Was the historical Jesus an anarchist?^147with authoritarian forms of kingly, messianic leadership that were
dominant at the time.^224 Indeed, given that the historical Jesus
seems to have expected those around him to be empowered to
carry out similar actions,^225 it might not be too fanciful to agree
with Gerd Theissen that the historical Jesus may well have envis-
aged his followers collectively taking on messianic tasks, enacting
a kind of group messiahship. If this is the case, it would have
meant that the historical Jesus effectively played down his own
significance and so could be seen as advocating a kind of distrib-
uted, non-authoritarian form of leadership.^226
Similarly, the traditions about his death are uniform in present-
ing a figure who remained consistent in not using or endorsing
violence against enemies and for whom physical violence by hu-
mans against humans was anathema.^227 It was not a form of lead-
ership in which authority was equated with a superior sense of
personal value. Indeed, it appears to have been the opposite.
b. The kingdom of God is prefigurative.
As we have noted, the kingdom motif is not just associated with
judgement but also with new forms of social life, and these are
not just advocated but practiced. It can therefore be usefully un-
derstood as prefigurative and, more specifically, prefigurative in a
way that resembles anarchist ethics. In most forms of anarchist
ethics, the means are consistent with the desired ends, that is “the
outcomes are prefigured by the methods”.^228 The practice of anar-
chists is assumed to have immediate consequences and to resem-
ble the outcome that is desired. As James Guillaume, a colleague
of Bakunin, said, in his famous critique of statist socialists, “How
could one want an egalitarian and free society to issue from au-
thoritarian organisation? It is impossible.”^229
The ethics of Jesus could be seen as analogous to this and in
many ways this helps makes sense of the notion that the king-
dom is already present, and being enacted, even if in an initially
insignificant way, in a manner that resembles and is related to its
final form. One thinks, of example, of the Parable of the Mustard
Seed^230 or the practice of open commensality we have touched
upon.