This good news of the kingdom will be announced in the whole world as a witness to every nation, and then the end will come. – Jesus of Nazareth, ~31 CE  (Matt. 24:14)    As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes....  – Benjamin Franklin Letter to Ezra Stiles (1790)    The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.  – Thomas Jefferson Letter to John Adams (05 July 1814) Quoted in Mayo (1942)

Abstract. Jesus' eschatological Kingdom of God announcement in the NT is deeply rooted in the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scripture, specifically on two foundations: (1) Covenantal justice-righteousness as retributive requiring atonement in God's sight, resulting in reconciliation or punishment. (2) Covenantal justice-righteousness as distributive of God's bounties to all. Covenant righteousness is Covenant justice. The Kingdom of God is the coming reign of God extended throughout all the earth, through His representative the Messiah.

Our purpose is to briefly review what was the universal "Kingdom of God" ethic that Jesus of Nazareth announced, and what were it's roots in the Hebrew prophetic tradition and in the ancient Near East. Also, what has happened to it in the Common Era? Specifically:

• Why did Christianity abandon Jesus' universal kingdom ethic within decades after his death?
• Why did Christianity (not unlike Judaism and Islam, although on a more massive scale) resort so repeatedly over the centuries to religious-political chauvinism, intolerance, wars, and persecution to self-propagate?
• What can account for the historical fact that the Judeo-Christian tradition over 3000 years (pre-exilic, post-exilic, Hellenistic, early Christian, medieval, Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation) never really advocated universal freedom of conscience and human rights until these were championed in the Enlightenment of the late 17th and the 18th centuries? (This despite roots in Hebrew Bible and Jesus' own kingdom teachings in the NT).

• I. Roman Galilee and Since
• II. 'The Kingdom of God is closing in!'
• John the Baptist
• The baptism and temptations of Messiah.
• Jesus of Nazareth: Jubilee kingdom – Early announcement in the Galilee
• Jesus cites Daniel.
• Jesus cites Isaiah.
• Kingdom storytelling.
• "Hear, O Israel: YHWH (is) our God, YHWH is One!"
• Radicalizing 'agapé' into justice in action.
• Excursus in realism: Natural rights vs the myth of 'laissez-faire'
• John and Jesus – announcing-enacting the Kingdom.
• III. Precursors of 'the Kingdom of God'
• In the beginning was one God
• Historical introduction – The making of the Book and its ethics
• Law as it began in the ancient Near East.
• Sabbaticals and the Jubilee Day of Atonement.
• Ethical digressions.
• Ethics.
• Cosmos: Ancient Near Eastern cosmologies
• Levitical tent – making of the Temple
• Ancient Near Eastern temples.
• Creation accounts: Worlds and temples in seven-days.
• Origin of the temple-microcosm motif – a hypothesis.
• Axial Age: Emerging ethic in the Prophets and the Writings
• Messiah – God's Anointed King on earth
• From Messiah till Advent: The 'birth pangs' of the Kingdom
• IV. Jesus and the nature of the in-breaking Kingdom of God
• The Kingdom prayer of Jesus
• The congratulations – Jubilee greetings of the Kingdom
• Agapé: Love not for all is not love at all
• Stop worrying.
• God's Kingdom hits the road
• God versus Caesar?
• Sabbath sabotage – Justice and Jubilee
• Only sheep and goats in the end
• Before 70 CE: Jerusalem under seige by Jesus' 'Kingdom of God'
• The Gospel of the Kingdom.
• V. Ex Post Christus
• Descent into the Medieval world
• The Enlightenment and universal human rights and freedoms
• Recovering the one God of the universe: Enlightenment Deism.
• Recovering Jesus' ideal of freedom: Roger Williams.
• What's not for all is not free at all: Against exclusivism
• Exclusivism vs. Scripture.
• Evangelical exclusiveness vs. inclusiveness.
• The direct, universal revelation in nature of the one Deity.
• In the Writings (final recensions 5th to 2nd centuries BCE).
• Jesus in the synoptics.
• Luke-Acts: The early church.
• Epistle to the Romans.
• VI. Conclusions
• Three historical questions
• The imperatives of repentance
• VII. References
• Appendix I. The Q tradition
• Appendix II. "Thou shalt not kill." Does the 6th Commandment forbid only murder?

