Jesus and Politics
Jesus and Politics
Various lines of evidence converge to show that Jesus expected his martyrdom, even if his talk about a role in the impending kingdom made that expectation seem less than intelligible to his disciples. These lines of evidence include both considerations above and the likelihood that (as we argued in ch. 18) Jesus viewed himself as king, and that some of his followers viewed him this way at least potentially.
However Jesus meant “kingdom” or his role in the kingdom (probably as God’s viceroy, hence probably as a messiah), he could not but know that this teaching would sound like (and would at the very least ultimately prove to be) a challenge to the political elite of Jerusalem.
Jesus could have left Jerusalem afterward, yet he chose not to do so; he also could have gathered more followers or armed them, but chose not to do so. (Josephus does not class him with the wilderness “prophets” with armed followings that Josephus so detested.) Jesus did not resist or flee the authorities’ retaliation; he therefore must have expected either his imminent death, God’s imminent intervention on his behalf, or more likely (if we incorporate all the evidence we have) both. The question is whether he expected God’s intervention before his death (preventing it) or afterward (raising him, whether individually, as in the gospel tradition, or along with others eschatologically, as in popular expectation).
Why would Jesus have deliberately exposed himself to martyrdom? As noted above, this was an expected fate of prophets; yet it is also possible that Jesus expected his death to accomplish something on behalf of his people who were not adequately prepared for the kingdom. Some of Jesus’ contemporaries believed that martyrs’ deaths could atone for Israel (see discussion below); Jesus may have therefore intended to lay down his life on behalf of his people.
Probably the majority of first-century Palestinian Jews waited for God to bring the end rather than advocating direct violence against the oppressors; while not pacifists, they were “very passively hostile.”145 That Jesus did not resist (cf. Jn 18:36: “otherwise my servants would fight”), and that his followers continued his example, suggest that they may have agreed with this eschatological model.146 Nevertheless, many plausibly believe that Jesus opposed the Judean elite (as in the Gospels, e.g., Mk 12:9, 12; 13:1-2; cf. 12:38-40); Jewish scholar Alan Segal argues that “Jesus was a passionate advocate of political and individual justice who predicted a terrible and imminent end for the evil regime ruling Judea.”147 At the very least, he did not believe that the aristocratic families empowered by Herod a generation earlier148 were Israel’s true and permanent leaders, and he was prepared to face death at their hands partly to make that point.