Jesus & Utopia

Scholarship on the historical Jesus and, now, on the "Jesus movement" generally divides into separate camps around two sticky questions: was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet and was the movement around him political, that is nationalistic or revolutionary? Mary Ann Beavis moves the study of the historical Jesus in a dramatic new direction as she highlights the context of ancient utopian thought and utopian communities, drawing particularly on the Essene community and Philo's discussion of the Therapeutae, and argues that only ancient utopian thought accounts for the lack of explicit political echoes in Jesus' message of the kingdom of God.

Mary Ann Beavis is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Religious Studies and Anthropology at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon