Jesus Was a Zealot, but We Can Still Learn Much from His Movement

or “Some reflections on the 'Nazarene', his times, and the state of our Republic"

The original version of this essay was published on April 6, 2024, under the title “Jesús era un extremista, pero podemos aprender mucho de su movimiento”.

Last Sunday I went to Easter Mass, mostly to keep someone company (I stopped practicing a while ago). Despite the special occasion, it was the first time in ages I’d attended “regular” service — weddings don’t really count. The priest spoke of Jesus and, of course, the resurrection, which most Christians around the world consider a pillar of their faith, if not the pillar. For them, Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of humanity’s sins, or so the story goes, and whoever believes in him will conquer death, just as he did

Naturally, this “sacrifice” means different things to different communities of believers — ranging from “Jesus died for you and, therefore, you should carry a profound sense of guilt until the day you die,” all the way to “Jesus, despite everything he ever said about money, died because he wanted you to be rich” #blessed. But for most people who commemorate Easter (Semana Santa), the resurrection is seen as Jesus’s greatest feat.

And not for nothin’, ya know? It’s not every day someone comes back from the dead, at least in those days.

For us nonbelievers, though, the life of Jesus of Nazareth can still serve as a fascinating case study (maybe even a source of inspiration), especially in Panama’s current moment, which has a lot more in common with Jesus’s time than might come across at first glance. Even if you don’t see him as divine, the flesh-and-blood Jesus — someone most of us would call a cholo from up in the mountains of, say, Central Veraguas — has plenty to teach us, particularly when it comes to precariousness and social (read partisan) tension.

Looking at Jesus’s life through a more “scientific” lens — unlike our own, deeply subjective one — can be surprisingly eye-opening, even if it doesn’t come naturally. The idea is to see the man — instead of the Christ of Faith, as author and academic Reza Aslan would say — not through our own filter: this meatsuit we walk around in, but in the context of his own time and place.

The upshot of this perspective is that, as a matter of faith, Christ can be anything to anyone: monarch, king of kings, lord, shepherd, lamb, savior, son of God, son of man, superstar, redeemer, judge, messiah, teacher, philosopher, prophet, guide, or just a dude you can sit down and have a beer with. Hell, he might even tell you to run for president, too!

The historical Jesus, however, is far less malleable. As Aslan says in his book, “Zealot, the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”, while we know very little for sure about his life, we know almost everything about his times. The resulting version is that of a Jew who, like the overwhelming majority of Galilean peasants, laborers, and fishermen, was illiterate and would’ve certainly seemed a “country bumpkin” to the elites in Jerusalem. He was executed by the Roman Empire after leading a national liberation movement, one of hundreds in an era steeped in “apocalyptic expectation”. This version of Jesus, however, often makes many uncomfortable, especially those who prefer the “Prince of Peace” version.

But Jesus as an extremist, even an ultranationalist has been a popular model of resistance to injustice, especially in Latin America. Seeing his people exploited by foreign occupiers, aided and abetted by Jewish elites, no less, his was a “messianic” movement to expel the pagan armies from Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. With the goal of unseating Jewish leaders who were enriching themselves off the backs of poor Jews, Jesus’s teachings became a direct threat to the established order.

The rabbi (teacher) known as the Nazarene who lived in first-century Palestine, under Roman rule for over 50 years, wasn’t so much challenging the religious conventions of his time as he was confronting the socioeconomic structures that kept the Jewish people subjugated. Even though he was executed for sedition, and even if his original movement was buried in the ruins of Jerusalem’s bloody sacking by the Romans, this Jesus — the one rooted in history — has more to teach us at our current crossroads than any other.

Welcome to the End Times

The political environment in which Jesus lived could best be described as a pressure cooker ready to blow. Socioeconomic tensions and infighting among Jewish sects, back when the separation of Church & State — religion and politics — simply didn’t exist, were intensified by a brutal, all-encompassing military occupation. This environment, shaped by the dominant influence of three major pillars of power, provides the necessary context to understand the life of Jesus of Nazareth — and why his message was so revolutionary.

