Our book Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict will be released early next year. It is available for pre-order through major online retailers such as Amazon, Bookdepository, etc. Pre-order your copy NOW from Zer0 Books and receive it as soon as it is published!
What made the Jesus movement tick?
By situating the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the turbulent troubles of first-century Palestine, Crossley and Myles give a thrilling historical-materialist take on the historical Jesus. Delivering a wealth of knowledge on the social, economic, and cultural conflicts of the time, Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict uncovers the emergence of a fervent and deadly serious religious organizer whose social and religious movement offered not only a radical end-time edict of divine reversal and judgment but also a promising new world order ruled in the interests of the peasantry. The movement’s popular appeal was due in part to a desire to represent the values of ordinary rural workers, and its vision meant that the rich would have to give up their wealth, while the poor would be afforded a life of heavenly luxury. Tensions flared up considerably when the movement marched on Jerusalem and Jesus was willingly martyred for the cause. Crossley and Myles offer a vivid portrait of the man and his movement and uncover the material conditions that converged to make it happen.
Endorsements:
Two of our most capable Marxist biblical interpreters offer a historical materialist life of Jesus, grounded in the social and material forces of Jesus’ age rather than on efforts to read Jesus’ mind. Precise, clear, accessible, and important. 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.
Neil Elliott, author of Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle and The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire
A work of exceptional scholarship, the greatest story ever told as told from below is more compelling than ever. I was utterly engrossed. What impresses the most, though, is in how by demystifying an epic class struggle of the past lessons of strategic relevance to struggles for liberation in the present can be drawn. Essential stuff.
Ciara Cremin, author of The Future is Feminine: Capitalism and the Masculine Disorder and Totalled: Salvaging the Future from the Wreckage of Capitalism
This account of the life of Jesus is neither a historical novel nor a scholarly monograph. It represents an excellent fusion of these approaches: copious and informed material information by way of well-wrought and well-written biographical narrative. The book conveys a sharp sense of the times and places, the issues and discussions, the difficulties and possibilities. A marvelous idea on the part of Crossley and Myles—altogether well done!
Fernando F. Segovia, Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, Vanderbilt University
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. Seeing such portraits as romanticized and overly idealized, the interest here is on the social and economic forces that produced the Jesus movement, so that Jesus and his associates are seen as responding to the material upheavals of the time.
Joan E. Taylor, Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, Kings College London
Crossley and Myles have recaptured the mind-blowing excitement generated by the original quest to distinguish the Jesus of history behind the myth. Although Jesus scholarship has struggled to let go of the fantasy of a man who dropped from the sky, this book places Jesus firmly on his feet, a product of his agrarian class and imperial repression. Crossley and Myles have found Jesus: in the Galilean dirt under his fingernails.
Deane Galbraith, Lecturer in Religion, University of Otago