The World of Jesus: First-Century Judaism in Crisis (Understanding Jesus Today) by John Riches

The World of Jesus: First-Century Judaism in Crisis (Understanding Jesus Today) Reviews

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  Steven H

  AN INTERPRETATION OF JESUS AS PARTIALLY A RESPONSE TO NATIONAL STRUGGLES
  
  John K. Riches is Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism Emeritus of the University of Glasgow. He wrote in the Introduction to this 1990 book, “Under what conditions did people begin to dream such strange dreams of future torment and rescue? How did such hopes—and fears---relate to the political and social aspirations of an occupied people? How did they relate to more traditional Jewish beliefs? Why did Jews find it necessary to modify or recast their traditional beliefs at all? The answer to these questions… can only be found if we first take a much closer look at the economic, social, and political setting of such texts. We need to see… the apocalyptic texts as responses to an ongoing history of national struggle for independence and for the reservation of traditional Jewish religious practices and beliefs.” (Pg. 3)
  
  He continues, “What I want to suggest through this study .. is that this unending dialogue cannot be seen simply as an intellectual, theological dialogue without relevance to its contemporary social, economic, and political context. Christian theology cannot for long abstract from the practical questions of its implications for social and political life. The context of Jesus’ preaching and teaching in the continuing struggle and search of the Jewish people for self-determination should make that clear…. In this volume my task is specifically to examine the ways in which Jewish figures and groups of the first century, Jesus included, reacted to the basic social, economic and political realities of the time… I shall attempt to shoe how Jesus’ prophetic activity represents one among a number of first-century Jewish responses to the prolonged political and cultural pressures to which they have been subjected… all these responses spring from the same stock of Jewish belief in God’s covenantal rule.” (Pg. 6-7)
  
  He asks, “To what extent did God reward the righteous here on earth? To what extent were Jewish election and the Covenant tied to some notion… of a Jewish monarchy modeled after David’s kingdom? What was the place of the other nations in God’s plan? These were all matters where Jewish history and individual experience might raise difficult questions." (Pg. 32-33)
  
  He explains, “When … the Maccabean revolt eventually led to the establishment of a Jewish dynasty, many no doubt saw this as the great opportunity for national renewal. But those whose aims had been principally the restoration of national sovereignty then had to face up to the realities of holding on to power in a hostile and dangerous world… To remain in power… This meant embracing Hellenism, for that was the currency of international affairs… It also meant that Jewish rulers became more and more dependent for their military and political power on alliances with other states.” (Pg. 43)
  
  He notes, “If the Sadducees were prepared to accept loss of national sovereignty so long as they kept control of the Temple, the Zealots were not… for the Zealots, service of God meant striving for freedom from foreign domination…. They objected particularly to the census imposed on Jews after the deposition of Archelaus in A.D. 6… This census was to form the basis of a property tax and both submitting to the census and paying taxes were seen as acts of acknowledging the rule of Rome and submitting to slavery…” (Pg. 72)
  
  He summarizes, “It is … mistaken to see Jesus simply as a rather freer kind of Hillel… Jesus is more like John the Baptist, a prophetic figure who looks forward to a new age and calls people to break their ties with the present age. What he announces are rules for the new Kingdom---but ones that have to be lived out in the present because the Kingdom is already dawning… [Jesus] recognizes the authority of God’s Rule and the need for the faithful to obey him radically now… he does not believe that it can be brought about by the military defeat of the Romans, indeed by military means at all… God is a God of peace, his subjects must love not destroy, their enemies. If they follow him along that difficult road they will both lose their life and find it in the coming of the Kingdom with power.” (Pg. 86)
  
  He suggests, “Jesus’ relation to John the Baptist must at least suggest that he is closer to the prophets… Jesus’ own vision of the future may have grown out of his initial disappointment at the arrest of the Baptist. Alternatively … it may have sprung from his own baptism by John... However that may be, it is clear that Jesus emerges as a prophetic figure in his own right AFTER the arrest of the Baptist… Perhaps less obviously, his vision of the future was now rather different from that of the Baptist.” (Pg. 103)
  
  He argues, “Jesus expected an act of national deliverance… but now to be brought about by the direct intervention of God… But while this brings Jesus closer to the Zealots, his meals with sinners and tax collectors point to a quite remarkable difference. The Zealots … [believed] All who were alien or who had dealings with those alien to the nation were to be destroyed. It is difficult to imagine a clearer signal of Jesus’ opposition to this kind of policy than his meals with tax collectors and sinners. The kingdom that Jesus expected was to be drawn---in part at least---from those who had failed to live up to the standards of the nation. It was even to include those who had collaborated with the foreign powers who dominated the life of the nation.” (Pg. 106-107)
  
  He says, “Jesus’ challenge to people to rethink their understanding of God’s Rule becomes particularly sharp … in his linking of the term ‘Kingdom of God’ with the meals with social outcasts… If Jesus was to use such a term he would need to signal very clearly the fact that he had substantially reworked it. This he did by announcing the Kingdom at the same time as he ‘welcomed,’ and shared meals with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus’ use of the term ‘Kingdom of God’ probably has a deliberate anti-Zealot bias.” (Pg. 118)
  
  He summarizes, “In what sense then was Jesus’ teaching a response to the pressures that bore on first-century Judaism?... it was a prophetic response, the vision of a man standing on the edge of his society and looking beyond to a future world. It was a vision that in one sense was disjointed… In another sense it was fired by deep theological and moral intuitions that remains as a challenge to all who hear it… Jesus’ prophetic vision… was not a serious POLOTICAL response … Jesus’ teaching… responded to his contemporary situation at two points. First, he clearly gave expression to the longings of his own people for release from their trials… Second, Jesus’ teaching also has to be seen as a contribution to the wider search for new cultural and social forms of life that the creation of a united Mediterranean had inaugurated. His vision of a new world based on the power of love to heal, to restore, and to reconcile would continue to haunt his followers and to press them to create societies that approximate it more and more nearly.” (Pg. 125)
  
  This book will be of interest to those studying the historical background of Jesus, and early Christianity.