020 Interview with Joan Taylor: Boy Jesus in Trauma's Shadow

What happened when a child from the line of David grew up watching cities burn under Roman occupation? Joan Taylor, Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College London, transports us back to the traumatic world of Jesus' childhood that shaped his revolutionary message.

Most of us picture Jesus growing up in peaceful Nazareth, but historical evidence reveals a radically different reality. Herod the Great had massacred men from Bethlehem before Jesus was born and built his imposing tomb within view of the town as a constant reminder of Roman power. The political chaos following Herod's death brought no relief—his son Archelaus slaughtered thousands in Jerusalem, and the Romans crucified 2,000 people outside the city. When Jesus' family settled in Nazareth, the nearby city of Sepphoris was burned in a Roman military action, a trauma the young Jesus likely witnessed firsthand.

Taylor helps us see how this context of collective trauma fundamentally shaped Jesus' ministry. His teachings about turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and special concern for the marginalized weren't abstract spiritual principles but radical responses to the violence and oppression his community experienced daily. When Satan tempted Jesus with power over all kingdoms, he was offering precisely what many expected of a Messiah—military victory over Rome. Jesus' rejection of this path represents a complete revolution in thinking about power, liberation, and what God's kingdom truly means.

This conversation will transform how you read the Gospels. By understanding Jesus as someone who experienced profound trauma and responded by creating an entirely new paradigm for confronting oppression, we discover the truly revolutionary nature of his message. His teachings weren't about passive acceptance but active resistance strategies designed to maintain dignity and humanity in the face of dehumanizing systems.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus' childhood was really like? Listen now and discover the historical Jesus you never knew.

Watch Joan Taylor and Helen Bond's documentary on Jesus' female disciples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17QWDhomle8

Transcript

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Jessica LM Jenkins 0:24

Welcome back . Today we are taking a break from our Women in Context discussions to talk with Joan Taylor about her study of Jesus in Context . Joan Taylor is the author of many books on ancient religion , history and archaeology . She is a New Zealander of Anglo-Danish

Introduction to Joan Taylor

Jessica LM Jenkins 0:44

heritage and is the Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College London . Joan , thank you so much for being with us today . Thank you for having me . Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and especially what got you interested in New Testament study ?

Joan E Taylor 1:05

Well , that is a very big question in that I guess I was brought up in a Christian family and went to Sunday school , went to church and during my teenage years got fascinated , as I was actually the confirmation experience at my Methodist church that I was going to in Lower Hutt in New Zealand . The minister there was really right on in terms of inquiry and that got me interested and knowledgeable about the fact that books had been written about how to interpret the Bible and the history and that really set me off . But I traveled to Israel , Palestine in my early 20s and roamed around there , went to a lot of archaeological sites , went to museums . All of these things feed into an interest and yeah , it really does .

Joan E Taylor 2:08

I was like this is what I need to study .

Jessica LM Jenkins 2:11

Yes , I relate . Yes , I know from being in Israel myself I spent nine months there that once you're there , you just can't get it out of your , your blood . You're like I just have to keep learning all about this for ever .

Joan E Taylor 2:24

Absolutely .

Jessica LM Jenkins 2:26

So I've been , joan . I've been reading through your newest book , which is titled Boy Jesus , and we'll get back to that , but I know you've written up quite a few other books as well . Can you tell us some of the books that you've written ?

Joan E Taylor 2:40

Oh , all kinds of different things I have written on John the Baptist .

Joan E Taylor 2:44

That was one of my earliest ones the Immerser , john the Baptist and Second Temple Judaism , and that really got me into looking at a figure of the New Testament within the context of his time and thinking about how he would have appeared at that time . I've written quite a bit on the Dead Sea Scrolls , the context for the Dead Sea Scrolls , the groups like , well , the Essenes , who I normally considered those responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls , and this really weird group over in Alexandria called the Therapeuti , who were contemporaries of Jesus and early Christianity , and we're doing something quite different over there in Alexandria in Egypt . So I've written about Philo of Alexandria , who was also contemporary and had his own particular ideas , philosophical Jewish ideas . So I roam into all of these different nooks and crannies really whenever I'm interested . But I also write and have written quite a bit over the years on women and gender issues in the New Testament and in the early church and also in Judaism . I was particularly in the women therapeutic , for example . Yeah , oh yeah , yeah .

Joan E Taylor 4:08

So , yeah , trying to understand what it was like for women , uh , around jesus . I wrote a book with helen bond women remembered , oh , female disciples and saw that . And we also , uh , did a documentary that is out there on YouTube . Okay , you can look at it . Oh , I'll have to look that up . Yeah , the new evidence for Jesus' female disciples . Okay , some of the new evidence for Jesus' female disciples and really how they were remembered in the early church .

Jessica LM Jenkins 4:42

Oh , I haven't found that yet , so I will definitely look that up . That sounds fascinating and I'll put a link to that in the show notes for anybody else who's listening . It's like oh , I want to look at that too , so I will find that and put a link on social media posts and in the show notes of this episode .

Jessica LM Jenkins 5:03

Thank you , wonderful . I just did a search , for Joan Taylor was looking at several of the books you did . Women Remembered was one of the first ones I noticed . I was like , okay , we're going to talk about Boy Jesus , which is amazing , but can you just tell us a little bit about what Women Remembered is about and what you did in that book ?

Joan E Taylor 5:21

Yeah , it did spring from our documentary and with the documentary we pitched the idea to a television production company , which is quite unusual for scholars .

Joan E Taylor 5:32

Normally TV production people come to you and go we want you to say these things in as short a time as possible .

Joan E Taylor 5:43

And Helen and I had done quite a bit of documentary work and we thought we can do a documentary and we pitched it and it was picked up by these people at Minerva Media and we made it . Um , we , we were on the road doing a lot of talking while we were making the documentary and we focused on certain , um , certain women who were disciples of Jesus , of course , course , mary Magdalene , yes , but also Salome , who was a rather mysterious figure , and the figures mentioned in the Gospel of Luke , like Joanna , who was wife of Cusa , herod's steward you know , mystery , mystery , yes and sat in the theatre at Tiberius and just brainstormed on what her life was like . And because we were doing a lot of brainstorming which wasn't all picked up by the documentary , we just had so much time to talk , right , okay , we need to do this book where we go into what we can possibly know about these named figures , but also what we might know about some of the unnamed figures who were clearly Jesus' disciples , like the woman with the issue of blood .

Joan E Taylor 7:02

She's not named in the Gospels . She's remembered as being called Veronique , okay , but she's not named . But clearly she was telling her story . Yes , because there's no way you would have known about her experience unless she had told that story . So that idea of women telling stories to other women was one of the things that was a thread through our book and just really pointing out that our texts shine the light on the guys . You know , they're interested in the men , they're not interested in the women . It's a man's world . But that doesn't mean historically there weren't right women and we know from the resurrection accounts that women were absolutely everything . They were . What was going on there ? Yeah , yeah . That's the book in a nutshell .

Jessica LM Jenkins 7:55

I love that . So I noticed a few of your other books that you've written as well , and I cannot wait to buy Women Remembered . I'm going to get that as soon as possible . But I noticed you've also written a book on what Jesus looked like . You've written books on Christians in the holy places , which that one . I thought that one seemed very scholarly . But I just wanted to pick your brain briefly on that , because I've traveled to Israel and there's all the holy sites in Israel and the people I was there with mentioned that many of those may not be actually accurate . Like they say , this is the church of the fish and the loaves . But do we ? Are the holy sites in Israel accurate to where those events actually happened ?

Joan E Taylor 8:43

Yeah , some of them are . Some of them are , and I think , for example , that the Gethsemane cave not the garden of Gethsemane , but the Gethsemane cave is recorded very early on in terms of Christian tradition

Joan's Research on Women Disciples

Joan E Taylor 8:57

as the place where it all happened . And that idea of it being a cave fits in with our gospel accounts and I've written about that that Jesus leaves somewhere and comes back somewhere and they're all sheltered in the very cold night that the night he was arrested . So that makes sense . But then we've got to remember that some sites were revealed to people in dreams , like , for example you know it's not in the book , but the cave of John the Baptist on the eastern side of the Jordan River . The story is that there was a monk who spent the night in a cave and John the Baptist appeared to him in a dream . This is a very important cave . Pay attention to it . And then it was considered to be the cave where John lived and it attracted a lot of pilgrims .

Joan E Taylor 9:51

So with any given holy site , you don't know really whether there's a firm tradition behind them or whether it's been revealed , because in the Byzantine period , that idea that you would get an angel or a , a saint right telling you this is this , these are my bones , or right ? This is a really important place . Um , that , uh , that that was really important for them , that that direct revelation , heavenly revelation , was more important than anyone saying , oh , we can trace a memory right back , you know . Yeah , you know , really , they valued that . So when we come along , we have to do all of the critical thinking and think , ok , where does it belong in terms of tradition and when did people first start coming here ?

Jessica LM Jenkins 10:44

Yes , our values and our ways of measuring knowledge are different now than back then . We have a different approach .

