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Jesus was not an egalitarian. A critique of an anachronistic and idealist theory
Biblical Theology Bulletin, Summer, 2002 by John H. Elliott
Abstract
The currently-advanced theory that Jesus was an egalitarian who founded a "community of equals" is devoid of social and political plausibility and, more importantly, of textual and historical evidence. Moreover, it distorts the actual historical and social nature of the nascent Jesus movement and constitutes a graphic example of an "idealist fallacy." The biblical texts to which proponents of the egalitarian theory appeal show Jesus and his followers engaged not in social revolution, democratic institutions, equality, and the eradication of the traditional family, but in establishing a form of community modelled on the family as redefined by Jesus and united by familial values, norms, and modes of conduct.
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The Declaration of Independence adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 contained the revolutionary concept that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Across the Atlantic in the same period, a revolution in France likewise was fueled by a call for liberte, egalite, et fraternite. While the notion of equality or egalitarianism eventually required further clarification and specification, especially in respect to the question of whether the term "men" included slaves and women, for example, this conviction concerning human equality eventually was to animate and shape the governmental polities of all states and the social policies of all institutions of the modern world. The quest for equality eventually also was felt in religious bodies resulting not only in the restructuring of admission and leadership policies but also in religious movements supportive of the abolition of slavery, the affirmation of women's suffrage, and the active support of civil rights movements attempting to make the equality of all persons a reality in the ecclesiastical as well as the civil sphere.
One interesting feature of some recent studies on the historical Jesus and the Jesus movement is the claim that already two thousand years ago Jesus was an "egalitarian" and that the group affiliated with the social reformer from Nazareth put into practice a "discipleship of equals." This is a view argued forcefully by Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, John Dominic Crossan, Gerd Theissen, and Theissen and Merz; for others see those listed by Kathleen Corely (1998:291, notes 3, 4). Proponents of this theory regard various New Testament texts as illustrative of Jesus' egalitarian stance. Jesus's injunctions to his followers to leave home, family, possessions, and protection are interpreted as an implied critique and rejection of the conventional patriarchal family and its hierarchical, male-dominated kinship structure. This supposed critique of the conventional patriarchal family structure, in turn, is then assumed by some to have involved a repudiation of the family as a model for the organization for the group associated with Jesus during his lifetime because the conventional family was patriarchal and hierarchical in structure and hence constituted a social form diametrically opposed to the egalitarianism that Jesus intended to establish. Those who accept as authentic Jesus' adoption and adaptation of the family model in his speaking of a new "family of God" (Mark 3:31-35 par.) maintain that this new family was organized not on patriarchal but rather on egalitarian lines. Matt 23:8-10 is interpreted as indicating an elimination of patriarchalism ("call no man father"). The purported egalitarian structure of the new family is claimed to be similar to the alleged egalitarian structure of voluntary associations of the time. After Jesus' death and prior to Paul, certain egalitarian theorist claim, this egalitarian and anti-patriarchal structure of the Jesus movement is attested in the pre-Pauline tradition expressed in Gal 3:28. With Paul, however, Schussler Fiorenza in particular argues, this initial abandonment of patriarchy slackened, the egalitarian vision and reality was lost and there began a regretable reversion to oppressive traditional patriarchal hierarchical family structures within the believing community. The more expansive adoption of the family and the household and household management tradition by post-Pauline New Testament authors is presented as evidence of this drastic loss of egalitarian vision and program and as a fateful return to patriarchal structures, structures which then set the organizational framework for the Church in susbsequent centuries. This historical stage of the egalitarian theory is the focus of two forthcoming articles (Elliott 2002a, 2002b) and will be commented on here only in passing.
The present study presents a critical examination of this theory as it concerns the words and actions of Jesus, the premises that the theory appears to entail, the interpretation of the New Testament evidence used to support it, the sociological plausibility of such a theory, and evidence of the historical and social practice of equality by Jesus and his followers.
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