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The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus & Paul Ignited a Revolution & Transformed the Ancient World
Set against the backdrop of Roman imperial history, The Message and the Kingdom demonstrates how the quest for the kingdom of God by Jesus, Paul, and the earliest churches should be understood as both a spiritual journey and a political response to the "mindless acts of violence, inequality, and injustice that characterized the kings of men." Horsley and Silberman reveal how the message of Jesus and Paul was profoundly shaped by the history of their time as well as the social conditions of the congregations to whom they preached.
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 1997
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February 13, 2020
Some of us who inhabit the world of the church distinguish between "Jesus Christians" (frequently Roman Catholics, people in "just peace" churches, other activist Jesus emulators), who follow the Jesus of the synoptic gospels and the Didache, and "Pauline Christians" (usually stereotyped as Protestants in church bodies of continental European Reformation heritage), who love to theologize the Pauline and deutero-Pauline epistles.
Scholars Horsley and Silberman offer economic, political, social, cultural, and sometimes religious considerations of Jesus of Nazareth's influences in a turbulent Ancient Near East during his time on earth and after his death; they also bring an overview of Paul/Saul of Tarsus' varied influences on early Jesus-followers. They caution us popular assumptions and shorthands aren't always so!
It wasn't all about peasant revolts, rural poverty, urban exploitation, or even oppressive empire, but for most groups, following Jesus or The Way of Jesus began as a hopeful attempt to regain some control over an existence slammed by dehumanizing religious and/or imperial injustices. The authors describe the why and the where of texts and trajectories of Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke-Acts; they remind us St Paul was far from a "this is how it needs to be / one size fits every group" teacher and missionary. (We don't need another proof-text...) "Within seventy-five years of the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem, the signs of the Kingdom were unmistakable wherever the assemblies of the saints gathered. The most important rituals of every Christian's life--baptism, Lord's Supper, and collections--seemed to gird the assemblies scattered through the eastern Mediterranean..." [page 224] Sacraments and works of mercy are central to today's church assemblies, also.
The Message and the Kingdom is solidly scholarly, yet reads like listening to an interesting lecture series that respects those with an academic bent, doesn't confuse or demean those without. I love the multicolored perspectives woven through the chapters! "Jesus Christians" tend to emphasize Jesus the teacher, healer, transformer of society, and prophet; "Pauline Christians" love to dig into theology, Christology, eschatology, sin, death, and redemption. This book works well for both groups, and though neither the ecclesiastical nor the spiritual dominates the book, Silberman and Horsley don't exclude them, either! End matter includes narrative bibliographical notes on each chapter, a big bibliography, and an index.
Originally reviewed in February 2013
Scholars Horsley and Silberman offer economic, political, social, cultural, and sometimes religious considerations of Jesus of Nazareth's influences in a turbulent Ancient Near East during his time on earth and after his death; they also bring an overview of Paul/Saul of Tarsus' varied influences on early Jesus-followers. They caution us popular assumptions and shorthands aren't always so!
It wasn't all about peasant revolts, rural poverty, urban exploitation, or even oppressive empire, but for most groups, following Jesus or The Way of Jesus began as a hopeful attempt to regain some control over an existence slammed by dehumanizing religious and/or imperial injustices. The authors describe the why and the where of texts and trajectories of Mark, Matthew, John, and Luke-Acts; they remind us St Paul was far from a "this is how it needs to be / one size fits every group" teacher and missionary. (We don't need another proof-text...) "Within seventy-five years of the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem, the signs of the Kingdom were unmistakable wherever the assemblies of the saints gathered. The most important rituals of every Christian's life--baptism, Lord's Supper, and collections--seemed to gird the assemblies scattered through the eastern Mediterranean..." [page 224] Sacraments and works of mercy are central to today's church assemblies, also.
The Message and the Kingdom is solidly scholarly, yet reads like listening to an interesting lecture series that respects those with an academic bent, doesn't confuse or demean those without. I love the multicolored perspectives woven through the chapters! "Jesus Christians" tend to emphasize Jesus the teacher, healer, transformer of society, and prophet; "Pauline Christians" love to dig into theology, Christology, eschatology, sin, death, and redemption. This book works well for both groups, and though neither the ecclesiastical nor the spiritual dominates the book, Silberman and Horsley don't exclude them, either! End matter includes narrative bibliographical notes on each chapter, a big bibliography, and an index.