Joan E Taylor 10:54

Which is not to say you know wonderful things can be , you know there could be wonderful things revealed in dreams and visions . Absolutely you know . But you know , to be really forensic and scientific , we want to know what the earliest stuff is .

Jessica LM Jenkins 11:08

Absolutely so . Let's talk about your newest book , Boy Jesus . What prompted you to do such a deep research into Jesus' childhood ?

Joan E Taylor 11:20

I think there's a whole lot of different things . It's partly just being a mum and thinking about how important childhood is , you know , wanting to being aware of the experiences of my children and how that has shaped them and also being aware of the experiences that have shaped me and also my mother . Frankly , my mum , her childhood was quite traumatic . She was you mentioned me being Anglo-Danish Mum is Danish , okay , and she's very elderly now , but she was in occupied Copenhagen during the Second World War and she has experiences that then were passed on to me and I can emotionally live through my mother in terms of the traumatic experiences during that time and I thought about okay , jesus , a child of Jesus . We have these accounts , these nativity accounts , and both nativity accounts indicate trauma of some kind and displacement of some kind , and it made me think so what is that ?

Joan E Taylor 12:40

What is going on here ? And I want to sort of think more about the historical context and place Jesus' childhood within that historical context . Even if we are really , really doubtful about the nativity accounts and a lot of my colleagues in historical studies are , I thought , okay , the least we can do is put Jesus in his time as a child .

Jessica LM Jenkins 13:04

Yeah , yeah , and that I found that to be really profound in the book . I have a master's in Israel study , so I've learned some of this , but people who have not done even a little bit of study I've done are often completely unaware of the historical context and everything that's going on socially and politically during that time period . Can you just give us a high level overview of the what's going on in that time period the revolts , the turmoil and all of that , just so that my audience can start to understand this picture ?

Joan E Taylor 13:42

Yeah , no , it's big , it's a huge amount of stuff going on .

Jessica LM Jenkins 13:49

And you outline it really well in the book .

Joan E Taylor 13:52

We try to boil it down .

Joan E Taylor 13:53

We know in the nativity accounts there is bad King Herod and he sort of turns up as a pantomime villain . You know , bad you know . But that actually relied on the audience having an experience of King Herod which was negative , and there were very many reasons for that . So the big picture is that the Romans had come in and really wanted to install their people in charge of Judea . So 63 BCE , pompey comes in and goes into Jerusalem and takes over and then the Romans take control and they rule via client rulers wherever they take control . So Herod is a Roman client king . He's in the pay of Rome and he has to do everything right by Rome . He had trouble initially taking charge .

Joan E Taylor 14:54

The great enemy of Rome , the Parthians you think modern Iran , it's the same area . The Parthians wanted their guy in Judea . They pushed back . Herod pushed back with the army of Mark Antony and got control . It's all very Roman stuff .

Joan E Taylor 15:14

And then Herod really wanted to keep that control . What the Romans wanted was everything to be peaceful , meaning they could harness as much taxation from these sorts of places as possible . They could have a lot of honour temples built for the Roman emperor , and Herod built imperial cult temples so that the Roman emperor would be worshipped . So he was Rome's man , and part of being Rome's man was to quash any even slight smidgen of revolt , and we , herod , interpreted that as anything that would impact detrimentally on his own rule , because he was placed there by rome , he was placed there by God , you know , ruler of Judea , and so he was mercilessly cruel and ended up killing three of his own sons and his wife Mariam , all sorts of other people , members of the royal household , servants ,

Authenticity of Holy Sites in Israel

Joan E Taylor 16:29

anyone who showed any sign of revolt . And just before Jesus well , sort of around the time Jesus was born there were all kinds of pushbacks against Herod , and Herod became increasingly horrible .

Jessica LM Jenkins 16:46

One thing that jumped out to me as I was reading the book is talking about Herod and how he , a little bit before Jesus was born , had killed young men from the region of Bethlehem and then built what became his tomb later within the eyesight of Bethlehem , and so that was fascinating to me . To fill out the context a little bit more , no , I mean , it's visually on the horizon .

Joan E Taylor 17:17

If you go to Bethlehem today , if you can get up on the roof of a building and look towards the south , you will see Herod's tomb . It's reconstructed on the side , much , much smaller than it actually was . He built that overlooking Bethlehem . He built a palace , fortress , overlooking Bethlehem . It was called Herodion and it's to commemorate the site of a massacre of the local inhabitants that had managed to see off after they attacked him . So what had happened was these Parthians had installed their man , mattathias Antigonus , on the throne of Judea .