Jesus of Nazareth (~3 BCE - ~30 CE) was a Jewish peasant from Roman Galilee who lived and died in the first century of the Common Era (CE; Crossan 1991). He began a "Kingdom of God" movement in Galilee, which spread to the Judean and Samarian prefecture, and ultimately evolved into what came to be called Christianity. Like the precursor reform movement of a likely Essene prophet, John the Baptist in the Judean wilderness, he also announced "the kingdom of heaven."

The main historical periods affecting Jesus' world and its aftermath as evidenced by archeology and exegesis (based in part on Crossan & Reed, 2001):

1. Late Hellenistic period (2nd - mid-1st centuries BCE) – Jewish settlement of Galilee under the Hasmonean rulers (from the Maccabees) in a sparsely-populated agrarian world guarded by Hasmonean military outposts and surrounded by agrarian Gentiles and Hellenistic towns.
2. Early Roman period (mid-1st century BCE - 1st century CE) – Under direct Roman rule (from 63 CE), Herod the Great's (designated 'king of the Jews') kingdom and trade-building (37-4 BCE) included the magnificent artificial harbor, Roman Caesarea Maritima, and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Rome drew and quartered Herod's kingdom leaving a Galilee tetrarchate to Herod Antipas (4 BCE-39 CE), who urbanized Galilee and built Greco-Roman Sephoris and Tiberias. Trade boomed, but debt and taxes led to wealth for a few and increasing landlessness for many. Hellenistic culture encroached on Jewish identity. Judea became a Roman prefecture under Pontius Pilate (26 CE). Exegetical layers in approximate time frames:
• Original layer (25-30 CE) – Itinerant Jesus of Nazareth and his companions on the move, refusing to establish any center, announcing 'the Kingdom of God' with story-telling and reciprocal healing-food / shelter sharing. Jesus crucified outside Jerusalem accused as 'king of the Jews' after a brief nonviolent takeover of the Temple Mount.
• Traditional layer (30-50 CE) – Oral tradition conveys the sayings of Jesus and stories about him.
• Evangelical layer (50-100 CE) – Epistles and 'gospels' of the tumultous, spreading the Jesus / Kingdom of God movement written even as they were first being called "Christian."
3. Middle and Late Roman periods (2nd - mid-4th centuries CE) – Swept by two Jewish-Roman wars (66-74, 132-35 CE), Galilee incorporated into a Roman province called Palestina. Accelerating trade, urbanization, and population growth in Galilee, including refugees from Jerusalem and Judea – Galilee now watched over by a permanently-stationed Roman legion. Synagogue replaces Temple as center of Jewish religion. Judaism and Christianity severed by mutual recrimination and persecution, the former retreating into a growing diaspora, and the latter advancing politically and being transformed by Greco-Roman neo-Platonism.
4. Byzantine period (mid-4th - 7th centuries CE) – After Constantine the Great converted with the Roman Empire to Christianity, imperial investment and monument-building made Palestine into a place with pilgrim shrines, churches, and monasteries. A rather long period of cultural decline but coexistence between Jewish and Christian Galilee. Christianity wracked by divisions as a series of imperial Roman-sponsored political, structural, and conciliar developments where the Greco-Roman and the neo-Platonic often clearly triumphed over the Hebrew and the Scriptural. (Numerous historians and scholars of different persuasions have documented these alterations in Christian theology, anthropology, soteriology, eschatology, christology, and ecclesiology. Cosmology was likewise affected until the Copernican Revolution of the 16th century and onwards).
5. Medieval period begins (7th-12th centuries CE and onward) – After the rapid Islamic conquests during a time of cultural resurgence and advance in the Near East, troubled western Christianity eventually but temporarily retakes the 'holy land' from the Muslims during the Crusades marked by blood baths which echo to our day. As Christianity became less universal and more Roman, Byzantine, etc., it underwent a series of schisms between the 6th and 16th centuries which mark the bloodiest intervals of human history until the 20th century. During this period successive waves of madness rocked christendom. Indeed those religious paroxysms of hatred have continued even through and past the 20th century (e.g., complicity in the following – the Holocaust, genocide in Nazi-allied Ustachi Croatia, attrocities in post-Cold War former Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda, etc., and yes, a measure of bystander and collaborative guilt in great economic deprivations, such as colonialism, unjust global trade treaties, 'third world' and labor exploitation, etc.).

The Roman Empire at the time of Gaius Julius Caesar, 44 BCE

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Reconstruction of 1st century Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean Sea  built by Herod the Great (37-4 BCE) Breakwater and lighthouse of all-weather harbor Wharf with giant store houses Overland freshwater aqueduct from north (foreground) Roman orthogonal throughfares: N-S axis cardo (N-S) and decumanus (E-W)  Boulevards centered on huge temple dedicated to goddess Roma and Caesar Augustus South end: An amphitheater-like hippodrome for games Herod's palace jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea

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Reconstruction of 1st century Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee built by Herod Antipas (4 BCE-39 CE), and named after Tiberius Caesar Similar to Caesarea Maritima but without the pagan temples Walls were finished after the time of Jesus Palace was behind the amphitheater (alluded to in Luke 7:25) Cardo (N-S) and decumanus (E-W) Herod's new capital after moving it from Sepphoris

Herod's Greco-Roman Galilee: What was it like? Hellenization Romanization urbanization commercialization The economic boom of the Pax Romana had arrived in the lower Galilee, a prosperity which was not 'trickling down': Ancient social safety nets were being dislocated peasant extended family kinship village cohesion the rise of peasant debt a more just land distribution was giving way to landlessness and indigence unemployment (until morning, mid-morning, noon, late afternoon, evening)

Commercialization had largely replaced Covenant, just as when Jeroboam II in the northern Kingdom of Israel (8th century BCE) was opposed by the oracles of Amos. Archeology has found the imported Egyptian and Phoenician artistry, Hebrew inscriptions of royal taxes on oil and wine, hundreds of ivory fragments and plagues from royal palaces. Amos called for justice because "justice equals righteousness; to do what is just equals to do what is right" (Crossan & Reed, 2001):

• "I will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions demolished" (3:15); "You put off the evil day and bring near a reign of terror. You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches" (6:3-4)
• "Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, 'When will the new moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat' – skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings of the wheat" (8:4-5)
• "I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" (5:21-24)

A central and unavoidable theme of the prophets was that service to God and repentance included justice for the poor and downtrodden.
 

II. 'The Kingdom of God is closing in!'

John the Baptist

The earliest detailed proclamation of the coming kingdom of God attributed to John the Baptist (a possible Essene) is found in an early unique tradition common to Luke and Matthew (perhaps as early as the 50s CE or before, Kee, 1970; Funk et al. 1993). This discernable tradition (i.e., source, German Quelle abbreviated Q; see Appendix I) seems to be a collection of aphorisms and parables in topical order upon which both Matthew and Luke were indebted and preserved to a greater or lesser extent (Eichhorn, 1810-1820). This tradition is distinct from what they share in common with Mark which for a number of reasons is likely to be the earliest of the canonical gospels (Styler, 1993; Funk et al., 1993; cf. Thiede, 2000; Thiede & D'Ancona, 1996).

In John's proclamation of the encroaching 'Kingdom of God' he added water baptism in Jordan. As we shall see, John's stark message-enactment was even more revolutionary than often thought.

John was an Elijah-like figure "clothed in camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist" and subsisting on "locusts and wild honey" like Elijah returning from Horeb! He heralded the kingdom citing messianic (Jubilee) portions of Isaiah, and calling for kingdom justice now, an overt change of course from injustice to justice, just as in Isaiah 1. Kingdom living begins now in repentance and justice. In his Jordan baptism, John was taking "Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan [who] went out to him" through "the Jordan confessing their sins" into the Promised Land! "It is an action which starts what it symbolizes" (Crossan & Reed, 2001). In requesting personal baptism from a reluctant John, Jesus said, "Permit it [to be so] now, for in this way it is appropriate for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15).

