I have a book in my to-read pile called “Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict” that apparently takes a look at the political situation that the historical Jesus would have found himself in through a historical materialist lens. The authors were on Rev Left a while back, which is where I first heard of it. I haven’t been able to read it yet, so I can’t personally vouch for it but based on that episode it seems pretty solid.
Figured I’d drop the title in case anyone was interested
Jesus was an anarchist radical/proto-revolutionary and that is why they murdered him.
This is actually an interesting part of the new testament. Judea was controlled by the Romans at the time of Jesus’ life, and the people living there didn’t really like that. There were attempts at rebellion all the time. At passover it was customary for one person to be pardoned for their crimes, chosen by the locals. Jesus was this guy who started claiming to be the King of the Jews, and at the same time tried to reform the church. This was, in all ways, blasphemy and illegal, so he was arrested when he entered Jerusalem. But there was someone else who could have been chosen for the pardon, A man named Barabbas. He was part of a group that attempted a violent rebellion against the Romans. He was a straight-up revolutionary to the people there. So when it came to a guy who fought for their independence or a guy who called himself king and kept promising eternal salvation if you were peaceful and nice to sinners, well, it’s pretty obvious what choice the crowd would choose.
yeah jesus and/or christianity was pretty pro-roman from early on which I think is why it worked because the people in the area had been rebelling over and over and just kept losing worse and worse so christianity came in and was like make peace with the romans its cool the real revolution is in your heart.
He WHAT?
