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Gerd TheissenThe Shadow of the Galilean
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Terror and Love of One’s Enemy”
Andreas spends the night in the caves. He has nightmares until Barabbas wakes him up; it is still dark. The two of them have a quiet conversation, and Barabbas explains that he was the one who suggested that he become an informant instead of being ransomed. He worried that if he said he knew Andreas, the other Zealots might ask too many questions. Although the Zealots can be frightening, Barabbas assures Andreas that they are not cold-blooded killers, though he has killed two people. Most people who join the Zealots are poor men who cannot make a living off their land and want to create a more just society. One of the Zealots, a man named Simon, has left the movement to join Jesus. Jesus’s approach to tackling oppression is rather different: he advises his followers not to “resist one who is evil” (87). Jesus asserts that people must dismantle the distinction between the oppressors and the oppressed if they want real justice.
Barabbas does not see how this approach will get anyone anywhere and insists that they must fight back against Rome. Reform is not enough; only overthrow is sufficient. Rome’s power is only increasing, and Antipas is essentially a puppet king who follows Rome’s orders. Andreas begs Barabbas to leave the Zealots, but Barabbas knows that if he leaves, either the Zealots or the Romans will have him executed. Andreas and Barabbas go back to sleep, though Andreas remains troubled. He finds problems with Jesus’s approach and with the Zealots’, and he wishes that it were possible for Rome’s control over Palestine to be more just. The next morning, the Zealots release Andreas, Timon, and Malchus. One of them asks Andreas to bring a letter and some money to his family in Capernaum, to the north. Andreas agrees.
Dr. Kratzinger does not like this chapter, Theissen notes, because it makes Jesus’s teachings political. Theissen explains that Jesus existed within a political context and had political goals as well as religious ones.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Conflict in Capernaum”
Timon, Malchus, and Andreas travel to Capernaum and find the Zealot’s family. The mother, Hannah, is taking care of her sick child, 12-year-old Miriam, while her husband is out fishing. Everyone is worried that Miriam will soon die. Miriam initially believes that Andreas is the Messiah: She has heard that Jesus has the ability to heal people and hopes that Andreas will heal her. Hannah tells Miriam stories of Jesus healing people; Andreas suspects that she makes some of them up to comfort her daughter. Andreas suggests that although Jesus is not here to heal Miriam personally, she might recover through the strength of her faith. Wanting to help Miriam, Andreas sends Timon, Malchus, and one of Miriam’s older brothers on an overnight trip to summon the physician Hippocrates to treat her. This choice proves controversial: The sabbath is beginning, and some people in Capernaum think it is inappropriate to work on the day of rest. Andreas argues that urgent, life-saving work is permissible, but not everyone agrees with him.
Some people also object to Andreas summoning a gentile doctor; Andreas is surprised by how strict people in Capernaum are about religious rules compared to those in Sepphoris. They accuse Jesus’s followers of “neglect[ing] the difference between clean and unclean” (102); Andreas reminds them that he is not a follower of Jesus. The next day, after the sabbath service, Andreas speaks to a man from Capernaum, who notes that many people resent Jewish people for taking so many days off, with their weekly sabbath and their many holidays. Some people think Jesus’s teachings undermine the sabbath, and that by spending time with people they perceive as sexually impure or otherwise immoral, he is polluting Judaism. Hippocrates arrives and says that Miriam will likely soon recover.
Theissen talks to Dr. Kratzinger about how Jewish traditions changed when Christianity emerged. At this time, Judaism was undergoing its own religious overhaul, and many people thought that certain rules were too strict.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Men on the Frontier”
Andreas travels from Capernaum to Bethsaida with Timon and Malchus. Along the way, they pass through a border manned by a toll collector. Andreas is expecting the toll collector to be Levi, with whom he has had many dealings in the past and who is always happy to be bribed with some wine. He is surprised to instead meet Kostabar, who is very strict about the tolls. It is difficult for toll collectors to make a living. After Kostabar and Andreas come to an agreement, a group of beggars arrives, demanding food. Kostabar sees them often: They are followers of Jesus. Levi has become one of Jesus’s followers, too. The beggars try to use one of Jesus’s parables to convince Kostabar to give them food, but he refuses, and they leave. Although Kostabar has sympathy for them, he knows that if he starts feeding them, they will keep coming back and financially ruin him. When Andreas, Timon, and Malchus leave Kostabar, they encounter some of the beggar children, who tell them “Unless you become like children again, you will not enter the kingdom of God” (115). Andreas gives them some food.
In his letter, Theissen defends his choice to connect Jesus’s parables to the political situation in Palestine during his lifetime. Most theologians see the parables as having religious rather than political significance, but Theissen believes that both can be true.
Chapter 13 Summary: “A Woman Protests”
Andreas hears more and more fantastic stories about Jesus: He can walk on water, and he can feed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread. Andreas visits Joanna and Chuza again. Joanna tells him privately that she sends Jesus money and supplies; her husband has no idea. She thinks Jesus feeds large crowds partly with the support of wealthy donors like her and partly because when they see plenty of food, people are more likely to contribute their own bread because they are “no longer afraid of going short” (120). The resulting feast looks like a miracle. Chuza arrives. Antipas is worried: many people think Jesus is the Messiah, and rebellious sentiments are getting stronger. Joanna defends Jesus’s ideas to her husband, who is dismissive. Joanna quotes Jesus several times, refuting all her husband’s arguments that Jesus is dangerous, a lunatic, or giving people false hope. Joanna finally admits that Jesus’s ideas are very important to her, and that Chuza’s dismissal is hurtful. He loves her, so he agrees to consider Jesus’s message rather than alienate his wife. Andreas leaves them to talk things over. Later, he hears Chuza singing a passage from the Song of Solomon. The next morning, Andreas has “the vague feeling that something in [his] life [has] changed” (126).
It is difficult to create an accurate picture of Jesus as a historical figure because so few facts are known about him outside of religious sources. The historical record indicates that he was a follower of John the Baptist, that he was crucified, and little else. Theissen has tried to create a plausible timeline and a plausible version of his political and religious arguments based on the available information.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Report on Jesus, or, Jesus in Disguise”
Andreas now knows that Jesus is a threat to Rome, but finds he agrees with many of Jesus’s ideas. He returns to Sepphoris, where Baruch has been helping with his business. He writes his report to Metilius about Jesus, making Jesus sound as harmless as possible. First, he compares Jesus’s philosophy to some Greek and Roman philosophers, especially the Stoics. He talks about Jesus’s non-violence, his command that his followers love their enemies, and his opposition to personal property. Jesus’s minimalist lifestyle is reminiscent of Diogenes. In case Jesus now seems implausibly docile, Andreas tempers his report with more radical opinions: Jesus values children, sex workers, and those often considered to be impure. These views are provocative, but they are not revolutionary. Hoping to protect Jesus from harm, Andreas also includes a description of him as “a peasant poet who has enriched Jewish literature with marvellous stories” (133). He gives several examples. Jesus is also a prophet, which is a much more dangerous title and harder to justify to Rome. Andreas does not mention this in his report. Baruch asks to take a holiday; he has felt out of place since he left the Essenes and does not know where he fits in.
Theissen discusses whether Jesus was unique in his own time, or whether he just seems that way in hindsight because of the success of Christianity after his death. Instead of focusing on Jesus’s uniqueness, Theissen is interested in showing him as authentically as possible and in showing the political situation that gave rise to his ideas.