John's proclamation-enactment (with further details from Luke's version):

• "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is closing in!" (Daniel 2; 7; 8-9) – therefore, proclaimed "a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins" (Re-enactment of the entry of Israel into the Promised Land, a merging of inauguration-consumation).
• Kingdom's arrival preceded by Isaiah's "A voice crying in the wilderness,
• 'Prepare the way of the Lord, and make His ways straight!'"
• The filling and raising of every valley, and lowering of every high mountain and hill
• Straightening crooked places and the rough places like a plain
• All flesh to see God's salvation!
• God's just wrath to come! Who warned this generation, "a brood of vipers" to flee?
• Claims to Abrahamic inheritance evident only with the 'fruit befitting repentence.'
• Judgment of 'every tree' based on its 'fruit' whether good or bad. Even now the ax is laid at the root of the tree! (Merging of inauguration-consumation, preparation and proleptic participation!)
• Everyone called to justice
• The clothed divide with the ill-clad (cf. Zacchaeus' pledge to give 'half his goods to the poor...' in Luke 19:8-9)
• The well-fed likewise divide with the ill-fed
• To the tax collectors representing imperial Rome,
• Collect only the taxes appointed by law – no unjust exaction.
• To the soldiers of imperial Rome and her subsidiaries (e.g., Herod and the Herodian court)
• No violence / intimidation against anyone (even against orders)
• No false accusations of anyone (even against orders)
• Be content with wages / rations
• In sum, John called for justice and non-violent resistance in direct challenge to Herod and to imperial Rome, but advocated continuing to pay taxes and not seeking higher soldier's pay (i.e., don't challenge Rome or Herod on the revenue side but only the justice side, thus forcing these enemies to respond to 'God's Kingdom' calls to justice). Jesus did the same later: "Render to Caesar only what's his and to God all that is His – everything!" More profoundly subversive (although Christians have missed his point at least in part).

John's announcement-action and baptism proved too much for Herod Antipas tetrarch of Galilee who finally imprisoned John for rebuking him over taking his brother Philip's wife (Mark 6:17; Matt. 14:3), and because of "all the evils which Herod had done" (Luke 3:19). Herod ultimately beheaded John (Mark 6:21-29; Matt. 14:6-12). It was after John's imprisonment that Jesus came announcing God's Kingdom in the Galilee.

The baptism and temptations of Messiah. In the gospels, the section about John the Baptist is concluded and the sections focused on Jesus of Nazareth are commenced with the stories about the baptism of Jesus by John in Jordan and the temptations of Jesus by the adversary in the wilderness. All the gospels testify that Jesus of Nazareth was baptized by John the Baptist with miraculous signs. Only Q (cited by Matthew and Luke) tells how Jesus was tempted on food, fate, and kingdom, and conquered on each.

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Reconstruction of Nazareth in the 1st century CE (Other than the gospels, there was no historical reference to Nazareth until the Roman Empire converted to Christianity and pilgrims began to arrrive in the 4th century CE) South-facing Jewish village of peasants (nearly anonymous until the 4th century CE)  Watered by a spring (now called the "Well of Mary") Lower fields (background) of grains, vegetables, and legumes Vineyards, olive trees, and towerlike columbaria for raising pigeons on upper slopes Winepress, collection vat, bottles, and pruning hooks (foreground) Houses of unhewn stones and mud with underground cavities, including living space, bell-shaped cisterns, and plastered cisterns for grain-storage Only a few copper coins and cheap jewelry found in burial sites Simple cooking vessels and jars Two stepped and plastered ritual baths (miqwaoth) for ceremonial washing Kokhim or loculi, burial shafts where the dead were placed until there were only bones left to be collected in ossuaries (standard Jewish burial custom of the 1st century) No synagogue remains from the 1st century CE have been found – this may reflect a time when synagogue also simply meant "a gathering" which occurred in a village house or open area (Luke 4)

7Q5: Fragment of Mark 6:52-53 from Qumran; dated ~50s CE by papyrological evidence (Thiede and D'Ancona, 1996); found with a fragment of II Timothy.

Jesus of Nazareth: Jubilee kingdom – Early announcement in the Galilee

The earliest proclamation of 'the Kingdom of God' attributed to Jesus is found in Mark (perhaps written as early as 50 CE; Thiede and D'Ancona, 1996; Thiede, 2000). Again the setting is the apocalyptic proclamation of John the Baptist calling for the baptism of repentance for forgiveness because of the Kingdom coming and 'a mightier one' (Messiah). Similar to the Luke-Matthew common (Q) tradition, John the Baptist's eschatological proclamation in Mark (1:2-3) referenced Isaiah but alluded also to Mal. 3:1, Isa. 40:3, and Exod. 23:20 in the LXX, and reminded his contemporaries of the prophecy of Elijah coming (Mal. 4:5; cf. Mark 9:11-13; Matt. 17:10-12; Luke 1:17)

Mark describes the result of the Baptist's proclamation was that all the country of Judea and all of Jerusalem were going out to him, being baptized and confessing their sins, and that Jesus of Nazareth also came to be baptized (Mark 1). As mentioned, John was quickly perceived as a threat and Herod imprisoned him. In this context Jesus of Nazareth entered into the Galilee to proclaim the 'kingdom.'