Joan E Taylor 18:02

Herod had fled from Jerusalem , fled south past Bethlehem . The local people who hated Herod , the guys from Bethlehem and the surrounding villages , went out and tried to attack him as he was fleeing , and he managed , with his own armed guard , to defeat them and totally slaughter them . But there was a memory of a massacre of young men in the Bethlehem psyche Right . That's what I think is so interesting in terms of a massacre of young men in the Bethlehem psyche Right . That's what I think is so interesting in terms of the massacre of the innocents that we have in the Gospel of Matthew , where Herod massacres small babies or boys , that there is this resonance of what had happened in 40 BCE .

Joan E Taylor 18:50

It's completely chronologically displaced , but sometimes with memory that happens . Some of the details change , the dates change as time goes on , but the actual event that Herod massacres people in the Bethlehem area is actually historically shown . It's shown in the writings of this Jewish historian , josephus , who had the court records of Herod's chronicler , nicolaus of Damascus . So it's not like he's dreamt it up . He's actually got the chronicles of the Herodian court not the chronicles of the Herodian court .

Jessica LM Jenkins 19:35

And so we see , as we read the nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke , we see how there's this underlying trauma that the people in this region carry that was precipitated on them by Herod himself , with visible reminders on their skyline every single day , and this is part of the context that the birth of Jesus is coming into .

Joan E Taylor 20:03

Exactly , exactly . And that sense of the bad Roman client rulers the rich and the mighty , the ones that have this power and incredible wealth in comparison to ordinary people .

Jessica LM Jenkins 20:20

Absolutely , and you get this class tension as well between the rich and the poor , as you said . Talk to us a little bit . Can you unpack the significance of being a son of David ? Bethlehem is the city of David . Jesus is the son of David . What is significant about that for Jesus personally in his identity ?

Joan E Taylor 20:44

Yeah , so again , it's one of those things in terms of my colleagues in historical Jesus studies were doubtful about Jesus actually being the son of David at all , because there's been this kind of western European , american , north American idea that , oh well , you couldn't really remember your genealogy over all of these generations . But coming from New Zealand , I see the indigenous people of New Zealand remembering their genealogy and it's hugely important across centuries and centuries , and so the fact that you can't remember your genealogy and recite it this is , you know , we get trapped into certain ways of thinking . But people also doubted that anyone could remember they were a descendant of David at the time and there wasn't much written about that . But I found two pieces of evidence that I thought were really important and one was a little ossuary bone box inscription in which someone is buried and on the bone box it's of the house of David . It's that person is identifying as coming from the Davidic line . And also in the Mishnah there's even a job description , the early Jewish writing for the descendants of David who have to take wood to the altar of Jerusalem .

Joan E Taylor 22:04

So there were descendants of David around and you would expect them to be in the ancestral town of David , which is so Herod actually building his fortress palace tomb overlooking Bethlehem is also this idea of Bethlehem being a place where descendants of David lived . And if you were a descendant of David , you had a lot of hope attached to you because there were predictions that there would be someone from the line of David who would return to the throne of Israel . Micah , chapter five , even talks about Bethlehem as the place that the future king , the Messiah , is going to come . This future king , the Messiah , is going to come . So if you were from that line of David and you had these scriptural predictions that someone from the line of David would rise to liberate and lead Israel , that would be a weight on your shoulders . There would be a sense of okay , someone from our family is supposed to lead Israel .

Joan E Taylor 23:13

What does that mean ? What does that mean ? And actually I think that what we have in the Gospels is a kind of working out of what it really meant to be a son of David for Jesus . You know there's expectation , there's prophecy , but what does it really mean ? Does it mean being a great warrior and riding your horse and getting an army together and liberating Jerusalem , only to get clobbered by the Romans ? Or does it mean something different ? How can you think outside the box ?

Jessica LM Jenkins 23:59

Right , because so many of the messianic type figures or rebel leaders that rose up during that time period were purely military , entirely , and so Jesus was a complete contrast to what people were expecting , absolutely During this time period . There's a lot of violence and revolts and wars between the Jewish people and the rulers . Was there specific political aggression against the house of David , in particular during this time period ?

