JESUS THE ZEALOT
The Zealots were the equivalent of the IRA in the first century. They were
Jewish fanatics who maimed and killed in the name of liberating their country
from the Romans. If Jesus existed he was a Zealot. It appears that the
life-story of Jesus was made up from different life-stories and so it could
happen that episodes in a Zealot leader’s life became part of the Jesus story.
Some zealots were just thieves who funded the more able killing
machines.
THE NAMES
The family of Jesus all have names plucked out of the Bible. Jesus/Joshua, the
warrior who acted like a king but who was not, was an interesting name for the
New Testament Jesus. As Reza Aslan notes, the choosing of these names was
patriotic and "may indicate a sense of awakened national identity that seemed to
have been particularly marked in Galilee."
Miriam Jesus' mother is based on Moses' sister Miriam. This is not a compliment
to Mary as Miriam gloated over the drownings of the Egyptians.
Read Exodus 15.
20 Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron's sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all
the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing.
21 Miriam sang to them: Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse
and driver he has hurled into the sea.
Thaddeus appears in the Bible as an apostle of Jesus in Matthew 10:3. Many
manuscripts claim the wording is “Judas the Zealot.” It is best to hold that
both are right. It really seems as if it is the same name as Theudas. The book
of Acts mentions a false messiah, a terrorist zealot, under that name who came
to a bad end. Josephus mentions what could be the same person if it were not for
the fact that he was slain much later in about 44 AD. We don’t know what
happened to this apostle but just as Joseph Smith had disciples who became rival
prophets Jesus must have had an associate or disciple who became a Messiah
figure too. Was Judas the Zealot an apostle?
Simon the Zealot was one of Jesus' apostles.
And Judas Iscariot means Judas the stabber and Iscariot denotes the small knives, called the sicarii, that Zealots used to carry out assassinations. Judas’ surname implies a number of knives so Judas could have been the maker of the knives for them or the supplier or had several knives himself which he put to much use earning him the nickname. Jesus would have been in big trouble for having these men as his disciples. It would bring suspicion on him. He was willing then to be seen as a Zealot for he was one.
Christians say that Jesus having Zealots as his organisers of the kingdom of God means nothing for Matthew was a tax collector and it did not mean that Jesus was into supporting the Roman revenue. But Matthew had left his job for Jesus. It is naïve to suggest that Matthew would not have joined with a Zealot, and by implication Rome, when Rome had been his employer. There is no evidence that Matthew liked the Roman rulers. And being a Zealot was not an occupation or job but about being a subversive. A modern prophet who has an IRA man as an apostle would obviously be approving of that man’s activities. He would probably be an IRA man himself. Even after Jesus rose from the dead the apostles wanted him to restore the kingdom to Israel so they had nationalistic ideas all the time meaning that the Zealot apostles were still Zealots. Obviously, they knew that the kingdom of God was to be political and save Israel from its enemies. They had never been put off this notion so Jesus must have agreed with what the Zealots were trying to do.
THE EVIDENCE FOR JESUS BEING A ZEALOT
Zealots were often thieves and only thieves and Jesus and Judas
Iscariot were accused of stealing. Read John 12:6. Mark
14:48. Mark 15:27.
Jesus claimed to fulfil the Old Testament prophecies and said he would fulfil
them all. Most of the prophecies about the Messiah are not about the kind of
Messiah that Christians say he was but about one that would rule the land and
vanquish enemies and establish righteousness on earth after a great war. They
never hint that the Messiah will do this after he dies or rises from the dead or
anything. The Messiah allegedly was called Prince of Peace in Isaiah but that
would only mean he has to fight to make peace so that his people can enjoy peace
without disturbance from their enemies. The prophecies were written to
Israelites with no hint that they were written to the Church which claims to be
the New Israel. See Jeremiah 23. Jesus knew he had to fulfil all the prophecies.
He knew Deuteronomy 18 spelled it out that nobody had any right to be believed
unless he spoke for God and predicted the future and was always right. So this
would have made him see that he would have had to fulfil every prophecy before
he could ask for faith. He would have to prove it for the same reason the
prophet had to be always right. He had to have been a Zealot. Maybe not an
orthodox one but he had to be a Zealot for prophecy demanded that he take the
terrorist role if he wanted to be a Messiah.
Jesus being a Zealot would be one explanation for why Paul just cared about the
risen Jesus and not the one that tried to save Israel and ended up on a cross.
Jesus being a Zealot would also explain why the Romans hated Christianity so
much. They were supposed to have been hated for immorality and for atheism for
they did not use idols. But still the Romans were determined not to hear their
side which suggests their phobia had something to do with who founded the sect.
The phobia was too deep-set and prevalent to be mere religious prejudice. Though
Jesus claimed to be Christ and they hated that it still would not have made them
hate Jesus that much.
The main reason for classing Jesus as a zealot for he was put on a cross and the
cross was about deterrence and triumph over the insurgent more than execution.
It was the zealot's reward. Rebels naturally got the most shameful version of
crucifixion and the gospels say Jesus's was exceptional.
MATTHEW 12
In Matthew 11:12 Jesus says that the violent men keep attacking the kingdom of Heaven from the days of John the Baptist until now. But the fact is that nobody was attacking or hurting Jesus or his followers then. The usual argument is that he was thinking of John and his violent death. But that does not fit well. It is siege from other human beings we have here. He is taking about given and take violence. I’d take this as a garbled memory of Jesus’ secret terrorist and revolutionary activity.
Jesus attacked people in the Temple and caused a riot. To
get the money changers and animals out he had to have had a lot of
help. Why he was not arrested then and locked up
for good makes no sense. But we still have enough here to show
that this was not a man of peace.
PALM SUNDAY?
The John Gospel (12:13) says that palms were spread before Jesus when he entered
Jerusalem to much acclaim from the people who hailed him as Messiah - Son of
David. Mark, Luke and Matthew carefully avoided calling them palms.
So the context is that something nationalistic was happening. It was political.
Another context is that palms are associated in the Bible with a violent
nationalistic Messiah. Palms were used in the feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus
23:40). Speaking of messianic times the following goes,
"Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up
year after year to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, and to celebrate the
Feast of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to
Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, they will have no rain."
(Zechariah 14:16-17)
Carson (1991, 432) maintains that that “From about two centuries earlier, palm
branches had already become a national, (not to say nationalist) symbol”. See
Carson, D. A. —. 1991. The Gospel According to St. John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
It makes no sense that Jesus got away with it - why was he not arrested there
and then for the Romans did not tolerate alleged messiahs as there was a problem
in the nation with messianic and nationalistic terrorism.
NO EVIDENCE AGAINST JESUS BEING A ZEALOT
Christians do everything they can to prove that Jesus was not a Zealot.
The Sermon in the Mount commanded turning the other cheek and carrying a Roman
soldier’s pack two miles when asked to do one. These rules would have been
necessary to avert suspicion. Jesus was interested in getting the Romans out of
Palestine but not in hating them as persons. He commanded and practiced kindness
to them for it was nothing personal. The public face of the IRA seems nice and
reasonable but then the main organisation is not.
Jesus looks as if he told the Jews to pay taxes to Caesar for his face was on
the coins. It was too soon to have a revolt so he might have had to tell them to
pay in the meantime. It could be said that when he gave such a stupid reason for
paying taxes that he was saying, “They should not be paid for the only reason
they should be paid if they should be is that Caesar’s face is on them and that
is not a reason at all”.
Why does Jesus not deny telling people not to pay tribute to the Roman Empire in
Luke 23:2? The time he said to give to Caesar what is due to him and God what is
due to God could imply Caesar is entitled to nothing. The double-meaning answer
shows his true thoughts - pay nothing!
Jesus ran away when the people tried by force to make him king. That may only
proves that the circumstances were not right not that he was dead set against
becoming a king.
Jesus prophesied not liberation but destruction for the nation. A Zealot prophet
would seem to prophesy liberation. But Jesus could have wanted the Jews to be
destroyed for most of them were not Zealots and the Jewish leaders even
collaborated with the Romans. The gospels are full of his rancour against the
Pharisees and the scribes or Sadduccees – the latter were the worst
collaborators. He predicted that the kingdom of God would come. This would
probably be made up of good Zealots and Jews with the majority destroyed. Jesus
never said they would all be destroyed. And the kingdom of God had to be a
political outfit. A kingdom without laws and penalties and politics is not a
kingdom at all. The kingdom of God was certainly to be a Church but was to be a
real kingdom. The Church says that the kingdom of God is just a non-political
collection of people who serve God. Jesus would have believed that those who
sincerely obey God’s laws would be already in this kind of kingdom of God but he
viewed it and stressed it in such a way that it had to be more than that.
Jesus told Pilate his kingdom was not of this world for his servants would fight
to save him if it were. Anybody who claimed to be a spiritual as well as a
temporal king could say that if he had lost the temporal kingdom. Jesus had
nobody at that time. The claim that at his arrest he said he could get
rescued by request by a legion of angels but he would not is
telling. He had no objection to war. For all we know, he
might have been trying to urge his Zealot group to attack, at some
time in the future, in the belief that angels would get involved
Caiaphas in the gospel of John accuses Jesus of sedition. That is extremely
important. People argue that the embarrassing stuff written about Jesus means it
was true but they cherry-pick the material. The sedition accusation should be
top of the list in believability.
Jesus said that he was going to Jerusalem to be crucified and die and that he
would rise again. It seems a Zealot leader would not be saying that for he would
be expecting to win the war. But Jesus could have believed that this would
happen to him and that it would be worth it if it incited the people to violence
against those responsible. Maybe he wanted to die for this reason. To be a
martyr.
Jesus did not talk much about politics - or so it seems.
The gospels could have left out his political activities in order to avoid being burnt by the Romans.
Jesus, as far as we know, did not look at the political history of the people much which seems to suggest he was not a Zealot. But when the gospels are more interested in the spiritual side of Jesus and see no relevance in the political side for Jesus was long gone this would be only natural. The gospels were not about politics but about arousing faith in him so they were not going to give us any of his political lectures anyway. We only know a little about what Jesus said and the gospels have most of the same teachings in common.
Jesus would have had to have been careful for he had to be sure his army was gathered properly and had to exercise discretion so too much political talk in public could have got him in trouble.
THE WOMAN
Zealots were rabidly racists and slammed non-Jews as dogs and
animals. Jesus ignored a Gentile lady who wanted him to get a
devil out of her daughter. Finally he had to deal with her.
He told her it was not FAIR to give the food of the children to
dogs. He did not say it was inappropriate. He used the
word fair. She replied dogs are entitled to scraps. For that
he told her he cured her daughter. He had a loophole here.
The girl was going to be lucid anyway and if the demon reasserted
itself again he was going to use the excuse that her pagan religion
was the reason it got back in. That he validated the woman's
diagnosis of her daughter speaks of his prejudice.
CONCLUSION
Jesus was a Zealot if he lived and so he was not the Son of God and unworthy of
worship. Or if you want you can think about what James Still wrote online, "We
can safely conclude at this point that Jesus was indeed supportive of the Zealot
movement if not in deed, then certainly in principle."
BOOKS CONSULTED
JESUS, AN Wilson, Flamingo, London, 1993
JESUS THE JEW, G Vermes, Collins, Glasgow, 1973
HE WALKED AMONG US, Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, Alpha, Cumbria, 2000
THE MESSIANIC LEGACY, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi,
London, 1987
http://www.geocities.com/nephilimnot/historical_jesus_christ.html