Jesus' first announcement in the Galilee according to Mark's gospel

Aside from the notion that God is already ruler over all and apportions kingdoms and nations, the idea that YHWH 'the God of heaven' would set up an eschatological 'kingdom' which would climactically break into history appears a few times in the Hebrew Scriptures, Ps. 2:9; 22:28; 45:6; Isa. 9:6-7; 60:12; Micah 4:7; Obad. 1:21; Zech. 14:9 (cf. 9;9-10; Ps. 47:7), and elsewhere.

Jesus cites Daniel. However the intervening and supplanting 'Kingdom' of the 'God' of 'heaven' is mentioned most explicitly and strikingly in Dan. 2:44-45, "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set a kingdom which shall not be destroyed forever. And the kingdom shall not be left to other peoples. It will crush and make an end to all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever..." (cf. LXX, almost identical). Not only was this kingdom to be 'like a stone cut out without hands' which would strike the vast 'image' of earth's kingdoms on the feet, it was to become 'a great mountain filling the whole earth' (2:31-35, 45). Jesus' Galilee proclamation of 'the Kingdom of God' involved a citation of Daniel 2 including some of the very words of the LXX.

It would seem that this kingdom at least inaugurally was to first appear while the kingdoms of earth were still standing (Isa. 2; Micah 4; Dan. 2; 7:9-12; Zech. 14; cf. Heb. 12:22-24; Rev. 4-5; Beale, 1999) and be inaugurated by the "near" approach with "the clouds of heaven" of "one like a Son of man to the Ancient of Days" in "the judgment" to "receive a kingdom" over all forever (Dan. 7:9-14, 18, 22, 27). And then consummatively, to consume and replace all kingdoms of this present age. The repeated use of 'Son of man' as a messianic epithet (attributed 81 times in the gospels, and 85 times in the NT) seems to be a direct allusion to the messianic 'Son of man' figure in Daniel 7.

Jesus' central kingdom proclamation "The time is fulfilled..." came from the next prophetic cycle in Daniel 8-9 which climaxes in the dramatic oracle of Daniel 8:14, "Unto 2,300 evening-mornings, then shall the sanctuary be vindicated" which 'vindication' is explicitly explained in 9:24-27 in sabbatical Jubilee Day of Atonement terms. That this was understood by some at least in similar terms in Jesus' day is evident in the Qumran Melchizedeq fragment, 11Q13.

Jesus cites Isaiah. From the wilderness after his baptism, Jesus returned announcing and healing into Galilee amid unprecedented good reports ('being glorified by all" Luke 4:14-15). Apparently he not only cited Daniel's sabbatical, Jubilee 'Kingdom of God' (as reported in Mark 1:14-15) but also the Jubilee as cited in Isaiah 61. He returned to his hometown Nazareth.

Kingdom storytelling. According to Luke 4, Jesus explicitly announced God's Jubilee Kingdom so as to include Gentiles and very nearly got him killed by his own townsfolk in Nazareth. It hardly seems coincidental that after the Nazareth incident, according to the synoptic gospels, Jesus seems to have adopted a different stratagem:

• Refused to make Capernaum his headquarters (Crossan & Reed, 2001) and was secretly on the move constantly
• Healing, shared food, and telling cryptic stories and aphorisms – subversive images of the Kingdom (Mark 4:11; Matt. 13:13, 35).

And so on! According to the synoptics, many of his most public teachings were parabolic.