Joan E Taylor 24:25

Herod particularly moved against the memory of David . To start off with , there was a tomb of David remembered in the middle of Jerusalem . It was quite a major monument in Jerusalem . It's referred to in the Acts of the Apostles . You know David's tomb was in the city and he went into the tomb in the middle of the night with a bunch of his closest associates and took the treasure out of the tomb . So that's a tomb desecration , that's a tomb robbery , and it wasn't said that it was done for any great reason other than he wanted the money and he went in . According to Josephus , he went into the deepest part of this tomb and actually some weird thing happened and that fire burst out when he entered this deep recess , which I think is kind of curious , because it's almost like there was a gas which you can have in tombs that have been ignited by the , the torches that they brought into the tomb . So I find that quite plausible , but it's . It shocked herod and he then built a propitiatory monument , a kind of saying sorry monument outside the tomb . But it was remembered that that herod had done this and as time goes by we get memories of early Christian scholars who say that Jesus' family who are also descended from David , were targeted by the Romans . So Jesus' family I think one of the what I really wanted to do in the book is is place Jesus within a family , so he's not just a lone figure , right , and not at all .

Joan E Taylor 26:16

Sometimes you see Jesus with his mother , of course , but it's not as if he's presented within a wider family circle , and I think that everyone grows up within . You know , we grow up within families and this is important and they shape us . Well , the family of Jesus took over the control of the Judean churches after he was no longer around . His brother , james , was in charge of the church in Jerusalem until 62 . It goes on through other family members Jerusalem until 62 . It goes on through other family members . The last family member is Simeon ,

Herod's Brutality in Bethlehem

Joan E Taylor 27:05

who is executed by the Romans as a descendant of David and a Christian . The grandsons of his brother , jude , were interrogated by the Romans as possibly being able to lead an army . They were descended from David , the Emperor Vespasian apparently , according to Hedgesippus , another Christian writer , tried to wipe out all of the descendants of David . So the Romans knew there was this prediction of the Messiah from the line of David and they wanted to get rid of all of them . So again , that ties in with the massacre .

Jessica LM Jenkins 27:38

Yes , and with the Romans trying to get rid of the line of David , was that before Jesus was born , so he would have been growing up with that tension ? Or was that after his life and death and resurrection growing ?

Joan E Taylor 27:51

up with that tension or was that after his life and death and resurrection ? It's attested . I mean , herod's desecration of the tomb was 10 BCE and normally Jesus is understood to have been born around and very confusingly I say BCE , 6 , bce , 6 BC . So Jesus was born six years before Christ .

Joan E Taylor 28:09

This is the peculiarity of our chronological system , right , so we tend to say BCE is before common era , right ? So it doesn't sound absolutely crazy , but he was born in the last years of Herod the Great , and that is clear from the nativity accounts . Yeah , last years of Herod the Great , and that is clear from the nativity accounts . Yeah . And also to make sense of the fact that he was around 30 years of age when he comes to John the .

Joan E Taylor 28:38

Baptist in the year 28 , in the 14th year of the Emperor Tiberius . So it does all work out , but those final years of Herod , only a few years before he desecrated the tomb of David , and clearly with the blessing of the Romans , because they didn't want anyone from the line of David coming up to cause a problem in Judea .

Jessica LM Jenkins 29:02

Yeah , okay . So Jesus is growing up in a time of great political turmoil . We have violent revolts happening . Herod is massacring people , so he is born in Bethlehem . They flee to Egypt . Talk to us about what's going on . When Joseph brings the family back from Egypt , the political situation has shifted because Herod the Great died . So what is going on with Archelaus and the other Herod in Galilee ? What's the situation there ?

Joan E Taylor 29:43

Well , it's complete mayhem at the time of Herod's death . Herod , just before he died , had done the most horrific thing , which is he had burnt alive the students of a particular couple of teachers in Jerusalem who had torn down the Roman golden eagle from the front of the temple . So it was a very anti-Roman gesture and all sorts of abominations that he was doing happened and then he dies and everyone's traumatised . You know , after all of these terrible things Right .

Joan E Taylor 30:23

And the question is who is his heir ? And whoever is the heir has to then be approved by Rome , and so there's this instability .

Jessica LM Jenkins 30:41

At that point , a number of revolutionary leaders , as you mentioned before , rise up and try and take back Judea as an independent area and so all of this is going on , kind of if we just try to keep the biblical timeline while Jesus and Joseph and his family are in Egypt . All of this is going on kind of if we just try to keep the biblical timeline while Jesus and Joseph and his family are in Egypt , all of this instability is happening in Judah , Palestine , Israel , yeah , Okay .

Joan E Taylor 31:00

Instability in terms of a liberation movement , with various different forms happening , happening , and one of the things that happen is a revolutionary leader called Judas takes the capital of Galilee , sepphoris , which is just down the road from Nazareth , and creates an independent area in Galilee .

