Jesus of Nazareth seems an unlikely candidate for the label "subversive." The most reliable writings about him that we have (the Gospels of Mark and Luke together with another source, Q, which Mark and Luke used) portray him as an itinerant preacher who urged his followers to repent of their sins, embrace a life of voluntary poverty and virtue, and prepare themselves for the imminent appearance of God's kingdom on earth. The latter is of special importance for understanding Jesus's mission and teachings. Jesus was a Jewish apocalypticist, a proponent of an ideology that saw the world as under the sway of evil powers. A Messiah sent by God would sweep away the evildoers and establish a new order of peace and godliness. In Jesus's version, the world as then known would soon come to an end, a day of judgment would separate the good from the wicked, and new earthly rulers, presumably his disciples, would preside over the new Kingdom of Heaven.
There was nothing particularly unusual in his message; a number of prophets before him, including John the Baptist, whom Jesus knew personally, had called the Jewish people to repent and prepare for an imminent catastrophe. Still, the Romans put Jesus to death as a troublemaker, so they may have seen something subversive in his preaching. What might that have been?
A subversive is someone who works to undermine a regime or an established political order. It is natural, therefore, to understand our topic as the question of whether Jesus was a political subversive. However, it is possible, with a little semantic license, to consider whether he might have been subversive in other ways, which I will mention later in this essay.
It is not easy to make the case for Jesus as a political subversive.* He does not seem to have been interested in the Romans at all, advising his followers to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." An apolitical attitude would make sense for someone who expected the world to end within a generation. God would deal with the Romans. His
sermons were all about the coming of the new Kingdom and what the Jewish people should do now to ensure God's favor at the end of days. Also, there is no evidence that Jesus tried to organize some clandestine organization devoted to overthrowing the Romans or even the Jewish king.
Nevertheless, near the end of his life when he entered Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, something happened to bring him under the suspicion of the Roman procurator. The authorities were always on edge during Passover, a time of great crowds in the city and not infrequent protests and sometimes even uprisings. It seems that Jesus's enemies among the prominent Jewish factions of the time saw an opportunity to get rid of him. His betrayer, Judas, may have told the Romans that he had been fomenting rebellion. In any case, when Jesus failed to deny before Pilate that he claimed to be King of the Jews, his fate was sealed. The Romans never hesitated to crucify anyone who appeared to threaten their authority.
We can be quite certain, therefore, that Jesus was not a political subversive. However, his adversaries among the religious authorities did not appreciate his criticisms of them and some of his interpretations of God's will, Jewish law, and traditional practices - his theology in other words. They also felt threatened by his ideas about the evils of wealth and the blessedness of the poor, the meek, and the oppressed. Jesus advised breaking up families, if necessary, and even suggested that marriage was pointless, given that the world was soon to end. If such radical ethical notions gained wide acceptance, they would change the very fabric of society. So, if Jesus was not a political subversive, as I have argued, is it plausible to think of him as a theological subversive, an ethical subversive, or a social subversive?
I leave those questions open for any readers who might wish to bring them into the discussion.
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* For a novelistic attempt at this project, see King Jesus by Robert Graves, available from Amazon.
- C. Marxer
