The Jesus narratives, at their core, are anticolonial literature about a native resident displaced by the invading imperial power. The Gospel narratives depict a careful dance between Rome, the colonizer, and Jesus, the colonized. Not far from the story-telling surface is the real-world dynamic of experiencing the consequences of empire. We see it throughout Jesus’s everyday life and how he responded to the circumstances brought about by the economic and political occupation of Judea.
