Abstract
Richard Horsley is a distinguished scholar who has made a number of significant contributions to New Testament studies over a long career in research and teaching. This collection of nine papers, all previously published, stand as a fitting tribute to his outstanding work in the field of politics and social context studies in first-century Palestine. However, it is not clear from this book whether these earlier papers have simply been republished. All were originally drafted in the 1970s and 1980s, and, as Horsley notes in his extended Introduction, revisiting the papers shows they need some updating. But there is no indication that this has been done, and Horsley simply notes areas that continue to need further investigation. Otherwise, the Introduction seems to provide the only new material, as Horsley traces the background to his earlier research and the various delays that had stood in the way of their initial publication. Thereafter, each of the essays stands independently of the others, leading inevitably to a degree of repetition.
Horsley says in his Introduction that his research at the time was driven by four major interests: a concern to listen as much as possible to the voices of the ordinary people in first-century Palestine; to analyse more fully the interacting power dynamics between the Romans and the local elites; to consider the impact of these power dynamics on the ordinary populations; and to challenge some of the scholarly constructs that had taken on a ‘taken for granted’ status 50 years ago, and that still linger on in some quarters, particularly around the largely fictional grouping known as the Zealots.
In order to achieve these aims, Horsley turns to a critical analysis of Josephus, probing beneath the surface of established scholarly readings in search of a more penetrating understanding. This shows that much of the ongoing investigation into the social context within which Jesus operated is at best naïve, and, at worst, entirely misleading. Jesus needs to be far more carefully considered against a background of popular discontent as the impact of Roman and Herodian policies caused extensive poverty and hardship. Jesus locates his ministry in precisely those rural communities in Galilee directly affected by such policies, and he attracts a following from those who probably regarded him as a popular (meaning not officially recognized) prophet.
The nine papers in this collection build up this argument step by step, attending first to the relationship between the elite priests in Jerusalem and the Roman occupying authorities, before turning to look in detail at the popular movements mentioned by Josephus and frequently lumped together by New Testament scholars as the ‘Zealots’. A group called the Zealots did emerge eventually, but not until a relatively late stage in the Jewish uprising. The misreading of Josephus that assumes that all the bandits, assassins (Sicarii) and Zealots mentioned by him were one and the same is simply wrong. These groups were driven by different causes and motivations, and only later coalesced into the Jewish revolt. Most of the bandit groups were independent, ad hoc, short-lived, made up of disaffected local people, and sometimes led by charismatic leaders who could be acclaimed as ‘kings’. Sharing some of the characteristics of the Robin Hood legends, these bandit groups were quite different from the more focused Sicarii assassins, and they enjoyed a high degree of protection from the local peasantry. In this context, would the Jesus Movement be seen, perhaps, as something remarkably similar to these popular groups of disaffected people?
Horsley laments in his Introduction that many of his challenges to the stereotypical generalizations about Josephus have not been taken on board in some quarters, and misleading generalizations continue to be repeated by scholars who ought to know better. This useful collection of Horsley’s formative work will perhaps go some way to redressing that imbalance. Even so, it seems a bit of a missed opportunity for these papers just to be republished rather than revised and extended in a way that might persuade some of the more conservative Historical Jesus researchers to take this work more seriously.