Over a weekend during my junior year of college, I decided to read all three Synoptic Gospels. I must confess that until this weekend, I had never read these Gospels in their entirety. Growing up Lutheran and attending church every Sunday, I was familiar with many parts of the Gospels. However, I had never actually read them in their entirety. When I finally sat down and did so that weekend of my junior year, what struck me most was how disagreeable and confrontational Jesus could be. The Sunday School images that I had been given of the humble, meek, and mild Jesus did not entirely line up with the Matthean, Markan, and Lukan Jesus. Referring to the Pharisees as white-washed tombs was rather harsh. Rejecting his biological family for those who hear and do the word of God was not exactly standing up for traditional family values. Calling King Herod a fox and dismissing the threats of the Pharisees was not exactly someone concerned with winning friends and influencing the right people. While there’s certainly more to be said about Jesus’ disagreeableness I don’t mean to suggest that there are not moments of great mercy and love. However, it seems the latter takes much more attention, and for good reason.
That said, my focus on the disagreeable side of Jesus is due in part to a recent foray into the great biblical scholar Norman Gottwald’s writing. In his article “Early Israel as Anti-Imperial Community,” Gottwald argues that early Israel arose as an anti-hierarchic/anti-imperial movement in opposition to outside states, nations, and empires. Moreover, he contends that early Israel operated with no central power and more like a regulated anarchy (12). This is borne out in the anti-monarchic stream one finds in the historical writings of the scriptures, from the Parable of the Trees in Judges to Israel’s rejection of Yahweh as their king and Samuel’s negative prophecy concerning their desire to have a king like the other nations. Lastly, we should not forget that Jesus subverts Davidic expectations of his Messiahship. And certainly, he would be a king like no other!
Nonetheless, Gottwald hypothesizes that a group known as the habiru (possibly Hebrews?) from around 1425-1350 BCE were ancestors of those tribes that would go on to form Israel. This is compelling because we know about the habiru from correspondence between the Egyptian royal court and their Canaanite vassals. Therein, we learn that they were a thorn in their side, described “as disturbers of the status quo, often as brigands or as mercenaries in the wars among the city-states, but also as rebels who threaten to overturn the prevailing regimes (9).” Going further, we know that the Egyptians considered the Hebrews an abomination because they were shepherds, but does this evidence add another level to why they were despised by them? They refused to be controlled or awed by Egyptian power. They were certainly a disagreeable lot, at least in the eyes of imperial power. Historically, down to the Roman Empire, that seems to be one thing they were consistent about; simply ask Pontius Pilate!
Reading Gottwald’s article made me wonder about the role of epigenetics and its connection to Jesus and his portrayal in the Gospels. Our environments can greatly influence how our genes get expressed, passed on, and activated. Jesus may have had the genes of the habiru and, certainly, Israel, which means that that disagreeable and anarchic spirit was not just a historical influence but also a genetic one, too. Did growing up in Galilee amid Roman occupation activate these things within him? I know this is speculative, but we can see evidence of this in his first-century peers, from the Galilean rebels who took over Sepphoris in 4 BCE to Barabbas to the various would-be Messiahs of the Jewish Revolt. Yet, remarkably, Jesus goes the nonviolent way and teaches us accordingly, stepping outside the destructive cycle of violence and revenge. To me, what’s compelling about Jesus is that his non-violent spirit was certainly not passive. Instead, it was quite disagreeable and anarchic. His actions throughout holy week prove as much, from stopping the Temple economy because of economic injustice to his dismissive contempt for Pontius Pilate and his questioning. Jesus certainly understood his people’s history well, but that was also because it was truly a part of him.
Norman Gottwald, “Early Israel as an Anti-Imperial Community” in Social Justice and the Hebrew Bible, Volume Two (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers 2017), 3-19.
A Foolish Way 