As Aslan writes in his book, the first pillar was the authorities of the Temple in Jerusalem, which in Jesus’s time wasn’t just the center of religion — where the spirit of Yahweh actually dwelled — but also the repository of the laws and collective memory of the Jewish people (a sorta 3-in-1 national library, public registry, and central bank). It was, quite simply, the center of Jewish political, economic, and social power.

Led by Caiaphas, the high priest and richest Jew of his time, these “authorities” played a central role in the political and economic transactions of Jewish Palestine, working hand-in-hand with the Roman occupiers to extract vast amounts of wealth from the impoverished peasantry. To poor but devout Jews like Jesus, this unholy alliance wasn’t just exploitative. It desecrated the sanctum sanctorum of the Jewish Nation. A simply intolerable state of affairs.

Then there was the Herodian elite, which emerged under Herod the Great and represented a fusion of Greek and Jewish cultures. Similar to contemporary Latin American elites giving their buildings, yachts, and racehorses names in English — and sending their kids to study in the U.S. — the elites of Jesus’s time were far more Hellenistic than Hebrew. Some had even stopped circumcising their sons, abandoning one of the core rituals of Judaism (the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants).

These groups profited massively from the occupation, widening the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else, and reshaping the socioeconomic dynamics of the Jewish people in profound ways — mainly through land grabs and the imposition of an economic system designed to concentrate resources and exploit labor.

And finally there was Rome itself, represented by the brutal Pontius Pilate. The Roman governor only deepened the exploitation of locals by their elites, even as he controlled key aspects of political, economic, and religious life — while crushing any sign of dissent. The presence of Roman soldiers in the Temple, along with the totality of the occupation, created an atmosphere of oppression throughout the land, and especially in Jerusalem.

This oppression seeded the ground for all sorts of messianic figures. Like Jesus, as well as his mentor, John the Baptist, these rabbis didn’t just challenge the moral authority of the Temple elites, but their right to govern and even interpret (and enforce) Jewish law. In the context in which he preached, Jesus’s core message was not only revolutionary, it was inherently political. Seen through this lens, his ministry was a direct challenge to entrenched power structures, and an urgent call for economic justice — same as we need in Panama today.

Inequality, resentment, and revolution

The image most of the world has of Jesus is that of a spiritual leader who blessed the poor, healed the sick, and urged his followers to “turn the other cheek” when attacked. For example, in Luke 6:20–22, Jesus says:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

But beyond comforting the poor, Jesus directly confronted local elites who were taking advantage of the Roman occupation to hoard resources — especially land — which they would pass down to their descendants as if hereditary title. So it’s no surprise that Jesus ends his previous blessing with a sharp warning, if not outright threat, directed at them (Luke 6:24–25):

But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

This message doesn’t get much airtime at mass — at least I never heard it Sundays growing up whilst enduring my weekly martyrdom — but it presented a completely upside-down version of the world, one in which the last would be first and the first, last. With those words, the Nazarene wasn’t just striking at the political and economic powers that oppressed his people. Indeed, he was issuing a rather clear call for revolution: a full 180 in which the current elites — if he had anything to say about it — would suffer the consequences of their greed and treacherous complacency.

To many, these words are a direct rejection of a system that idolizes the accumulation of wealth at the expense of justice and, needless to say, broad-based socioeconomic development, especially for those who lived on the margins of society — just like our current system does in Panama. Yet today the gringos aren’t the ones who control our most valuable (and profitable) resources; rather, it’s four or five local business groups, and a handful of multinationals with top-tier legal and financial representation.

Beyond it’s more “spiritual” interpretation, the Nazarene’s message was also socioeconomic in nature, a call to dismantle the blasphemous partnership sustaining inequality, and the exploitation of the Jewish people — just like the Panamanian State does to its citizens today.

What we need in the National Assembly

One of the pivotal moments of Jesus’s ministry, which set in motion his arrest and eventual crucifixion, was the expulsion of the merchants from the Temple in Jerusalem. According to Matthew 21:12–13:

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of thieves.’”

