{"id":204,"date":"2003-04-20T19:52:12","date_gmt":"2003-04-21T02:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=204"},"modified":"2003-04-20T19:52:12","modified_gmt":"2003-04-21T02:52:12","slug":"render-unto-caesar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/04\/render-unto-caesar\/","title":{"rendered":"Render unto Caesar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate because he was a rabble-rouser. This much is agreed by scholars. What kind<\/em> of rabble-rouser he was is the topic of heated debate. I’ve long cherished the notion that Jesus was a political operative, a separatist agitating against collaboration with the Roman occupiers, invoking God’s authority to legitimize his cause. This is not an inherently atheistic stance—liberation theology has taken this view and run with it—but it does recast Jesus’s motives on a much more human scale.<\/p>\n

I took this composite shot of the Temple Mount in the winter of 2000\/2001. Click to enlarge.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Recently, this view has fallen into relative disfavor. The weight of scholarly opinion has shifted towards a strictly eschatological Jesus, one who went around preaching the imminent end of the world and the coming kingdom of God, not 2,000+ years hence but in a matter of weeks<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Whenever there is such controversy, The New York Review of Books<\/em>—that ambulance chaser of scholarly conflict—seems hell-bent on asking the proponent of one camp to disparage<\/strike> review a recently published work of a professional rival. And thus we have E.P. Sanders, Art and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke, reviewing<\/a> Crossan and Reed’s Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts<\/em><\/a>.It’s in the April 10 Edition of NYRB, which has just arrived in Stockholm in time for Easter. The New Yorker<\/em> issues are longer in the coming—in the latest issue, I am still subject to quickly aging pre-war presaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alas, the Sanders article is not available for free online. But a Sanders co-conspirator, Paula Fredrikson<\/a> at Boston University, has an engaging (if oddly formatted) overview of all the Jesuses<\/a> in play today:<\/p>\n

We have one apocalyptic Jesus. He caused a scene in the Temple to symbolically enact a prophecy of impending redemption (Sanders). We have two non-apocalyptic Jesuses, a Cynic and a Jewish Cynic. The Cynic Jesus went up to Jerusalem as a normal pilgrim and was killed—no Temple tantrum (Mack, Seeley). The Jewish Cynic Jesus went up for the first time in his life that one Passover. Disgusted by what he saw (he had had no idea, remember, what Jerusalem would be like), he overturned the tables, thereby symbolically destroying the Temple’s brokerage function (Crossan). And, finally, we have one metaphorically apocalyptic anti-nationalist Jesus who went up to Jerusalem at Passover to confront the Temple system, which he symbolically challenged, indicted and condemned (Borg, Wright).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what about Fredrikson’s Jesus?<\/p>\n

I had an apocalyptic Jesus who went up to Jerusalem for Passover at or as the climax of his mission. He symbolically enacted the Temple’s impending destruction. The gesture implied no condemnation of his native religion but, rather, announced the imminent coming of a new Temple and, hence, as well, God’s kingdom. The act brought him to the attention of the priests, who became alarmed at the potential for mass disturbance during the holiday when Pilate was in town. They facilitated his arrest, and Pilate killed him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which Jesus is the most likely is beginning to depend more and more on circumstantial evidence, hence the quest for historical context. Sanders counters Crossan’s rendition of a Jesus engaging in “resistance against the distributive injustice of Roman-herodian commercialization”Life imitating the art of Monty Python<\/a>?<\/span> by examining precisely how much Jewish agrarian life had been altered by Roman influence. His answer: little to not at all. Eventually, it gets personal, as such matters are wont to do, and Sanders posits that Crossan’s bias in favor of a rebellious Jesus is based on Crossan being Irish, with the Romans and the British in the role of oppressor.<\/p>\n

But what is interesting is that none of the various versions of Jesus imbue the founder of Christianity with particularly flattering attributes. Sanders calls Crossan’s Jesus “a minor social deviant and critic.” Fredrikson calls her apocalyptic Jesus “an embarrassment” to later Christian apologists, thus:<\/p>\n

Jesus securely anchored in his first-century Jewish apocalyptic context—working miracles, driving away demons, predicting the imminent end of the world—is an embarrassment. Is it sheer serendipity that so many of our reconstructions define away the offending awkwardness? Miracles without cures, time without end, resurrections without bodies. The kingdom does not come, it is present as an experience, a kinder, gentler society, mediated, indeed created, by Jesus. Then what is this kingdom language doing here anyway?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For me, the most refreshing aspect of reading this research is the lack of any concern on the part of scholars as to whether Jesus was<\/em> the son of God or not. All assume that a charlatan or a psychotic would have had as much a chance of garnering a movement as the real deal.<\/p>\n

Regardless of which he is, Jesus can be useful, especially as a repository for parables when trying to make a point with people who belong to prayer groups. And there is clearly use for one now regarding the reconstruction of Iraq when arguing with the Presidents’ men. Contracts need to be awarded. Should they go to American companies? British companies? Certainly not French and German companies? What Would Jesus Do?<\/p>\n

Naomi Klein sees nothing but nefariousness<\/a> in US motives. She starts off well, but gets a bit shrill by the end. She loses credibility when she seriously suggests that the Iraq war was fought because “‘free trade’ by less violent means hasn’t been going that well lately.” What an unsubtle appeal to Marxian dialectics!<\/p>\n

In the other corner sit the newly smug neocons, who feel that since they made the effort, they should reap some spoils, in the guise of a long-lasting military presence and a preeminent role in the reconstruction of Iraq.<\/p>\n

I think both sides miss the point. What we need to do here is render unto Caesar<\/a>. If the US is paying, by all means award those contracts to American companies. It’s the traditional way of dispensing aid and pleasing your constituents. If the funds are coming from Iraq’s oil revenues, or if the exploitation rights of that oil are being sold, then it should be up to an Iraqi representative government, which, if it so chooses, can hand it to the French.<\/p>\n

The seeming lack of overwhelming gratitude on the part of Iraq’s civil society towards the US is probably borne from a suspicion of America’s intentions, a suspicion they do not seem to harbor about the British. The indigenous representative government that will form from this inchoate mess may not be as pro-American as Bush hopes. To what extent will there be pressure to ensure collaboration with the invading force? And for how long? These are all reasons to get the UN involved as soon as possible. The best way for the US to prove to its critics that it had only its own safety in mind and not its commercial interests is to not pursue those interests too ruthlessly. Do as Jesus would: Heal, but do it for free. It worked for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate because he was a rabble-rouser. This much is agreed by scholars. What kind of rabble-rouser he was is the topic of heated debate. I’ve long cherished the notion that Jesus was a political operative, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-3i","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}