Book Description

In this book, bestselling biblical scholar and media darling John Dominic Crossan analyzes Jesus and Paul's revolutionary message in light of the Roman Empire of their own time. Jesus and Paul came from very different backgrounds and their styles were very different, but one of the things they shared was a criticism of the civilization of their day as imperial, unjust, and violent. In their time, the Roman Empire's mantra was "first victory, then peace." The counter–mantra of Jesus and Paul was "first justice, then peace." In God & Empire, Crossan charts the evolution of biblical thinking on the relationship between faith and politics.

Using the tools of expert biblical scholarship, Crossan deftly presents the tensions in the Bible between political power and God's justice. He reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, retribution and violence, justice and peace, and ultimate redemption. He examines the meaning of the "kingdom of God" prophesized by Jesus, and the equality recommended by Paul to his churches.

Just as Rome in the first century, American policies and moral values can be reexamined in light of Jesus's prophetic message of peace through social justice, NOT peace through military victory. Crossan contrasts Jesus and Paul's messages of peace through justice to the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision of Revelations and its use by modern right–wing theologians and televangelists to justify U.S. military aggression in the Mideast.

Review

"In this fine study of civilization, culture and transformation, Father Crossan asks important questions: have those who resort to violence as a means of change succeeded in their quest for empire? Or has nonviolence been more effective in bringing about lasting change? Crossan, professor emeritus at De Paul University and author of several well-received works including The Historical Jesus, believes that the solution is not in violent intervention but in the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. But how, and when, will this Kingdom come? In comparing the missions of Jesus and John the Baptist, Crossan states his idea clearly: "Jesus differed precisely from John in emphasizing not the future-presence but the already-presence of God's Kingdom as the Great Divine Cleanup of the world." In other words, Christ saw the Kingdom as a present and active reality. Crossan uses the teachings of Jesus to promote his thesis, and then turns to an unlikely ally—the Apostle Paul—by suggesting that Paul's emphasis on equality and freedom helped carry forward Jesus' program of nonviolent change. Crossan's latest work presents a complex subject in a clear and powerful way, and it merits a wide readership." --Publishers Weekly

"*Starred Review* By Crossan's lights, Jesus proposed the nonviolent kingdom of God to supplant Rome. And not just Rome but civilization per se may be the object of Jesus' revolution, for civilization building was Rome's pretext for imperial aggression and economic as well as physical violence against common people. Fighting Rome was folly, so the kingdom of God movement aimed to liberate ordinary people nonviolently. It threatened Rome because Jesus' proclamation of God defied the Roman emperor's institutional divinity, and because Jesus proposed peace through justice against Rome's conceit that it achieved peace through the violence of conquest. Paul sharpened the concept of equality in the kingdom of God by advocating for slaves and cooperating on equal terms with women; here Crossan goes Garry Wills' What Paul Meant (2006) one better by carefully explaining that pro-slavery and anti-women Pauline remarks come from epistles spuriously attributed to him. Later, the Revelation of John promulgated a "pornography of violence" and has malevolently affected Christianity ever since, most recently in rapture theology, whose influence on U.S. neoconservatives' bush-league Rome is the immediate provocation for this book. The opposition of God and empire, of justice and violence, persists. Despite a few rant-lines from the progressives' book of cant, this book makes the best reading for the most readers of any that Crossan has written." --Ray Olson, Booklist