Jesusviolence : Racism, Speciesism, and Other Violences in and after the Gospels

This book is simultaneously a study in biblical violence and a study in biblical hermeneutics. More precisely, it is a search for a biblical hermeneutic adequate to engage with biblical violence. It is more interested in what gospel texts do than what they mean—not least when what they do, or cause to be done, is violent.

What does Jesus say and do within the narrative worlds of the New Testament gospels that, through the ages, enabled innumerable gory horrors and immense systemic violences to be perpetrated with his presumed permission? That is the question driving this book. Its compound title, Jesusviolence, simultaneously denotes: first, the violences inflicted on the gospel Jesuses in their narrative worlds; second, the violences enacted by the gospel Jesuses in their narrative worlds; and third, certain of the violences enacted in Jesus''s name in our histories and worlds. The book''s investigation of Jesusviolence extends over a spectrum ranging from the spectacularly visible--most notably, the ultraviolent spectacle that was Roman crucifixion--to the systemically invisible, which is to say structural, sanctioned, or sanctified violence, encapsulated in such gospel sayings as "The poor you always have with you" and "Are you [humans] not of more value than [nonhuman animals]?" Entangled with class- and species-related stratgems of systemic violence in and after the gospels are sex/gender-related stratagems, and race/ethnicity-related stratagems, the latter epitomized by the whitening of the gospel Jesus(es). A religio-cultural by-product of European colonialism, this white Jesus still towers over much of the globe. The book also conducts an iconoclastic interrogation of representation, the foundational concept for all previous scholarship on biblical violence, arguing that it is a distantiating concept inadequate for engaging with the visceral nature and immediacy of violence. Inspired by affect theory, non-representational theory, and other related currents of thought, this book is more interested in what gospel texts do than what they mean--not least when what they do, or cause to be done, is violent.