My view is that he was an 'agitator' with ties to those who became Zealots, expressing the dislike of the local Jewish populace with those in control. his religious message was pretty much in line with those of the Pharisees. He was one of a fairly long list of itinerant preachers of that time. I doubt that the historical Jesus saw himself as divine--that belief came later when Paul overturned things.
Interesting perspective!
So far as my reading of the historical Jesus scholarship goes, I would say you're spot on about five things-
(1) that Jesus was an 'agitator'; (2) he gave expression to grassroots discontent and ferment (often manifesting itself in apocalypticism) among the colonised for a better (post-Roman imperial) order; (3) he was one among a multitude of other itinerant preachers of that late Second Temple era, ranging from Honi the Circle-Drawer and the anonymous Samaritan prophet to his own teacher John the Baptist; (4) he had the most in common theologically with the Pharisee party and (5) there is no persuasive evidence Jesus understood himself to be 'God' in his lifetime.
I think your off on 'two points'. Because its such an effective summary, though, I'd like to go through your points one-by-one with reference to scholarship.....
(Whilst I'm a Christian, the information I am collating below is derived from purely secular scholarly perspectives that don't align with Christian orthodoxy, so it still fits the the thread OP.)
1. Agitator
He certainly seems to have been an 'agitator', one may even say - applying an anachronism from our own contemporary idiom - a "
populist": "
Jesus' message was controversial and threatening to the established institutions of religious and political power in his society: the message carried with it a fundamental transvaluation of values, an exalting of the humble and a critique of the mighty" (
Professor Richard Hays (Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 164).
Ditto, therefore, on your point about his threatening 'those in control'.
Those who present a "lovey-dovey" purely religious characterisation of Jesus as someone who got along with everyone and didn't challenge the entrenched inequities and powers-that-be in his society, as well as the imperial - priestly order, completely fail the
crucifiability criterion.
As Professor Pounds rightly states:
"Victims of the cross are often depicted as those who participated in seditious or treasonous activities, such as defamation of the emperor, military desertion, or outright rebellion...
Certain crucifixion scenarios can be eliminated as pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth because they defy other probabilities of his historical context. Jesus neither died during the time of a Jewish revolt against Rome nor did he die during the persecution of a religious group, thereby eliminating the possibility that he was captured as a victim of circumstance during those two scenarios.
There is no reasonable evidence that Jesus was engaged in banditry, eliminating that crucifiable offence. In addition, we should note the obvious fact that Jesus was not a slave. This is significant because slaves were more likely than free people to be arbitrarily crucified, as the former were sometimes threatened with crucifixion on the whims of their masters.
We are left with the manageable alternatives that Jesus was either considered a seditionist or a rebel".
2. Pharisees
Likewise, he appears to have been theologically closest to the Pharisees of the major schools (i.e.
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you" (
Matthew 23:2))
3. One of many apocalyptic preachers
On your third point, him being part of a fairly long list of itinerant preachers of the time...
humour me, while I tell you a short story...
Once upon a time, in first century Roman-occupied Judea, there was a rural Jewish peasant called Jesus. He went around Jerusalem prophesying the imminent destruction of its temple, arousing the rancour of the Judean priestly class, who arrest and gave him over to the Roman governor. The Romans flay him with scourges. When the Governor questions him as to who he was and why he uttered the things he did, Jesus refused to answer him.
And then...the Governor makes the magnanimous decision to let him go free. And four years later, Jesus is sadly killed by a stone launched from a catapult while the Romans are busy besieging the city, his prediction of "
a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, woe to Jerusalem!" (unfortunately for him) proven true.
End of story.
That's the tragic life-story of
Jesus ben Ananias, a plebian farmer who preached four years before the Roman-Jewish war in 66 A.D. and about 30 years after the crucifixion of his infinitely more famous namesake, the Jesus from Nazareth. We know about poor old Jesus son of Ananias from Book 6, Chapter 5, Section 3 of the Roman-Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus'
The Wars of the Jews......
The tale of Jesus Ben Ananias reminds us that Jesus Christ was both one of many such itinerant Jewish eschatological prophets of the time and for some reason
far more threatening, or rather 'agitating' to those in power. Ben Anias got away with it, whereas Jesus of Nazareth made the authorities feel so threatened, that they felt it necessary to execute him under the most severe penalty known to Roman law.
4. Anti-imperialist
Professor Richard Horsley emphasises that Jesus' manner of death demonstrates “
[h]is program of resistance to the imperial order.” Conversely, he views certain other Jesuses to be invalid on the basis of their uncrucifiability:
"It is hard to imagine, however, that either a visionary or an itinerant teacher would have been sufficiently threatening to the Roman imperial order that he would have been crucified"
So he did something or said something much worse (from a high priestly and Roman perspective).
As the New Testament scholar Professor Larry Hurtado has noted in this regard:
Lord Jesus Christ
The outcome of the arrest of Jesus of Nazareth means that he must have been taken as a much more serious threat than the poor wretch described by Josephus, and that probably something more than a disturbance in the temple courts during a tense holy-day period was involved.
So more legs for the 'agitator' hypothesis.
Where I think the consensus among modern scholars diverges from your portrait is in terms of an alleged association with
'Zealots' and the claim that St. Paul overturned things to invent Christianity (by which, I assume, your referring in particular to the early pre-dogmatic articulation of Jesus's deification).
(continued...)
