Roman Domination & Resistance PDF

# **Jesus and Empire** ## **Roman Domination** Roman conquest of the Middle East and the Roman imperial order created the conditions for the emergence of Jesus and other prophets of resistance and renewal among the subject peoples of Galilee and Judea. The few treatments of Jesus that take Roman d...

# **Jesus and Empire** ## **Roman Domination** Roman conquest of the Middle East and the Roman imperial order created the conditions for the emergence of Jesus and other prophets of resistance and renewal among the subject peoples of Galilee and Judea. The few treatments of Jesus that take Roman domination into account tend to focus on the effects of the tribute and occupying troops. Roman imperial domination, however, was far more complex and pervasive in its operations and effects. We can sketch some key interrelated factors. * **Cultural Domination**: The relentless Roman extension of its power over other cities and peoples of the Mediterranean world was not accidental, but driven by the idea of empire. Romans saw themselves as a superior people, a "people of empire". They viewed other peoples as inferior in various ways, needing the domination of a superior people. Some, such as Syrians and Judeans, were basically servile and good for little other than enslavement. Rome itself was somehow destined to achieve world supremacy. The torch of civilization had passed from ancient Troy to Rome (see Virgil's Aeneid). Rome was favored by the gods; history was moving through its good fortune. The aftermath of Octavian's great victory at Actium in 31 B.C.E., ending the chaotic empire-wide civil war only escalated and consolidated the ideology among subject cities and peoples. The elites of Greek cities built monuments and temples, established games and festivals to honor Augustus/Caesar as the Savior who, under the guidance of divine Providence, had brought Peace and Prosperity to the whole world. * **Military Domination**: Roman warlords carried out their military conquests, and particularly their re-conquests of recalcitrant uncooperative peoples such as Galileans and Judeans, with extreme brutality. In the course of its conquests, Roman warlords destroyed whole cities, such as the classical city of Corinth in 146 B.C.E.---only to rebuild it as a Roman colony a century later. Generals such as Pompey or Vespasian commanded their troops to devastate villages, to slaughter and enslave the people, and to crucify those who resisted in view of survivors. All of this was clearly to intimidate peoples into submission, literally to terrorize subject peoples. Josephus' histories supply case after case of such Roman brutality in its sequence of re-conquests of Galilee. Some of these could be classified as massacres, such as the slaughter of thousands in and around Magdala in 52-53 В.С.Е. and in the area of Nazareth in 4 B.C.E. As we may be aware by reports of the recent massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo, such massive violence by the vengeful Roman military would have left collective trauma among surviving Galileans in those areas. * **Indirect Rule Through Client Kings**: Following their conquest of Middle Eastern peoples, the Roman patricians and imperial regimes set up indirect rule through client kings such as the Herodians. After his appointment by the Senate, Herod the Great conquered his people with the help of Roman legions and then held them in check with an extensive security apparatus of fortresses, garrisons, and informants. He quickly became the Romans' favorite military dictator, partly because of his extensive program of "development," mainly massive building projects, such as whole cities named in honor of Caesar and several imperial temples as well as impregnable fortresses for the regime's security. Such "development," of course, required draining maximum resources possible from the Galilean, Samaritan, and Judean villagers. * **Temple-State & High Priestly Rule**: At Herod's death the Romans placed his son Antipas, who had been raised and educated at the imperial court, in charge of Galilee and Perea. Continuing his father's "development" programs, he (re-)built two capital cities in Galilee, Sepphoris and Tiberias, within 20 years. Such massive building of course required extraordinary revenues. But the collection of taxes was now presumably far more efficient once the ruler of Galilee was located directly in the district, with nearly every village within easy oversight of one or another of the ruling cities. Herod and the Romans kept the temple-state intact as a key institution of the imperial order. The temple-state had been set up in Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C.E. by the Persian imperial regime as an instrument of imperial control. The temple provided a religious-political-economic formation