Originally reviewed in February 2013
May 29, 2024
AN INTERPRETATION OF CHRISTIANITY AS “BOTH A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY AND A POLITICAL RESPONSE”
The authors wrote in the Prologue to this 1997 book, “This book will attempt to reconstruct the social history of early Christianity from a wide variety of newly available evidence---drawn from recent studies of ancient Roman culture and from archaeological discoveries… in utilizing new sources of information to trace the earthly origins of Christianity, we will attempt to show that the world of John the Baptist, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the earliest Christians was not only a spiritual battleground but also a landscape of far-reaching economic dislocation, cultural conflict, and political change.” (Pg. 2) Later, they add, “we will attempt to show that the continuing question for the Kingdom of God by Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians should be understood as BOTH a spiritual journey and an evolving political response to the mindless acts of violence, inequality, and injustice that characterized---and still all too often characterize---the kingdoms of men.” (Pg. 7)
They observe, “Early Christianity was, in fact, a down-to-earth response to an oppressive ideology of earthly power that had recently swept across continents, disrupted economies, and overturned ancient traditions… At the beginning of the second century C.E…. a vast and growing public was being taught to cooperate in the construction of a new global system of economics, culture, and civil administration, in which the figure of the emperor had begun to take on the qualities of a single supreme god. THAT was why the early Christians were viewed as so subversive, for anyone who refused to pay homage to Caesar was both atheist and traitor.” (Pg. 10)
They suggest, “The massive uprising of the people of Israel after the death of Herod the Great would have left a deep impression on Jesus---and on all the members of his generation---wherever they lived. The dashed hopes of redemption … seem to have intensified the faith of many of the farmers and townspeople of the Land of Israel in the reality and inevitability of the Kingdom of God. It forced them to seek other, creative ways to respond to Rome… And in that respect, the gospels of Matthew and Luke are quite right in reporting that a unique heavenly vision arose among the people of Israel at the time of Jesus’ birth… In fact, the roots of Christianity can be traced to a much more down-to-earth occurrence: the sudden elevation to power in Galilee of ANOTHER ambitious Herodian prince who believed that he could be---and should be---king of the Jews.” (Pg. 21)
They assert, “In flocking out to see John the Baptist… peasants and townspeople … were also show how the present reality of suffering and dispossession might be changed by their own actions and moral resolve. John’s direct attack on the dynastic maneuvers of Antipas came in the course of his continuing campaign against the injustice and arrogance of Herodian society… and in acting out their commitment to oppose those violations through the ritual of John’s baptism, John’s followers were already in open revolt… A growing number of the People of Israel were convinced that the Kingdom of God was indeed at hand and that the sufferings of the righteous would soon come to an end.” (Pg. 39)
They note, “For those who followed Jesus, the time for the Renewal of Israel… had finally come. Yet the hard, historical consequences of Jesus’ decision to travel to Jerusalem would be … [that] Jesus clearly underestimated the power of another pharaoh… of the great city of Rome… As a result, the outcome of Jesus’ decision to mount a defiant prophetic demonstration in Jerusalem, before the eyes of the entire Jewish people, would be unexpectedly violent. And that tragic, violent outcome would lead at least some of Jesus’ original Galilean followers down the path to Christianity.” (Pg. 64)
They argue, “[Jesus] gave voice to the frustrations of every faithful Israelite who wondered if the rebuilt Herodian Temple… was really the true House of the God of Israel… few would have mistaken what he was doing. As he smashed tables and scattered silver coins across the pavement, the voice of God seemed to possess him with a peasant prophet’s fiery oracle that the Kingdom of God was at hand.” (Pg. 78)
They state, “all of a sudden, comes a peasant prophet … making his way into the Temple plaza with his followers overturning tables and destroying Temple property. No civil or ecclesiastical authority… would ever tolerate this kind of behavior; it threatened the kind of order and respectability that they stood for, and their support of the Roman authority on which their power now depended.” (Pg. 80-81)
They say of Paul, “How could a single man… ever bring word of divine redemption to the population of a vast area that spanned mountains, oceans, and islands over thousands and thousands of square miles? How could he persuade the few truly righteous men and women scattered among the world’s peoples that they must separate themselves from the ways of the wicked and await the impending climax of a divine drama that had been unfolding for thousands of years? He would do it by recognizing how Roman imperial rule manifested itself in each of the regions he visited---and by skillfully adapting the core images and ideals of the Jesus Movement to the specific cultural traditions of each province’s population, he could organize a network of local movements of resistance and renewed communities.” (Pg. 148)
