126 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
indeed, for them, is) an anarchist but whether the man called Jesus
of Nazareth, who lived and died about two thousand years ago,
could usefully be called such.
I should also make it clear that I am specifically interested in
whether Jesus can be called an “anarchist”. This is not neces-
sarily the same as saying that he simply had anti-authoritarian
tendencies nor that he was a violent insurrectionist of some kind –
something that received considerable attention some decades ago
and which has recently been revived.^18 Nor is it the same as decid-
ing that he was a “revolutionary” of some other kind, something
that has been a particular interest in contemporary scholarship,
especially amongst those concerned with trying to demonstrate
that the historical Jesus was an “inclusive” figure of some sort.^19
Ideas about what might constitute “politics” have become increas-
ingly nuanced, under the influence of such things as postcolonial
and gender theory,^20 and the ideological contexts of both the his-
torical Jesus and New Testament scholars themselves have come
under extensive scrutiny.^21
However, before we can attempt to answer the question we
have posed, there are a number of preliminary matters that
need to be addressed. In asking whether the historical Jesus can
be usefully labeled an anarchist I am conscious that many an-
archists may be familiar with material, academic and otherwise,
which maintains that Jesus of Nazareth never existed,^22 and they
may think that my question is a pointless one to try to answer.
Although no questions should be ignored in the critical study of
religion, the arguments of those who doubt the existence of the
historical Jesus are unpersuasive.^23 None of the opponents of early
Christianity, although they found numerous grounds for criticis-
ing the life and teaching of Jesus, doubted his existence,^24 and, to
put the matter concisely, the existence of Jesus of Nazareth is by
far the most plausible way of explaining the traditions we have
about a first-century, charismatic, Jewish peasant of that name.
Traditions that, culturally speaking, cohere with what we know
about the religious and cultural environment of Palestine at the
time and which combine to form a picture of a specific and dis-
tinctive individual within it – not a banal and fanciful composite.
Of course, these sources need to be handled with critical caution,