• The Fetish for a Subversive Jesus

    Author(s):
    Robert Myles
    Date:
    2018
    Item Type:
    Article
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6382K
    Abstract:
    What does it mean to say Jesus was subversive? This article engages in meta-critical analysis of the use of ‘subversion’ in historical Jesus research. It argues that the neoliberal lives of Jesus in particular have increasingly fetishized a cultural mainstreaming of subversion in which certain forms of containable subversion are tolerated within late capitalist society, as part of a broader strategy of economic and ideological compliance. On the one hand, J.D. Crossan’s Jesus spun subversive aphorisms which constituted the radical subversion of the present world order. On the other hand, N.T. Wright has frequently intensified the rhetoric of subversion, claiming a ‘profoundly’, ‘doubly’, ‘thoroughly’, ‘deeply’, and ‘multiply’ subversive Jesus, while simultaneously distancing him from traditional subversive fixtures like militant revolutionary action. Through its discursive mimicking of wider cultural trends, this rhetorical trope has enabled Jesus scholarship to enjoy both popular and academic success in Western, neoliberal society.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Journal:
    Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
    Volume:
    14
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    52 - 70
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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