They note, “new understandings had to be developed for the meaning of salvation and the Kingdom of God. Paul had already transformed the central figure of the crucified Christ into an adaptable symbol of sacrificial commitment. His followers continued to believe that … God would somehow, sometime, somewhere ensure that the righteous meek would inherit the earth… Yet in the last days of the reign of Nero, no one could really be blamed for dismissing the tiny tribe of Christians as a cult of doomed dreamers and idealists… The greatest miracle ne could possibly imagine was that the dream of the Kingdom of God would survive at all.” (Pg. 203-204)
They summarize, “by the closing decades of the first century, the followers of Jesus and the followers of the rabbis had apparently reached a decisive parting of the ways. Though no single Christian ‘church’ had yet emerged and no single orthodoxy had been agreed upon, the scattered Christian communities had gradually come to accept the verdict of history… The conquered Land of Israel… lost a special claim to salvation. And from this time onward, they fervently believed, the fulfillment of the divine plan would be accomplished through a Kingdom of Heaven reserved for Christians alone.” (Pg. 222-223)
They conclude, “If the quest for the historical Jesus and the archaeology of the world of the earliest Christians can offer us any lesson … it is that those who fancy themselves to be faithful followers of Jesus should be constantly reminded of the painful struggle of the saints against Caesar in which the Christian faith was born. Christianity’s historic origins … [lie] in a dedication to resist the idolatry of power embodied by the Roman Empire. Jesus of Nazareth offered desperate Galileans and Judeans a path to village revival. Paul of Tarsus sought to provide … a way to achieve the same ideals. The Church… may have inherited the earthly Kingdom. Yet as Paul sternly warned… power and grandeur are sinful illusions. And he passionately believed that only those down-to-earth saints who faithfully challenged the pretension of earthly kings and patrons… were destined to inherit the Kingdom of God.” (Pg. 231-232)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the historical background to Jesus and early Christianity.
The authors wrote in the Prologue to this 1997 book, “This book will attempt to reconstruct the social history of early Christianity from a wide variety of newly available evidence---drawn from recent studies of ancient Roman culture and from archaeological discoveries… in utilizing new sources of information to trace the earthly origins of Christianity, we will attempt to show that the world of John the Baptist, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the earliest Christians was not only a spiritual battleground but also a landscape of far-reaching economic dislocation, cultural conflict, and political change.” (Pg. 2) Later, they add, “we will attempt to show that the continuing question for the Kingdom of God by Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians should be understood as BOTH a spiritual journey and an evolving political response to the mindless acts of violence, inequality, and injustice that characterized---and still all too often characterize---the kingdoms of men.” (Pg. 7)
They observe, “Early Christianity was, in fact, a down-to-earth response to an oppressive ideology of earthly power that had recently swept across continents, disrupted economies, and overturned ancient traditions… At the beginning of the second century C.E…. a vast and growing public was being taught to cooperate in the construction of a new global system of economics, culture, and civil administration, in which the figure of the emperor had begun to take on the qualities of a single supreme god. THAT was why the early Christians were viewed as so subversive, for anyone who refused to pay homage to Caesar was both atheist and traitor.” (Pg. 10)
They suggest, “The massive uprising of the people of Israel after the death of Herod the Great would have left a deep impression on Jesus---and on all the members of his generation---wherever they lived. The dashed hopes of redemption … seem to have intensified the faith of many of the farmers and townspeople of the Land of Israel in the reality and inevitability of the Kingdom of God. It forced them to seek other, creative ways to respond to Rome… And in that respect, the gospels of Matthew and Luke are quite right in reporting that a unique heavenly vision arose among the people of Israel at the time of Jesus’ birth… In fact, the roots of Christianity can be traced to a much more down-to-earth occurrence: the sudden elevation to power in Galilee of ANOTHER ambitious Herodian prince who believed that he could be---and should be---king of the Jews.” (Pg. 21)
They assert, “In flocking out to see John the Baptist… peasants and townspeople … were also show how the present reality of suffering and dispossession might be changed by their own actions and moral resolve. John’s direct attack on the dynastic maneuvers of Antipas came in the course of his continuing campaign against the injustice and arrogance of Herodian society… and in acting out their commitment to oppose those violations through the ritual of John’s baptism, John’s followers were already in open revolt… A growing number of the People of Israel were convinced that the Kingdom of God was indeed at hand and that the sufferings of the righteous would soon come to an end.” (Pg. 39)
They note, “For those who followed Jesus, the time for the Renewal of Israel… had finally come. Yet the hard, historical consequences of Jesus’ decision to travel to Jerusalem would be … [that] Jesus clearly underestimated the power of another pharaoh… of the great city of Rome… As a result, the outcome of Jesus’ decision to mount a defiant prophetic demonstration in Jerusalem, before the eyes of the entire Jewish people, would be unexpectedly violent. And that tragic, violent outcome would lead at least some of Jesus’ original Galilean followers down the path to Christianity.” (Pg. 64)
