Chapter 13

Nolan begins this chapter with the fact that Jesus was persecuted just like thousands of other Jews. Jesus’ conviction was that he was inciting the people to revolt and oppose taxes. However, the question became did he? 
 
 There are two main schools of though regarding Jesus’ conviction guilty or innocent. Some (mainly the roman authorities) viewed him as a violent revolutionary attempting to over throw the Roman imperialists to attain liberation. Others claim that Jesus was an innocent pacifist that told the people to pay their taxes and love your enemies.
 
 The Jews made no distinction between Religion and Politics, so since was Jesus a heavily religious man he was also viewed as extremely political and therefore was expected to be part of the Zealot’s movement for ‘liberation’. Although he was not, the Zealots wanted to use force to remove the oppressive Romans from power and place themselves on top instead. Jesus had a fundamental problem with that plan; simply replacing the Jews for the Romans would not liberate anyone from anything and would not cause oppression to die. Jesus said warned them “Unless you change you will all be destroyed.” The Zealots could not possibly overthrow the Romans in a military battle due to their numbers. Instead, Jesus advised, “The only way to be liberated from your enemies was to love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, to pray for those who treat you badly.” Jesus’ idea for liberation went far beyond any previous conceived notion. The idea of a religious liberation to make way for the ‘Kingdom’ of God. When asked the question “Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus’ response was a shock to everyone that heard it. Jesus claimed that it was ok and good to return the property of Caesar (i.e. money) to him. He responded this way because he saw the true reason for the question. It was not out of love for God that they asked it was out of greed and the conquest for power and prestige.

 During this time, there were many class struggles of oppressors and the oppressed. One such was the upper class Jews (the Pharisees) oppressed the poor Jewish and criticized them from not being religious enough and being “unclean.” Jesus in turn criticized the Zealots along with the other upper class people for being overly religious and lacking in compassion. They were proud of their religious zeal and viewed themselves superior and that is why Jesus criticized them. Jesus looked kindly upon the sinners and the ‘unclean’ because they were humble and knew they needed redemption. Jesus foretold that the upper class Jews would be the ones excluded from the ‘Kingdom’ because of their lack of compassion and superiority complex.