A Friend?

Rev dear Rev: Is it honestly fair to say that Jesus the Nazarene in his historical human personality was a friend of Rome and the Roman Empire or must we conclude that like most of the Zealots of his time, plus the pharisees and others, that he would have been numbered and presumed to be among the enemies of the emperors and an enduring critic of the ongoing Roman Empire, as most modern theologians since Rahner often tout in their books and articles, often depreciating Roman laws that the Romans promoted?

This Question which was first articulated as a bawdy and ribald act of unbelief and disbelief and sheer total dubitatio to a Sermon one Sunday actually comes from a chappie. He lives on the road out to Oxford. And it arose from him after he witnessed a First Communion Sunday Mass in which the Indiana Jones style priest tried to explain to the young people something about the earthly Jesus - and yes he was a human but not merely a human, only human by an adoptionism. But it is a very common Quaestio nowadays and one that was also asked quite frequently in my hearing by another chappie from Birmingham and Leicester on the unknown roads thereon. We shall endeavour to persevere on this one, noting by the way, as we pass over the pages of Ancient World History that until the luminously inspiring book of historicist faction by David Gibbons called "The Last Gospel", one which toys tantalisingly like a Tantalus with some pretty exciting claims such as a secret meeting of a young Jesus with the emperor Tiberius at Tabga, most theologians to a man and a woman retained the above view of the earthly Jesus, namely that he was no friend of Rome, being a contemporary wandering Jew of a zealot kind, and nether the twain shall ever meet - this was such a common view among theologians up to recently that it became an orthodox dogma of consensus amongst them all, impossible to move against or struggle against like a young Einstein in Berlin, as more and more of the older kind sought to distance the gospels of the early christians from their apparent persecutors in the sands of the Collosseum. But it was not always thus. There was a time when it was wholly other. Allow me to explain to the readership of old style newspapers:

A very good question from the Midlands in the main. We must assume with our theologian friends above that every Palestinian Jew of the period was pitted against the Roman Occupation, if not publicly certainly privately, and that is why it was not a problem for Jesus to accept Zealot terrorists for inclusion among his troupes of various apostles and presbyters and deacons at the time - it seemed normal because it was a normal disposition among so many. And when it came to a trial, it seemed to be Pilate's working assumption that Jesus was a Rex Hebraicus who was anti-empire and a sworn and violent enemy of Rome too - that much was clear in his interrogation of the young Jewish messiah. So it would seem that the theologians after Rahner, and many of them being German, assumed all of this correctly with Pilate. There was one tiny little niggardly little detail though that many theologians did not articulate in the key period of Contextual Studies 1960 to 2015, and that was that when Jesus did finally appear in his public ministry as a prophet to Jerusalem to forewarn the ordinary simple people inside that city of impending doom, he failed to appear in the following guises. He was not:

            Not with the Pharisees and the ruling classes of priests;

            Not with the Sadduccees and the temple officials of the key city;

            Not with the Herodians and the local monarchy which was very strange;

            Not even with the Terrorist Zealots of the nationalists like Peter;

            Not with the evil Sicarii who used to assassinate lone legionaries;

            Not even with the Barrabbasites of the Revolt;

            Not with Hercules Athronogaios of the Desert Revolt;

            Not with a young Jesus Albinus of the mad traditionalist hasidics;

            Not with Jesus bar Kochbar and the beginnings of the later Grande Jewish Rebellion.

All of this should sound a large death knell type warning to our identification of Jesus as a mere Wandering Aramaean Jewish Prophet of the usual kind of Jewish nationalist. So no answers arising therefrom, quite a mystery that he did not appear in the garb and uniform of any of these above movements, for a wandering liberating Jewish prophet. But if we look over the unturned pages and largely unnoticed pages of the official canonical Gospels, eventually we might find a little scene at the synagogue at Capernaum where some light will emerge. Here near Capernaum Jesus meets a Centurion of the victorious Roman Army, and in a dialogue worthy of a Socrates, we discover the finest compliment Jesus pays to anyone in Israel. After the Centurion asks him to heal his servant, and Jesus presses to go to his house, the Centurion explains that he is not worthy to have Jesus under his roof, from which our communion prayers arise, and that all he has to do is just to give the order. Jesus is astonished - very rare emotion for Jesus, the prophet of much foresight, and he says to all the apostles standing around - "Nowhere in all of Israel have I found faith like this." Nowhere:

            Not in the Temple where it should be;

            Not in the Porticos of Solomon where it might be;

            Not in the Temple at Shiloh where the Ark was found near the Plains of Yearim;

            Not among the priests and sacrificing massing types;

            Not among the worshippers gathered at the Pool of Siloam;

            Not among the synagogue officials and huperetes;

            Not even among the clerical orders of the scribes and pharisees running the university;

Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere, and that means nowhere. Rome was just become a friend of Jesus. Surprisingly, and we sincerely mean this, surprisingly, Jesus found a Roman to be the best advert of his Father's gift of faith. Nobody in all of Israel like him. And then we learn that this Roman occupier and Centurion was: a) a friend of the local synagogue; b) and efficient Centurion petitioning a healing ministry; c) a believer in that selfsame healing ministry, unlike any of the Jews who had been chosen from before time to hear the Gospel first. Jesus we are told quite firmly was "astonished." He was not a subscriber to the pro's and contra's of the early Jewish ideologies of conflict at the time. He had suddenly found a vibrant and sincere and devotional faith in Israel, far far far beyond the visible confines of Judaism. Jesus was now a friend of Rome - in sum he was a Rex Socius.