Customer Reviews

Victory Over Violence and Was Jesus a Revolutionist?

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This work by Hegel was actually two pamplets that have been translated and made into one book. Martin Hengel is and expert in the early zeolots. The pamplets overlap in what they are attempting to show and that is that Jesus was not a violent Zeolot, but was only falsely accused of being one. These pamplets were written in 1970 and 1972 when revolution was being spoken of quite frequently, and Jesus was often used as support for whatever cause. Hengel's work definativly show that Jesus was opposed to the violent revolutionary actions of the zealot movements of his day. Jesus does believe in overcoming evil and violence, but not by evil and violent means, but rather by the way of suffering and dying at the hands of evil and violence. This is called the way of the cross. This is a message that todays T.V. preachers need to hear. I have recently heard on big voiced preacher calling for a pre-emptive strike on Iran in order to protect Israel from a future nuclear attack. According to Hengel (and I certainly agree with Hengel), this would not have been the way of Jesus.
This is a good book that is worthy of five stars for its content, but it is not a very lucid read. This is due to it being translated from German to English. It, at times is a bit choppy. The definate benefit of reading Hengel is that you are reading one of, if not the top scholar on the Zealots.