first_light_reader

PARTICIPANT READER BY
John Dominic Crossan

First Light: Jesus and the Kingdom of God Participant Reader. Copyright © 2009 by
livingthequestions.com, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Licensed for use for one year from date
of purchase. License must be renewed annually. Other usage is strictly prohibited.
Table of Contents
Prologue
i.
1. The Matrix of Jesus

1
2. The Advent of the Messiah

5
3. God’s Great Cleanup

9
4. Collaborative Eschaton
13
5. The Lake as the World

17
6. Parables as Lures
21
7. Jesus as Lord
25
8. Substitutionary Atonement?
30
9. Demonstrations in Jerusalem
34
10. The Crowd & the Crucifixion

39
11. Resurrection as Resistance

43
12. America as the New Rome

48
Epilogue
52
PROLOGUE
LIVING THE QUESTIONS
“Live the questions now, perhaps you will then gradually,

without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, July 16, 1903
What, then, are the constitutive questions for this Participant Reader? Here
is one set of questions. First, why did Jesus happen when he happened? If you
reply that it was divinely providential, I rephrase the question: why were at
least some of his fellow-Jews ready for that specific providential event at that
time and in that place? Second, why did two populist movements, the Baptism
movement of John and the Kingdom movement of Jesus, occur in the
territories of Herod Antipas in the 20s of that first common-era century? Why
then? Why there? And here is another set of questions—to focus that former
set even more precisely.
First, since Nazareth was Jesus’ native village and he was always called
“Jesus of Nazareth,” why this relocation in Matthew 4:13: “He left Nazareth
and made his home in Capernaum by the sea” that is, by the inland Sea or Lake
of Galilee? He moved not just from a very tiny village to
a somewhat larger one, but he moved from a hillside
village to a lakeside one. Why?
Second, why were Jesus’ best-known compan-
ions all associated with fishing villages around the north-
west quadrant of the Sea of Galilee?
Mary was from Magdala, the most important
town on the lake before Herod Antipas built Tiberias
around 19 CE. The Hebrew name of Mary’s home-town
comes from migdal, a tower, that is, presumably, a light-
house, and its Greek name, Tarichaeae, means salted
fish. Peter moved from one fishing village, Bethsaida—
in the predominantly Gentile territory of Herod Philip—
to live with his wife and mother-in-law at another such
village, Capernaum—in the predominantly Jewish Magdalene, Georges de la Tour, 1640.
territory of Herod Antipas (Mark 1:29-30).
Again: “Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter” (John
1:44). And again: “As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and
his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen …. As
he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who
were in their boat mending the nets” (Mark 1:16,19). And they are called to
“fish for people” (Mark 1:17).
Even after the resurrection, at least in John 21, Jesus is back again “by
the Sea of Tiberias,” back with boat and net, fishes and fishers. Jesus in Galilee
is seldom far from lake and boat and net, fishes and fishers. Why?
Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

1
THE MATRIX OF JESUS
“As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the
holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom
forever—forever and ever.” Daniel 7:7-8
THE CHALLENGE OF MATRIX. Jesus was a Jew within Judaism within

the Roman Empire. That is not just the possibly interesting background but the
necessarily constitutive context of his life. We deliberately use the term matrix
to avoid any idea that you could pass background and go straight to foreground or
even pass context and go straight to text. By matrix we mean everything you must
know to understand Jesus in his own time and place before it is possible to
understand him in ours. Jesus minus matrix makes gospel equal Rorschach.*
Would you ever think of discussing Mahatma Gandhi except as an
Indian within Hinduism within British imperialism or Martin Luther King, Jr.,
except as an African-American within Christianity within American racism?
So it is also with Jesus as a first-century homeland Jew within Judaism within
Roman imperialism. Incarnation is where the transcendental intersects the
local, where vision and character interact with time and place, and where matrix
is destiny. And our Jesus matrix begins a century and a half before his birth.
BEAST-EMPIRES OUT OF CHAOS. After the death of Alexander the

Great, his Greek super-empire was broken up among his generals and their
subsequent dynasties. By the 160s BCE, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, ruler of the
Greco-Syrian mini-empire, sought to consolidate his security against Egypt by
bringing Israel—militarily, politically, economically—into tighter cohesion and
under tighter control.
Among the aristocratic and high-priestly leadership of Jerusalem, some
Jews considered that a desirable operation. But, when other Jews resisted that
acculturation, Antiochus launched a religious persecution. Some Jews, led by
those we know as the Maccabees or Hasmoneans, fought back militarily and
were able to stop the persecution, defeat the Syrians, and expand their own
territories under a hundred years of relative peace—before Pompey’s Romans
fully and finally arrived in the 60s BCE.
Other Jews resisted non-violently, and it is their vision that gives us
the biblical book of Daniel. It was actually written within that same dangerous
matrix of the Jewish 160s BCE, but it fictionally imagined its protagonist,
Daniel, as a prophetic sage during the Babylonian Exile in the 500s BCE.
Our focus here is on a single chapter which picks up the much earlier Greek
proposal that human history was proceeding through four great ages towards
a fifth and climactic one.
___________________________________________________________
* [An ink-blot test reflecting one’s own subconscious desires, feelings, and/or beliefs – Ed.]

2 first light
Daniel 7 is set within a Babylonian Empire about to fall before the

Medes and Persians of Cyrus. It is under Belshazzar, famous for being able “to
see the writing on the wall” in Daniel 5, but not, of course, for being able to do
anything about it, that Daniel receives a vision in 7:1-14 and then its interpreta-
tion in 7:15-28.
The vision begins with Four Beasts arising, one after the other, from the
foaming chaos of the sea. The first three were, respectively, “like a lion … like a
bear … and like a leopard.” The Fourth Beast was “terrifying and dreadful and
exceedingly strong … it was different
from all the beasts that preceded
it” (7:7,19).
The Four Beasts are “four
kings” (7:17), that is, the personified
embodiments of the Babylonian, Median,
Persian, and Greek Empires. But the
Fourth Beast, the Macedonian imperialism
of Alexander the Great, is “different from
all the other” beast-empires (7:7,19,23)
because it is able to “devour the whole
Alexander the Great defeating Darius from a Pompeii mosaic. earth, and trample it down, and break it to
pieces” (7:23). Nevertheless, it broke apart
on Alexander’s death into multiple separate “horns” or sub-empires and the
Greco-Syrian sub-empire was merely a “little horn” from among them (7:8 &
7:20-21).
AN END TO IMPERIALISM. In heaven above, God, the Ancient or

Eternal One, had already convened a tribunal of judgment (7:9-10) and con-
demned to destruction both the world-empire of Alexander and its sub-empire
of Syria, both the Fourth Beast and its “little horn” (7:11-12,26). In other words,
imperialism itself—that unjust process whereby one people or nation uses others exclusively
or primarily in its own interest—was condemned in all its then-known incarnations and,
presumably, in all its future ones as well. But what was to take its place? What about
that ancient Greek tradition of human history’s five great eras, empires, or
periods? What about the Fifth Kingdom? What would it be like?
In that same mid-second century BCE, Rome said that it was the long-
awaited final and Fifth Empire of human history. But Daniel 7 gives a very
different answer, and it is repeated four times; once in the vision and thrice in
its interpretation, but with a very significant development across those multiple
accounts. Repetition, of course, underlines importance—three times for
Alexander’s rule (7:7,19,23) but four times for God’s (7:14,18,22,27).
The Fifth Kingdom, or the Kingdom of God, begins before that
judgment-tribunal in heaven: “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like
a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient
One and was presented before him” (7:13). The great kings personifying and
embodying their earthly empires were all “like” this or that beast but this
personified embodiment of heavenly rule is “like” a human being—not “like”
a beast.

The Matrix of Jesus 3
ONE LIKE THE SON OF MAN. The King James Version of Daniel
7:13—and many other older translations—read this way: “I saw in the night
visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,
and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him.”
Why, then does the New Revised Standard Version read as above?
Just as male-chauvinistic English once used “man” and “mankind” to
mean “human beings,” so Hebrew and Aramaic used “man” or “son of man”
in a similar chauvinistic manner. Hence that correction from “one like the Son
of man” (KJV) to “one like a human being” (NRSV). You can see a similar
correction in Psalms 8:4 and 144:3 when “man” and “son of man” (KJV)
become “human beings” and “mortals” (NRSV).
We return to that change in translation below but, for now, back to
heaven and the destiny of God’s transcendental replacement for earthly
imperialism. Read through these four texts and watch how God’s Kingdom
comes from heaven down to earth:
To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples,
nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall
never be destroyed (7:14).
But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and
possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever (7:18).
Judgment was given for the holy ones of the Most High, and the time
arrived when the holy ones gained possession of the kingdom (7:22).
The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms
under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the
Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all
dominions shall serve and obey them (7:27).
To understand that process recall that God was first introduced as surrounded
by hosts of angels, “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times
ten thousand stood attending him” (7:9). Based on that, God’s Kingdom
descends from its personified embodiment, probably the archangel Michael
(7:14), through those angelic “holy ones” (7:18,22), until it is finally given to
“the people” of God here below upon this earth.
That vision imagines that imperialism has been condemned long ago by
God and that its replacement has already been created in heaven where it is held
in angelic protection until it can appear here below. In all of this, the phrase
Kingdom of God is not primarily a question of this place or that place. It is a
question of mode, style, and type of rule. It is a transcendental dispute between
a beast-like rule from earth and a human-like rule from heaven.
ESCHATON AND APOCALYPSE. What type of faith generated and

empowered that vision of Daniel 7? Scholars call it eschatological faith and,
as we just saw, it clearly condemned imperial faith. Eschaton is an ordinary
Greek word meaning the “end” or the “last” of something—so “of what
something” becomes the crucial point.
4 first light
Israel’s faith was in a God of distributive justice who created and

therefore owned the earth. But Israel’s experience was of an earth blatantly
unjust, be it from kings at home and/or emperors abroad. For Israel, therefore,
God would have to conduct a Great Divine Cleanup of the World, an eschaton
or end, not of the world itself but of its evil and injustice, war and violence,
and especially its “beastly” imperial brutality—here below upon a transformed
earth. Think of eschaton as end-of-empire. Eschatology was never about global
destruction, but about global transfiguration—here below upon a recreated
earth.
Our English term apocalypse comes from the Greek term for revelation—
hence the last text of the Christian Bible is called both the book of the
Apocalypse and/or the book of Revelation. Apocalyptic eschatology, therefore,
claimed to be a revelation about that Great Divine Cleanup of the World and,
in practice, especially a message about its timing. When? How soon? In our
lifetime? Imminently? If not now, when? If not now, why?
That transcendental clash between empire and eschaton, specifically
between Roman imperial theology and Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, is the
absolutely necessary matrix within which to understand Jesus’ execution by
Rome and resurrection by God. Thereby, of course, and as ever, Israel’s God
was on a collision course with empire.

2
THE ADVENT OF THE MESSIAH
“He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord
God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David …. The Holy Spirit will
come upon you [Mary], and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God …. To
you [shepherds] is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the
Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 1:32,35; 2:11
Before Jesus ever existed, certain streams of Jewish thought had already
identified that mysteriously transcendent “one like a son of man” from Daniel
7:13-14 with the long-awaited Anointed One—the Messiah or Christ of Israel.
And they also, as in Daniel, combined heavenly individuals with earthly people.
God’s Kingdom was to be both the Kingdom of God’s Messiah and the
Kingdom of God’s People.
An Aramaic fragment, for example, was found among the Dead Sea
Scrolls in Cave 4 at Qumran. It speaks of one who “will be called Son of God,
and they will call him Son of the Most
High.” But before the arrival of this
divine being, an imperial kingdom “will
rule several years over the earth and crush
everything; a people will crush another
people, and a city another city.”
Then, “the people of God arises
and makes everyone rest from the
sword.” But as the text continues there
is a conflation—as in Daniel 7—between
the individual Son of God and that
collective People of God. It continues
like this: “His kingdom will be an eternal
kingdom, and all his paths in truth and Dead Sea Scroll fragments from the Book of Daniel.
uprightness. The earth will be in truth and
all will make peace. The sword will cease in the earth, and all the cities will pay
him homage” (4Q246).
A PARADIGM SHIFT WITHIN JEWISH MESSIANISM. In his 1995

book, The Scepter and the Star, John J. Collins of Yale University surveys, as his
sub-title says, The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature.
Despite many different understandings of the expected Messiah, he cites this
“common core” or “dominant note” at the start and finish of his very helpful
study:
This concept of the Davidic messiah as the warrior king who would
destroy the enemies of Israel and institute an era of unending peace
6 first light
constitutes the common core of Jewish messianism around the turn of

the era …. There was a dominant notion of a Davidic messiah, as the
king who would restore the kingdom of Israel, which was part of the
common Judaism around the turn of the era (pp. 68 & 209).
The Davidic Messiah as a warrior king is not, therefore, just one option among
many messianic understandings and expectations. It is rather the basic one. And
that, of course, raises this immediate problem:
Although the claim that he [Jesus of Nazareth] is the Davidic messiah is

ubiquitous in the New Testament, he does not fit the typical profile of
the Davidic messiah. This messiah was, first of all, a warrior prince, who
was to defeat the enemies of Israel …. There is little if anything in the
Gospel portrait of Jesus that accords with the Jewish expectation of a
militant messiah” (pp. 13 & 204).
As you can see, those statements frame the book and raise this obvious
question. Since Jesus and all his first companions were Jewish, how are we to
explain their divergence from the “common core” or “dominant note” or
“typical profile” of the Davidic Messiah?
We see that divergence as a paradigm shift or mutational swerve within
Jesus’ contemporary messianic eschatology. We borrow that term paradigm shift
from the famously influential 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by
Thomas Kuhn of the University of California, Berkeley. But, as so many other
scholars have already done, we apply the tern paradigm shift beyond his original
application to science.
In all walks of life and not just in science—in art and music, poetry and
dance, politics and religion—we usually conduct everyday operations within
some basic and foundational paradigm, some ordinary and standard model.
As problems, anomalies, and non-fits appear, we usually sweep them under the
rug of paradigm-normalcy until the bulge becomes too embarrassing to sustain.
Then we are ready for a paradigm shift, a swerve within the tradition, a
mutation in the previously dominant model.
The vision of Jesus was a paradigm shift within first-century Jewish
messianism and, as we see in greater detail below, it also represented—not
surprisingly—one within its wider and more general apocalyptic eschatology.
There were, by the way, a lot of other paradigm shifts in that century—from
consular republic to imperial monarchy within the Roman Empire at its start
and from Sadduccean Temple to Pharisaic Torah within the Jewish homeland
at its end.
Within both non-Christian and then Christian Judaism, the expected
Messiah was a divinely transcendental figure and even a mysteriously
pre-existent one. Trailing clouds of glory he would come from God who
was his home. They also agreed on a necessary interaction between him and
them, between God’s Messiah and God’s People in God’s Kingdom. Whether
as Son of Man or Son of God and whether he was imagined as their leader,
representative, personification, embodiment, or the heavenly counterpart of

The Advent of the Messiah 7
their earthly collectivity, he and they were inextricably linked together in the
Great Divine Cleanup of God’s World.
But just as clear as those two fundamental agreements was this equally
fundamental disagreement. Jesus, as we just saw, was neither “warrior king” nor
“warrior prince.” His resistance to imperialism was programmatically non-
violent. Do not forget, by the way, that, according to Josephus’s Jewish War and
Jewish Antiquities many non-Christian Jews used large-scale non-violent protests
against the census of Quirinius in 6 CE (JW 2.117-118; JA 18.4-9,23-25), the
actions of Pilate in 26-27 CE (JW 2.169-177; JA 18.55-62), and the statue of
Caligula in 40-41 CE (JW 2.185-203; JA 18.261-309).
We make no claim that either Jesus or earliest Christianity invented non-
violent Jewish resistance against Rome. But, by their practice of it, they created
a paradigm shift within their contemporary Jewish messianism—and, as we see
below, within the entire matrix of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology as well. And
that shift was already proclaimed at the start of Jesus’ life in the infancy stories
of Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. What follows, by the way, is based on the much
fuller discussion of those stories as parabolic overtures—each to its own
gospel—in the Borg-Crossan 2007 book The First Christmas: What the Gospels
Really Teach About Jesus’ Birth.
THE DAVIDIC MESSIAH IS BORN. Both our Christmas stories agree

that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah and, to express that status parabolically, both
locate his birth in David’s city of Bethlehem (Matthew
1:1,20; 2:1,5-6,16; Luke 1:27,32,69; 2:4,11,15). Or, as
Paul put it, emphasizing status not city: “Jesus Christ …
who was descended from David according to the
flesh” (Romans 1:1-3). Furthermore, both those stories
see the advent of Jesus as the messianic challenge from
God’s non-violent eschatology to Rome’s violent
imperialism.
Matthew 1-2. Jesus is here the Davidic Messiah,
but precisely as the New—the reNEWed—Moses.
Furthermore, Herod is the New Pharaoh who slaughters
male infants to kill the predestined Child, and Israel-
under-Herod is the New Egypt from which, rather than
to which, that Child escapes. Exodus 1-2 is prototype
for Matthew 1-2. But Herod is, by Roman appointment,
“King of the Jews.” So the clash of empire and
eschaton is set when the Magi arrive—not kings, but
Statue of Augustus in divine pose (found
sages with the wisdom of the East confronting the in Thessaloniki, Greece).
power of the West. They ask Herod: “Where is the child
who has been born king of the Jews?” and he immediately rephrases their
question as “where is the Messiah to be born?” (2:1-4). Matthew never uses that
title “King of the Jews” again until it appears above the cross of the crucified
Jesus (27:11,29,37). Rome-appointed Herod failed to kill the “King of the Jews”
just as Rome-appointed Pilate (thinks he) succeeded in doing so. As in medieval
art, a crucifix hangs on that birth-room wall.

8 first light
Luke 1-2. The angel tells the shepherds that, “to you is born this day
in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:11). The title
Messiah is bracketed and thereby interpreted by those other titles of Savior and
Lord. But, since Savior and Lord were well-known titles of the then-
contemporary Caesar Augustus, this Child incarnates, not Christianity against
Judaism, but Jewish eschatological
covenant against Roman imperial power.
Furthermore, a whole angelic
multitude appears with the transcenden-
tal message that “the glory of God in
heaven” is reflected as “peace on
earth” (2:13-15). Christ is Peace-
Bringer—but by what means? Recall
that, in Roman inscriptions, the first and
fundamental title of Caesar—before Son
of God or Divine Augustus—was Imperator.
We translate it lamely as Emperor but it
Inscription at Ephesus, Turkey, proclaiming “Imperator”
means Victor or Conqueror and, when it Caesar Augustus “Son of God” and “high priest.”
became Augustus’s titular monopoly, it
meant World Conqueror. Augustus became Rome’s Peace-Bringer with peace
through violent victory but Jesus became God’s Peace-Bringer with peace
through non-violent justice. And, as Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 say: to be
continued . . . .
The Holy Family, Girolamo Marchesi 1490-1531.

3
GOD’S GREAT CLEANUP
“Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.” Matthew 11:11
“Among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the
Kingdom of God is greater than he.” Luke 7:28
For geology, deep below our physical earth, giant tectonic plates grind
against one another and periodically create seismic convulsions on the face of
the land. For history, deep below our social world, there are also tectonic
tensions that cause seismic surface disturbances.
One such seismic disturbance occurred in the 20s CE around Antipas’s
establishment of Tiberias and its controlled commercialization of the Sea of
Galilee. All the general discussion about human-like eschatology versus beast-like
imperialism from Daniel 7 and even the more specific one about non-violent
versus violent Jewish messianism came together along a very localized tectonic
fault-line, first in Perea with the Baptism movement of John and then in Galilee
with the Kingdom movement of Jesus. Both those movements were different—
but profoundly different—visions of the Great Divine Cleanup of God’s
World.
THE BAPTISM MOVEMENT OF JOHN. It will vastly help what

follows if you bracket absolutely any Christian connotations of the term
“baptism” when speaking of John the Baptist. What exactly was he doing
and why?
Eschatological Vision. John was one of those classic apocalyptic
eschatologists discussed above. God’s Great Cleanup was future but
imminent—any day now it would happen. He was, as Isaiah promised, “A
voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight
in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every
mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and
the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken’” (40:3-5).
Our New Testament accounts, however, have changed his message
from one about the imminent advent of God to one about the imminent
advent of Jesus. But, of course, what he says of a violent God hardly fits with
a non-violent Jesus.
Divine Character. John’s God was one of punitive vengeance. Watch
his metaphors: “John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him,
‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Even
now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not
bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire …. His winnowing fork is
in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary;
10 first light
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire’” (Luke 3:7,9,17). That
sounded so negative that Luke himself added a more humane insertion in 3:10-
14 before he could call it all “good news” in 3:18.
Specific Program. John accepted the theology in which God rewarded
or punished Israel according to its obedience or disobedience to the covenant
(see, for example, Deuteronomy 28). Since Israel was currently under Roman
oppression, a great act of national repentance was needed to deliver it from
imperialism.
John’s program was a mighty sacramental
reenactment of both the Exodus from Egyptian Bondage
and the Return from Babylonian Exile. He brought
people out into the wilderness east of the Jordan in
Perea; took them through the Jordan and, as the waters
washed their bodies, repentance purified their souls;
then, once a critical mass of holiness had gathered in the
land of Israel, God would surely, must surely come. For
why else was God not coming except as punishment for
national sin?
But what came was not the eschatological
deliverance of God but the imperial cavalry of Antipas.
“John, because of Herod’s suspicions,” wrote Josephus
in his Jewish Antiquities, “was brought in chains to
Machaerus … and there put to death” (18:119).
Jesus had started his public life as a follower
of John. We are sure that he was one because of the
increasing embarrassment about his baptism as you read from Mark’s admission
(1:9), through Matthew’s expansion (3:13-15) and Luke’s contraction (3:21b),
and on to John’s total omission (1:29-34). Yet, when Jesus found his own voice,
he is both very respectful and very different from John. So John died. But Jesus
watched, Jesus learned, Jesus changed.
THE KINGDOM MOVEMENT OF JESUS. As we saw in the epigraph,

“Kingdom of Heaven” is simply a courteous Matthean avoidance of the sacred
name in the phrase, “Kingdom of God.” Both terms mean, as the Lord’s Prayer
makes clear, the will of God not for heaven—which is in excellent shape—but
for this earth—which is not: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). “The Kingdom” is Jesus’ special term for
what we call God’s Great Cleanup of the World.
Eschatological Vision. We return to that messianic paradigm shift
represented by Jesus and now find its roots in an even deeper one from Jesus.
John said that the eschaton was future but imminent; Jesus said that it was
already here: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the
Kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). You have been waiting for
God while God has been waiting for you. The eschaton is not imminent but
interactive, participatory, collaborative.
Jesus created a fundamental paradigm shift within Jewish eschatological
expectation from an imminent divine intervention to a present human-divine

Gods Great Cleanup 11
collaboration. And, of course, the messianic paradigm shift simply followed that
more basic one. All of that was said already in two episcopal sermons across a
millennium and a half and from either end of Africa. Augustine of Hippo in
416: “God made you without you …. he doesn't justify you without you.”
Desmond Tutu of Cape Town improved it in 1999: “St. Augustine says, ‘God,
without us, will not; as we, without God, cannot.’” Or, less politely: It’s about
collaboration, dummy.
Divine Character. But what is the character of the God with whom
Jesus proclaimed this collaboration in Cosmic Cleanup? You can see the answer
of Jesus most clearly in the following sayings where the motivation for human
non-violence is quite simply divine non-violence—even or especially when
dealing with one’s violent enemies.
In Matthew, Jesus commands his hearers to “love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you” and the reason given is “so that you may be
children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (5:44-45).
And Luke’s version says to “love your enemies … and
you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to
the ungrateful and the wicked” (6:35).
Furthermore, the conclusion in Matthew is very
striking. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father
is perfect” (5:48). That sounds impossible, for how
could the human be as perfect as the divine? But, in
Greek, that verb “to be perfect” can also be translated
as “to be finished”—for example, with Jesus’ dying
words, “It is finished,” in John 9:30. In other words,
we humans are perfected, finished, fully completed in
our humanity, when we are non-violent in imitation of
and participation in the non-violent God.
Special Program. We summarize this third
major difference between John and Jesus like this: John
had a monopoly but Jesus had a franchise. John was “the Ecce Agnus Dei, Dieric Bouts, 1460.
Baptist” or “the Baptizer”–that was his nickname in
both Josephus and the New Testament. There were not lots of baptizing
stations all up and down the Jordan and you simply went to the one nearest
your own home. You went to John and to John alone. To stop his movement,
therefore, Antipas had only to execute John. It could linger on in memory,
nostalgia, denial, and disappointment but, since it depended on John’s life, it
ended with John’s death.
On the other hand, Jesus himself does not settle down, for example, in
the house of Peter’s wife at Capernaum. Notice Peter’s expectation and Jesus’
withdrawal: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns,” Jesus tells Peter, “so that
I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mark
1:38). Jesus does not establish himself in one place and send out disciples to
bring people to him there as monopolist of the Kingdom of God. Instead, he
tells his companions—not disciples, which mean students—to do exactly what he
himself is doing. We will see what that was in the next segment, but for now the

12 first light
point is simply that Jesus empowered rather than dominated others because
God’s Great Divine Cleanup was about empowerment and collaboration, not
disempowerment and domination.
LOCATION AS DESTINY. Jesus’ proclamation of God’s Great

Collaborative Cleanup of the World occurred not just within Roman Empire,
homeland Judaism, and Galilean environment, but within one quadrant of the
Sea of Galilee, the north-west corner from
Tiberias through Magdala and Capernaum to
Bethsaida.
His challenge incarnated a clash of divinely
transcendental empire versus divinely transcendental
eschaton. That localized embodiment of Roman
Empire versus Jewish God involved a time, place,
and focus, a person, community, and window
of opportunity. Above all else, it involved a
charismatic prophet who created a companionship
of equality by empowering others to “go and do
likewise” (Luke 10:37).
What, then, was the collaborative program for this eschatological
community of God’s Kingdom? How did it propose to rebuild peasant
community from the bottom up in opposition to Antipas, who was building
his territorial economy from the top down? How did it set the share-life of
eschaton against the greed-life of empire?
First-Century Capernaum, Balage Balogh, 2000.

4
COLLABORATIVE ESCHATON IN A
SHARE-COMMUNITY
“In traditional societies, for instance, health care systems may be the major
mechanism for social control.”
—Arthur Kleinman, 1980
“In the straitened Mediterranean, the Kingdom of Heaven had to have

something to do with food and drink.”
—Peter Brown, 1982
The heart of this collaborative program for the lake-as-world was this:
heal the sick, eat with those you heal, and announce that God’s Kingdom is already present in
the gratuity, mutuality, and reciprocity of that share-community. Notice that communal
circularity of healing and eating with those healed to create
a community of free and open spiritual power (healing)
and physical power (eating). That program is still visible
in several different sources but all of them are now
layered with later practice, fuller experience, and,
unfortunately, with increasing bitterness at rejection.
SENDING. The most important texts are the

Q Gospel (from the late 50s) and Mark (from the early
70s), the two independent sources used by Matthew
and Luke. Mark’s version is in 6:6b-13 and copied
thence into Luke 9:1-6; the Q Gospel’s version is in
Luke10:1-12; and both versions are merged together in
Matthew 9:37-38; 10:7-15. We emphasize four points
shared in common by both the basic versions
Mission & Message. In the Q Gospel Jesus
Healing of the Paralytic, Netherlandish
says: “Cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 1560.
‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (in Luke
10:9); and, “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has
come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons”
(in Matthew 10:7-8).
Mark focuses on the Twelve, frames their mission with a double
mention of demons (6:7,13a), and says that they “anointed with oil many who
were sick and cured (etherapeuon) them” (6:13b). They were to proclaim that “all
should repent” (6:12) as Jesus himself had done: “The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).
Dress & Appearance. Think of this as a “uniform” that is symbolic for
their mission. The Q Gospel says: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet
no one on the road” (in Luke 10:4=22:35-36); and, “Take no gold, or silver, or
copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a

14 first light
staff” (in Matthew 10:9-10a).

Mark—from a decade or so later—has a striking difference from those
instructions. “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff;
no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put
on two tunics” (6:8-9). The too-radical demands not to carry a staff or wear
sandals—as in the earlier Q Gospel—are now withdrawn. Notice that no-staff is
a very visible statement of non-violence even of the most basic defensive
counter-violence. It is a visible message of peace.
Acceptance & Accommodation. The Q Gospel emphasizes that
mission of spreading peace: “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this
house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that
person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and
drinking whatever they provide” (Luke 10:5-7a=Matthew 10:11-13).
Mark is much more terse: “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until
you leave the place” (6:10) but he also forbids moving around. He omits,
however, that comment from the Q Gospel that “the laborer deserves to be
paid” (Luke 10:7b) and “laborers deserve their food” (in Matthew 10:10b). That
comment also appears in Paul, “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim
the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14) and in
pseudo-Paul, “The laborer deserves to be paid” (1 Timothy 5:18). But, originally
with Jesus, food and even hospitality were not payment but program—a free
and equal sharing of the spiritual power of healing and the physical power of
eating.
Rejection and Vengeance. Mark does not speak of vengeance or
punishment: “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you,
as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against
them” (6:11).
The Q Gospel begins with that same dust-shaking admonition:
“Whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its
streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe
off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come
near’” (Luke 10:10-11=Matthew 10:14). But then the Q Gospel adds an
immediate threat comparing that rejecting town with ancient Sodom (Luke
10:12=Matthew 10:15). It continues with severe woes and bitter condemnations
against Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum (Luke 10:13-15=Matthew 11:20-
24 relocated). That is not Jesus but an addition from the Q Gospel itself.
Finally, when you look back at all of that complex, you can hear the
voice of Jesus in the Q Gospel with this: “The harvest is plentiful, but the
laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into
his harvest” (Luke 10:2=Matthew 9:37-38). The Gospel of Thomas has a parallel
version: “The harvest is large but the workers are few, so beg the lord to send
out workers to the harvest” (14). But, once again, the Q Gospel adds a negative
saying to that more open and positive one from Jesus himself: “Go on your
way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Luke
10:3=Matthew 10:16).

Collaborative Eschaton 15
HEALING. Is healing the same as curing? If yes, why do we say after a

tragedy that “the healing has begun,” and not “the curing has begun”? If no,
could there be healing without curing, curing without healing, neither, either,
or both in a given medical situation?
Medical Anthropology. Think, for example, of the 1993 movie
Philadelphia as a graphic illustration of the distinction between healing and
curing. Andrew Beckett, played by Tom Hanks, is a homosexual with HIV/
AIDS who is fired for that combination by his law-firm. You know as the story
unfolds that curing is not possible. There will be no happy Hollywood ending.
But the only word for what happens to Beckett is healing—from the love of his
partner, the support of his family, and the skill of his lawyer who successfully
sues his firm for discrimination. When medicine cannot cure, a community of
love, concern, and support can often heal.
That is simply Medical Anthropology 101.
Sickness is a coin whose twin faces are illness and disease,
treated respectively by healing or curing. In his seminal
1980 book, Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture,
for example, Arthur Kleinman of the Harvard Medical
School said that, “A key axiom in medical anthropology
is the dichotomy between two aspects of sickness:
disease and illness. Disease refers to a malfunctioning of
biological and/or psychological processes, while the
term illness refers to the psychosocial experience and
meaning of perceived disease” (p. 72).
Types of Illnesses. When you look from the
healings of Jesus backwards to, say, the healing shrines
of Asklepios in Greece and Turkey or forwards to, say,
those of Mary in Portugal and France, what strikes you
immediately is the common types of illnesses mentioned.
The Healing of the Blind Man detail, El
They involve individuals who are blind, deaf, mute, Greco, 1541-1614.
or lame; individuals who have growths or cancers;
individuals who have problems of paralysis or difficulties with pregnancy.
Take blindness, for example. Do you need glasses to read this page? If
you had no corrective lenses of any type, could you do your job? What about
your dignity, family, society? What, then, did “blind” mean in a world without
corrective lenses? Jesus did not cure blind people whose eyes had been gouged
out; he healed blind people whose eyesight was inadequate for work, family, and
society. He healed them by accepting them into a new family and a new society,
that of God’s present eschaton on earth.
Great healers, by the way, are often reputed to raise the dead. Compare,
for example, the testimonials inscribed for Asklepios at Epidauros in Greece with
the stories that Zeus killed him for raising too many deceased people. That
comes—for Asklepios and for Jesus—from their Department of Public
Relations rather than their Department of Medical Records. But you do not
get that accolade without being first a great healer.
Social Strain and Chronic Pain. Finally, think about those many cases
where society not only discriminates against illness and/or disease, but actually

16 first light
causes them in the first place: malnutrition from poverty, disease from bad
water, obesity from consumerism, cancer from smoking, bulimia from
advertising, etc., etc.
Jesus conducts, for example, an extraordinary number of exorcisms.
Why so many demoniacs precisely there, precisely then? In answer notice that
striking conflation of demonic possession and imperial oppression in Mark 5:1-
20. A single extraordinarily powerful demoniac lives among the dead but has a
multiple name “Legion: for we are many.” It/they prefer to enter swine and
drown than be sent “out of the country.” That is imperialism as demonism with
illness and/or disease as a socio-somatic reality.
Finally, here are two modern examples of illness and/or disease caused
by society itself. In The Illness Narratives from 1988, Arthur Kleinman quotes a
doctor trying to help “an obese hypertensive mother of six.” Her diagnosis:
“Hey, what she needs is not medicine but a social revolution” (p. 217). Or, this
from Time magazine’s “Health Report: The Bad News,” November 4, 1996:
“African Americans who must suffer discrimination in silence have higher
blood pressure than those who can afford to challenge racist treatment. The
finding may explain why blacks as a group have such high rates of stroke, heart
disease and kidney failure” (p. 20).

5
THE LAKE AS THE WORLD
“At the place called Taricheae [Magdala] the lake supplies excellent fish
for pickling.”
—Strabo of Amaseia, 60s BCE-20s CE, Geography 16.2.45
The coordinates of matrix are historical time and geographical place.

With those cross-hairs in mind, we now fine-focus on the opening questions in
the Prologue above. In the last paragraph of his famous 1906 book on The Quest
of the Historical Jesus, for example, Albert Schweitzer said of Jesus that, “He
comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he
came to those men who did not know who he was” (2001, p. 487). It is almost
discourteous to interrupt that soaring peroration and ask: what was Jesus doing
“of old, by the lakeside”? Why precisely there? Why precisely then?
THE GENERATION BEFORE JESUS. During that period Herod the

Great undertook simultaneously two of the greatest construction projects in the
Roman Empire—world-class operations in terms of vision and scope, quantity
and quality.
Caesarea Maritima. On the mid-Mediterranean coast of Israel, Herod
created from scratch a new city and a giant port named, respectively, Caesarea
and Sebastos—the Greek word for Augustus, the One-to-be-Worshipped.
Construction and dedication began Israel’s linkage into Rome’s imperial
infrastructure of all-weather ports, roads, and bridges—an infrastructure by
First-Century Caesarea Maritima, Balage Balogh, 2000.

18 first light
which its legions moved swiftly and securely to wherever they were needed.
The port Sebastos was an eighth wonder of the world. It encompassed
over 40 acres with giant breakwater-moles extending 800 feet into the sea. They
were wide enough to carry large storage sheds, and their north-west opening
protected against the south-westerly winds and waves out of Africa—there is
the same north-west opening, by the way, in Tel Aviv’s yacht harbor today.
The state-of-the-art foundations for those moles were poured
underwater using a hydraulic cement combining lime with volcanic ash from
Pozzuoli in Italy (hence pozzolana). “The king triumphed over nature,” enthused
Josephus’s Jewish War, “and constructed a harbor larger than the Piraeus” of
Athens (1.410). The city’s water, by the way, had to come by aqueduct from
Mount Carmel ten miles away.
Jerusalem’s Temple. Herod’s second huge project created a plaza
around the Temple, five football fields long by three wide. That Court of the
Gentiles would have been difficult
enough on a flat surface, but Herod
was building on the prow of a hill with
valleys on three sides. He was also
digging into the rising hill to the north
and building up above those valleys on
the south.
When the Romans destroyed this

great temple in 70 CE, they could only
toss down its uppermost stones. Layers Temple court, Jerusalem model.
of great ashlars, fitted in header-stretcher
sequence, still stood and stand firm on all four corners. The largest ones are
around 175 tons—not the oft-repeated 570 tons. Those stones—visible today
in the Western Wall tunnel—were so placed that they could originally be seen
by pedestrians on the north-south street beside the Temple. But, especially,
they could be admired by aristocrats crossing the bridge from the Upper—by
hill and by class—City. They were, in other words, placed for show, not func-
tion. It is strange to think of Herod the Great as an apostle to the Gentiles, but
he must have intended not just Jewish but pious pagan pilgrims to enter his
great new port at Caesarea and ascend to his Temple at Jerusalem.
What about Galilee? You will notice, however, that those great
constructions all took place in Judea. Herod’s monumental building program
skipped Galilee. Here is another indication of that omission: the marbled city
of Caesarea Maritima was crowned by a temple to Rome and Augustus, the
divine couple at the heart of the New World Order. It was constructed off the
city street-grid so that it would face boats entering that breakwater’s opening.
It was one of the very first of those temples across the Roman Empire and
Herod had two more of them—one at the new city of Sebaste in Samatia and
the other at Panias (later Caesarea Philippi) in the far north. But, as you can see
once again, Herod controlled but ignored Galilee.

The Lake as the World 19
THE GENERATION OF JESUS. In other words, the imperial program

of Romanization by urbanization for commercialization struck Galilee forcibly, not in
the generation before Jesus, but in that of Jesus. It arrived fully there, not
under Herod the Great (37 BCE-4 BCE), but under his son Herod Antipas
(4 BCE-39 CE).
The Man Who Would Be King. To understand Antipas, whom Luke’s
Jesus called “that fox” (13:32), you must remember that all his life he dreamed
and planned to become “King of the Jews,” appointed by Rome, of course,
as was his father. He even went to Rome twice—once hopefully and once
desperately—to plead his case.
The first time was in 4 BCE before Augustus against the claims of his
brother Archelaus. He failed and ended up as tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. His
prudent reaction, according to Josephus’s Jewish War, was to make his capital
city Sepphoris “the ornament of all Galilee, and call it Austocratoris” (18:27)
after Augustus (Autocrator is Greek for Imperator). The last time was in 39 CE
before Caligula against the claims of his nephew Agrippa. He failed even worse
and ended up an exile in Gaul.
But in between the emperors Augustus and Caligula was the emperor
Tiberius (14-37 CE). That was when Antipas made his second attempt
“inasmuch,” said Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities, “as he had gained a high
place among the friends of Tiberius” (18.36). But to achieve the title “King of
the Jews” Antipas needed internal Jewish approval (or, at least, non-resistance)
and external Roman appointment.
Internally at Home. When Rome took over the Jewish homeland,
it replaced the native-Jewish Hasmonean dynasty with the converted-Jewish
Herodians and, although Herod the Great married the Hasmonean Mariamme,
he later executed her for treason. Her popularity is clear, by the way, from the
number of first-century infant girls named Mary in the Jewish homeland. So
Antipas, seeking popular approval at home, divorced his Nabaean wife and
married a Hasmonean princess named Herodias, grand-daughter of the beloved
Mariamme, and wife of Antipas’s half-brother—whom she in turn divorced.
You can understand, therefore, why Antipas and Herodias would have
been infuriated by two popular prophets criticizing that Herodian-Hasmonean
marriage alliance. From John the Baptist: “It is not lawful for you to have your
brother’s wife” (Mark 6:178). From Jesus: “Whoever divorces his wife and
marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband
and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11-12). Prophetic
resistance was not good for popular approval.
Externally at Rome. How could Antipas persuade Rome to give him
the whole country? Maybe, if he could increase his taxes from a mere tetrarchy,
Rome might consider granting him a full monarchy, give him the whole country
as “King of the Jews”? But how could he increase his taxes from a peasantry
living already at subsistence level without risking rebellion? After all, the
emperor himself had warned against excessive taxes, according to Suetonius’s
Tiberius 32.2, since “it was the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not
skin it” (32.2).

20 first light
So it came to pass that, having multiplied loaves in the valleys around

Sepphoris, Antipas planned to multiply fishes in the waters around Tiberias. He
built a whole new capital city, named it after the emperor, and built it on the
mid-west coast of the Sea of Galilee. The process of Romanization by urbanization
for commercialization simply expanded from Sepphoris to Tiberias, and was
already there by the start of the 20s. You may judge how many people disliked
that change by their (unlikely) accusations that the city was built on a graveyard
and had forbidden images on its palace walls.
THE GALILEE BOAT AS SYMBOL. In 1986 a drought lowered the

level of the Sea of Galilee and revealed large swaths of sandy-mud around its
shores. A first-century boat was discovered in that receding lakeshore and, since
it was then the consistency of wet cardboard or soft cheese, it took an
“excavation from hell” and a decade of preservation work before it was—and
is—on display at the Yigal Allon Museum in Kibbutz Ginnosar.
This 8x26-foot boat was the typical workhorse transport of the first-
century lake. It had mast, sail, four oars, rudder, and could hold around fifteen
people. But it had been nursed along by skilled boat-wrights using poor-to-bad
materials. There were twelve different types of wood in it; a keel half of good
cedar—but cannibalized from an older boat—and half of poor jujube wood;
and strakes replaced not by whole planks but by ones cobbled together from
bits and pieces.
Then one sad day it could no longer safely float. It was completely
stripped of anything salvageable—stem post and sternpost, sail and mast,
oars and rudder, every single iron nail—and pushed into the lake to sink in a
graveyard of discarded boats—off a
Magdala boatyard. It has been called
“The Jesus Boat,” but we prefer to call
it “The Mary Boat.”
It is a symbol of what Tiberias
did to Magdala, and Antipas to Mary,
and Romanization by urbanization for
commercialization did to those other
peasant-fishers who were also the first
companions of Jesus. Nothing was free
any more—not casting a net, launching
a boat, or beaching a catch. Antipas’s
factories for salting, pickling, and drying The author observing the “The Mary Boat,” Yigal Allon
Museum, Kibbutz Ginnosar.
fish took precedence and control over
private entrepreneurial possibilities.
But was this just, fair, and equitable? Was this the will of God? If God
owned the world and especially the land of Israel, did God not own the Sea of
Galilee? The lake was microcosm for world as macrocosm. In other words, to
adopt and adapt Psalm 24:1, “The lake is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the lake,
and those who live around it.”