"Hear, O Israel: YHWH (is) our God, YHWH is One!"The synoptic gospels (Mark 12:28-34; cf. Matt. 22:36-40; Luke 10:25-28) attest that Jesus of Nazareth linked the great shema Israel creed, "Hear, O Israel: YHWH (is) our God, YHWH is One! You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deut. 6:4-5) together with the latter part of "'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am YHWH'" (Lev. 19:18). Mark describes Jesus as declaring, "The first [commandment] is.... [The] second (is) this.... Greater than these is no other commandment." Matthew has him affirm, "This is the first and great commandment, and second is like it" and add that "on these two hang all the law and the prophets." Jesus radicalized the Levitcal command to "love your neighbor" by extending it beyond just "the children of your people" to include all, even enemies, as inclusive and free as the sunshine and rain of YHWH Himself. Luke has Jesus conclude and answer the question, "And who is my neighbor?" with the story of a Samaritan who crossed ethnic-religious barriers to rescue a Jew who had been robbed and wounded. Jesus said, "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:29-37). The emphasis Jesus put on 'love for neighbor' may well have led to its recurrent citation in the NT epistles (Rom. 13:9-10; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8).

Jesus of Nazareth so radicalized the shema Israel and love for neighbor by combining them that the revolutionary and subversive 'Kingdom of God' ultimately alarmed the Temple establishment (mostly Sadducees), the synagogue establishment (mostly Pharisees), the Herodian partisans, and even the imperial representatives of the Roman empire of Caesar in Judea.

Radicalizing 'agapé' into justice in action. Christians have traditionally translated agapé as "love" and the verb agapao as "to love" and equated it with charity, or eventually an abstract, neo-Platonic conception like "to love out of principle" (whatever that means!) However, agapao should be translated much more concretely "to share" (Crossan & Reed, 2001), and it probably derives at least in part from agan which means "much" or "abundant" (Strong's). Hence, agapao and agapé most likely meant "to share abundantly" or "sharing abundantly." In both Torah and the Prophets, justice (v. tsedaqah, n. tsedeq) is not only retributive, but distributive (Ibid.), and is equivalent in the NT, to being and to declaring just-righteous (v. dikaio) and justice-righteousness (n. dikaiosyne), not only what God freely counts to believing sinners (Rom. 3-4) but reflected in how we are to live. On Jesus' lips, agapé is abundant God-style sharing, i.e., how God's justice and kingdom begins on earth now! In John's first epistle, "By this we know agapé [God-style sharing], because he laid down his life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Then comes the application of agapé: "But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the agapé [God-style sharing] of God abide in him? My little children, let us not agapé [engage in God-style sharing] in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (I John 3:16-18).

To further illustrate the difference between commerce and Covenant, and the practical implications of recognition of basic human needs as human rights, we add the following excursus:

The mercantilist, 'laissez-faire' economics philosophy (now couched in terms of international 'free trade', i.e., making transnational the oppression of the poor and exploitation of the environment on God's earth) of today is very similar to Jesus' description of slavery to mammon (wealth and materialism). "And because lawlessness [anomia] will abound, the love [agapé, i.e., God-style sharing] of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matt. 24:12-14). The one enduring to the end and finding salvation, will reject lawlessness and persevere in the practice of God-style sharing (agapé) toward all, especially the most destitute and vulnerable. This will be seen to be not as a matter of 'charity' or 'bounty' but as our duty because of the rights of our fellow humans. To preach a gospel of justification and salvation devoid of this ethical consequence is to preach falsely and in vain (James 2).

John and Jesus – announcing-enacting the Kingdom. To see in Mark's account a "new Exodus" of Christianity from Judaism (possibly cf. Watts, 1997) sounds suspiciously anachronistic, flavored more like post-Hadrian (135 CE) Christian anti-semitism rather than anything John or Jesus did. Instead, John and Jesus were announcing-enacting a "new conquest" of Canaan, the Promised Land, completely unlike the stories of genocidal wars found in Joshua. John the ascetic wilderness prophet was leading Israel across Jordan in repentance! Jesus the itinerant party-goer was leading the non-violent conquest by God-style "sharing abundantly." Their contrasting actions began the Kingdom of God! According to Q, Jesus himself said so.

