Jesus and Empire

by Richard A. Horsley

Book Overview

Building on his earlier studies of Jesus, Galilee, and the social upheavals in Roman Palestine, Horsley focuses his attention on how Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God relates to Roman and Herodian power politics. In addition he examines how modern ideologies relate to Jesus' proclamation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080063490X
• ISBN13: 9780800634902
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

An academic review of Horsley's "Jesus and Empire"

Richard Horsley's Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) addresses Jesus' political and economic context in Galilee and Judea under Roman rule. He examines the historical precedents for prophetic condemnation of unjust imperial rule and the Mosaic covenantal basis for social and economic justice. Then he demonstrates how Jesus' life and sayings as portrayed in Q and Mark continued the prophetic critique and call for a new social order. Horsley begins by pointing out problems in U.S. religious attitudes. Since the Puritans, the U.S. has seen itself as a new Israel in a new promised land; however, it has acted more like Rome in its arrogant expansion and ethnocentrism. Typical U.S. views of the Bible are skewed in four ways: they separate the political from the religious; they reflect the individualism in U.S. culture; they analyze Jesus' statements as isolated sayings; and they use scholarly concepts like "apocalyptic" while denying the judgmental dimension of Jesus' discourse. Horsley continues to challenge these depoliticized views of Jesus in subsequent chapters. In chapter one, Horsley demonstrates how the Roman Empire destroyed, subjugated, and terrorized other lands and peoples in its expansion to become the only superpower in the Mediterranean world. The Pax Romana was harsh and chaotic for the subjugated peoples. Romans practiced enslavement, genocide, torture such as crucifixion to deter rebellion, and agricultural taxes that put peasants deeper into debt. The emperor cult was superimposed on local religions-religion and politics were intertwined. In chapter two, the author traces the Jewish tradition of rebellion against foreign domination, from the exodus through prophetic condemnation of abusive kings and priests to the Maccabean revolt. The apocalyptic writings in Daniel and 1 Enoch, Sicarii counterterrorism, popular protests such as the standards incident with Pilate and the peasant strike, and appearances of popular messiahs are later examples. In chapter three, Horsley critiques modern Western "historical Jesus" approaches. The post-Enlightenment, intellectual bias rejected the supernatural parts of the Gospels, leaving some isolated sayings of Jesus as the only authentic elements. Horsley argues that we must view Jesus' cultural context, including class and regional divisions (e.g. Galilee vs. Judea), and we should not dissect the story of Mark or series of speeches in Q, thereby losing the integrity of the message. Chapters four and five are Horsley's weakest link, in my opinion. In chapter four, Horsley asserts that Jesus, in continuity with past prophets and liberators, asserted his people's independence from Roman rule, through his emphasis on the reign of God in his words (in Q) and in his actions (in Mark). In chapter five, Horsley states that Jesus promotes replacing unjust imperial rule with a just, covenantal community that lives out the reign o

Excellent read

I'm going to agree with both reviews above (or below) mine. It is unsettling, it certainly has made me wonder how a major religion could spring from Jesus, when he's put into the context of his time. On the other hand, one needs to put Jesus into context in order to understand the Gospels. I am glad I read this book and will continue to read more of Prof. Horsley's books. As for the Imperial Rome/U.S. analogy, makes perfect sense to me. I've long thought that America is the new Imperial Rome. History always repeats itself...esp. when you have someone like George Bush in office.

Thought provoking

Horsley makes a very good case for understanding Jesus in the context of people under the thumb of a brutal Roman empire. His main thrust, in my opinion, is that the dichotomy that those of us in 20th and 21st century Western culture percieve between the "secular/political" and the "religious" would be completely foreign to the people of ancient Palestine. For example The Temple, so often referred to in the Hebrew and Christian Bible, was not simply a place for religious services as we tend to view it today, but also the center of economic and political life for the community. Jesus' contemporaries would have heard a very political message in his words, relating to the occupying Roman empire. The last part of the book compares the Roman Empire with the American Empire in a way that should make us middle-class Christians in the West very uncomfortable. The people Jesus associated with were more similiar to Nicaraguan's in the 1980s, Iranians under the Shah, etc. suffering under the Pax Americana than to us. We are the "Romans" benefiting from the spoils of the Empire.