6
PARABLES AS LURES FOR COLLABORATION
“Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told
them nothing.” Matthew 13:34
Why did Jesus speak in parables, that is, create fictional stories with a
theological challenge about the Kingdom of God? Why indirect parables and not direct
sermons? Think, to begin with, about Mark 4, that major source for the
standard misunderstanding of Jesus’ parables.
THE SOWER AS PARADIGM. The parable of the Sower is addressed to

“a very large crowd” (4:1-9). It begins with “Listen” and ends with “Let anyone
with ears to hear listen!” It is told, in other words, for understanding and not
obfuscation. That terminal phrase, used so often by Jesus, means: “Use your
head!”
Yet, according to Mark, Jesus then withdraws from the people, and
tells his companions that, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom
of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they
may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand;
so that they may not turn again and be forgiven,’” as Isaiah 6:9-10 foretold
(4:10-12). But, those framing injunctions to “listen” make any deliberately
punitive mystification of this or any other story by Jesus extremely unlikely.
Mark has incorrectly equated parable with riddle and while they are alike
as two interactive and collaborative modes of discourse, they are otherwise
quite unlike one another. A riddle demands a single correct response—and
Mark delivers an allegorical one to the Sower parable-as-riddle in 4:14-20. But
a parable intends application, decision, and action.
In a privately read written text, a parable is a lure for personal reflection,
imagination, and interpretation. In a publicly spoken oral text, a parable is a lure
for discussion, debate, and the raising of corporate consciousness. In other
words, parable—and aphorism as well—are precisely the modes of
collaborative discourse required for a collaborative eschaton.
You can, for example, read that Sower story in about half a minute. But
give it, say, an hour on the lips of Jesus and allow for constant interaction from
the original audience, constant debate not only with Jesus but with one another.
Imagine these reactions:
“What a waste of time—we knew all that stuff about the birds, rocks,
and thistles.”
“It’s not about sowing at all. It’s about something else.”
“Then why did he tell us about sowing”
“Whatever it’s about, we are sure it’s not about sowing.”
“Then, what’s it about, if you’re so smart?”
“It’s a parable, dummy!”
22 first light
Those orally delivered parables demanded and would have received

collaborative discussion and corporate argumentation. They were the perfectly
appropriate genre for a collaborative eschaton. Furthermore, the Sower is a parable
about the eschaton and also about parabling the eschaton. In any collaborative
process, it says, there will be different modes of failure and even different
degrees of success. Stay calm, stay patient, stay ready for both.
THE VINEYARD WORKERS. Imagine, for example, how that process

worked in an oral delivery of the Vineyard Workers in Matthew 20:1-16. It is
harvest time in the vineyards and a landowner goes to the marketplace to hire
day laborers. But instead of hiring all he needed at once, he went out five
times—at 6am, 9am, 12 noon, 3pm, and 5pm. (Are you already sensing a
comment on his character in that procedure?)
At the end of the day, all alike are given a silver denarius for a full
day’s pay. They grumble immediately about the landowner’s injustice. And,
from Matthew on, we tend to focus on that problem of personal and individual
justice or injustice. Was it fair? Was the owner equitably generous or provoca-
tively condescending? And in focusing there, we do not focus elsewhere.
But think about this interchange: “About five o’clock he went out and
found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here
idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them,
‘You also go into the vineyard’” (20:6-7). How would Jesus’ listeners—
especially poor day-laborers—have responded to that interaction? Would
nobody from the oral audience have objected to such a blatant blaming the
victim? Would nobody have protested that looking for work all day was not
laziness?
What would have happened in such a discussion was a raising of the
audience’s consciousness on the difference between, in our language, personal
and individual justice or injustice as against systemic or structural justice and
injustice. Why did it happen mysteriously that, even at high harvest in the
vineyards when labor should have cost top denarius, day-laborers were still
looking for work at the end of the day? And, of course, the owner knew that
situation full well since he had tried all day to have just the amount of labor
needed and no more. He knew he could go out as late as 5pm and still find
workers. How did things happen just as the landowners wanted?
The audience would have been lured by that story into thinking,
debating, and understanding the crucial distinction between individual charity
(a denarius for each) and structural justice (no work for all), and in that
collaborative process they would—Jesus hoped and intended—begin the
collaborative process of eschatological transformation with a God of
distributive justice.
ORAL LURE & ORAL DEBATE. Commenting on the parables of

Jesus is not, therefore, a matter of solving riddles or proposing allegories. It
is a matter of imagining—as best we can at this distance—the debate and
discussion, argument and counter-argument, increase in awareness and response
in commitment among the audience challenged by Jesus’ collaborative eschaton.
Parables as Lures 23
Imagine the parable of The Good Samaritan in Luke 10:29-37, for example, as
spoken by the Jewish Jesus to a Jewish audience. Notice what he did and did
not say and think about possible audience reactions.
First, he did not speak about four unspecified individuals on the
Jerusalem-Jericho road with one “person” in the ditch, two “persons” passing
by, and a third “person” offering help. The debate would be about helping
somebody in dire need.
Second, he did not speak about four fellow-Jews, one in the ditch,
a priest and a Levite passing by, and a fourth Jew stopping to help. The
discussion might be about why that specification of the non-helpers as Temple
officials. Should you help even if Temple officials do not? And why pick on
them as the negative models? Unfair? Gratuitous?
Third, he did not tell it in that preceding manner but had a Samaritan
left dying in the ditch and a Jewish lay-person help him. He could have done it
that way and kept the rest of the story without further change. The audience
debate would be about helping even an ethnic outsider in distress. Yes, of
course! No, not a Samaritan!
Finally, there is the story as told by Jesus. It presumes that you should
help any person in distress. But why make the helper—and not the helped—an
ethnic outsider? How can Jesus’ fellow Jews identify with a Samaritan? What
does that do to their categories of who’s in and who’s out? What does it mean
if religious leaders do not help a fellow-Jew and the Samaritan does? Jesus’
precise formulation of the story guarantees strong audience reactions because
it raises questions—and therefore consciousness—about the standard social
paradigm and taken-for-granted categories on which his society rests.
PARABLES ABOUT JESUS. We have been speaking about parables by

Jesus. Few Christians have ever been shocked that Jesus used fictional stories
to speak of the Kingdom of God. But
they are often shocked even to imagine
that the gospel writers copied that
process by creating parables about Jesus.
It was, apparently, a bad habit they
picked up from him.
We give as an example the
parable of the Multiplication of Loaves and
Fishes from Mark 6:30-44—and, by the
way, keep an eye on the parallel but
independent version in John 6:1-14.
Mosaic, Church of the Loaves and Fishes, Tabgha, 5th Cent. That Markan story is deliberately chosen
from among the multitude of gospel
parables about Jesus in order to pick up the eating aspect of that programmatic
healing-eating empowerment from the preceding session. Notice especially the
dialectic of him (Jesus) and them (the Twelve) as he keeps them as repeated
intermediaries with the crowds in this five-scene mini-drama.
Solving. Twin solutions are given to this problem of ordinary everyday
hunger. From the Twelve: “Send them away” to buy food and eat. From Jesus:

24 first light
“You give them something to eat.” And they almost mock him for that
suggestion (6:36-37). He versus them.
Seeking. He then sends them to find out what food is available: “Go
and see” (6:38). Notice that the parallel passage in John 6:5-6 adapts their
common tradition to emphasize that Jesus knew the answer all along!
Seating. Once again that core dialectic continues as “he ordered them to
get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in
groups of hundreds and of fifties” (6:39).
Distributing. Despite parallels with desert-exodus and manna-miracle,
Jesus does not bring down bread from heaven nor turn stones into bread. He
simply takes what is already there among the people and when it passes through
his hands, there is more than enough for
everyone.
Jesus looked up to heaven
and performed not just a miraculous
multiplication but a eucharistic
distribution of food. Compare, for
example the verbal sequence of take,
bless, break, give here in Mark 6:41 and
at the Last Supper in Mark 14:22.
Gathering. Only here does
Mark lack the explicit he-they of Jesus
and the Twelve. They are not told to
gather up the fragments but they do so Christ in Emmaus, Peter Paul Rubens, 17th Cent.
in any case (6:43). John, however, has it
explicitly “He told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that
nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up” (6:12-13).
We interpret that story as a deliberately created parable about Jesus. It is
not about the multiplication of food not there but about the distribution of food
already present. It suggests that when food passes through the just hands of God-
in-Jesus there is more than enough for all. It is about who owns this world and
who owns the food that is the material basis of life on this earth.
The parable also suggests that the church (the disciples as leadership
or as symbolic entirety?) wants no part of this functional destiny and must be
pulled by Jesus (kicking and screaming, as it were) into the middle of that
process: Jesus to disciples to people. The disciples: “send them away.” Jesus:
“you give them food.” No wonder we prefer to emphasize a miraculous
multiplication which we want but cannot obtain rather than a just distribution
which we can obtain but do not want.

7
JESUS AS LORD
“I looked, and there was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one
like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in
his hand.” Revelation 14:14
The title “Son of Man” is the most important and also the most
misunderstood of all the titles given to Jesus in the New Testament. We are
often asked, in interviews and questions, for example, whether Jesus was the
“Son of God”—meaning was he divine—or the “Son of Man”—meaning was
he human.
On the one hand, in our Christian faith, Jesus was both fully divine and
fully human. But, on the other, while “Son of God” certainly means divinity,
“Son of Man” does not simply mean “humanity.” The title “Son of Man” is, in
fact, even more transcendental than “Son of God.”
Think, for example, of how Mark exalts “Son of Man” over other titles
such as “Messiah” or “Son of God” by replacing them with it. First, at Caesarea
Philippi, Peter confesses Jesus as “the Messiah” (8:29) but Jesus immediately
speaks of himself as “the Son of Man” (8:31). Second, under trial at Jerusalem,
Caiaphas asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
(14:61) and Jesus immediately responds that, “I am; and you will see the Son of
Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of
heaven” (14:62). You will recognize, of course, that “one like a son of man” and
“clouds” from Daniel 7:13.
We stay, therefore, with Mark’s gospel to understand Jesus’ title of “Son
of Man” (that is, the truly Human One) as the specific incarnation of that “one
like a son of man” (that is, as we saw above, “one like a human being”) from
Daniel 7. For Mark, Jesus embodies that Danielic Son of Man under three
linked aspects:
First Aspect: Jesus as “Son of Man” on earth with heavenly authority

(2:10,28).
Second Aspect: Jesus as “Son of Man” undergoing death and resurrection

(8:31; 9:9,12,31; 10:33,45; 14:21a,21b,41).
Third Aspect: Jesus as “Son if Man” returning (parousia) with heavenly

power (8:38; 13:26,34; 14:62).
We touch next on those first and second aspects, but the second one will
receive much fuller consideration in “The Crowd & the Crucifixion” below.
Our major focus here will be on that third aspect.
26 first light
PRESENT HERE NON-VIOLENTLY. Mark sums up the message of

Jesus in this inaugural proclamation: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom
of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).
Scholars have long and inconclusively debated whether that “has come
near” (ëggiken in Greek) means “here now and present” or “here soon and
imminent.” But Mark’s understanding of Jesus’ message does not depend
on that single word’s syntactical interpretation.
As we saw in our opening session on Matrix, the “one like a son of
man” in Daniel 7 received the Kingdom of God (7:14) which was to be
preserved among the angelic “holy ones” in heaven (7:18,22) until it was
brought down “to the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (7:27).
If, therefore, Jesus is here on earth as “the Son of Man”—with, that is,
simile ceding to title—the Kingdom of God is already present on earth and
not just imminent. The paradigm shift from imminent and interventionist
eschatology to present and collaborative eschatology has taken place with
Jesus as the Son of Man.
In other words, Jesus said that the “Kingdom of God” is already
present in our world and Mark concurred by emphasizing that the “Son of
Man” is already present on our earth. You will notice, by the way, that Mark
used those twin phrases almost exactly the same number of times (14 and
15 times respectively). And despite all the authority of Jesus as Son of Man
in that first aspect above, no violence—human or divine—saves him from
death in that second one.
RETURNING SOON VIOLENTLY. We look now at a second

extraordinary feature of earliest Christian faith. The first was the
proclamation of a collaborative eschatology and a non-violent Messiah as
paradigm shifts within their contemporary Jewish
expectations. But the expectation of a second coming
of the Messiah was another paradigm shift within
Christian Judaism. Or, better, expected as imminent
and violent, it was actually a paradigm anti-shift or
retro-shift back towards the older model of an
imminent and violent start-of-eschaton. The first
and past non-violent Messiah of a non-violent God
cedes place to the second and future violent Messiah
of a violent God. It was like Darwinism (paradigm
shift) countered by Creationism (paradigm
retro-shift).
Imminence. A first question: granted that the
eschaton’s inauguration was already collaboratively
The Last Judgment detail, and non-violently present with Jesus, did he also
Michelangelo, 1534-1541.
say not that the start but that the end of the eschaton was
imminent, that is, would happen very soon? Collaborative eschatology would
be, in other words, a very short project.
First, and in general, whenever people are confronted with a
paradigm shift within any standard normalcy, there is a tendency to
Jesus as Lord 27
announce it as not that significant a change. The automobile arrives as

simply a “horseless carriage” and radio arrives as simply “wire-less.”
On the one hand, then, it would not be surprising if even Jesus
himself thought of the collaborative eschaton as an event to be completed
within the very lifetime of his audience. On the other hand, the most
explicit such statements from the lips of Jesus seem mostly if not
exclusively to have been placed there by the ongoing Christian tradition
after his death.
In discussing the Kingdom of God, for example, John P. Meier’s
on-going and four-volume project, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus,
concludes in his Volume 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles that: Matt 10:23 is “not
from Jesus but from the early church (p. 341); Mark 9:1 is “likewise the
utterance of a first-generation Christian prophet” (p. 344); and Mark 13:30 has
its “origin in the early church” (p. 348). Meier, therefore, answers negatively his
initial question: “Did Jesus Give a Deadline for the Kingdom?” (pp. 336-48).
Second, it is certain that Paul, while he followed Jesus’ vision of an
already present, collaborative, and non-violent eschaton, explicitly expected it to
be over in his own lifetime. When he wrote 1 Thessalo-
nians, Paul expected the coming of the Lord within his
own lifetime: “we who are alive … will be caught up in
the clouds … to meet the Lord in the air” (4:17). Later,
in 1 Corinthians, he had the same expectation: “the
impending crisis … the appointed time has grown short
… the present form of this world is passing away” (7:26-
31). Finally, as late as Romans, his position was still
unchanged: “you know what time it is, how it is now
the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation
is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the
night is far gone, the day is near” (13:11-12).
It is, in summary, uncertain that Jesus but certain
that Paul expected an imminent conclusion to the
eschaton and, of course, anyone who did so was wrong
The Last Judgment detail, by two thousand years and counting. What is vital, in
Michelangelo, 1534-1541.
any case, is that they both believed that the eschaton
had already started as non-violent and collaborative.
Violence. We repeat: one of the most extraordinary features of earliest
Christianity is not so much the expectation of a second coming of Jesus, but
rather the transformation from the first coming of a non-violent Jesus into the
second coming of a violent Jesus. That process was consummated, of course,
in the Christian Bible’s final text, the book of Revelation. But it had been going
on from the very beginning of the tradition about Jesus’ words and deeds.
One Example. When Jesus sends out his companions in Mark, he warns
them that, “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as
you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against
them” (6:11). That and no more.
But in the Q Gospel, that other source (Q or Quelle in German) besides
Mark used by both Matthew and Luke, that same piece of tradition continues

28 first light
with fearsome threats of divine punishments in which Chorazin, Capernaum,

and Bethsaida would be handled less kindly than Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and
Gomorrah (Matthew 10:14-15 & 11:20-24 = Luke 10:10-15). The non-punitive
God seen above from Jesus in Luke 5:44-45 has become punitive and violent.
(By the way, never confuse internal human consequences with external divine
punishments.)
Another Example. The return of the Son of Man is told by Mark primarily
in terms of divine consolation:
“Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds [Daniel 7:13 once
more] with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and
gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the
ends of heaven.” (13:26-27)
But in the Q Gospel it is told primarily in terms not of divine consolation, but of
divine punishment:
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the
Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being
given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood
came and destroyed all of them. Likewise, just as it was in the days of
Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and
building, but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur
from heaven and destroyed all of them—it will be like that on the day
that the Son of Man is revealed.” (Luke 17:26-30)
As a general principle, the more opposition or persecution a Christian

community experiences, the more punitive and violent is its present God
and future Jesus.
Final Example. Those are but two small examples from a multitude of
increasing threats about and punishments from divine and messianic violence
leading up to the second coming of Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation is,
of course, the great climax and absolute transformation of Jesus from non-
violence to violence in this the most consistently and relentlessly violent book
in the entire canon of the world’s canonical literature.
This is John’s vision of Jesus: “I looked, and there was a white cloud,
and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on
his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand” (Revelation 14:14). And after that
sickle has done its work:
“I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to
all the birds that fly in midheaven, ‘Come, gather for the great supper of
God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the
mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders—flesh of all, both free and
slave, both small and great.’” (Revelation 19:17-18)
Isaiah 25:6 had promised a Great Eschatological Feast: “the Lord of hosts will

Jesus as Lord 29
make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food
filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” The book of Revelation
agrees but now it is a Great Final Feast for the vultures and the scavengers.
In response to that transformation of the present and non-violent first
coming of Jesus into the imminent and violent second coming of Jesus, we
conclude with these questions:
First Question: is the Second Coming of Jesus to happen – soon?

