Part II:

From Jesus
to the Christ
2.2
Jesus within the
social milieu of
first-century Palestine
 a) Palestine in Jesus’ time:
scene of widespread social discontent
 long history of foreign and local
domination and oppression
 political economy of agrarian social
system in the Roman empire

Basic social divisions:

rural peasantry and the mostly urban elite
non-literate majority and the literate guardians
of tradition
Land: main means of production
 majority of the people were peasants
 rural farmers, rural artisans, rural fishers
 within a structural relationship of consumers-producers
 1-2% of the population take 50-60% of agricultural
productivity
 though not the legal owners of their land, peasants were the
“effective possessors” through familial inheritance
 each peasant household formed an entire economy, an
independent center of production, and combined farming
and domestic handicrafts
 95-97 % of the people in Palestine were non-literate
(Dominic Crossan)
 titular or documentary landownership was nearly
impossible or meaningless
 there were also tenants, as well as dispossessed or
landless peasants due to unpaid debts or non-payment of
taxes
In the agrarian social system of Palestine:
 peasants were not only poor but also powerless
 the external force of control rests in urban elite:
 had control over the means of violence through the regular
army
 through administrative system, they were able to accumulate
agricultural and non-agricultural goods and instruments of
production in the great granaries and storehouses of the city
 these resources were accumulated through coercive taxation
and war booty
 justification for tax-payments: protection to the peasants
against invaders, dangerous neighbors, local disturbances, and
bandits
 King Herod, for example, required at least a third of the total
crops and other agricultural products
 excessive taxation = consequence of the great physical and
cultural distance between the urban elite and the rural
peasantry
literate guardians of tradition and the
non-literate majority
 non-literate social systems:
 tradition is the whole reproduction of practices and beliefs on the
basis only of common usage and presumption
 lived by oral tradition, wherein tradition was neither
conceptualized nor systematized
 entailed both a practical and a poetic-mythological
consciousness of time, events and space, which are continued
through generations or through changes of social and natural
environment
 activities were always localized and done face to face (“high
presence-availability”)
 time is fluid; it is “rubber time” (note: dating can be exact only
where there is literacy and record-keeping)
 tradition involves rituals and formulaic truths: preserved and
interpreted or modified by guardians
Literate social systems:
 conceptualization and systematization of tradition, time and
eternity, space and infinity, history, past, present, and future
 a tradition could know itself to have existed for a very long time
 guardians of tradition could increasingly become an elitist
group that protected fiercely the community’s traditions
 there develops not only the production of written traditions;
once written, the “truth” of a tradition is fixed, it is constricted
in a paper for the community to follow
 interpretation of traditions becomes a contested area, and
which could be imposed on other members of the community
 with their ability to produce and read textual traditions, factions
of the elite were able to differentiate the past and idealize it
according to their own interests
 b) What was the location of Jesus
in the social divisions?
Mk 6:1-3 = “Is this not the tekton (woodworker)?”
Mt 13:55 = “Is this not the tekton’s son?
 artisans = 5 % of the Palestinian population, and of a
lower social stratum than effective peasants (John
Dominic Crossan)
 originated from dispossessed members of peasantry
 below the artisans was the stratum of “expendables”

 “Jesus the woodworker in Nazareth would have ranked

somewhere at the lower end of the vague middle
[stratum],” perhaps equivalent to “a blue-collar worker”
of our times. (John Meier)
  Luke 2:24 (special Luke):
 Mary’s offering for her purification consisted of “a pair
of doves or two young pigeons”
 confer Lev 12:8, if the woman “cannot afford a lamb,”
birds will do (the offering of the poor)

 Siblings of Jesus? in Mk 6:3 and

Mt 13:55 = adelphos
 cousins?

 stepbrothers/sisters?
John Meier: “probably the
brothers and sisters of Jesus
were true siblings
Mk 15:40 and Mt 27:56: Mary
mother of James and Jonas
 “brothers/sisters” in Jewish
culture/faith?
 Historical notes of Jesus’
socio-economic status:
 neither rich nor with the
expendables, but certainly
belonging to the poor peasants.
 Jesus’ material lack = not a
chosen poverty but a forced
poverty brought about by unjust
social system
 Nazareth was isolated rural
village, with no economic
significance (pop. – 200)
 Probably with non-literate peasant spoke Aramaic; had at least basic
tradition, though a brilliant one on knowledge of Hebrew from listening
the evidence of his usage of in synagogues; probably a little
sayings, parables, Hebrew knowledge of Greek language
scriptures (Marcus Borg) through dealings with people (an
assumption based on socio-
geography, e.g., Sephoris)
c) The Guardians of Jewish
Tradition

 Pharisees
 Priests
 Sadducees
  mostly non-priests; some
Pharisees were based in rural areas,
others in towns and cities
 leaders in local synagogues
 adhered to common Jewish
beliefs:
 one Supreme God
 divine election of the
Jewish people
 sacredness of the Torah
 some form of existence
after death
 developed a special body
of non-biblical traditions
about how to observe the
Torah (“oral law”)
 strict with which they
themselves kept the Torah
and not compromising with
Roman ways of living
 two major groups:
conservative Shammai
school and the liberal Hillel
school
 those who overburdened
the poor with too many “The teachers of the law and the
special traditions or with a Pharisees tie up heavy loads and
severe interpretation of the put them on people’s shoulders,
but they are not willing to lift a
Torah were the ones whom finger to move them” (Mt 23:4 [Q];
Jesus criticized see also Mk 2:23-27).
 Paradigm of the Pharisees:
Holiness by following the Torah
(Pharisee from Hebrew “parush” or Aramaic “parishya” which means
“separated”, equivalent of Hebrew “qadosh” or “holy”)

