Richard Horsley

• University of Massachusetts Boston

As part of the deepening diversification of biblical studies, several lines of research are now undermining the print-cultural assumptions on which New Testament studies developed. The first section offers summaries of important inquiries into ancient communications media: the dominant oral communication and the uses of writing; revisionist text-cr...

In Jesus and the Disinherited Thurman recognized that the all-important historical context of Jesus was among a people subjugated, similar to that of segregated and colonized peoples. He discerned the cost in human degradation for people subjected by overwhelming power as they struggled with fear, deception, and hate. In the Gospels he discerned Je...

In the context of our modern global economy in which the richest one percent of the population becomes richer, while the poor grow ever poorer, this essay draws attention to the many biblical texts that announce God€™s concern for economic justice. From teachings that govern community life in the torah of Moses, to the indictments of injustice made...

In ancient Roman Palestine, politics and religion were inseparable in the power-relations between the Galilean and Judean peasants and their Roman, Herodian, and high priestly rulers. In contrast to the overly simple previous dichotomy between revolt and quiescence as the principal political options for Jesus, it may be possible to discern a range...

Jewish and Christian, and especially Protestant Christian, emphasis upon the sacred book and its authority have combined with scholarly interests and techniques, as well as the broader developments in the modern West . . . to fix in our minds today a rather narrow concept of scripture, a concept even more sharply culture-bound than that of “book” i...

This article investigates the origins and development of the earliest Jesus movements within the context of persistent conflict between the Judean and Galilean peasantry and their Jerusalem and Roman rulers. It explores the prominence of popular prophetic and messianic movements and shows how the earliest movements that formed in response to Jesus’...

Introduction: Empires Old and New

Werner Kelber's The Oral and the Written Gospel was a significant breakthrough in biblical studies in general as well as in gospels studies in particular. The book was a major challenge to some of the most fundamental assumptions, approaches, and constructs in the field. Precisely for that reason, few biblical scholars have attempted to come to gri...

Portrayals of Jesus based on analysis of isolated sayings of Jesus are problematic because the meaning discerned in sayings isolated from literary and /or social context on which their historical meaning would depend is highly susceptible of determination by the concerns of modern scholarly interpreters. Recent literary and social-historical analys...

As the study of religion expands its repertoire of approaches and perspectives, issues and cases of religion in relation to the workings and effects of empire can be included in the agenda. A complex critical analysis is necessary to discern the complex and sometimes hidden relations between religion and empire.

This article examines briefly ancient and modern examples of three different patterns of relations between empire and religion: (a) imperial elites' construction of subject peoples' religions, (b) subjected peoples' revival of their own traditional ways of life in resistance to imperial rule, and (c) the development of religious practices that cons...

New Testament studies, and Biblical studies more generally, is a conservative field when it comes to oral tradition. The field developed as part of Christian theology in order to interpret the Scripture, the sacred text that contains or mediates the holy word of God. Within this field of study, the term "oral tradition" has a very distinctive and c...

Adopting a perspective of class awareness, this study proposes that Jesus and his movements in Palestine did not simply have political implications but were engaged in social-political organising that brought them into political conflict with the Jerusalem and Roman rulers. This disposition has its roots in the distinctiveness of Galilee/Galileans...

The innovative regional approach taken by Meyers, Strange, and their associates to the excavation and interpretation of Upper Galilean villages has generated a fresh perspective as well as important new information for Galilee in late antiquity. The results of their explorations also stimulate reassessment of standard assumptions and concepts accor...

L'A. cherche a evaluer les progres dans l'exegese neo-testamentaire en examinant l'innovation dans la recherche d'une orientation nouvelle de cette science. Les etudes actuelles redecouvrent la problematique propre liee a la matiere. L'A. essaie de renouveler la criteriologie avec l'objectif d'etablir des criteres communs au nombre le plus large de...

Mettre en rapport Jesus et les Zelotes suppose qu'il y aurait eu un puissant mouvement zelote ayant une ideologie messianiste. Or en fait, on confond souvent Sicaires et Zelotes. L'A. releve et analyse ce que dit Josephe des differentes factions rivales dans la Jerusalem insurgee. Menahem a la tete des Sicaires eut bien un comportement "messianique...

“Christian Natural Law is the acceptance and reinterpretation according to Christian and ecclesiastical principles of Stoic Natural Law. …” Thus runs Troeltsch's classic and influential formulation of the view that Stoicism forms the “preparation of the gospel” with regard to the law of nature in Christian theology and ethics. Historians of politic...

In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul is attempting to straighten out some people in his newly founded community who, by virtue of their possession of wisdom, were claiming a special spiritual status. Apparently they designated themselves as pneumatikoi in contrast with the psychikoi , or those of lesser religious achievement. By a careful reading of P...