No!
Second Question: is the Second Coming of Jesus to happen – violently?

No!
Third Question 3: Is the Second Coming of Jesus to happen – literally?

No!
The Second Coming of Christ is what would/will happen when we Christians

accept the First Coming as the only one and join in its collaborative eschaton.

8
SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT?
“It is not proper for God to pass over sin unpunished …. it is not fitting that
God should take sinful man without an atonement …. this cannot be effected
unless satisfaction be made, which none but God can make and none but man
ought to make; it is necessary for the God-man to make it.”
—Anselm, Cur Deus Homo? 1.12,19; 2.6
In 1097, Anselm of Canterbury, monk, philosopher, archbishop, exile, and

saint, wrote a two-book treatise, Cur Deus Homo? It asked: “for what cause or
necessity, in sooth, God became man, and by his own death, as we believe and
affirm, restored life to the world; when he might have done this, by means of
some other being, angelic or human, or merely by his will” (1.1). His purpose
presumed faith, of course, but bracketing it operationally, he sought an answer
“by plain reasoning” alone (Preface).
His answer is known as substitutionary atonement or vicarious satisfaction
and it is delivered as a platonic-style dialogue between Anselm and a set-up
companion named Boso. Here it is in briefest summary: (1) Human beings
had sinned and dishonored God; (2) God’s justice demanded adequate and
appropriate punishment; (3) Human beings could never adequately restore
God’s honor; (4) Only a Deus-Homo, a person at once human and divine,
could substitute for us as a vicarious victim, offering God full atonement
and satisfaction for the divine dishonor of sin.
Anselm’s experiment was not the wise interaction of revelation and
reason but rather the unwise subjection of revelation to reason. As the most
unfortunately successful offering from pre-enlightenment rationalism, Anselm’s
doctrine is not found in the New Testament but represents an incorrect
equation of sacrifice—which is definitely there—and substitution—which is
definitely not there.
Although many sincere Christians accept absolutely that equation of
sacrifice and substitution, it is profoundly incorrect on levels extending from
cross-cultural anthropology to ordinary everyday language. We look at it as
bad anthropology and bad language in this section and return to it as bad
history and bad theology in the next two sections. Notice, as we proceed,
that the problem is not with the words atonement or satisfaction but with the
words substitutionary and vicarious.
CROSS-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY. How and why—in cross-

cultural perspective—did human beings invent the slaughter of domestic—but
not feral—animals as gifts for their gods, goddesses, or God? And why do we
call what they did sacrifice, from the Latin sacrum facere, to make sacred? How
does killing an animal make it sacred rather than just dead?
Take as an example the case of the Celts, a people pushed by the
Romans to the north-western fringes of the European continent. From before

Substitutionary Atonement? 31
and after the turn of the Common Era we find them depositing iron weapons,
silver artifacts, gold ornaments, and slain human beings in bogs where land and
water merge and where humanity above interacts with divinity below. Think
especially of those human “bog bodies” with their better-than-mummified skin,
their aristocratic and well-manicured nails, and the consumed remnants of last
suppers still in their stomachs.
Was that about substitution? Were the Celts thinking: we should be
punished by destruction but, instead, let us destroy these substitutes?
Absolutely not. Forget substitution and, instead, think gift, for it is the deep
human experience of gift that grounds and founds sacrifice—for the Celts, the
Israelites, and others, cross-culturally over time and place.
On the human level, we have two main ways of maintaining or

restoring good relations between ourselves and others. The first way is the gift,
and it stretches all the way from pure gratuity—with parent and child—to
absolute reciprocity—with patron and client. Think, for example, of what you
probably do if you get a Christmas gift
from somebody to whom you did not
intend to send even a card. You probably
hasten to mail off a return gift as soon as
possible and if you could pre-date it, that
would be just fine. That is the gift as
exact and precise reciprocity.
The second way is the meal as a
special sub-form of the gift. To maintain
or restore good relations, I invite you to
a festive meal. For that occasion, pita
and hummus will hardly be enough; we
The Moschophoros (calf-bearer), Greek, dated to 570 B.C. would need a lamb or even a fatted calf.
An animal will usually be killed and
consumed in our common meal. It does not pass totally from me to you but
from me to us together. If, of course, your meat comes plastic-wrapped from a
supermarket, you might easily forget that your meal involved the shedding of
blood.
On the divine level, that human experience was presumed cross-
culturally and then elevated transcendentally.
In terms of the gift: think, for example, of the holocaust or whole-burnt
offering in Israel’s Temple. The entire animal is made sacred by being given to
God as total gift. Did anyone, could anyone, ever think: we should be slain for
our sins but let us kill the animal instead?
In terms of the meal: think, for example, of the sheep sacrificed, that is,
made sacred at Passover in Israel’s Temple. They were given to the priests to be
slain and thereby made sacred. The meat that was then given back to the offerers
had been thereby made sacred food that they eat it together with their God. We
repeat: did anyone, could anyone, ever think: we should be slain for our sins
but let us kill the animal instead?
In summary: sacrifice or sacred-making has nothing whatsoever to do
32 first light
with substitutionary atonement or vicarious satisfaction. It concerns

maintaining or restoring relationships between humanity and divinity through
the gift and the meal. The animal’s bloody death is not substitute for our own
but the necessary concomitant of gift and/or meal elevated from human to
divine interaction.
ORDINARY EVERYDAY LANGUAGE. The term sacrifice is too

necessary a word to let it be confused with and then lost to the term
substitution as if that were its inevitable concomitant and necessary
interpretation. We need the word sacrifice, for example, to describe adequately
the following act of heroism. On the late afternoon of January 13, 1982, Air
Florida 90, an inadequately de-iced and incorrectly piloted Boeing 737, took
off in a snowstorm from Washington National Airport and, half a minute later,
plunged through the 14th Street Bridge into the ice-strewn Potomac River.
Only five persons survived from the plane’s 79 passengers and crew, but
those statistics do not tell the full story.
Six survivors were holding on to the plane’s half submerged tail when a
police helicopter arrived at the scene twenty minutes after the crash. Hovering
dangerously close to the water, it started to drop lines to them. Twice, Arland
D. William, Jr., caught a line but, instead of tying it around his own waist, gave
it first to the flight attendant Kelly Duncan, and then to the severely injured Joe
Stiley. By the time all five survivors had been pulled to safety, the tail and “the
sixth passenger” had slid beneath the icy water. Williams was the only passenger
who died from drowning.
What is the proper term for his action? It is surely not enough to say:
Man Drowns. It could only be this: Man Sacrifices His Life. All human life and
death is sacred, but Williams made his death peculiarly, especially, emphatically,
profoundly sacred because he gave it up for others. It is for such acts that we
need and must retain the term sacrifice or made sacred.
SACRIFICE OF ATONEMENT FOR SIN. In itself, therefore, blood

sacrifice—whether of animals in the Old Testament or of Christ in the New
Testament—never entailed Anselm’s substitutionary atonement or vicarious
satisfaction until he inserted it a millennium later. Just think, for example, of
Paul’s comment that “our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corin-
thians 5:7). Did Jews and/or Christians think that the Exodus-Lamb, the
Passover-Lamb, or the Christ-Lamb involved a punitive death that substituted
for that due to them?
But what about Paul’s other assertions that “Christ died for our
sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3) or that Christ was “a sacrifice of atonement by his
blood” (Romans 3:25)? What, especially, of those repeated claims in the letter
to the Hebrews that Christ was, for example, “a sacrifice of atonement for the
sins of the people” (2:17) or “for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (10:12).
Or, finally, what about those statements in 1 John that Christ “is the atoning
sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole
world” (2:2) or that “this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (4:10)?
Substitutionary Atonement? 33
The problem once again, is not with sacrifice, atonement, satisfaction,

salvation or even with all of that for human sin, but only and exclusively with
any hint of substitution, with any interpretation that explains the death of Jesus
as a divine substitution for punishment due to all of us. We see in the next two
sections that substitutionary—but not sacrificial—atonement is bad history and
bad theology. We also see there that that sacrificial atonement for sin was and is
a perfectly valid theological interpretation of the execution of Jesus.
But, as epilogue to this section and prologue to the next ones, think
about that great parabolic scene at Caesarea Philippi in Mark’s gospel. Jesus
announces that, “the Son of Man must undergo great
suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests,
and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise
again” (8:31). Next, Peter rebukes him and is in turn
rebuked back (8:32-33). Then, instead of reassuring the
Twelve and the audience that he dies in substitutionary
atonement or vicarious satisfaction for their sins, “He
called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them,
‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow
me’” (8:34). That does not sound like substitution
but rather participation and collaboration.
The Deposition, Rembrandt. 1606-1669.

9
DEMONSTRATIONS IN JERUSALEM
“To whom does the land belong? ‘The land is mine; with me you are but aliens
and tenants.’” 2 Samuel 3:12 & Leviticus 25:23
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”
Psalm 24:1
As the venue of Jesus changes from the Lake to the City, from Galilee
to Jerusalem, and from the territory of Herod Antipas to that of Pontius Pilate,
these are our new guiding questions. On the one hand, if Jesus went regularly
to Jerusalem for the pilgrim feasts, what happened this time that had never
happened previously? On the other, if Jesus only went there this one time,
what was his purpose in making this pilgrimage? Did he go there in a deliberate
search for martyrdom—either
from human impulse or divine
necessity? We will, of course, be
judging Jesus’ intention externally
from what he said and did, and not
internally from any psychological
diagnostics.
We begin with our
conclusion and then present the
evidence for it. Jesus went deliberately
to the capital city of his people to make a
double and linked demonstration first
against Roman imperial control and then
against high-priestly collaboration with it.
In both cases Jesus performs a
symbolic action whose meaning
is clear against its prophetic
background and is also explained
by accompanying words—either
from the crowd or from Jesus
himself.
It is not, by the way,
necessary to demonize either Pilate
or Caiaphas, but both of them
were removed after a decade of cooperation by Rome itself. We should,
however, ponder how things might have been different if Pilate—like any other
Roman governor—had to deal, not with a high-priestly aristocrat he could hire
and fire, but with lay aristocrats within a capital city’s council whose executive
committee was always capable of communally denouncing him to Rome. Pilate
and Caiaphas played completely into one another’s administrative weaknesses.
Demonstrations in Jerusalem 35
MESSIANIC ENTRANCE INTO THE CITY. In 332 BCE Alexander

the Great, brilliant warlord and paranoid drunk, lunged southward along the
Levantine coast, gorged already with two stunning victories over the Persian
Empire at Granicus and Issus. Tyre and Gaza fell after terrible sieges and—
more wisely—Jerusalem opened its gate without a fight.
Imagine the victorious Alexander entering Jerusalem on his famous
war-horse, the black stallion Bucephalus. That, surely, is how a victorious
conqueror enters a submissive city. But recall this contrasting vision in the
prophet Zechariah as God or God’s Messiah comes down that same
Levantine coast past Tyre (9:3) and Gaza (9:5):
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble
and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off
the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the
battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River [Euphrates]
to the ends of the earth.” (9:9-10)
This is the anti-triumphal entrance enacted by Jesus on what we call Palm

Sunday. The crowd acclaims him:
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes
in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the
coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Mark
11:9-10).
That was a very deliberate
demonstration by Jesus as is shown
by the way he sends for a donkey that
was prepared and waiting for him: “The
Lord needs it and will send it back here
immediately” (Mark 11:3). The prophetic
background is left implicit in Mark but
made explicit in Matthew 21:5 with a citation from Zechariah 9:9. But there is
one fascinating aspect to Matthew’s version.
In Zechariah those lines “on a donkey // on a colt, the foal of a
donkey” are a typical example of Semitic poetic parallelism where the same
content is given twice. There is, in other words, not two but one donkey
involved. But the single “colt” of Mark 11:2,4,5,7 is changed by Matthew as
follows: “find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to
me … them … them … they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their
cloaks on them, and he sat on them” (Matthew 21:2-3,7).
It is possible that Matthew is a literalist who does not understand
poetic parallelism. It is probably much more likely, however, that he wants two
animals, a donkey with her little colt beside her, and that Jesus rides “them” in
the sense of having them both as part of his demonstration’s highly visible
symbolism. In other words, Jesus does not ride a stallion or a mare, a mule or

36 first light
a male donkey, and not even a female donkey. He rides the most unmilitary
mount imaginable: a female nursing donkey with her little colt trotting along
beside her.
Jesus comes in—with his supporters and their branches—from Bethany
on the city’s east as a living lampoon of Pilate coming in—with his soldiers and
their swords—from Caesarea on the city’s west. God and Rome, Jesus and
Pilate, nursing donkey and war horse. Quite a demonstration, especially if it
were timed so that both processions approached Jerusalem on the same day
and at the same time.
MESSIANIC DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE. The second

demonstration follows the same pattern as the preceding one. First, in both
cases Jesus comes to Jerusalem from Bethany (11:1; 11:12). Second, Mark
emphasizes that they took place on two separate days—our Sunday and
Monday of Holy Week. Third, the deliberate nature of this second
demonstration is emphasized by this: “He entered Jerusalem and went into the
temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he
went out to Bethany with the twelve” (11:11). Late evening is no time for a
demonstration, so Jesus waits for the next morning.
Matthew and Luke, by the way, those first and most careful readers of
Mark, eliminate that non-event in Mark 11:11 and replace it with the Temple-
action in Matthew 21:10-17 and the weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19:41-44.
Finally, once again, the event involves an action by Jesus and an explicit citation
from the prophets.
Mark frames the Temple-action (11:15-19) with the cursing (11:12-14)
and withering (11:20-21) of the fig tree and those frames are intended to
interpret the central event. It is, in other words, not a “cleansing,” but a
destruction of the Temple. But that requires some explanation.
In Jeremiah 7 the prophet was ordered by God to warn those
entering the Temple that worship inside did not excuse them from justice
outside. Watch the conditional ifs in his oracle:
“If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly
one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the
widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after
other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in
the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.” (7:5-7)
The threat is that, if they continue to substitute worship for justice, God will
destroy the Temple because they have turned it into a hideaway, a safe-house,
“a den of robbers” (7:11). Notice carefully that “a den” is not where robbers
rob, but where they flee for safety having robbed elsewhere. That is all quite
clear and almost costs Jeremiah his life. “Know for certain that if you put me to
death,” he says, “you will be bringing innocent blood upon yourselves and upon
this city and its inhabitants, for in truth the Lord sent me to you to speak all
these words in your ears.” (26:15)
What Jesus does is to destroy the Temple symbolically by closing down its