Chapters 10-14 Analysis
In writing to Metilius, his Roman overseer, Andreas compares Jesus to the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who lived from around 412 to 323 BCE. According to possibly apocryphal stories, Diogenes slept in a barrel and had no personal possessions besides a wooden bowl. When he saw a child drinking water from his cupped hands, he exclaimed that he had been outdone and smashed the bowl. There are a lot of stories about Diogenes’s radical cynicism, some of which do bear a passing resemblance to Jesus’s rejection of material comfort in pursuit of spiritual truth. Andreas is trying to navigate a morally acceptable and safe path through the Political and Religious Upheaval that surrounds him. His strategy here is to assimilate Jesus into the dominant Roman worldview. He has seen that Jesus does pose a threat to Roman power, but he also sympathizes with Jesus both as a fellow Jew and as a teacher whose ideas have begun to appeal to Andreas. As such, he seeks to protect Jesus by downplaying the more radical elements of his philosophy and emphasizing his connections to a tradition the Romans have already appropriated—that of the Greeks.
This section includes extensive discussions of the role of the sabbath. In Judaism, the sabbath (or Shabbat) is a day of rest. It begins at sundown on Friday and continues until sundown on Saturday. Depending on the sect of Judaism in question, rules about refraining from work on the sabbath can be quite strictly enforced, and they sometimes result in conflict both within Jewish communities—as when some people object to Andreas’s summoning of a doctor to treat Miriam—and with non-Jews, like the Romans who complain that their Jewish subjects use the Sabbath to avoid labor. Indeed, strict adherence to Jewish law can be a form of resistance to cultural and political oppression. By strictly observing the Sabbath and other religious requirements, the Jewish people of the Roman Empire assert their difference from their Roman colonizers. The same is true of discussions about ritual cleanliness, which Theissen also touches on in these chapters.
Barabbas mentions that a Zealot named Simon has joined Jesus. This is Simon the Zealot, one of the twelve apostles. He is not to be confused with Simon Peter, another apostle sometimes known simply as Peter. Very little is known about him in historical sources. The extent to which Simon was really involved in the Zealot movement is unclear—he may have gained the epithet for other reasons, or it might be a mistranslation of “Canaanite.” In debates about Political and Religious Upheaval, Theissen primarily explores the differences between the Zealots and Jesus. Chapter 10 in particular emphasizes that the two groups share certain aims but do not share the same priorities or strategies. Theissen presents Jesus as a standing for a totalizing religiosity that goes beyond distinctions between colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed. In the face of the total devotion Jesus demands, such distinctions are moot. The Zealots, by contrast, believe that only a violent overthrow of their oppressors will change their circumstances. Andreas—characteristically interested in peace and self-preservation above all—is reluctant to embrace any significant changes to the status quo, at least at this point in the narrative. He wishes Rome’s oppression could be gentler, but he does not actively seek its end.
Both Jesus and the Zealots reckon with Morality and Culpability. Barabbas is quick to justify his own killing of two people, explaining that one killing was an act of self-defense and the other was a way to enact justice. In his eyes, Jesus’s non-violence is not just ineffective; it is also harmful to his own followers, who need real change. Jesus’s ideas might sound nice, but they will only work if they are backed up by the threat of violence. There are no easy answers to these questions, and Andreas struggles to decide where he stands. He is in a philosophical no-man’s-land, as symbolized by the literal no-man’s-land of the desert. However, in these chapters, Andreas becomes much more sympathetic to Jesus’s view. He remains hesitant, but he is now on his way to becoming an early Christian. He feels a strong drive to protect Jesus, and he wakes up one morning undergoing a psychological or spiritual shift that he cannot yet articulate.
Theissen acknowledges that Historiography and the Ethics of Narrative pose significant challenges. Since Christianity treats Jesus as a universal figure of divinity, it can be uncomfortable for Christians to place him in a political and historical context. Jesus’s parables are generally interpreted as moral guidance that any Christian in any era can benefit from, but Theissen challenges that view. The sayings that are attributed to Jesus may have spiritual benefit for all Christians, but they were nevertheless initially uttered in a specific time and place, among people who had particular political needs. These chapters also emphasize that Jewish people in Jesus’s time were not a monolith. They had a wide range of political and religious opinions that pushed some to embrace Jesus’s message and others to reject or ignore it.