The contrasting styles of John and Jesus correspond to the stark privation of the wilderness wandering followed by the promised "land flowing with milk and honey." "Assuredly, I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my sake and the gospel's, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time – houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions – and in the age to come, eternal life" (Mark 10:30). For the destitute and landless refuse of Herod's Greco-Roman kingdom that was hope. "Be warmed and filled" has never been enough, any more than 'pie in the sky, in the sweet by and by.' No wonder imperial Christianity (post the 2nd century CE) stirred by 'the love of money' found neo-Platonism so congenial, and so began, not to be persecuted, but to persecute, theologically and ecclesiologically armed with a foreign anthropology, soteriology, eschatology, and christology. Who really desires to listen to that Galilean peasant?
 

III. Precursors of 'the Kingdom of God'

What Jesus of Nazareth announced-enacted of the universal 'Kingdom of God' rested on emerging ideas within a long historical background: Near Eastern law and temple, Torah and tabernacle, Prophets and wisdom Writings, ancient creation stories and ultimately the widespread and prehistoric traditions-idea of only one Deity behind and beyond the universe, who created it all.

In the Hebrew scriptures – the Torah, the prophets, and the wisdom writings – the highest practical ethical claims made upon the Covenant people are centered in justice. As we noted justice-righteousness is not only retributive but distributive. Righteousness is active justice judicially so found before God and man. Justice-righteousness is most explicitly defined as impartiality, generosity, defending the cause of and providing relief for the vulnerable and indigent – the poor, the needy, the fatherless / orphan, the widow, and the stranger.

We turn in broad outline to some of the historical sources of the ancient world-view inherited by Jesus and his contemporaries, in order to highlight how Jesus' ethics built upon that world-view.
 

In the beginning was one God

The prehistoric idea of one Deity who originated the world, and rules heaven and earth is apparently very old (Schmidt, 1912; 1931; 1933) and according to anthropologists widespread and perhaps universal in the early history of many cultures around the world (Armstrong, 1993) including those which have since adopted the worship of many gods or other spirits (polytheism and animism). Unlike the later pantheons of gods, the one Deity (often called by anthropologists, the high God or sky God) was considered to be inexpressible and beyond description and so was not depicted by image or effigy and did not have a temple cult or mediating priesthood.

The oldest historical records (23rd-21st centuries BCE) of the idea of one transcendant God beyond the universe are found in cuneiform tablets from Ebla (Heeren, 2000) more than 15 centuries before the final recensions of our Hebrew Bible. El, the high or sky God of Canaan is also alluded to in the Patriarchal sagas in Genesis as El of Abraham, El Elyon, El Shaddai, the Terror or Kinsman of Isaac, the Mighty One of Jacob, El of Beth-El, El of Peni-El, El of Isra-El, El of Ishma-El, El-roi) and elsewhere in the poetic writings of the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g., Ps. 19:1-4; Job; etc.). In almost every culture the idea of a supreme Being corresponding to the human sense of the unseen and the transcendant, a sense of presence behind the world of appearances, mana to south Pacific islanders, numina to the ancient Romans (see Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy) has been eclipsed by more immediate spirits and gods. Often the sun, moon, planets, earth, sea, sky, winds, rain, or even animals and birds came to be personalized and worshipped as gods. With the rise of city-states, a long and complicated pantheon of gods reflecting all the foibles of humankind developed in the Near East.

As we will discuss more later, the creation accounts in the Hebrew Bible are almost all modeled after and a monotheist polemic against already-extant creation myths (Kikawada & Quinn, 1985; Christian, 2003; Hasel, 1974). There is one however that may well reflect the remnants of primordial monotheism or deism found by Professor Schmidt in many indigenous cultures around the world. There are also some truncated fragments interspersed.

(Nearby star in the foreground, but far away galaxies beyond!)

The seemingly natural and almost universal notion of a supreme Deity originating and transcending the universe is so powerful and important to our story, that we will return to it again.
 

Historical introduction – The making of the Book and its ethics

The legal codes and ethics of ancient Israel were the result of a long process of historical development, and involved oracular traditions and eventually the final written version of what is our Hebrew Bible.

Law as it began in the ancient Near East. (Ehrlich, 1993). There are several terms for law: Torah = instruction; choq  = statute; mishpat = ordinance; mishvah =  commandment; dabar = word; (oral Torah = mishnah, etc.). It was once thought that Israel's legal and moral traditions were unique in the ancient world, but now we know that this is not the case. There were many precedents, especially found in cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia. (For more on ancient law traditions, see Fiero, 1992).