Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict

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One of the ways James connects his interest in these two periods is through his focus on how people understand and negotiate historical change. His work on political rhetoric, for instance, looks at how the social, economic, and geopolitical upheavals have led to distinctive ways of constructing what the Bible and religion "really means" Similarly, his work on first-century Palestine looks at how socio-economic changes in Galilee and Judea intersected with traditions associated with Jesus and how these were then interpreted, ignored, rethought, modified, adapted, and so on.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, please support great working-class and pro-people journalism by donating to People’s World. Crossley and Myles locate Jesus’s class position as that of a tektōn, an ancient Greek noun meaning craftsman or carpenter. Being born and raised in this artisan rural working stratum, Jesus and his immediate family would have felt the full force of the economic dislocations and displacements caused by the massive Herodian building schemes at Sepphoris and Tiberias.

A work of exceptional scholarship, the greatest story ever told as told from below is more compelling than ever. I was utterly engrossed. What impresses the most, though, is in how by demystifying an epic class struggle of the past lessons of strategic relevance to struggles for liberation in the present can be drawn. Essential stuff. Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict provides an important refocusing and reprioritizing of earlier Scriptural studies as seen through the lens of historical materialist analysis. JESUS: A Life in Class Conflict provides an important refocusing and reprioritising of earlier Scriptural studies as seen through the lens of historical materialist analysis.

With Crossley and Myles, the difficulty is that too often supposition turns into certainty. There is too much of “it is not out of the question to suppose . . .”. To mention just two detailed points: the presentation of the movement as “tough, muscular, hard, and manly” hardly fits Peter’s reaction to Caiaphas’s servant-girl. Nor does the “preferential option for death” accord well with the persistent and emphasised failure of the disciples to accept the message of suffering.That said, the authors do reinforce more traditional interpretations in other regards, including the self-awareness of Jesus that the trajectory of his life would lead to a challenge to the religious and military authorities in Jerusalem. This volume greatly accomplishes such a task, and does so in a thoroughly compelling way. Of all the Marxist works I have read on the origins of Christianity and on Jesus (Machovec, Kautsky, Kalthoff, Lenzman, Kryvelev, Robertson, Mongar, Chiakulas, etc.) this is perhaps the most fully engrained, and truly Marxist (historical materialist) analysis of Jesus and his life, and, personally, I think that as far as biographies of Jesus are concerned this is probably the best they can get.

At a time when Marxists and people of faith continue to treat each other’s core texts with contempt or suspicion, Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict is a timely and welcome study. May it be the first of a revived genre.Crossley, J. (2022). Mary Magdalene and the Life of Judith in Life of Brian, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, s. 156 - 169. Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ISSN: 1476-8690 Fernando F. Segovia , Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Vanderbilt University Crossley, J. (2022). Towards a Vulgar Marxist Reading of Christian Origins Today, Critical Theory and Early Christianity,, s. 252 - 267. Equinox Publishing, ISBN: 9781781794135 Two of our most capable Marxist biblical interpreters offer a historical materialist life of Jesus, grounded in the social and material forces of Jesus’ age rather than on efforts to read Jesus’ mind. Precise, clear, accessible, and important. I can think of no better introduction to the historical Jesus for the general reader, no clearer statement on the legacy of the Jesus movement in the sweep of subsequent history, or a more worthy challenge to contemporary scholarship on Jesus and the rise of Christianity.