in which the Judean people could serve their own "God who is in Jerusalem" (Ezra 1:3) while providing economic support for a priestly aristocracy who both controlled the area and rendered tribute to the Persian court. The Romans and their client king Herod, like the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires before them, simply perpetuated the temple-state as an instrument of imperial rule. Herod launched the ambitious and massive project of vastly expanding and rebuilding the whole temple-complex in grand Hellenistic-Roman style. Herod's temple became one of the great wonders of the Roman imperial world. Along with the sacrificial cult to the God of Israel, which comprised their principal function, the priests also offered sacrifices on behalf of Roma and Caesar. Above the gate of the temple Herod erected a great Roman imperial eagle. After Herod's death, when the Romans ostensibly imposed direct rule by a Roman governor, the four high priestly families appointed by Herod were placed in charge of Judean society. The incumbent high priest was appointed by the Roman governor from among those four families and, in effect, served at his pleasure. The high priestly aristocracy generally was responsible for maintaining order and for collecting the tribute to Rome. They also used their positions of power to feather their own nests of privilege. Archaeologists have discovered that they apparently built increasingly lavish mansions in the New City in the course of the first century C.E. The temple-state, as much or more than Herodian kingship and Roman governors and garrisons, constituted the face of Roman imperial rule in Judea. ## **Galilean and Judean Resistance** The Galilean, Judean, and Samaritan people inherited a deeply-rooted tradition of independence of foreign/imperial rule from their Israelite ancestors. Memories of early Israel centered around the exodus from bondage in Egypt under the Pharaoh and the many stories of Israelites gaining their independence of Canaanite kings. The ideal articulated in age-old victory songs such as the Song of Deborah (Judg 5) was of Israelite village communities free of exploitative practices of rulers. The God of Israel was the only proper ruler of the people, and the principles of social-economic interaction were laid out in the Mosaic covenant, which insisted upon the people's exclusive loyalty to their divine king and non-exploitative egalitarian relations among the people. A whole series of prophets from Elijah on appealed to those principles in condemning the oppressive practices of domestic kings and foreign emperors alike. Especially in Judea memories would have been fresh of the Maccabean revolt in which Judeans had again attained their independence of imperial rule. This deeply-rooted tradition of independence is surely what underlies the repeated resistance mounted by Judeans and Galileans against the imperial order imposed by Rome. The lifetime and mission of Jesus, in fact, is framed by widespread revolts, against Herod's conquest of his subjects with the help of Roman troops, against the Herodians, high priesthood, and Romans at Herod's death in 4 B.C.E., the great revolt against the Romans, Herodians, and high priestly aristocracy again in 66-70 C.E., and against the Romans again in 132-35 C.E. Between those revolts, moreover, scribal groups as well as peasants and Jerusalemites protested repeatedly against the rulers, and peasants formed several movements of resistance and renewal. Most of the protests, non-violent in themselves but met with brutal repression by the rulers, were mounted by peasants and/or Jerusalem-ites. Some protested provocations by the Romans in violation of Israelite covenantal principles such as Pontius Pilate's provocative dispatch of Roman troops into Jerusalem carrying their army standards decorated with sacred images or the emperor Caligula's order to place a bust of himself in the Jerusalem temple. Others protested oppressive treatment by Herodian or high priestly rulers. Perhaps the most vivid example of the continuing confrontation between Roman imperial order and Judeans or Galileans acting out of their deep tradition of independence was the annual celebration of the exodus from bondage under Pharaoh at the Passover Festival in the Jerusalem temple. Anticipating that Judean and Galilean passion for deliverance would be running high, the Roman governors posted Roman soldiers atop the walls surrounding the temple-courtyard, a provocative reminder of their continuing subjugation. One year toward mid-century the Passover crowd erupted in protest of an obscene gesture by one of the soldiers, and the governor Cumanus sent in the troops to attack them, with considerable slaughter. More significant in their level of organization and persistence were the many popular movements that took two