Joan E Taylor 31:21

So that's very important in terms of the background for the Gospel of Matthew , because what we have is Joseph feeling , you know , getting a message that he can return because the people that were the great threat have gone , that's Herod and people associated with Herod . But then it says , when he heard that Archelaus was ruler of Judea , he goes to Galilee . Well , that's very interesting , because what happens in Judea , in Jerusalem , is that Archelaus kind of takes control . He still needs to be given the okay by Rome , but he takes control . But what has happened is huge numbers of people have encamped in the temple demanding liberation , that they can independent , state and um , he tries to take control of the situation and ends up massacring thousands of people in in the jerusalem temple . So it's a horrific bloodbath and and Archelaus has then proven to be no better than his father , in fact , probably worse , in various different ways .

Jessica LM Jenkins 32:36

Didn't you say in the book he crucified like 2,000 people , right outside Jerusalem , in that area ?

Joan E Taylor 32:43

That's right . Well , it's the Roman legate from Antioch , varus , who comes down in support of Archelaus . Okay , it's remembered as this war of Varus , this enormous onslaught by the Romans . You never messed with the Romans .

Jessica LM Jenkins 33:00

No , you never won .

Joan E Taylor 33:03

The Romans came down from Syria with a huge army including Nabataeans and all sorts of other client rulers who came in and joined them and they just went through and they actually defeated Judas in Galilee and the city of Sepphoris and enslaved the entire population , as Romans did . And they went down to Jerusalem and just annihilated all of the opposition and cruelly executed yeah , crucified people , and people fled to the , the Judean wilderness . They were hunted down there . They didn't want to leave anyone alive who had revolted against them . So that incredible cruelty .

Joan E Taylor 33:51

And and so what I think of is of Joseph taking his family back from Egypt . They think they're going home to Bethlehem . They veer off , as it says in the Gospel of Matthew , from Judea to Galilee , where there's a bit of respite . There isn't . Where there's a bit of respite , there isn't a Roman client king in charge at that time only to have Varus' armies arrive and torch Sephoris . And from Nazareth . You would have gone up on the hill behind Nazareth and be able to see Sephoris burn . And I think , okay , little boy jesus , you know that the smoke of burning sephorus , um , I remember myself as a personal story when I was a child um , a house burnt down the end of our road and I remember I would only have been about three . Okay , I remember crying . I sat on the on the sidewalk outside our house and and cried , and I remember my mother picking me up and saying oh you know , come inside and for for a child to see terrible destruction has a huge impact on you .

Jessica LM Jenkins 35:10

And this I feel like trying to choose my words , thinking about Jesus' childhood as a mother . In the context , herod brutalizes the people of Bethlehem , builds the Herodian right outside , where they can see it . Jesus , that's about 30 years before Jesus is born . Jesus is born in Bethlehem . They're afraid of Herod . They flee to Egypt . Joseph is told to come

Political Turmoil During Jesus's Childhood

Jessica LM Jenkins 35:39

back once Herod the Great dies . He's like I don't want to deal with Archelaus in Judea because he's just as bad . I'm going to go up to Nazareth where right now you described , there's a kind of a little pocket of Judean control . We're going to go to Nazareth . We'll be safe . We're from the line of David . We're already , as our family , in a precarious position . They get to Nazareth only to have the Roman army come through and the city they can see from where they're living gets burned , and Jesus could have watched that as a little boy .

Joan E Taylor 36:14

Exactly , it's huge In terms of impact . It's not said , but it's hinted at . If you just put Jesus in the context of the times , that is actually what happened .

Jessica LM Jenkins 36:30

Jesus in the context of the times , that is actually what happened , and so his entire ministry , as an adult , is he's ministering in and to a people group that is fundamentally and profoundly traumatized . His entire ministry is reaching to the poor , lower class groups that have been absolutely brutalized and traumatized by the ruling powers . So it's not just oh , we don't prefer Rome , we'd rather be free . They have been completely traumatized and his entire ministry is in some ways lifting , giving people hope in the middle of their intense trauma , which he experienced alongside them as a child .

Joan E Taylor 37:22

Absolutely , and I think that there's a . He turns things around . So instead of thinking of liberation in terms of a military way , he's thinking of a kind of new way of being , a new way of operating . So I mean , I want to explore that more in the next book that I'm writing .

