My latest peer review paper does a comparative study of other Sign Prophets to Jesus and their respective movements. It reveals some pretty interesting results. One result was the type of movements these were, what were the driving forces. Both the apocalyptic worldview, visions and scriptural re-enactments were all attributes of these movements. What they hoped to achieve (by some scriptural re-enactment) was to force the imminent kingdom of God in a new age and a reversal of fortunes for the oppressed suffering peasants. “Some of these movements were armed, some were not, so whether the groups of people Jesus led before his execution (Ant. 18.63) were armed or not, his movement can be seen in light of sign prophet movements.” [1] The gospel of Luke does suggest the Jesus group was lightly armed:
according to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers: “The one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.” . . . They [the disciples] said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” He replied, “It is enough” (22:36–38). Their response indicates that they are already armed.[2]
According to Brandon, Jesus had been sanitized in the gospels, he works from the premise that Jesus got “crucified by the Romans as a rebel against the government in Judea.”[3] Even though Jesus was whitewashed and changed beyond recognition there were some fossils, stories about the historical Jesus that just made it into the gospels. These incidents escaped the censorship editors such as the disciples armed with weapons starting to defend him against the arresting mob in Gethsemane. Jesus asked at the last supper have you got any swords. The kingdom of god advances with violence, Jesus saying “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34) and many other such incidents.
So we find the movement bringing swords into Jerusalem. Jesus accused of making threats to the temple. Gospel of Peter says they were attempting to start fires at the temple. “we were in hiding, for we were sought after by them as wrongdoers and as wishing to set fire to the sanctuary” (Gospel Peter 26). The curtain was torn (Mark 15:38). Jesus flipping over tables, striking with weapons (John 2:13). Caiaphus’ servant got his ear cut off, the ring-leader is arrested and swiftly executed. The band disperses and regroups back in rural Galilee. Texts later arise that sought to sanitize all that. The gospel of John uses the word σπεῖρα (speira), that is a cohort consisting of 500 to 1000 Roman soldiers and the word χιλίαρχος (chiliarchos) for their commander, this is a commander of one thousand. (John 18:11). Why so many to arrest Jesus? The Barabbas incident suggests a rebellious background. In Mark 15:7, “στάσει” means rebellion or insurrection. The Greek text has insurrectionists [plural] that committed murder, not just Barabbas alone. In historical context as seen in Josephus, the number of rebels the gospels allude to would have been substantial.
In the same tradition of Brandon, Bermejo-Rubio thinks that a pacifist layer was added by the gospels, that the original layer covered up was that Jesus was some sort of zealot rebel. “Put away the sword”, “turn the other cheek”, “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”, are all sayings resisting violence. That the gospels all have Jesus resisting violence yet still let it out that Jesus was crucified between two insurrectionists and notes that these may have been followers.[4]
On the other side of the argument Simon J. Joseph says we cannot privilege one set of violent sayings over another set of non violent sayings:
Various sayings can be read as promoting both violence and nonviolence. This recognition can result in cognitive dissonance: the cognitive inability to reconcile apparently dissonant data. Some critics choose to avoid the problem by denying the problem and/or by trivializing it as a non-problem. Others modify the dissonance by minimizing the data: the (non)violence is not really that (non)violent. Still others redescribe the problem by expanding the data set so that one or the other side of the debate predominates.[5]
So Joseph asks how do we judicate between both sets of sayings. I find the solution to this is to examine the medium through which we determine the history. By recognizing the gospels really are products of Roman book culture by highly educated Greek speaking diaspora Jewish-Roman citizens. This scholarship really took on by Dr Richard Miller who has correctly placed the gospels as part of Greco-Roman apotheosis pieces, using well known tropes in order to translate Jesus to a Mediterranean God.[6] Miller examines the gospels in light of the translation fables of the Greco-Roman world. The most obvious is of course the empty tomb, many disappearing bodies in Greco Roman literature indicates that the person was being apotheosized. Millers Reception and Resurrection book has influenced many scholars to rightly recast the composition of the gospels from community based to being products of the Roman book culture as espoused by Robyn Walsh.[7] Macdonald using memises and other literary techniques connected them to other classical Greek literature.[8] David Aune has said the framework is Greco-Roman but the content is Jewish.[9] We cannot say that the gospels are cover ups, but literary Tanakh allusions that did not particularly care whether there were violent or non violent. And this is the best reflection of the times.
Even with the other sign prophet movements- it wasn’t an issue whether they were armed or not, it’s like to them that was besides the point, they thought there was going to be a Yahweh intervention and only brought weapons for defense. [10] That’s what happened with the movement led by the Te’heb in Samaria, Theudas movement may have been armed, the Egyptian definitely was; with Jonathan the weaver- they were too poor to arm. Yet they all believed the sign prophet would initiate the new age- being armed was not even talked about, it’s like as taken for granted that they probably were. It’s only modern folk that are shocked by this- the gospels certainly weren’t.
[1] David Allen, How Josephus really viewed Jesus, RevBib 85/3-4 (2023), pp. 333-357, quote at p.353.
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew, p.129.
[3] S. F. G. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots : A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity, Manchester, 1967, p.1.
[4] BERMEJO-RUBIO, “(Why) Was Jesus the Galilean Crucified Alone? Solving a False Conundrum”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (2), pp.127–54.
[5] Simon J Joseph, A Social History of Christian Origins, The Rejected Jesus, pp.57-58.
[6] Richard Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, Routledge, 2015.
[7] Robyn Faith Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, Cambridge, 2021.
[8] Dennis MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Yale, 2010.
[9] David Aune, Greco-Roman Literature and The New Testament, Westminster Press, 1987.
[10] See Dale B. Martin, “Jesus in Jerusalem: Armed and Not Dangerous”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 2014 37/3
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