Few actions better capture the revolutionary nature of Jesus’s movement. Not only did it get him into serious trouble with Roman authorities, but it was a direct, even violent confrontation between the leader of a movement we’d now likely call “populist”, and the Temple elites, who not only controlled the religion, but applied its laws and prohibitions in ways that served their own interests. The systematic exploitation of the Jewish masses only deepened their resentment, and many saw in Jesus not just a prophet or spiritual leader, but a reformer — if not an avenger — who challenged the status quo and advocated a redistribution of wealth and power running totally counter to the existing one.

Driving the merchants out of the Temple was, at its core, an act of political violence — however just or necessary some of us might consider it. It’s actually not so different from the political violence we’ve seen, not just in Panama lately, but throughout the history of this region, the most unequal in the world.

Jesus was crying out for the restoration of holiness — yes, but above all, of justice — at the heart of Jewish life, just as his people’s sacred texts commanded. By directly attacking the corruption taking place inside the Temple, much like the deals that go down in the halls and backrooms of Panama’s National Assembly — Jesus was tackling head-on the unholy alliance of his religious authorities and the heathen imperialists.

His message also highlighted the deep tension between the Jewish ideals of justice and compassion that Jesus preached and the harsh reality of a society built around wealth accumulation — alongside the hardening of grotesquely unequal social strata. This tension, palpable in Panama today, threatens to further fracture our society, creating an environment in which we see each other as us vs. them, instead of as one nation under the law, fighting towards some sort of common goal.

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews

In the end, Jesus’s threat could not be tolerated. Like so many spiritual (read political) leaders before and after him who declared themselves messiah, Jesus was sentenced to die on the cross. It’s crucial to understand, though, that in this context “messiah” meant something very specific: the direct descendant of King David who would reunite the twelve tribes of Israel and so restore his kingdom. It’s also worth noting that crucifixion was a punishment Rome reserved almost exclusively — mainly for its deterrent effect — for crimes against the State: treason, sedition, rebellion, etc. At the gates of Jerusalem, any pilgrim or traveler couldn’t help but see rows upon rows of crucified messiahs who had dared to challenge Rome’s absolute power.

The Romans crucified Jesus because he claimed to be the messiah, that is, King of the Jews. As stated on the inscription above his head: INRI (Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum), this sign stated his crime for all to see. Jesus had claimed kingship over his people, when the ultimate authority over the Jews was Caesar. Yet another clear sign that Jesus’s movement was political in nature, his was clearly a (radical) response to the socioeconomic conditions faced by the Jewish people.

From Roman Palestine to Present-day Panama: When will we learn?

The resentment sparked by Roman occupation, aided by complicit local leaders, was so widespread that prophets like John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth found followers in practically every town they preached, actually, something akin to what Latin America saw in the second half of the 20th century: liberation theology.

A local example of radicalism fueled by resentment over inequality, Father Héctor Gallego tried to organize the peasants of Veraguas Province in the late 1960’s. Like Jesus and his followers, at the time most Panamanian peasants were exploited by huge landowners, similar to the Herodian elites that controlled most of the resources in the Land of Israel — in exchange for bowing down to Caesar.

Facing a threat to their power, Torrijos did Veraguas landowners a solid and, by way of his secret police, “eliminated” Gallego — just like Pilate did for the Temple’s elites when he got rid of the “zealot” who’d barged into their offices and physically assaulted them. Furthermore, the Nazarene’s movement was likely to end in revolution, and wealthy Jews at the time knew full well that any uprising would provoke a harsh Roman response, one that could wipe out not just their fortunes, but the Jewish nation as they knew it.

As history has shown us time and again, when inequality reaches unsustainable levels, social unrest can erupt into mass violence and anarchy. Jesus of Nazareth spoke for those whom the system denied any sort “citizenship”, but his message wasn’t just about a comfortable afterlife. With his sharp, unapologetic critique of the cruel injustices of his time and place, the so-called “Kingdom of God” that he preached, whatever you believe he meant by it, was expressed in the physical world through acts of, mostly, love for thy neighbor.