Demonstrations in Jerusalem 37
fiscal and sacrificial operations as he “began to drive out those who were selling
and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the
money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow
anyone to carry anything through the temple” (11:150-16). As he quotes
Jeremiah 7:11, he brings God’s threat
there symbolically to pass.
That addition of Isaiah 56:7
about the Temple as a “house of prayer
for all the nations” comes not from Jesus
historically but from Mark editorially.
Jesus, standing in the southern porticoes
of the great Court of the Gentiles, could
never have voiced that complaint, but
Mark could and did because of the war
with Rome that ended in the Temple’s
destruction.
DOUBLE DEMONSTRATION. It must be emphasized that Jesus is

not acting against Jerusalem, the Temple, the high-priesthood, the blood
sacrifices, or even the freely-paid taxes from around the Jewish diaspora (hence
money-changing) as such. It is, first, Roman imperial oppression and, second,
high-priestly collaboration with it that has rendered Jerusalem and its Temple
impure and unjust. This is not Christianity against Judaism but Christian Juda-
ism against Sadducean Judaism.
It is a similar indictment to that made against the four main first-century
high-priestly families in the Babylonian Talmud: “They are the high priests, and
their sons are treasurers, and their sons-in-law are trustees, and their servants
beat the people with staves” (Pesahim 57a). It was always possible for that
high-priestly aristocracy to have focused primarily on the Temple and left
Jerusalem’s lay aristocracy, gathered as a city council, to deal with Rome and
Pilate.
In any region of the Roman Empire, a governor like Pilate would have
had to deal with such a collective lay aristocracy. On the one hand, he could
not have hired and fired them as he could the high-priest in Jerusalem. On
the other, such a lay council could easily have indicted him to Rome for
malfeasance in office and he could not have prevented it. When all is said and
done, Caiaphas and the other high-priestly families had alternative options for
dealing with Roman governors. They never invoked them and thereby sealed
their own eventual doom.
MORE QUESTIONS. The next set of questions is immediately

obvious and they will serve as a transition to our next section. Granted the
dialectic of those planned demonstrations, did Jesus also intend to get himself
executed? Did he intend—either from human impulse, prophetic design, or
divine necessity—to die a martyr in Jerusalem? Having failed to achieve this
on Sunday, did he try again on Monday? And, if so, why did he survive until
Friday?
38 first light
One final question: Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ
began, not on Palm Sunday morning, but on Holy Thursday evening. Then,
on Good Friday, it showed screen-shots filled with Jews shouting for Jesus’
crucifixion. So if (some? many? all?) the Jews of Jerusalem (or of all times? and
places?) were against Jesus, why was it necessary to pay a traitor for information
and arrest Jesus in the darkness of night? Why not do it openly any day from
Sunday onwards? Or, as Jesus himself might have asked: Why, “when I was
with you day after day in the temple, did you not lay hands on me”? (Luke
22:53).
ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM. Jesus tells his companions exactly

what will happen in Jerusalem three times as he travels to that city. That
certainly makes it seem that he deliberately goes there to get himself killed as
a martyr.
But first, that is simply Mark’s way of emphasizing that everything that
happened was accepted—not necessarily willed—by Jesus himself. Second,
each of those prophecies is part of a complex which explains how the literal
death-resurrection of Jesus must be at least a metaphorical death-resurrection
for his companions:
First Time Second Time Third Time

Prophecy by Jesus 8:31-32a 9:31 10:33-34
Reaction by the Twelve 8:32b 9:32-34 10:35-37
Response by Jesus 8:33-9:1 9:35-37 10:38-45
Mark himself created the three prophecies within very specific contexts, and
the prophecies must never be extracted or isolated from those contexts. Still,
even granted that those complexes came not from Jesus but from Mark, the
core question still stands. Did Jesus intend to get himself killed in Jerusalem
and, if not, how did he expect to survive those demonstrations?

10
THE CROWD AND THE CRUCIFIXION
“Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us,
had condemned him to be crucified.”
—Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.63-64
“Christus … had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by
sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus.”
—Tacitus, Annals 15.44
JOSEPHUS AND TACITUS. It is as sure as historical events can ever

be that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. At the end of the first century,
the Jewish historian Josephus, and, at the start of the second century, the
Roman historian Tacitus, agreed on four details concerning that execution.
There was a movement over there in Judea. It resulted in the execution of its
founder, Jesus or Christ. What followed was not cessation but continuation.
And, more than that, what followed was expansion. You can see the core of
that double witness in the epigraphs to this section.
That emphatically does not mean that all the details of the “he said”
and “he did” or the “they said” and “they did” were intended historically rather
than parabolically in the gospel versions. But, granted the historicity of that
execution, we are constrained to work backwards to explain what led up to it.
And, in general, the broad outline of Mark’s account is the closest reconstruc-
tion presently possible. In it and by it we can see clearly how Jesus almost got
away with his twin demonstrations, even or especially at Pentecost.
THE FIRST CROWD. Mark emphasizes clearly the sequence of events
from day to day, and we do the same using our modern terms for those days.
Watch, then, what he underlines about “the crowd” from Sunday through
Wednesday of Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem:
Sunday. As we saw already, “many people” acclaimed Jesus on that
anti-triumphal entry-demonstration on Palm Sunday. That support continued
on the next three days. The “crowd” forms, as it were, an impermeable ring
around Jesus. And that is how we know he did not go to die but—despite what
had happened to John the Baptist—to get away with his double demonstration.
Monday. After the Temple-demonstration, there was a clear separation
between the high-priestly authority and the crowd: “when the chief priests and
the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid
of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching” (Mark 11:18).
Tuesday. Mark repeats that distinction three times. First, concerning
John the Baptist, “they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a
prophet” (11:32).
Second, after the parable of the Tenants: when “the chief priests, the
scribes, and the elders … realized that he had told this parable against them,
they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went
away” (11:27 & 12:12).
40 first light
Finally, Jesus challenges “the scribes” on how the Messiah can be

both David’s Son and David’s Lord at the same time, “and the large crowd
was listening to him with delight” (12:37).
Wednesday. That morning, the high-priestly authorities finally give up.
“It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The
chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and
kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the
people” (14:1-2). That, of course, is why Judas becomes so important in 14:10-
11. He promises to locate Jesus for them at night and apart from the protective
screen of the crowd.
In other words, and despite an undoubted awareness of the dangers
involved, Jesus expected the collective security of “the crowd” to suffice as his
protection—and, until Judas, he had succeeded.
Recall, by the way, that for over a hundred years Judeans had been
immigrating into Galilee so that, as archaeology has shown from material
continuities, extended families were linked between those two regions. Do not
think of Jesus all alone or even alone with his female and male Galilean
companions. He may well have been invited or even challenged to take his
message to Jerusalem (recall John 7:3-4). Furthermore, notice that—as Mark
emphasizes in 11:1,11,12 & 14:3—Jesus stays in Bethany around the Mount of
Olives out of sight of city and Temple—among his extended family, such as
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus?
THE SECOND CROWD. It is clear from Mark—the earliest of the

four New Testament accounts of Jesus’ death and the source, most probably, for
that of Matthew and Luke, and, possibly, for that of John as well—that we must
distinguish that “crowd” on Sunday through Wednesday from the one on
Friday. Watch very carefully, therefore, the sequence of verses as Mark
introduces this second crowd:
[1] “At the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for
whom they asked.
[2] Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had
committed murder during the insurrection.
[3] So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according
to his custom.
[4] Then he answered them, ‘Do you want me to release for you the
King of the Jews?’”
In the logic of that narrative: [1] there is an open Paschal amnesty; [2] Barabbas
—freedom fighter for some, murderous brigand for others—is in jail; [3] the
“crowd” come up to get him out under that amnesty; [4] Pilate tries to give
them the non-violent revolutionary Jesus instead of the violent revolutionary
Barabbas. In other words, that “crowd” come up for Barabbas and are only
against Jesus in so far as he becomes a threat to that purpose.
The term “crowd” is always relative to time, place, and situation. How
big, then, should we imagine that “crowd” before Pilate on Friday? Our best
historical judgment is that the Friday crowd was between a half dozen and a dozen

The Crowd & the Crucifixion 41
people. Our conclusion derives from three reasons: the situation of Passover, the
volatile character of Pilate, and the nature of their request.
First, Pilate transferred his pretorium from Caesarea Maritima to Jerusa-
lem for Passover, a festival in which large numbers of Jews in a confined space
celebrated deliverance from Egypt then while under Rome now. There were
two riots in the Temple during Passover, according to Josephus, one in 4 BCE
in which “three thousand” were killed (Jewish Antiquities 17.213-218 = Jewish War
2.10-13) and another around 50 CE in
which either “twenty thousand” (Jewish
Antiquities 20.105-112) or “thirty
thousand” (Jewish War 2.223-47) were
killed. Passover meant a tinder-box and
zero-toleration atmosphere for any large-
scale crowd approaching the governor.
Second, we know more about
Pilate than about any other governor in
that first-century Jewish homeland—and
all of it is bad. Josephus actually focuses
specifically on his brutal way with Pontius Pilate Inscription from Caesarea Maritima.
crowds: against two protesting but
unarmed Jewish crowds (Jewish War 169-77 = Jewish Antiquities 18.55-62) and
one—probably also unarmed—Samaritan crowd (Jewish Antiquities 18.85-89)
for which he was finally dismissed from office.
The contemporary Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, makes
Pilate a poster-boy for a bad governor. In his treatise On the Embassy to Gaius,
he describes him as “a man of very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as
well as obstinate.” He cites “his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his
rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continued
murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and
gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity ... being at all times a man of most
ferocious passions” (38.301-302).
Finally, that “crowd” was asking Pilate for the release of somebody
who was—from the Roman point of view—a murderous rebel. What if Pilate
decided to grab that crowd as, at least, sympathizers if not more of the same?
Better keep the group very small, with arms outside their cloaks, and a lot of
bowing and scraping. All in all, therefore, imagine something like a very small
delegation before Pilate that Friday. So much, then, for the history of that
execution; what about its theological interpretation?
A SACRIFICE FOR SINS? First of all, Jesus died as a martyr. His life
incarnated the non-violent justice of God, and he was executed by the violent
injustice of Rome. It took neither prophetic insight nor divine foreknowledge
for him to have known—especially after John’s fate—that his life was in
permanent danger. The integrity of his life might well involve his death. That
is not, emphatically not, the same as wanting or seeking martyrdom which can
never be done since every martyr needs a murderer.
But, even granted all that, how is Jesus’ martyrdom a sacrifice or
sacrificial atonement for the sins (or better: Sin) of the world? Can “sacrifice
42 first light
for sin(s)” be understood and should it be understood totally apart from any
form of substitutionary atonement or vicarious satisfaction for sin(s)? It can
and should, but it helps if, before we continue, you shift the focal meaning of
sins from sex unto violence.
Recall, for example, that once we left Eden our inaugural sins in
Genesis 4 were not fornication and adultery but murder and fratricide.
Thereafter, we scarcely improved at all in our capacities for sex but we have
exponentially developed—as, from Cain to Lamech, that chapter warned—our
capacities for violence.
Think about that magnificently parabolic scene in John’s gospel where
Pilate and Jesus climactically confronted one another, where the Kingdom of
Rome embodied in Pilate finally faced the Kingdom of God incarnated in Jesus.
“My kingdom,” said Jesus in the King James Version of the incident, “is not of
this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight,
that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from
hence.” (18:36) No violence ever, says Jesus, not even to release or save me.
First, the crucial difference—and the
only one mentioned—between the Kingdom
of God and the Kingdom of Rome is Jesus’
non-violence versus Pilate’s violence. Without
violence it could not hold its empire against
external and internal threats. Without violence
it could neither attain nor proclaim its mantra
of peace through victory.
Second, Jesus does not even mention
Pilate or Rome by name. The violence of
Roman imperialism was but an incarnation
at that first-century time and in that
Mediterranean place of “this world,” that is, of the violent normalcy of
civilization itself. Empires come and go, imperialism stays as the veneer of
civilization we have overlaid upon God’s creation. Human sin is the normalcy
of civilization’s violence which now threatens not only our species, but even
our world, that is, all of God’s global creation.
Inside Christian faith, Jesus died from that sin of human violence and in
atonement for that sin of human violence. His non-violent resistance incarnated
the character of God, the Kingdom of God, and the collaborative eschatology
he had announced as open to all. He gave his life crowned by that death as a
gift, that is a sacrifice (a sacrum-facere) both to God and to the world. That
religious vision offers salvation to the creation-world which “God so
loved” (John 3:16).
Outside Christian faith, human evolution has created an animal
constrained from killing its own species not by instinct and chemistry but by—
at best—law and morality. The cosmic race between justice and violence is now
approaching the finishing line. And the ultimate question is whether we are—
like the saber-toothed tiger—a magnificent but doomed species. What political
vision offers salvation from that escalatory-violence which has been, since the
Neolithic Revolution over 6,000 years ago, our global drug of global choice?

11
RESURRECTION AS RESISTANCE
“Crucified under Pontius Pilate, and buried; the third day he rose from
the dead.”
—Older form of the Apostles’ Creed & the Nicene Creed
“Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended
into hell; the third day He rose from the dead.”
—Later form of the Apostles’ Creed & the Athanasian Creed
We begin, as always, with questions from the historical matrix. When, in

the century before Jesus, a Pharisee—who affirmed it—and a Sadducee—who
denied it—argued about the general bodily resurrection, what did they mean and
what was at stake in that debate? Then, consequent on that Jewish debate about
the bodily resurrection of the dead, what did those first Christian Jews mean
when they proclaimed that God had raised Jesus from the dead?
Finally, and more basically, why and how did anyone ever conceive
of anything so absolutely counter-intuitive as a general bodily resurrection?
Immortality or reincarnation of souls can hardly be proved or disproved, but
everyone knows what happens to bodies—embalmed, entombed, or cremated,
destroyed by physical disaster, feral attack, or human violence. Why even
imagine a general bodily resurrection?
DIVINE JUSTICE AND BODILY RESURRECTION. For roughly a

thousand years before the time of Jesus, his fellow-Jews did not believe in an
afterlife. It was not because they had never imagined it—they lived next door to
Egypt—but because they considered it a typical piece of pagan impertinence, a
human usurpation of divine immortality. It was enough—more than enough—
to have ever belonged to the people of God upon this earth and after that there
was only Sheol—the tomb-as-end writ large in dust and darkness. And none of
that, let it always be remembered, stopped the majesty of the Torah, the glory
of the Prophets, or the splendor of the Psalms.
But in the 160s BCE, at the time of the Hasmonean Maccabees, the
Syrian mini-emperor, Antiochius IV Epiphanes, launched a religious
persecution to force Israel into political, social, and economic subjection to
him. Religious persecution meant martyrs, women and men who refused to
apostatize and therefore died, or who chose to apostatize and therefore lived.
Hence, a new and pressing question.
The question was not about the survival of me or even us but about the
justice of God. Furthermore, it was about God’s justice for the bodies of martyrs,
for bodies tortured, brutalized, and executed. Since God was just, theologians
argued, there would have to be a day of vindication, a day of general bodily
resurrection—especially for martyrs and for all those who had lived for justice
or died from injustice.