Joan E Taylor 37:47

Jesus , but just you know , in terms of what the trauma has meant personally to Jesus , I think , when he sends out his apostles , when he sends out the 12 to the villages of Galilee , he asks them to go out to a village without anything , without a change of clothing , without extra clothing , without food , without any money in their belts . They can have sandals , they can have a walking stick , but they basically arrive in a village looking like poor refugees , not trying to be anything , not trying to look fancy . They're not arriving in suits and looking like they have it all . They're looking the very opposite . So it sort of turns everything around and he indicates that anyone who doesn't welcome such people , well , that's what's going to invite God's justice ultimately . You know it's a what you give you get , kind of thing . And so he embraces in some way the model of being hit by the world . In a way he goes well , God is on the side of those who have suffered .

Joan E Taylor 39:12

God is on the side of the downtrodden and the poor and the marginalised , actually , and if God is on your side , actually , that's mightier than the . Roman emperor , wow , and it's strengthening you against the claims of Rome .

Jessica LM Jenkins 39:31

And so that , in his teachings , would have had a profound impact on the groups who were trying to align themselves with Rome religiously . The Sadducees , the Pharisees , didn't love Rome , but they still had a bit more power and class than the average people did , and so Jesus' message to this incredibly traumatized group would have automatically pitted him against those trying to seek their own welfare by aligning themselves with Rome .

Joan E Taylor 40:03

Absolutely , and a lot of the things he says about the rich and the mighty . Behind that is the sense that you are rich and mighty in a world that is aligning itself with Rome , that you are benefiting somehow from the present world order . You know , in the temptation narrative when Jesus meets Satan in the wilderness . Satan basically tempts Jesus with saying look , you can have all of this , you can be emperor , you can be world emperor . And Jesus just pushes right back at that . It's the absolute opposite of what God is about .

Jessica LM Jenkins 40:44

Which , in this context , is profound , because people are expecting , they're looking for a military Messiah to be ruler king over Judah , israel and maybe even more of the world , and Satan offers that and Jesus is like . That's not the way this kingdom works .

Joan E Taylor 41:02

Yeah , I came to serve , not be served .

Jessica LM Jenkins 41:05

Oh , it completely shifts everything . Wow , talk to us a little bit more about Nazareth . When he was a boy we often hear think about Nazareth as kind of this idyllic picture , as a quiet Nazareth , as kind of this idyllic picture as a quiet , backwater , nowhere town , where Jesus is just kind of growing up , running on the hills and playing and he's a simple peasant boy . It's a quiet , unassuming life in this little tiny , nowhere town . How much of that matches what we know of Nazareth

Nazareth: Not the Idyllic Village

Jessica LM Jenkins 41:37

and Galilee in this time period .

Joan E Taylor 41:41

Yeah , Nazareth , we don't know , how big Nazareth was , because very little archaeological excavation has taken place in Nazareth , but we know that Galilee generally was very densely populated . There were a lot of villages very close by . So it's not like Jesus , when walking around Galilee , would have gone very far before hitting another village , and that's been shown by many archaeological surveys . And this dense population , things like various different diseases , would have been rife . There would have been high infant mortality . There seems to have been even within we can see it in jesus own teaching a lot of poverty day laborers going out to work in the fields and just being ready for hire . The lands were largely controlled by rich landowners . So this , this is the wealth and the poverty . There was a certain amount of village land and you know poor farmers as well , but there were these . There would have been Roman-style villas where there were wealthy landowners and they also feature in Jesus' parables .

Joan E Taylor 42:59

He reflects the time in terms of what he presents there and this bubbling of discontent . Josephus talks about the Galileans as being rather macho warrior guys , you know , wanting to fire off right . And the message of Judas , who got thoroughly defeated , was percolating all along and actually then erupted in the 60s when the Judean , the great revolt happened when the Judeans , spearheaded by the Galileans , in fact revolted against Rome . So all of that , you know , was under the surface . There was banditry , bandit caves , sort of .

Joan E Taylor 43:51

If you think about the ancient world , there's no police in the ancient world , right , yeah , and there's a lot of crime . Yeah , it's not a safe environment . You rely on your village community to support you . Um , I I think that one of the things that I noticed was how um josephus , when he became a a leader of the the revolt himself , before he switched sides in the 60s , um , he very quickly assembled a huge galilean army , and so he knew about what galileans were like , and I think , okay , if they were this kind of warrior style uh people , then um jesus would probably have been learned learning to fight like other boys in his village .

Joan E Taylor 44:43

Learning to fight in many cultures is just what you grow up with . So I think sometimes we think about Jesus , you know , learning carpentry or the synagogue school and learning Bible and all of these things and it being quite peaceful , but I think about him also having to learn how to fight . Yeah , wield a knife .

Jessica LM Jenkins 45:08

Yeah , we don't think of Jesus being scrappy and ready to battle and then choosing to go the complete opposite way .

Joan E Taylor 45:16

Exactly . So again , you know , turn the other cheek . You know , if someone asks you to walk one mile , go with them to . You know that sense of we're consciously going to push back at you by doing something you don't expect . You know you being the attacker in this situation . So it's a . It's a it's not passive . It's an act of turning things around and witnessing to someone who would otherwise be violent towards you .

Jessica LM Jenkins 45:58

How were they important for the early church ? Because the Gospels were written after , right after , the Great Revolt in 60 , 70 AD , where Jerusalem was destroyed . The Gospels are written after that ?

Joan E Taylor 46:12

Am I correct Absolutely ? The first Gospel , the Gospel of Mark , is probably written shortly after 70 , when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans .

Jessica LM Jenkins 46:27

And so these themes that are all through the Gospels and all through Jesus' early life would have been incredibly important for the early church . How would that have brought hope and comfort to the early church ?

Joan E Taylor 46:38

That's a big question .

Jessica LM Jenkins 46:41

And I sort of have to think about it ?

Joan E Taylor 46:43

Hope and comfort , I think , in a culture where clubs and societies could be banned very , very quickly by the Romans . This is the Roman world and there are spies everywhere and anyone who has any kind of whiff of objection to what the , the roman , imperial um family , is saying is a traitor and treasonous . And you , you die , um . There there would have been hope and comfort , but there's also a preparedness to take the consequences to . You know , jesus said to his disciples whoever wants to follow me has to take up their cross . You know , and follow me . And they were prepared to die and in fact they did in the persecution by Nero in Rome after the fire of Rome in 64 .

Joan E Taylor 47:44

That's probably when both Peter and Paul were killed . So that sense of don't expect the world to look after you actually , because the world is has gone wrong and trust in God and the right way of following Jesus and his teaching . But yeah , this is not about making a safe place for yourself in the world . Your hope and comfort really comes with a faith in something much deeper and more meaningful about what life is about .

Jessica LM Jenkins 48:24

So , joan , for you personally , as we wrap things up , studying Jesus , studying him in context , studying his childhood , for you personally , how does that impact your walk with Jesus , your personal faith ?

Joan E Taylor 48:42

It does . All the time . I feel I learn all the time as I go into the past . I often feel like Jesus sets such an incredibly high bar in terms of a model , if you think of him .

Joan E Taylor 48:57

as you know , I'm a Quaker and part of the Society of Friends , and it's a sense of you look to Jesus as an ethical model and a guide and a support , but he's so far out

Jesus's Response to Trauma and Violence

Joan E Taylor 49:17

in the distance in terms of what we can achieve . In terms of what we can achieve but still setting his moral stance , seeing him create that moral standard , is really , really important and discerning it and being true to it as much as we can in our own evil way , I think is very important for me and that's why I think it is important also to be part of a faith community , whatever faith community feels comfortable for you , because we need each other . We're not just single people out in the world , you know , we're not just little islands . We need to be clustered together and support each other Absolutely .

Jessica LM Jenkins 50:05

Thank you so much , Joan , for coming and sharing with us about all of your writings and your wisdom . For those who are listening , you can get her Boy Jesus book now . It came out March 11th . She does an excellent job in Boy Jesus , walking through the scholarship and the background . There's so much more in the book than we can get to in our brief conversation today , but I will put in the social media posts all of her books . Not all of her books , because she has a lot , but I'll highlight a few of her books that are available , as well as Boy Jesus . Joan , we greatly appreciate you taking the time to come talk with us about this and I personally can't wait to dive into some of your other resources as well .

Joan E Taylor 50:52

Well , thank you so much . I really enjoyed being here and I appreciate your questions , Thank you so much .

Jessica LM Jenkins 51:02

I've been really blessed by this conversation . I'm going to be pondering on a lot of the themes that we've brought up in this conversation for a long time , and I think it's going to help me personally really , as I interpret the Gospels and think about the overall context , especially how Jesus is ministering in the face of trauma and PTSD symptoms constantly . Trauma and PTSD is the cultural context in which Jesus' entire ministry is taking place , and so that's just one of the many things I'm going to be chewing on as I come back to the texts of Scripture . After engaging with you and reading your work , I am so thankful for you and for your work and I cannot wait to read more . Thank you , thanks so much .

Jessica LM Jenkins 51:56

You're so welcome . Well , I'm going to close us off now . Well , I'm going to close us off now and one of our next episodes we will be returning to women of the Bible in their historical context . So when I return to the we who Thirst podcast next , that is what we will be going back to . Thank you all for tuning in and listening and have a great week .