Say, you wanna revolution? Well…

For many, myself included, this is something worth admiring. However, unless you think, like Jesus, I’m calling for revolution, let me remind you that the Jewish movement for national liberation eventually ended in total disaster: Jerusalem would be sacked and destroyed in its entirety, the Temple would be razed to the ground, and the Jewish people would be exiled from their “promised land”. Alas, one generation after Jesus’s execution and, just as the Temple elites had feared, the Great Jewish Revolt provoked a Roman military response so brutal that Jews wouldn’t be allowed to return to their (disputed) historic capital for nearly 2,000 years.

The resulting diaspora would permanently alter the course of both Jewish and European history. Judaism, which had been centered around a physical place — the Temple, the Land of Israel — became a religion rooted in sacred texts, from where different philosophical schools emerged, each based on different interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.

As for the Nazarene’s “church,” his brother James led it for 30 years after his death. Like most people living in Jerusalem at the time, however, he died in the resulting bloodbath following the jewish uprising. Christianity as we know it today, then, would shift from a Jewish sect to — under Paul (Saul) and the wider Jewish diaspora across the Mediterranean — a Roman and, eventually, universal religion.

As usual in most revolutions, even so-called “democratic” ones, those who suffered most from the Great Revolt were the Jewish people themselves. The ones who weren’t murdered in broad daylight were stripped of their possessions and forced into exile for generations — even if they would eventually go on to build thriving communities in cities around the world, and the practice of their religion would become as diverse as that of Christianity or Islam.

Just as in the Roman province of Judea, where Jesus of Nazareth lived and was executed for crimes against the Empire, so too do Panama’s economic and political elites often benefit from systems that deepen inequality and precariousness for most, frequently in ways that are simply indefensible. This is the direct result of public policies enacted by our “excellent” and “honorable” political leaders who, like Caiaphas & Co., legitimized the extraction of Jewish resources (land and labor) in exchange for living like the royalty they never would’ve become without selling out there homeland.

The old New Testament

If there’s one thing to learn from the life and times of Jesus, it’s that while political violence almost always ends up making the majority worse off, an unequal and thus unjust society practically forces citizens to seek increasingly desperate solutions.

In Panama, we’ve normalized collusion between economic and political power with astonishing ease. Two out of the three candidates for the country’s highest office, for example, have either been or currently are lawyers for a Canadian mining company whose dealings with every government since its operations began have been riddled with corruption and crimes against the national interest.

This kind of state capture results in a system unresponsive to the interests of the majority. That, in turn, breeds deep frustration and disillusionment among the people — so much so, that they lose faith not only in their institutions, but in their fellow citizens, especially those who don’t look, talk, or pray like them. False prophets thrive in precisely this environment, promising to end the abuse and restore security, especially economic security, with one sweeping gesture.

This loss of civic trust is fertilizer for authoritarianism. When the alternative is to keep living on a razor’s edge, praying you don’t end up depending on a corrupt and inefficient State, or on an economy that’s utterly stagnant, then the populist siren song will begin to sound more and more appealing, especially to those busting their asses just to stay afloat — while local elites keep coming up with clever ways to extract value from Panama’s resources without paying the privilege.

The Jewish national struggle against the Roman Empire offers us a chance to reflect on our own current context, and on how we might start building a res pública where justice and human development are real things, not just cheap buzzwords thrown around during election season — or by PR firms masquerading as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) departments.

The violent ends of both the life of Jesus and the Great Jewish Revolt of 70 AD should serve as a clear warning for Panamanians (just as, I hope, Venezuela does). While Jesus’s actions were extreme, they may well have been entirely justified in the face of overwhelming oppression. Even so, history is full of examples that show political violence, however understandable, rarely leads to sustainable solutions, and often brings even more suffering to the very people in whose name the “struggle” is waged.