44 first light
It was a profound paradigm shift within contemporary Jewish faith

from those pre-Christian centuries and it was asserted—not argued but asserted
as if we had always known it. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake,” wrote Daniel 12:2-3, “some to everlasting life, and some to shame
and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of
the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and
ever.”
You can see it even more clearly when the Maccabeean martyrs assert
under torture that God will one day give them back their bodies destroyed in
persecution. For example: “He quickly put out his tongue and courageously
stretched forth his hands, and said nobly, ‘I got these from Heaven, and
because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back
again’” (2 Maccabees 7:101-11). Or, in even more purple prose, when Razis
“tore out his entrails, took them in both hands and hurled them at the crowd,
calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again” (14:46).
That was biologically crude but theologically clear: since martyrdom was about
tortured bodies, the justice of God required transfigured bodies in the future for those
disfigured bodies in the past.
Among those Jews who believed in the eschatological transformation
or Great Divine Cleanup of the World, some—such as the Pharisess—began
to proclaim that the very first order of divine business on that great future day
would be a general bodily resurrection, a public and forensic consummation
involving a vindication of all those who had died for justice and a condem-
nation of all those who had lived for injustice. There would be, as it were, a
great Peace and Reconciliation Commission for all of human history. For how
could you believe in the future justice of a God who had ignored the huge back-
log of injustice that preceded the Cleanup?
DIVINE JUSTICE AND JESUS’ RESURRECTION. It is absolutely

within that general Jewish matrix that we must understand the bodily
resurrection of Jesus. And we must distinguish clearly the terms (bodily)
exaltation from (bodily) resurrection.
Exaltation. First, that early Christian Jewish faith does not simply
announce bodily exaltation but bodily resurrection. Exaltation would have meant
that Jesus had been assumed bodily into heaven and was seated at the right
hand of God as heir apparent and Lord of the universe. It would have been all
about Jesus and would have come dangerously close to nepotism (or filiotism)
with God taking special care of God’s only Son. Any Jew would have noted
that Jesus was neither the first nor the last Jewish martyr to have died on a
Roman cross. No matter how unique he was, he was never alone, so what
about collaborative eschatology?
Resurrection. Second, then, the insistence on resurrection (and not just
exaltation) is quite clear with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15—and remember that he
was a Pharisaic Jew before he ever became a Christian Jew. Notice, for example,
that Paul never suggests—nor could he within the contemporary meaning of
the word—that resurrection is a personal privilege for Jesus alone. Instead he
argues in both directions: if there is no general-bodily-resurrection, there is no

Resurrection as Resistance 45
Jesus-bodily-resurrection; if there is no Jesus-bodily-resurrection, there is no

general-bodily-resurrection:
“If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you
say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of
the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been
raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been
in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we
testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is
true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then
Christ has not been raised.” (15:12-16)
Paul cannot imagine a Jesus-resurrection without a general-resurrection

because—and here is the crucial point—that Jesus-resurrection is the start of the
general-resurrection. It was never about Jesus’ special privilege, but about God’s
general justice.
In other words, we now have three different theological ways of
proclaiming the already-presence of God’s Great Cleanup of the World—and
John would represent a fourth one:
From Jesus: the Kingdom of God is already here

From Mark: the Son of Man is already present
From Paul: the general bodily resurrection is already begun
From John: the Logos of God is already incarnate
But, of course, all of that is still collaborative, still an interaction between the
divine and the human. It is, says God, already only if you are all ready.
RESURRECTION WEST AND RESURRECTION EAST. We can now

assess, within Christianity, how our western and individualistic understanding
of Jesus’ resurrection differs from the
eastern and corporate interpretation.
And what is at stake for us in that
difference. Go to Google, for
example, click on Images, and put in
“Resurrection of Christ” in the Search
slot. Notice that some of the images
show Christ coming out of the tomb
in splendid isolation while others show
him leading (or, better, yanking) others
with him.
In the western tradition, in,
say, the Averoldi Polyptych by Titian
in Brescia, Italy (1520-22) or the
Moretus Triptych by Rubens in
Antwerp, Belgium (1611-12), the
resurrection shows Jesus arising in Averoldi Polyptych, Titian, Brescia, Italy, 1520-22.

46 first light
well-muscled magnificence. Also, however, within that same western tradition,

we have corporate images of Jesus standing atop the shattered gates of Hades
and, with Satan cowering in the background, leading out those just and
righteous ones who had died before him. You can see that image, for example,
from Fra Angelico in Cell 31 of the San Marco Dominican Priory, now a
museum, in Florence, Italy.
Here, however, is the point. We call that image either the “Descent
into Hell” or the “Harrowing (or Despoiling) of Hell” and, as you can see in
the Creeds at the start of this section, we separate it from the resurrection itself.
It is, as it were, something to keep Jesus busy on Holy Saturday, in between the
horror of Good Friday and the triumph of Easter Sunday.
In the eastern tradition of resurrection theology those events have
never been separated. What we call the “Harrowing of Hell,” it calls simply
“The Resurrection.” That is exactly the Greek term written above those
corporate images in frescoes from the
Dark Church in Cappadocia to the
Holy Savior in Chora Church (now
the Kariye Museum) in Istanbul.
In that latter huge and most
magnificent vision a beautifully-robed
Christ yanks Adam and Eve from their
tombs and, along with them, arise large
groups led by Abel, the first martyr of
the Old Testament on one side, and by
John the Baptist, the first martyr of the
New Testament, on the other. This is
The Resurrection, Chora Monastery (Kariye Museum),
not some separate event before the Istanbul, Turkey.
individual resurrection of Jesus but the
corporate resurrection of Christ. And that, and that alone, is an adequate
representation of resurrection as divine justice, as the first act of collaborative
eschatology, as establishing justice for the past before promising it for the
future.
Finally, there is this striking example. A processional banner hangs
inside the tiny traditional site of the tomb of Jesus in the rotunda of the Holy
Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem. It is of red cloth with CHRISTOS top to
bottom on one side and ANESTH top to bottom on the other: “Christ is risen”
it proclaims on either side of a central diamond-shaped image.
In it a robed Christ stands on the shattered gates of Hades with broken
locks and bars all around him. In his left hand he holds a slender cross and
with his right he reaches out towards four figures: Adam, Eve, Abel (with staff)
and John the Baptist (with halo). It is, as it were, that giant image from Istanbul
condensed to a small miniature in Jerusalem.
LITERAL OR METAPHORICAL RESURRECTION? Was that entire

trajectory—from non-Christian Judaism to Christian Judaism—understood
literally or metaphorically? We recognize immediately the difficulty in
answering—or even knowing how one could answer—that question within a

Resurrection as Resistance 47
pre-Enlightenment world where transcendental wonders were a culturally

accepted part of ordinary expectation and normal experience.
On the one hand, that western and individual resurrection can be taken
literally far more easily than can the eastern and corporate one. In the former
case there would be only one empty tomb near Jerusalem, in the latter case
there would have been hundreds, thousands, or, if “Adam and Eve” were
also metaphorical figures, even millions.
On the other hand, if Jesus’ resurrection is taken literally, then,
presumably, so will our own future resurrection be literal; but if it is taken
metaphorically, then ours will also be metaphorical. But whether we take it
literally or metaphorically, we are still called in either interpretation to
collaboration with it—called, as Paul would say, to lead resurrected lives here
upon this earth. In fact, if we do not, Jesus can be imagined as “exalted” but
certainly not as “resurrected.” All those visions of an already-here eschaton
are provisionally dependent on a collaborative interaction between God and
ourselves.
Finally, never think of the justice of God as a matter of rewards and
punishments from without. God’s justice is about internally inevitable consequences
and never—despite our repeated insistence—about externally administered
punishments. If, for example, you jump from the 20th floor, do not say that God
hit you with the sidewalk as a punishment. Or, as Psalm 82:7 puts it more
globally: “all the foundations of the earth are shaken” by human injustice to
one another. But, as that eastern tradition of Jesus’ corporate resurrection has
always proclaimed, God’s justice and our collaboration in the Great Divine
Cleanup of the World demand that we look both backward to the past as well
as forward to the future.

12
AMERICA AS THE NEW ROME
Jesus Christ to the apostle Peter: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who
take the sword will perish by the sword.” Matthew 26:52
Jesus-Aslan to the youngster Peter: “You have forgotten to clean your sword …
whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword.”
—C. S. Lewis, Narnia 2.132-33
For over a century and a half we have heard two claims about the
manifest destiny of our country. They have been repeatedly emphasized—by
liberals sadly and conservatives gladly—in the last two decades.
AMERICA AS ROME. First, America is an Empire. That claim was given

its classical expression by Walt Whitman in his poem, “The Errand Bearers,”
first published in The New York Times on Wednesday, June 27, 1860:
“I chant the new empire, greater than any before—As in a vision it

comes to me;
I chant America the Mistress—I chant a greater supremacy ….
And you, Libertad of the world!
You shall sit in the middle, thousands and thousands of years ….
The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,
The ring is circled, the journey is done.”
You will notice how, in those final two lines, imperial claims are consummated
in eschatological language.
Second, America is the New Roman
Empire. This came around that same
time. In his 1858 book, The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Sr., wrote that: “We are the Romans of
the modern world—the great assimilating
people. Conflicts and conquests are of
course necessary accidents with us, as with
our prototypes.” Within a few years both
those writers were searching battlefields for,
respectively, a wounded brother and a
wounded son, but even a terrible American U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.
Civil War confirmed that Roman analogy
since they too had one on their path to imperial power.
As Americans, therefore, we have come today to face the fact that we
have moved steadily across our centuries from a continental through a hemispheric

America as the New Rome 49
to a global imperialism. In his Henry M. Jackson Memorial Lecture in

Washington, D.C. on September 18, 1990, Charles Krauthammer said that,
“People are now coming out of the closet on the word ‘empire.’ The fact is no
country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and
militarily [as America] in the history of the world since the Roman Empire.”
As American Christians, then, we are confronted today with this
question: Since the Old Roman Empire crucified our Lord, how must we live in
the New Roman Empire? That is a profound enough question to face, but there
is an even more profound one advancing
behind it. What happens when our very
Christianity is used to defend and support
our American imperialism?
Maybe, for example, God was so
clearly and emphatically against empires—
from Egyptian through Assyrian, Babylon
and Persian, to Macedonian—in the Old
Testament because they were pagan and not
Jewish? Maybe God was against the Roman
Empire in the New Testament because it was
pagan and not Christian? What if God wants
a Religious Empire? Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David, 1784.
IS GOD VIOLENT? It as at this point that we glimpse the ultimate

question that has been lurking below all the sections of this Reader: Is God
violent? That is surely our most basic question as Christians. For, if God is
violent, if God’s final solution to the problem of evil is to punish and kill the
evil-doer, then what is wrong with us operating on that same principle? Indeed,
a collaborative eschatology with a violent God necessarily arrives—as did the
7-book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, and the 12-book series,
Left Behind, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins—at the conclusion that,
respectively, young Christians or adult Christians will participate violently in
the Second Coming of a violent Jesus empowered by a violent God. Surely
that, all of that, is the sin against the Holy Spirit.
Hence, that fundamental question presses above all others for us as
Christians. Is God violent? And again, we repeat, do not confuse that question
with this one: are there inbuilt sanctions for injustice and violence, war and
imperialism? Is the God of our Christian Bible violent or not?
There are, from Genesis to Revelation, from one end of the Christian
Bible to the other, two visions of God struggling with one another. Think, for
one example, of the Divine Cleanup of the World imagined as a Great Final
Feast for all the nations on Mount Zion or as a Great Final Battle against all
the nations near Mount Megiddo (Armageddon). Or think, even more precisely,
of that vision of eschatological non-violence in the prophets Isaiah and Micah
when “in days to come ... they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks” (2:4=4:3) and compare it with the alternative one of
eschatological violence in Joel when “in those days and at that time …. beat
your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears” (3:10).

50 first light
Which is it: a violent or a non-violent God? Or is it a transcendental

cocktail that you create with so many parts of each and mix to taste? Both
visions are there and they extend from one end of the Christian Bible to the
other. That ancient lie that God was violent in the Old
Testament but non-violent in the New Testament, by
the way, will only work for those who have never read
either. So how do we as Christians decide between
those divergent biblical visions of our God?
Once the question is formulated that way, the
answer is immediately obvious. Which vision of God is
embodied in the historical Jesus? If Jesus is the incarnate
image of our God, does he incarnate violence or
non-violence? Even Pilate, by the way, got the correct
answer to that question. But our Christian Bible is
therefore a rather unique book. It contains a story
whose meaning is in the middle not the end, whose
climax is in the center not the conclusion. Jesus as Lord
is Lord even of the Book that proclaims his Lordship.
Think about this image. In the apses and domes
of countless churches within eastern Christianity Jesus
appears as the Pantocrator, the All-Powerful One—at a
time, by the way, when the emperor was termed the Autocrator, the Self-
Powerful One. Jesus is depicted with his right hand raised in the traditional
Christian teaching gesture with its fingers separated into a twosome for the two
natures in Christ and a threesome for the three persons in the Trinity. In his
right hand he holds a book—be it the gospel, the New Testament, or the Bible.
But here is the point: he is never shown reading that book. It is usually closed and
clasped or, if open, it is open towards the viewer. God so loved the world that
he sent us, not an Inscription but an Incarnation, not a Book but a Person.
FOUR BASIC QUESTIONS. All the questions cited so far are based in
these foundational ones which are a circular sequence in that the last one turns
back to the first one as a theological matrix.
What is the character of your God? This picks up, of course, where
we have just ended. Whether you imagine God anthropomorphically or not,
what is the character of your vision? Above all else: is your God punitive? How
do you distinguish internally-derived human consequence from externally-
appointed divine punishments? Is your God just and, if so, violently just or
non-violently just? Can even God be violent and just at the same time?
What is the content of your faith? How is Jesus the embodied image
or incarnational revelation of your God? Is Jesus punitive and violent—past,
present, future? If you confess, for example, that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is
not, what exactly is the content-difference between those titles? How exactly
is creation different from civilization, the-world from this-world, the
eschatological kingdom from an imperial kingdom? No title without content!
What is the purpose of your worship? Does God need your praise
and adulation? Is worship for us, for our petitions, our needs, our hopes? Is

America as the New Rome 51
there something even more basic than holding our hearts within the shadow of
transcendence? Is it about empowerment? Are we like lap-top computers that
need regularly if not permanently to be plugged into a power-source? Plugged
in, that is, to the very character or spirit of that just and non-violent God?
What is the function of your community? Why do you not worship
in individual privacy or even strictly within your family? You could have a
God-room like you have a living, dining, or bath-room at home? Imagine asking
Jesus or Paul that question. We organize, they would stutter back at us in
disbelief, because what we oppose is already organized. Cooperative
eschatology must be at least as organized as its imperial alternative—but, of
course, organized very, very differently.
Think, in summary, of that great biblical parable in which Jacob
wrestled with God through the night and, even if not vanquished, was left
limping into the dawn. That is the parable of our Christian Bible itself. In it the
radicality of God struggles unceasingly with the normalcy of civilization in a
contest where a draw and a limp would be more than enough. Think about it.
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. This video presentation was

intended primarily for discussions in community. Its purpose is not just to
change individuals but change individuals-in-community. Its hope is to make
each church a beachhead of collaborative eschatology in union with a God of
non-violent justice even or especially against a world of violent injustice.
The first imperative, then, is to decide individually and communally
before God in Christ—that is, in study and prayer, meditation and
contemplation, liturgy and worship, theory and practice—whether the vision
it presents is true to that God and that Christ. The second imperative is to
incarnate the spirit of that vision until it becomes one’s very own. This is what
we might call—in honor of Jesus’ great apostle Paul—entering the Body of
Christ or receiving the Spirit of Christ. And, although that process may be a
slow and steady progress across a lifetime, think of it on the analogy of these
more-or-less instant operations.
From modern technology, imagine your computer screen offers you the
free download of a new operating system for your computer. You open the
FAQs and write: thank you very much but, if I download, will I still be able to
access everything now on my hard drive? Oh yes, of course, comes the answer,
but it will all appear completely different to you. Do you or do you not hit the
OK?
From modern medicine, imagine a heart-transplant in which your old
heart is completely gone and a new heart has replaced it. If there is no rejection
or at least none that is beyond control, that new heart now empowers your life.
Think then, on that analogy, of a spirit-transplant or a character-transplant in
which your old spirit or character is removed and replaced by another one.
What if Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., had offered you a free spirit-transplant at
the height of the Civil Rights Movement. You knew what it might do to you—
in terms of trouble, jail, or even death. Would you have taken it? Would you
take, since it is freely offered to all by God, a Spirit-transplant from Jesus?

