution, Peace and Violence: Rethinking Jesus and the Politics of His Day’ Throughout the history of historical Jesus studies, questions relating to Jesus involvement in, and views on, politics, revolution, violence, and peace have been repeatedly raised while a cluster of publications over the past two years have attempted to rethink these issues both empirically and theoretically. This session will continue to address some of the classic questions in such debates about Jesus and the earliest Palestinian tradition: Was he ‘peaceful’? Was he ‘violent’? Was he a ‘revolutionary’? How did he view Roman imperialism? Did he have coherent views on the future of the ‘political order’? However, this session will also look at whether the labels commonly applied to Jesus (or the earliest tradition) are still analytically useful and whether strict categorisation of Jesus as, for instance, either ‘peaceful’ or ‘violent’ is too simplistic. Similarly, ideas relating to ‘revolutionary’ will be investigated in relation to variety of themes (e.g. class, gender relations, literacy) and beyond questions of ‘peace’ and ‘violence’ We will also consider papers in the area of historical Jesus studies more generally.

Both of us have, in different ways, an interest in this topic, whether, ahem, my Jesus and the Chaos of History, or Fernando's 105 page article 'Jesus and the Anti-Roman Resistance: A Reassessment of the Arguments' in the latest Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. And it's a hot topic, is it not?