Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§15.2 Who Did They Think Jesus Was?
political whitewash. Their accounts have been toned down to eliminate all features
of Jesus' attempt to foment revolution, but the political whitewash has not
entirely succeeded. Enough elements were so firmly rooted in the tradition that
they could not be excised completely. The key data are as follows: 36 one of Jesus'
close disciples was Simon the zealot, that is one of those committed to violent resistance
to Roman rule; Jesus' entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11.1-10 pars.) was
'virtually a proclamation of rebellion'; 37 the 'cleansing of the Temple' (Mark
11.15-17 pars.) was an attempt to seize the Temple by force, a messianic coup
d'etat, probably part of a wider uprising in which Barabbas took part (Mark
15.7); Jesus' response to the question about paying tribute (Mark 12.13-17 pars.)
was to rule decisively against it — the Holy Land and its resources belonged emphatically
to God, not to Caesar (hence Luke 23.2); Luke 22.36-38 indicates that
Jesus urged the acquisition of weapons, and there was armed resistance when Jesus
was arrested (Mark 14.47 pars.); and Jesus was crucified as a royal messianic
pretender (Mark 15.26 pars.) and on a charge of subversion and revolt (Luke
23.2).
Brandon's thesis has won little scholarly support. 38 We will examine the
most overtly 'messianic' episodes within Jesus' mission in some detail below.
But we can draw immediately on our earlier findings on at least two points. First,
it is highly unlikely that Simon's nickname of 'zealot' (Luke 6.15) had any of the
connotations of 'freedom-fighter' at the time of Jesus. 39 Mark, writing round
about the time of the first revolt, may have chosen to disguise the fact by calling
Simon 'the Cananean', from the Aramaic word for 'zealot' or 'enthusiast'
(qan'an); that is, he transliterated rather than translated the Aramaic. Even so,
however, the connotation at the time of Jesus was of a zealous person, not of an
advocate of revolutionary violence. 40 Second, if Jesus did indeed teach that love
36. Already in Fall of Jerusalem 101-107; Zealots ch. 7; Trial (Paladin) 78-81, 99-101,
122-23, 174-76.
37. Brandon, Trial (Paladin) 175.
38. Bammel and Moule, Jesus and Politics was intended primarily as a response to
Brandon. See also M. Hengel, Was Jesus a Revolutionist? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971).
39. See above, §9.3a (4).
40. Even less plausible are the suggestions that Peter's surname Barjona meant 'terrorist'
and that the surname Iscariot indicated Judas to be one of the Sicarii (as still maintained by
O. Cullmann, Jesus and the Revolutionaries [New York: Harper and Row, 1970] 8-9, 63 n. 13;
Buchanan, Jesus 247), both anachronistic for the time of Jesus: like the Zealots, the Sicarii did
not emerge for another twenty or so years (see again above, §9.3a[4]; also Davies and Allison,
Matthew 2.156-57). On the 'two swords' passage see Hahn, Hoheitstitel 167-70 {Titles 153-
55); Cullmann, Revolutionaries 47-49 ('This is no summons to a holy war'); Hengel, Was Jesus
a Revolutionist? 21-23; G. W. H. Lampe, 'The Two Swords (Luke 22:35-38)', in Bammel and
Moule, Politics 335-51; 'Luke understood the acquisition of two swords in Luke 22.38 not as a
preparation for revolt but as a repeal of the rules for mission and of the renunciation of any pos-
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