What difference did empire make for Jesus and his disciples? What difference did empire make for the broader social currents of which he and they were a part? What social roles did Jesus perform, what "little tradition" did he embody against the "great tradition" of Roman culture? What difference does it make for our understanding of Jesus if we attend to new kinds of evidence regarding popular movements, the dynamics of oral tradition, and reading history "from below"? Richard A. Horsley addresses all these questions and sketches a dramatic new picture of Jessus in light of recent approaches.

Richard Horsley is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of several other titles, including Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder and Scribes, Visionaries and the Politics of Second Temple Judea.