distinctively Israelite social forms. In the revolt that erupted at the death of Herod, in the major districts of Galilee, Judea, and Perea, says Josephus, peasants proclaimed one of their number "king"-just as long ago Israelites had "messiahed" the young David as their king-who led them in raiding Herodian fortresses and storehouses or Roman baggage trains. These movements were able to maintain their independence for months, in one case three years, before the Romans could again "pacify" the areas. The movement headed by Simon bar Giora in the great revolt and the Bar Kokhba Revolt as a whole took the same form, of a popular messianic movement. In mid-first century C.E., moreover, several movements of peasants coalesced around prophets such as Theudas or the "Egyptian," who led followers in anticipation of new acts of deliverance patterned after the one led by Moses and the taking of the land led by Joshua. Again of course, all of these movements were brutally suppressed by the Roman military. In addition to these protests and movements of resistance and renewal among the ordinary people, however, protests were carried out by some of the sages and teachers who, as scribal retainers of the temple-state, were economically dependent on the priestly aristocracy. As Herod lay dying two distinguished teachers of Jerusalem inspired their students to cut down the golden Roman eagle from above the gate of the Temple. A decade later, when the Romans imposed the direct rule of a Roman governor, a teacher and a Pharisee, Judas of Gamla and Zadok, organized a movement to refuse payment of the tribute. Then, 40 or so years later, as the high priests became blatantly predatory against their own people as the social order deteriorated, the successors of those dissident intellectuals went so far as to organize a terrorist group, the Sicarioi, who assassinated high priestly figures who were collaborating closely in Roman rule. We can draw three major conclusions from this survey of resistance and rebellion: First, resistance to the Roman imperial order was widespread among the people, in Galilee, Judea, Samaria, and Perea, and persisted for well over a century. Second, the movements opposed the high priests and Herodian rulers as part of the Roman imperial order. Far from having represented the concerns of the Judean people, the high priests do not appear in our sources as having protested against Roman provocations. Third, even groups of scribal retainers economically dependent on the temple-state mounted protests against the rulers; indeed resorted to terrorist acts against their own high priestly figures. ## **Jesus and the movement he catalyzed belong in and can be understood only in the context of the struggle of the Galileans and Judeans for independence and renewal of the Israelite people in resistance to the Roman imperial order. As outlined above, we proceed by trying to hear and consider the earliest Gospel sources as complete narratives sets of speeches and by attending especially to the context in which they resonated and to the key patterns in Israelite cultural tradition that they referenced. Perhaps the three most important aspects of Jesus-in-movement's opposition to the Roman imperial order were the proclamation of the kingdom of God, exorcism of demons, and Mosaic covenantal renewal of village communities.** ## **Kingdom of God-Renewal of Israel Independent of Roman Domination** Recent studies of the historical Jesus continue to proceed by close examination of the word "kingdom" and the phrase "the kingdom of God" in various text-fragments such as isolated Jesus sayings or short passages in Judean or Diaspora Jewish texts. The only possibilities for what the phrase meant, however, are already predetermined in the discourse of the field by certain synthetic scholarly constructs: it can be either past or present or future, and/or it can be either apocalyptic" (future "cosmic cataclysm") or "sapiental" (present internal-spiritual). But what about "none of the above"? The continuing debate about whether Jesus' preaching of the kingdom was "apocalyptic" or "sapiental" is a "red herring." Neither side recognizes that their debate is determined by, because focused on a synthetic modern scholarly construct. A century ago theologically-trained New Testament scholars such as Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer constructed what was supposedly a dominant ancient Jewish world view of Apokalyptik out of text-fragments from recently discovered "apocalyptic" documents that they read literally. A half-century ago, Amos Wilder tried to persuade interpreters to be more sensitive to metaphor and hyperbole in the use of language and to be more open to the relation between "eschatological imagery and earthly circumstance." The theological influence of Rudolf Bultmann, however,