Compelling, intriguing, deeply thought provoking

Horsley's work strongly defends his thesis that Jesus was a prophet leading a community of social and economic renewal of Israel. He carefully considers the economic and social environment of the day in Palestine and compares it to the Mosaic tradition and law that had been cultivated over centuries by the prophets. His primary argument is that the historical tradition was a legacy of God working for the poor and the oppressed, the "orphan and the widow", opposing the exploitative empirical construct of the ancient world. In the tradition of Moses who freed the Hebrew people from the enslaving Egyptians, and of Elijah who called for a restoration and renewal of the Israelites to their covenantal God, Jesus assumed the role of a new herald of renewal for the people. Another example not mentioned is the book of Daniel, which predicted the destruction of the Seleucid kingdom of Antiochus IV Ephiphanes in the 2nd century BCE, and its replacement with the kingdom of God, one of justice and peace. Horsley depends to a very great extent on the tradition of the prophets to justify his interpretation. Horsley is most successful when he abolishes the myth that Jesus or his fellow Jews had any notion of separation of religion from state. Such an idea would have been incomprehensible nonsense at the time, as alien as the theocratic government of Iran is to modern day Americans. There was no such separation: renewal of the covenant meant the renewal of political life as well as economic and social life. Horsley uses the gospel of Mark and Q (by way of Luke) as evidence for his argument. Juxtaposing these documents with the Israelite covenantal tradition, he lays out his evidence from both the actions and speeches of Jesus as understood by his original audience. Jesus proclaimed "blessed are the poor, the hungry, and the mourning; woe to the rich, the full, and the laughing." He was turning the social, political, and economic reality upside-down. His was a harsh judgment of the status quo represented by the imperium of Rome and the collaborating high priests. The raw evidence in its context demonstrates that, similar to other popular prophets of the time, Jesus posed a great political threat to Rome. His crucifixion, his teaching to the rural poor, his denunciation of the Jerusalem elites, and his exorcisms all point to this antagonism towards Rome. Exorcisms? Jesus exorcised "2,000 demons" named "Legion" who possessed two men, cast them into a herd of pigs who rushed headlong into the sea, drowning. His hearers would understand. A "legion" was a 2,000-strong Roman military garrison, symbolically cast into pigs, an unclean animal to Jews, and thrown into the Mediterranean Sea whence they had come, vanquished. Just as Yahweh had thrown the enslaving Egyptians into the Sea of Reeds and drowned them as they pursued the liberated Hebrews. The advantage of Horsley's approach is that it coheres with the Israelite tradition of the divine being o

Handle With Care

In the first 128 pages of this disturbing little book, Professor Horsley builds a credible case for understanding Jesus and the proto-Christian movement as a communal renewal of families and traditional villages in opposition to the Roman Empire and its client local rulers. Professor Horsley argues, successfully, that Jesus can only be understood in his original context. He further argues that Jesus can be best interpreted in corporate, rather than individual, terms. None of this is new.In the last twenty pages of this book, however, Professor Horsley draws disquieting social, economic, political, military and religious parallels between imperial Rome and an imperial United States of America. With irksome clarity and courage, he points out that ancient Palestinians resisted Western imperialism by every means possible, including terrorism, and that some of their Middle Eastern descendents appear to be doing nothing more than following that example.After September 11, 2001, this is not the book to read if you wish to be comforted, or rest cozily in your Western preconceptions. However, if you wish to be challenged intellectually and spiritually, this is a good book to read. If you wish to be disturbed and forced to think, read this book.