Do we consult the New Testament for guidance about living peacefully, or for confirmation of moral judgements that must be shored up, by coercion if necessary? In this extract from his new book, Thomas R Yoder Neufeld reflects on the treatment of violence in the gospels

It is not an exaggeration to say that violence pervaded the world of Jesus and his followers. Herodian and Roman imperial rule, sparking sporadic resistance, and culminating in the catastrophic war against Rome in 66–70CE, created an ambience of pervasive violence.

In addition to the political and military brutalities, the growing disparities between rich and poor, landowners and landless, form a vivid background to Jesus’ parables, for example. And the conflict between the rural poor and the temple state centred in Jerusalem is reflected in the final days of Jesus’ life.

If what counts as violence is marginalisation on the basis of religion and sex, the pages of the gospels reflect the pervasiveness of such violence as well. The presence in the narratives of Jesus’ life of lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, haemorrhaging women, and Samaritans testifies to what can fairly be called structural, cultural and religious violence. Equally, the landowners, slaveholders, centurions, suspicious and judgemental religious leaders, local kings and Roman overlords populating the narratives of Jesus’ life and his parables represent those in charge of maintaining an order soaked in violence. Violence is seldom if ever beyond the horizon in the gospels.

When we move beyond Palestine into the wider Mediterranean world, and view that world from the vantage point of believers in Jesus, we see that it too is marked by pervasive violence. Even when the Jesus movement benefited from the order and “peace” the security state brought them, making possible the rapid spread of the movement, the violence of that system was never far out of sight. Apart from the hostility and even physical violence early Jesus-believers experienced at the hands of their fellow Jews, Roman authorities also frequently responded to them as a threat to civic order and peace.

This is an extract from the February 2012 issue of Reform.

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