Just as it’s easy to be seduced by populism in times of injustice and hardship, we have to understand that the only path to lasting change is the democratic one. Even if our State currently functions as little more than a tag-team partner for the country’s major business groups — to keep extracting most of the value from Panama’s resources — we have mechanisms designed to peacefully resolve conflict and build a more just society.

But we’re on the verge of losing this to an authoritarian, in case you haven’t noticed, and that makes it the single most urgent national crisis we face. Revitalizing our democracy and making sure it actually responds to the needs and aspirations of the majority is the greatest responsibility Panamanians share. Faced with temptation from political messiahs, we must reject those who preach easy change without any sacrifice.

What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD)

At the same time, we need to recognize that Panama’s current situation is just as tense as Jerusalem’s was in Jesus’s day. And just as the Jews tried, again and again, to free themselves by force from under the yoke of Rome, Panamanians will continue to radicalize as long as the economy remains in the hands of our so-called political elites, who manage it for the benefit of corporations, both foreign and local, that profit from state resources.

Would Jesus, in all his sacred fury, target not only the corruption of our politicians, but also the power of private empires that benefit — more subtly than the Romans, but just as well — from an economic system that puts profit over people? A system, mind you, that they themselves imposed with the active collaboration, naturally, of the “authorities”.

Jesus of Nazareth was an extremist, and political violence is never a legitimate way to uphold anyone’s rights. Still, when democracy becomes nothing more than a cover for four or five clans to control the entire country’s political economy, we shouldn’t be surprised when some groups, just like the marginalized Jews Jesus led, take the law into their own hands.

Political radicalism, which often ends in violence and authoritarianism, is not the answer to our crisis, no matter how inevitable Panama’s blatant inequality might make it seem. But especially when our democracy, just like the Temple’s theocracy, only serves the powerful, the only way forward is political organization and, as hard as it may be, collective action — with a clear purpose and a coherent strategy — especially for wage-earners and local entrepreneurs who, like the peasants of Galilee, are just one misstep away from destitution.

You can serve Caesar. You can serve Jesus. But you can’t serve both

Let me reiterate that this “version” of Jesus is just that, one of many, and every Christian seemingly has its own. Even Catholics, who supposedly believe in the Pope’s infallibility, are deeply split on Pope Francis, for example. Personally, aside from what John Paul II did to help dismantle the communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe, there hasn’t been an influential Catholic in my lifetime that has used his power for better ends than Francis. But just to be clear, none of this is meant to change your mind about Jesus.

Again, what’s useful about the life of Jesus is what it can teach us, Panamanians, because while Panama in 2024 is a hell of a lot more complex than first-century Palestine, some things remain true per secular secularum. For instance, in Jesus’s time, the Roman Empire was in control. Today, the ones calling the shots — though far less violently than the imperialists of antiquity — are, ironically, the same people who show up to mass every Sunday in half-million-dollar cars with rosaries dangling from the rearview mirror.

That said, even if the modern world is “complicated,” one thing’s still clear to me: the ones who lived behind walls separating them from the rest of the population, with who-knows-how-many guards controlling access — in places like the Antonia Fortress — were the Romans, not Jesus or his followers.

The ones extracting the vast majority of resources — land, mostly — in cahoots with the political/religious authorities of the people, were the Romans, not Jesus or his followers.

The ones enriching themselves off the resources of the Jewish nation, literally, off the backs of those who worked (especially the land) even on Sundays and holidays — were the Romans, not Jesus or his followers.

The ancient truth, even in this modern world, is that we can be Jesus and his people, or we can be the Romans, but we can’t be both.

And for those of us who have (almost) everything and believe this grace is somehow deserved — or that it’s simply God’s will — let me remind you that most of Panama’s great fortunes come from privileged access to national resources. Or, if you prefer, from what God promised the Panamanian people, that is, to all of us who’ve had the immense fortune of being born on this blessed little strip of Central American isthmus.

I hope the life of the Nazarene — the flesh-and-blood one — helps us see our complicity in the fact that this divine promise still hasn’t been fulfilled, and in the cross we therefore impose on so many Panamanians who are just trying to make a living in a country that is completely subjugated by private interests.