The popular appeal of the movement was due in part to a desire to represent the values of ordinary rural workers.

Some readers may be irritated by the retro-fitting of 19th and 20th century language to a first century setting (the Twelve Disciples are referred to as the Jesus Movement’s “Politburo,” and the desired millenarian outcome as a “Dictatorship of the Peasantry,” for instance). Copious and informed material information by way of well-wrought and well-written biographical narrative.

An expert panel discusses the introduction of Prayers of Love and Faith and blessings for same-sex couples. Tensions flared up considerably when the movement marched on Jerusalem, and Jesus was willingly martyred for the cause. I can think of no better introduction to the historical Jesus for the general reader, no clearer statement on the legacy of the Jesus movement in the sweep of subsequent history, or a more worthy challenge to contemporary scholarship on Jesus and the rise of Christianity. We are trusting God’s plans for St John’s and excited to discover how he might be looking to use us for His Kingdom in our community. It is often the message rather than the details of the story which is important and, therefore, inspired.

If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. There needs to be more study, not of history as a science, but of the genres of historical writing and their way of asserting the truth, or, rather what truth they mean to assert. The claims of hyper or “servant” masculinity and the downgrading of the Movement’s radical inclusion of women needs far more substance to stand up than they provide here.Watson then proceeds on the basis of two historical principles: first, the grant of the benefit of the doubt, that evidence should be accepted unless there is reason for disbelief; and, second, the uniqueness of historical events. Crossley and Myles offer a vivid portrait of the man and his movement and uncover the material conditions that converged to make it happen. As of yesterday, my co-author James Crossley and I submitted the final author-approved manuscript of Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict to our publisher Zer0 Books . Crossley and Myles have recaptured the mind-blowing excitement generated by the original quest to distinguish the Jesus of history behind the myth.

The latter is written from a Marxist viewpoint, presenting Jesus not as “a Great Man of history”, but as a religious organiser, formed by and emerging from the peasantry of Galilee and Judaea, the vanguard of a new political party with its own politburo, a dictatorship to serve the interests of the non-elite peasantry, but also with a mission to the rich.The book conveys a sharp sense of the times and places, the issues and discussions, the difficulties and possibilities. When John’s shorthand term for the Jewish authorities in the Passion narrative as “the Jews” is described as a “chilling ‘fascist-like’ tendency”, the reader may be forgiven for assuming that the authors slip too readily into a Marxist perspective. For many young men of the time, there were only two realistic responses: banditry or hitching themselves to a prophetic itinerant movement. Seeing such portraits as romanticized and overly idealized, the interest here is on the social and economic forces that produced the Jesus movement.

Fr Henry Wansbrough OSB is a monk of Ampleforth, emeritus Master of St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, and a former member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

This book moves on from the Third Quest for the historical Jesus, so focused on seeing Jesus as a great innovator within a particular cultural, religious and societal context. Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict provides an important refocusing and reprioritizing of earlier Scriptural studies as seen through the lens of historical materialist analysis. Before you go, please support great working-class and pro-people journalism by donating to People’s World. More generally, if the Jewish historian Josephus is the chief witness for the Galilean world of “excessive taxation, discontent, banditry, warfare and violent reprisals”, his own motives for painting this picture for the Romans should be more closely examined. That said, the authors do reinforce more traditional interpretations in other regards, including the self-awareness of Jesus that the trajectory of his life would lead to a challenge to the religious and military authorities in Jerusalem.