In so doing, the authors speedily debunk the “Great Man” myth and demonstrate the large number of similar grouplets in a Palestine that was being convulsed by serious dislocations. Seeing such portraits as romanticized and overly idealized, the interest here is on the social and economic forces that produced the Jesus movement. We are trusting God’s plans for St John’s and excited to discover how he might be looking to use us for His Kingdom in our community. Tensions flared up considerably when the movement marched on Jerusalem, and Jesus was willingly martyred for the cause.

Before you go, please support great working-class and pro-people journalism by donating to People’s World. Despite being written from a perspective that questions many of the traditions of the Christian faith, it is respectful in its approach, reasonable in most of its assessments, and simply enjoyable to read.

The movement’s popular appeal was due in part to a desire to represent the values of ordinary rural workers, and its vision meant that the rich would have to give up their wealth, while the poor would be afforded a life of heavenly luxury.

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.More generally, if the Jewish historian Josephus is the chief witness for the Galilean world of “excessive taxation, discontent, banditry, warfare and violent reprisals”, his own motives for painting this picture for the Romans should be more closely examined. Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict will henceforth provide an easy answer whenever friends and family request a recommendation for an accessible but reliable book about the historical Jesus.

Myles have painstakingly examined many of the mainstream interpretations of the life, teachings, and execution of Jesus. We are a conservative evangelical church with a long history of faithful Bible teaching in the coastal town of Whitehaven in beautiful West Cumbria. This book moves on from the Third Quest for the historical Jesus, so focused on seeing Jesus as a great innovator within a particular cultural, religious and societal context. Nor does the “preferential option for death” accord well with the persistent and emphasised failure of the disciples to accept the message of suffering. Most sciences aim to establish general laws, but the science of history accepts that historical events are unique.

Bringing a wealth of knowledge on the social, economic, and cultural conflicts of the time, Crossley and Myles uncover the emergence of a fervent and deadly serious religious organizer. 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. The book is sound in its scholarship, reasonable in its conclusions, yet provocative enough that it will hold an array of readers' interests. For some in Galilee, these grandiose projects, constructed in part to solidify the status of the comprador bourgeoisie of their day, resulted in great wealth and an enhanced social standing. What is important from the biblical point of view is not which hat he wore, but what the author wishes to convey by mentioning it, nor whether skeletons rose from their tombs at the death of Jesus (Matthew 27.

From the outset, this book seeks to place the “Jesus Movement” within its wider economic and social context. Some readers may be irritated by the retro-fitting of 19th and 20th century language to a first century setting (the Twelve Disciples are referred to as the Jesus Movement’s “Politburo,” and the desired millenarian outcome as a “Dictatorship of the Peasantry,” for instance). The movement’s popular appeal was due in part to a desire to represent the values of ordinary rural workers, and its vision meant that the rich would have to give up their wealth, while the poor would be afforded a life of heavenly luxury. Crossley and Myles have recaptured the mind-blowing excitement generated by the original quest to distinguish the Jesus of history behind the myth. Tensions flared up considerably when the movement marched on Jerusalem and Jesus was willingly martyred for the cause.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.