Tacitus (a Roman Historian repulsed by Christianity) and Josephus (a Jewish Historian non-plussed by Christianity) agree on four things regarding Jesus: 1. He started a movement. 2. The movement upset Roman authorities. 3. These authorities executed Jesus. 4. After Jesus execution, the movement continued. Josephus Antiquities of the Jews was written 60 years post-crucifixtion and Tacitus Annals was written over 80 years after that bloody day. The four points of convergence have nothing to do with messiahs, saviors, demigods, sons of god, or miracle working magicians: but, instead, refer to what is plausibly, reasonably and sensibly a general course of events when Imperial might confronts Occupied resistance. Empires crush resistance and occupied populations find ways to subvert imperial oppression. This is hardly the stuff of myth or religious fantasy: it is an ugly truth of human history. The Jesus of the Gospels (who is undoubtedly difficult to define precisely or capture completely) is not the sort of character you would expect to see arising from a text endorsed, canonized and enforced by the imperial forces from Rome to the USA. I find it extraordinary that these Jesus narratives even exist, or were allowed to exist. They are profoundly radical and subversive, challenging all of the dominant power structures of that day: offering a message and program that was in conflict with and inimical to Rome and every empire since. This child of political refugees, raised in occupied territory, in conflict with the dominant religious systems, encouraging sedition against occupying forces, disrupting ancient patriarchial kinship codes, challenging all the mediterranean customs of healing purities and eating hierarchies, without an army or political status, who in the end is arrested, tortured, executed, risen to new life....why this story becomes the guiding and normative narrative for millenia of civilizations, is baffling. I understand how the Roman Empire eventually endorsed Christianity as the State Religion, thus creating an Imperial Church. But this was not an endorsement of Jesus the crucified Jew, but a fantasy called Christus Victor: Christ as Cosmic Ceasar! This is how the normalcy of imperial conquest steals the revolutionary impulse of the prophetic spirit. But why the great European and American empires for the past two millenia would allow such a subversive story like Jesus to exist is, I think, one of the most interesting twists in human history. Not only to allow it to exist, but to make it their own, steal its fire, use it against the very spirit of revolutionary change that made it in the first place. I should think the entire element of the Jesus corpus that reflected revolutionary subversiveness wouldve been removed by now: edited out of existence and replaced with a more compliant Easter Bunny and Santa Claus character. I find it impossible that the radicality of Jesus has not been erased from literary history. But, there it is. A flagrant affront to all things hierarchical, imperial, militarist, built on gold or dominator status: that is a miracle, to me.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 18:03:17 +0000
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