They argue, “[Jesus] gave voice to the frustrations of every faithful Israelite who wondered if the rebuilt Herodian Temple… was really the true House of the God of Israel… few would have mistaken what he was doing. As he smashed tables and scattered silver coins across the pavement, the voice of God seemed to possess him with a peasant prophet’s fiery oracle that the Kingdom of God was at hand.” (Pg. 78)
They state, “all of a sudden, comes a peasant prophet … making his way into the Temple plaza with his followers overturning tables and destroying Temple property. No civil or ecclesiastical authority… would ever tolerate this kind of behavior; it threatened the kind of order and respectability that they stood for, and their support of the Roman authority on which their power now depended.” (Pg. 80-81)
They say of Paul, “How could a single man… ever bring word of divine redemption to the population of a vast area that spanned mountains, oceans, and islands over thousands and thousands of square miles? How could he persuade the few truly righteous men and women scattered among the world’s peoples that they must separate themselves from the ways of the wicked and await the impending climax of a divine drama that had been unfolding for thousands of years? He would do it by recognizing how Roman imperial rule manifested itself in each of the regions he visited---and by skillfully adapting the core images and ideals of the Jesus Movement to the specific cultural traditions of each province’s population, he could organize a network of local movements of resistance and renewed communities.” (Pg. 148)
They note, “new understandings had to be developed for the meaning of salvation and the Kingdom of God. Paul had already transformed the central figure of the crucified Christ into an adaptable symbol of sacrificial commitment. His followers continued to believe that … God would somehow, sometime, somewhere ensure that the righteous meek would inherit the earth… Yet in the last days of the reign of Nero, no one could really be blamed for dismissing the tiny tribe of Christians as a cult of doomed dreamers and idealists… The greatest miracle ne could possibly imagine was that the dream of the Kingdom of God would survive at all.” (Pg. 203-204)
They summarize, “by the closing decades of the first century, the followers of Jesus and the followers of the rabbis had apparently reached a decisive parting of the ways. Though no single Christian ‘church’ had yet emerged and no single orthodoxy had been agreed upon, the scattered Christian communities had gradually come to accept the verdict of history… The conquered Land of Israel… lost a special claim to salvation. And from this time onward, they fervently believed, the fulfillment of the divine plan would be accomplished through a Kingdom of Heaven reserved for Christians alone.” (Pg. 222-223)
They conclude, “If the quest for the historical Jesus and the archaeology of the world of the earliest Christians can offer us any lesson … it is that those who fancy themselves to be faithful followers of Jesus should be constantly reminded of the painful struggle of the saints against Caesar in which the Christian faith was born. Christianity’s historic origins … [lie] in a dedication to resist the idolatry of power embodied by the Roman Empire. Jesus of Nazareth offered desperate Galileans and Judeans a path to village revival. Paul of Tarsus sought to provide … a way to achieve the same ideals. The Church… may have inherited the earthly Kingdom. Yet as Paul sternly warned… power and grandeur are sinful illusions. And he passionately believed that only those down-to-earth saints who faithfully challenged the pretension of earthly kings and patrons… were destined to inherit the Kingdom of God.” (Pg. 231-232)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying the historical background to Jesus and early Christianity.
October 11, 2007
This book is very strong on the political and social backgrounds of the times of Jesus and Paul during the founding of the Christian Church. The books reads quite easily and is chocked full of wonderful historical and cultural tidbits that makes the Scriptures come alive with freshness. If you enjoy history and culture you will thoroughly enjoy this book. I especially appreciated the authors' proclamation of human rights and economic equality as some of the original purposes of the Jesus Movement against the Roman forces of patronage and paganism. I thoroughly recommend this book!
January 19, 2018
This is a readable account of an interpretation of Jesus’ message in its historic economic and social setting. It is light on references, but presents useful historical facts and sometimes reasonable, though not always convincing, interpretations.
April 25, 2011
Politically interested book about the Roman empire and communities of resistance in the time of Jesus and the apostles. But theologically weak - or rather anti-theological, as the authors bend their interpretative stick over backwards to discount anything theologically or religious distinctive or innovative about Jesus and the early Xian communities and read everything as attempts to establish a broad movement of resistance of the oppressed against Roman rule. I like looking at things this way, but the authors are too myopic on it.
February 14, 2008
I was disappointed in this book. I was looking for a scholarly look at the foundations of Christianity, but what I got was much more superficial. Don't bother reading this one.
November 18, 2016
Great! I don't agree with everything and his co-author say, but this is a remarkably clear, easy-fo-follow overview of the social and political contexts of the New Testament.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews