In this innovative study, Horsley builds on his earlier works concerning the problematic and misleading categories of "magic" and "miracle" to examine in-depth the meaning and importance of the narratives of healing and exorcism in the Gospels. Incorporating his work on oral performance and turning to important works in medical anthropology, a new image emerges of how these narratives help us re-evaluate Jesus's place in first-century Galilee and Judea. In his exorcisms and healings, Jesus-in-interaction was empowering the villagers in their struggles for renewal of personal and communal dignity in resistance to invasive Roman rule.
Richard A. Horsley is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Emeritus. His numerous publications include these recent works from Cascade Books: You Shall Not Bow Down to Them: The Political Economic Projects of Jesus and Paul (2021), Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, 2nd ed. (2021), Jesus and Magic (2014), and Text and Tradition in Performance and Writing (2013).
“Taking exorcism and healing as the primary work of Jesus, Richard Horsley presents Mark, Matthew, and Luke as scripts for communal performances of hope and resilience. Showing how these scripts worked in their historical situations, this splendid book explores the astonishing charisma of Jesus and its deep rootedness in the traditions and peoplehood of Israel.”
—Amanda Porterfield, author of Healing in the History of Christianity
“By framing Jesus’s healings as empowerment—empowering people and communities to resist destructive powers—Horsley sheds light not only on the pathology of the first-century, Roman-occupied context of the Gospels but also on our own context of pandemic and power struggles. An exciting and timely book!”
—Barbara Rossing, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
“This is the sort of book that one can write only in the fullness of their career. . . . In Empowering the People, Horsley aligns those decades of interdisciplinary research into a single, though multifaceted, reconstruction of Jesus traditions that sets healing and exorcism at its center. The book is sure to fuel productively animated conversation from all sides of the question.”
—Colleen Shantz, St. Michael’s College
“For nearly four decades, Richard Horsley has sought to bring broader perspectives from the humanities and social sciences to the study of Jesus. Empowering the People continues this program by reframing Jesus’s healings and exorcisms within the struggles for power between Rome and its Judean collaborators on one hand, and on the other, ‘the people.’ For those of us interested in reinvigorating the study of the historical Jesus, there is much here to consider.”
—Rafael Rodríguez, Johnson University
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