EPILOGUE
A BI-LINGUAL INTEGRITY
“From the first chipped stone to the first smelted iron took nearly three
million years; from the first iron to the hydrogen bomb took only 3,000
years …The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall
by what we do, and don’t do, now.”
—Ronald Wright, 2004
It is now necessary for us Christians—most especially in America—to

become bi-lingual. On the one hand, we should know completely and
internalize fully our own Christian faith and be able to articulate it as sincerely
and clearly as possible. On the other, when we talk in the public square we must
also be able—with absolute integrity and complete fidelity—to translate that
intra-Christian language into extra-Christian challenge.
We must, when necessary and where appropriate, be able to translate
our Christian vision into the language of public discourse—whether you call
that public language ecumenical or secular or simply American. Just think of
these two examples.
From Thomas Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence (1776)
through Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address (1863) to Martin Luther
King, Jr., in his “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), we
have declared that “all men are created equal.” It would
almost seem that it is only once each hundred years that
we famously hear that all human beings are created
equal by God. What if we tried to make that the actual
basis of foreign policies and domestic programs?
Or, again, this example: We ask our children on
school-day mornings to pledge allegiance (from 1892)
to a flag and a country that promises “liberty and justice
for all” (and not just all “men,” by the way). Do you
actually believe that pledge and, if we do, what are we
doing about it?
The phrase “under God” was later added
(1954) and that allows the contemporary debate on
that phrase to avoid—prudently and wisely?—any
concentration on “liberty and justice for all.” But if
Abraham Lincoln Memorial,
Washington, D.C. we—or any other nation or all the world—ever
established “liberty and justice” for all upon this earth
we would be, whether we liked it or not, “under God” as transcendence has
been understood across the world’s great religions.
There is no claim here that we are a “Christian nation.” The claim is
that we Christians must be bi-lingual because: first, our Christian faith speaks—
as indeed do all the great religions of the world—to humanity’s deepest hopes

53
and yearnings for an end to oppression and injustice, war and violence; and
that, second, our American destiny points in that same direction since the Con-
stitution’s Preamble sets out to “establish Justice.”
In summary and conclusion, then, as Christians and as Americans, we
have changed that ancient blessing, “Go in Peace,” to this amended version:
“Go in Justice, and Peace will take care of Itself.”
Jefferson Bible, c. 1820, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. Near the end of
his life, Thomas Jefferson clipped verses from the New Testament to create this
work, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth."
NOTES
Arthur Kleinman, Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. An

Exploration of the Border-land between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry.
Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Pres, 1980. Page 41.
Peter Brown, Protocol of the Forty-Second Colloquy of the Center for
Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture. Berkeley, CA, 1982.
Page 23.
Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress. The 2004 Massey Lectures
co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press, & Massey College in the
University of Toronto. Toronto, Canada: Anansi Press, 2004.

54 first light
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Cover: Sunrise over the Sea of Galilee, photo by David Ice; pg. i: Magdalene, Georges de la
Tour, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 2
Alexander the Great defeating Darius (detail) from a Pompeii mosaic, Naples Archeological
Museum, Italy, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 5: Dead Sea Scroll fragments from the Book
of Daniel, Israel, photo by John Trever; pg. 7: Augustus statue, Thessalonica, photo by Jeff
Procter-Murphy; pg. 8: Ephesus inscription, photo by David Ice; The Holy Family,
Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 10: The Baptism of Jesus,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 11: Ecce Agnus
Dei, Alte Pinakothek in Munich, Germany, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 12: First-Century
Capernaum, private collection, photo by Jonathan Reed; pg.13: Healing of the Paralytic, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 15: The Healing of the Blind
Man, Alte Meister Gallerie, Dresden, Germany, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 17: First-
Century Caesarea Maritima, private collection, photo by Jonathan Reed; pg. 18: Temple court,
Jerusalem model, Israel, photo by David Ice; pg. 20: The Mary Boat, Yigal Allon Museum,
Kibbutz Ginnosar, photo by David Ice; pg. 23: Mosaic, Church of the Loaves and Fishes,
Tabgha, photo by David Ice; pg. 24: Christ in Emmaus, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany, photo
by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pgs. 26 & 27: The Last Judgment (details), Sistine Chapel, Vatican City,
photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 31: Man Carrying a Calf on his Shoulders, Acropolis Museum,
Athens, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 33: The Deposition, Alte Pinakothek in Munich,
Germany, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 35: Palm Sunday Tapestry, Vatican Museum, Vatican
City, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 37: Christ Driving out the Moneychangers, Gemaldegalerie,
Berlin, Germany, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 41: Pontius Pilate inscription from
Caesarea Maritima, photo by David Ice; pg. 42: Christ before Pilate, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin,
Germany, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 45: Averoldi Polyptych, SS. Nazaro e Celso, Brescia,
Italy, Scala/Art Resource, NY; pg. 46: The Resurrection, Kariye Museum, Istanbul, photo by Sarah
Crossan; pg. 48: U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg.
49: Oath of the Horatii, Louvre, Paris, France, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 50: Pantocrator,
Monte Cassino, Italy, photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 52: Abraham Lincoln Memorial,
Washington, D.C., photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy; pg. 53: Jefferson Bible, Smithsonian Institute,
Washington, D.C., photo by Jeff Procter-Murphy.
Maps on Pages 12 & 34 by Anthony Rayl.

55
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Dominic Crossan is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at De Paul
University. Widely regarded as the premier historical Jesus scholar in the world,
Dr. Crossan has authored over 20 books, including God and Empire: Jesus Against
Rome, Then and Now, The Historical Jesus and Excavating Jesus, co-written with
archeologist Jonathan Reed, and The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus'
Final Week in Jerusalem and The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About
Jesus' Birth co-written with Marcus Borg.
A Roman Catholic monk for nineteen
years and a priest for twelve years,
Dr. Crossan is a former co-chair of
The Jesus Seminar and chair of the
Historical Jesus Section of the Society
of Biblical Literature.

56 first light
Additional Resources From Living the Questions:

Living the Questions 2.0 : An Introduction to Progressive Christianity
LtQ2 is the completely revised and expanded version of Living the Questions, the popular video &
internet-based small group exploration of progressive Christianity featuring 30 premier religious
voices of our day. An open-minded alternative to studies that attempt to give participants all
the answers, LtQ2 strives to create an environment where participants can interact with one
another in exploring an emerging Christianity. Comprised of 21 sessions, LtQ2 may be offered
in sequence or as three independent flights of seven units each: Invitation to Journey, Reclaiming the
World and Call to Covenant. LtQ2 includes downloadable and printable leader and participant
guides with weekly readings and discussion questions. Each session may be conducted in one
hour or expanded to include a meal and personal sharing. The 20-minute video segments
include conversations with leading voices of faith, sermon and lecture clips, digital stories
illustrating aspects of an evolving faith, and concrete spiritual practices and disciplines. The
flexible DVD and resource materials can be used in variety of class, retreat, and other formats.
Invitation to Journey
1. An Invitation to Journey
2. Taking the Bible Seriously
3. Thinking Theologically
4. Stories of Creation
5. Lives of Jesus
6. A Passion for Christ: Paul
7. Out into the World: Challenges Facing Progressive Christians
Reclaiming the World

8. Restoring Relationships
9. The Prophetic Jesus
10. Evil, Suffering & A God of Love
11. The Myth of Redemptive Violence
12. Practicing Resurrection
13. Debunking the Rapture
14. Reclaiming the World
Call to Covenant
15. A Kingdom without Walls
16. Social Justice: Realizing God’s Vision
17. Incarnation: Divinely Human
18. Prayer: Intimacy with God
19. Compassion: The Heart of Jesus’ Ministry
20. Creative Transformation
21. Embracing Mystery
Dream.Think.Do.Be.
Designed for college age/young adults, Dream.Think.Do.Be. is a four-volume overview of
progressive Christianity featuring the voices and insights of many of today’s religious leaders.
Each volume contains five sessions that consider the primary themes of Christianity. Each
session includes a 20-minute video with guided discussion questions. The core message, dogma,
and practices of the Christian faith are re-evaluated with a love for and relationship with
scripture at its center. Each volume is self-standing; together they form a foundation for young
progressive Christians in today’s world.

57
Saving Jesus
Join Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Matthew Fox, Amy-Jill Levine, James Forbes and a
host of other leading religious voices for a conversation around the relevance of Jesus Christ
for today. The 12-session program includes a printable participant reader and a facilitator guide
with discussion questions. The basic format for each weekly 1 - 1½ hour session includes
conversation around the readings, a 20-minute video segment and guided discussion.
Eclipsing Empire
A 12-session series on Paul, Rome, and the Kingdom of God. Join preeminent New Testament
scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan on location in Turkey as they trace the
Apostle Paul’s footsteps throughout the Roman Empire. This 12-session DVD and web-based
study explores fresh insights into Paul’s message of the Kingdom of God, its challenge to
Roman imperial theology, and the apostle’s radical relevance for today. Participant Guide
written by John Dominic Crossan. Filmed in High-Definition across Turkey, Greece, and Italy.
Countering Pharaoh's Production-Consumption Society Today

A study for progressive Christians featuring Walter Brueggemann. Ideal for Advent and Lent,
flexible in format, Countering Pharaoh can be conducted over four or five sessions. The program
includes a two-hour DVD and a CD-Rom with printable written materials. Sessions: The Way
Out, The Decalogue, Countering Caesar, An Act of Imagination, and On Not Doing God Any Favors.
Questioning Capital Punishment with Sr. Helen Prejean

A five-session DVD study featuring one of the world's leading authorities and outspoken critics
of state-sponsored execution. Study themes include: Crossing the Breach, What in God’s Name?, A
Change of Heart, Radical Forgiveness, and Next Steps.
Tex Mix
Stories of Earthy Mysticism with Tex Sample. You've heard of tall tales—Tex definitely has a
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(including ten stories from LtQ2). The DVD also includes Tex 's introduction to storytelling
and a downloadable guide with points to ponder, related Scripture texts and discussion
questions. A bonus DVD includes mpegs of Tex's stories licensed for use in PowerPoint or
Keynote slideshows to enhance worship and sermons.
Matt & Lucy's Version Births Christmas Pageant

Little did Matt & Lucy know when they agreed to help out with this year's Christmas pageant
that the director would give them each a different script and leave them to work out their differ-
ences...” Matt & Lucy's Version Births Christmas Pageant can be as simple or elaborate as you
decide. There are four speaking parts for youth and eight delightfully singable songs for young
children (aged 3 and up). The LtQ Equip-kit includes two CDs: a TRAX music CD containing
separate instrumental and vocal tracks of the eight musical selections, and a CD-ROM with
printable pdf files of the script, production notes and lead sheets (arrangements) of the songs.
Written by Rev. Dot Saunders-Perez, with original music by Janet Allyn.

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PARTICIPANT READER BY

John Dominic Crossan

1. The Matrix of Jesus

2. The Advent of the Messiah

3. God’s Great Cleanup

5. The Lake as the World

10. The Crowd & the Crucifixion

11. Resurrection as Resistance

12. America as the New Rome

“Live the questions now, perhaps you will then gradually,

Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

THE CHALLENGE OF MATRIX. Jesus was a Jew within Judaism within

BEAST-EMPIRES OUT OF CHAOS. After the death of Alexander the

Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

Daniel 7 is set within a Babylonian Empire about to fall before the

AN END TO IMPERIALISM. In heaven above, God, the Ancient or

Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

ESCHATON AND APOCALYPSE. What type of faith generated and

Israel’s faith was in a God of distributive justice who created and

Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

A PARADIGM SHIFT WITHIN JEWISH MESSIANISM. In his 1995

constitutes the common core of Jewish messianism around the turn of

Although the claim that he [Jesus of Nazareth] is the Davidic messiah is

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THE DAVIDIC MESSIAH IS BORN. Both our Christmas stories agree

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The Holy Family, Girolamo Marchesi 1490-1531.

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THE BAPTISM MOVEMENT OF JOHN. It will vastly help what

THE KINGDOM MOVEMENT OF JESUS. As we saw in the epigraph,

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Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

LOCATION AS DESTINY. Jesus’ proclamation of God’s Great

First-Century Capernaum, Balage Balogh, 2000.

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“In the straitened Mediterranean, the Kingdom of Heaven had to have

SENDING. The most important texts are the

Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

staff” (in Matthew 10:9-10a).

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HEALING. Is healing the same as curing? If yes, why do we say after a

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Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.

The coordinates of matrix are historical time and geographical place.

THE GENERATION BEFORE JESUS. During that period Herod the

First-Century Caesarea Maritima, Balage Balogh, 2000.

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When the Romans destroyed this

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THE GENERATION OF JESUS. In other words, the imperial program

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So it came to pass that, having multiplied loaves in the valleys around

THE GALILEE BOAT AS SYMBOL. In 1986 a drought lowered the

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THE SOWER AS PARADIGM. The parable of the Sower is addressed to

Those orally delivered parables demanded and would have received

THE VINEYARD WORKERS. Imagine, for example, how that process

ORAL LURE & ORAL DEBATE. Commenting on the parables of

PARABLES ABOUT JESUS. We have been speaking about parables by

Copyright © 2009 www.livingthequestions.com, LLC. All rights reserved.