Use Archibald Robertson, The Origins of Christianity, to make the case that Jesus was a secular revolutionary
chatGPT:
To argue that Jesus was a secular revolutionary using Archibald Robertson’s The Origins of Christianity, we can draw from Robertson’s Marxist historiography and materialist reading of early Christianity. Robertson presents Jesus not as a supernatural figure, but as a historical actor shaped by class conflict and the socio-political context of 1st-century Roman-occupied Judea. Here’s how we can build the case, step by step:
1. Jesus as a Product of Class Struggle
Robertson, influenced by Marxist thought, emphasizes the material conditions and class tensions in Judea at the time of Jesus. He sees Jesus as a representative of a popular movement among the oppressed lower classes—particularly Galilean peasants—against both Roman imperial authority and the collaborationist Jewish priestly aristocracy.
“The Jesus of history was a product of the economic and political ferment of his time—a time of deepening misery and growing unrest under Roman rule.”
— Robertson, The Origins of Christianity
This positions Jesus as a revolutionary figure fighting for material justice, not merely spiritual salvation.
2. Anti-Roman and Anti-Priestly Polemic
Robertson notes how many of Jesus’s teachings can be read as subversive critiques of both Roman power and the Temple elite. The cleansing of the Temple (Mark 11:15-18) is seen as a politically charged act, not just a religious gesture. It challenged the economic exploitation at the heart of the Temple system, which had become integrated with Roman interests.
“The overturning of the money-changers’ tables was not the act of a mystic, but of a man who recognized the collusion between religious authority and economic oppression.”
Here, Jesus aligns with a popular anti-elite sentiment—a key feature of secular revolutionary movements.
3. The Kingdom of God as an Earthly Order
Robertson insists that the “Kingdom of God” in Jesus’s message was not a transcendent heaven but an immanent socio-political transformation. The “kingdom” would reverse the social order, uplift the poor, and depose the powerful—echoing themes of egalitarian revolt.
“Jesus proclaimed the coming of a kingdom in which the poor would inherit the earth—not in some afterlife, but here and now. This was the language of revolution.”
This interpretation aligns Jesus with movements for redistributive justice, not spiritual otherworldliness.
4. Repression and Execution as Political Punishment
Robertson stresses that crucifixion was a Roman method of executing political rebels. Jesus’s death is not best understood as a religious martyrdom, but as the state’s punishment for sedition.
“If Jesus had merely preached peace and piety, Rome would have ignored him. The fact that he was crucified proves that his message was seen as a direct threat to the political order.”
Thus, Jesus dies the death of a revolutionary agitator, not just a theological symbol.
5. Later Spiritualization as Historical Distortion
Finally, Robertson argues that Pauline Christianity and the early Church spiritualized and depoliticized Jesus’s radical message in order to survive and gain favor within the Roman world.
“The original movement of Jesus, a mass uprising of the dispossessed, was gradually transformed into a mystical religion palatable to the ruling classes.”
This shift obscured Jesus’s revolutionary character and turned him into a divine figure, removing the radical edge of his message.
Conclusion: Jesus as a Secular Revolutionary
Using Robertson’s framework, we can argue that:
- Jesus emerged from a context of social and economic oppression.
- His teachings and actions were revolutionary, aimed at overturning unjust systems.
- His execution was political.
- The later Church reinterpreted his message to fit religious paradigms, thereby erasing his secular, revolutionary origins.
Robertson gives us a Jesus who stands not as the founder of a church, but as a leader of the oppressed, whose real aims were political and material—a secular revolutionary in a deeply unequal society.