 Pharisees wanted all Jews to observe the laws like them

who claimed to be “holy” (“separated”)
 by following the purity laws and tithing (or taxation on
agricultural products)
 requires separation within society (different from
Essenes): from all that was unclean, including Gentiles,
the sick and sinners to protect Israel against Hellenistic
assimilation and corruption so to become Yahweh’s holy
people
 resulted to “intracultural differentiation” or intense social
division in Jewish society
 served in the temple of Priests
Jerusalem, offering sacrifices
 assisted by a “clergy” of lower  Temple became not only
rank, the Levites (were not the center of Jewish
priests but Temple officers) religious life but symbol of
economic and political
 priestly office was hereditary dominance of elite
(lineage back to Aaron, the
brother of Moses)
 not a full-time occupation,
except perhaps for the high
priest during his tenure
 most priests worked in temple
for only a few weeks each year
 partially supported by the
tithes (temple-taxes) and the
first-fruits that the peasants
gave the temple [Ex. 30:11-16;
Dt 18:1-5]
 when not serving the temple, some priests worked as
professional scribes (“Grammateis” = “student of the
scriptures” = interpreters of scriptures)
 there were ordinary priests (a few were Pharisees)
and there were aristocratic priests = descendants of
rich priestly families
 among aristocratic priests was the high priest = had
actual authority in Jerusalem even though
government was formally in the hands of a Roman
prefect
 During 6 to 66 CE, high priests were chosen by Rome
from one of four priestly families
 high priest and other aristocratic priests constituted
the most powerful sector of the Jewish urban elite in
Judaea.
Brief excursus:
 Historically, Jesus was neither “priest”
nor “lay” per post-biblical and present-day
definition of priest and layperson
 Historically, Jesus was a Jewish
layperson in comparison to the Jewish
priests who performed cultic rituals in
Jerusalem temple
 Hebrews 7:26-28 and 9:11-14 (Jesus as
“high priest”) = a post-easter theological
reflection in metaphorical language on the
significance of Jesus’ suffering for the
sake of others
 from upscale families, belonged
to the urban elite
Sadducees
 some were priests
 did not believe in any form of
life after death, and did not
accept the special traditions of
the Pharisees
 sympathetic to the Romans and
sought to maintain their
aristocratic positions in society
 often disagreed with the
Pharisees because the
Sadducees rejected the oral
traditions and much of the
doctrine of the Pharisees
(Sadducees stressed the
“written law”)
 lived primarily in
Jerusalem, whose lives
often focused around
the happenings of the
Jewish temple

 opposed to Jesus
because there was the
supposed threat that
Jesus could potentially
overthrow the Roman  the Sanhedrin (the judicial
government, thus council of the Jewish
jeopardizing their people) was comprised
positions of prestige primarily of Sadducees.
 d) The Essenes and
John the Baptist
 Essenes: largest community was at
Qumran, a place at the northwest coast of
the Dead Sea
 not part of mainstream Judaism, and their
hidden library had preserved for us what
are now called the Dead Sea Scrolls
 Essenes rejected the line of
Jerusalem high priests (since
the 2nd century BCE) as
illegitimate, and thus they
separated to set up their own
community
 also rejected Hellenization of
Jewish culture
 stricter than the Pharisees in
their observances of the Torah
(e.g., defecation was even
discouraged on the Sabbath!)
 believed that the definitive
intervention of God was
imminent in history
 John the Baptist
 was he reared among the Essenes?
 J. Meier (Marginal Jew, vol. 2) - this is
unprovable using sources presently
available; also, no evidence he ever
belonged to a fixed community
 Essenes practiced regular ritual
cleansing but John administered a
once-for-all baptism as a form of ritual
cleansing
 probably the only son of a priest, and
became an anti-establishment prophet”
(John Meier, Marginal Jew, p. 27)
 John became the mentor of Jesus [see
Jn. 3:22-26]
 Jesus’ conviction on the nearness of
God’s reign (Mt 3:17; Mk 1:15) probably
came through the Baptist (see Mt 3:2 –
nearness of the kingdom)
 John stressed
conversion in the
face of imminent
doom (Lk 3:7-9 [Q])
(“world-rejecting)
 Jesus proclaimed the
joy of salvation that
the poor and afflicted
could experience
already through his
practice (Mt. 11:5
[Q]).
(“world-affirming)
 e) Jewish Background
(Old Testament Tradition)
Messianic Tradition
 David as ideal Israelite king
 Oracle of Nathan (2 Sam 7:1-16)
 Yahweh’s promise to build a house for David and to
establish an everlasting dynasty through his son
(Solomon)
 God’s covenant with Israel would be fulfilled through
a mashiah (anointed) in Davidic line of kingship
 Historical and theologically interpreted by the
prophets as the coming of the anointed of God who
would bring righteousness, peace and justice to
God’s people
Wisdom Tradition
 Wisdom (sophia) as personification or
attribute of God
 Wisdom comes forth from the mouth of
God
 Wisdom was present at creation
 Wisdom has mission for God’s people
 Wisdom as the righteous sufferer
Apocalyptic Tradition
 developed from 200-100 BCE in the context
of the Maccabean war against Greek cultural
intrusion under Antiocus Epiphanes
 focused on the “end of evil” (suffering,
domination, exploitation) and the only-
hoped-for victory of God’s transcendent
power over creation and forces of evil
 language is highly imaginative, visual,
metaphorical = language of hope and
confidence in strong experience of negative
contrast
THANKS