[Dialogue] The political Jusus

[KroegerD@aol.com]

Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 by the Boston Globe 
The Politics of the Christmas Story 
by James Carroll
 
The single most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the 
Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of 
Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political 
challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make 
the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over. 
The Gospel of Matthew builds its nativity narrative around Herod's 
determination to kill the baby, whom he recognizes as a threat to his own political 
sway. The Romans were an occupation force in Palestine, and Herod was their 
puppet-king. To the people of Israel, the Roman occupation, which preceded the birth 
of Jesus by at least 50 years, was a defilement, and Jewish resistance was 
steady. (The historian Josephus says that after an uprising in Jerusalem around 
the time of the birth of Jesus, the Romans crucified 2,000 Jewish rebels.)
Herod was right to feel insecure on his throne. In order to preempt any 
challenge from the rumored newborn "king of the Jews," Herod murdered "all the male 
children who were 2 years old or younger." Joseph, warned in a dream, slipped 
out of Herod's reach with Mary and Jesus. Thus, right from his birth, the 
child was marked as a political fugitive.
The Gospel of Luke puts an even more political cast on the story. The 
narrative begins with the decree of Caesar Augustus calling for a world census -- a 
creation of tax rolls that will tighten the empire's grip on its subject 
peoples. It was Caesar Augustus who turned the Roman republic into a dictatorship, a 
power-grab he reinforced by proclaiming himself divine.
His census decree is what requires the journey of Joseph and the pregnant 
Mary to Bethlehem, but it also defines the context of their child's nativity as 
one of political resistance. When the angel announces to shepherds that a 
"savior has been born," as scholars like Richard Horsley point out, those hearing 
the story would immediately understand that the blasphemous claim by Caesar 
Augustus to be "savior of the world" was being repudiated.
When Jesus was murdered by Rome as a political criminal -- crucifixion was 
the way such rebels were executed -- the story's beginning was fulfilled in its 
end. But for contingent historical reasons (the savage Roman war against the 
Jews in the late first century, the gradual domination of the Jesus movement by 
Gentiles, the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century) the 
Christian memory deemphasized the anti-Roman character of the Jesus story. 
Eventually, Roman imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing 
Romans as the main antagonists of Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself. 
(Thus, Herod is remembered more for being part-Jewish than for being a Roman 
puppet.)
In modern times, religion and politics began to be understood as occupying 
separate spheres, and the nativity story became spiritualized and 
sentimentalized, losing its political edge altogether. "Peace" replaced resistance as the 
main motif. The baby Jesus was universalized, removed from his decidedly Jewish 
context, and the narrative's explicit critiques of imperial dominance and of 
wealth were blunted.
This is how it came to be that Christmas in America has turned the nativity 
of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with 
Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new 
self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land 
oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American 
occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a 
pall over the festival of consumption. A story of the Jewishness of Jesus 
might undercut the Christian theology of replacement.
Today the Roman empire is recalled mainly as a force for good -- those roads, 
language, laws, civic magnificence, "order" everywhere. The United States of 
America also understands itself as acting in the world with good intentions, 
aiming at order. "New world order," as George H.W. Bush put it.
That we have this in common with Rome is caught by the Latin motto that 
appears just below the engraved pyramid on each American dollar bill, "Novus Ordo 
Seculorum." But, as Iraq reminds us, such "order" comes at a cost, far more 
than a dollar. The price is always paid in blood and suffering by unseen 
"nobodies" at the bottom of the imperial pyramid. It is their story, for once, that is 
being told this week.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. His most recent book 
is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."
© 2004 Boston Globe 
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