TANK MAN AND THE LIMITS OF TELEPHOTO LENSES: OR, HOW MUCH CAN INDIVIDUALS STOP VIOLENCE?

The tank man photo is the most famous image of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement in Beijing. Indeed it is considered one of the most famous photos of the 20^th century.   It has become a symbol of human resistance, a lone individual stopping a whole column of tanks. 

What the photo claims to symbolize, however, is only very partially true.  It is not a photo of Tiananmen Square, but of a boulevard nearby.  It was not taken during the crackdown on demonstrators, which took place on June 3 and the following night, but on the quiet morning of June 5, after Tiananmen Square had been cleared and government control had been reestablished in Beijing. And it was not a successful protest. The tanks stopped briefly; two men came into the street and took the protestor away.

The photo was taken by an American newsman,   from a hotel balcony 800 meters distant--about half a mile. It was shot through a telephoto lens, like so many news photos of recent decades. This is one of the marvels of modern technology, and a hidden one: how seldom do we stop to think of how the photographer got so close, so near the action where history is made? Compare the equally famous, infinitely shocking photo from South Vietnam 1972 of children running from napalm—where did we think the photographer was standing? 

Telephoto lenses allow us to intrude closely into events that the participants would probably like to keep hidden. It is one of the sharpest differences between our images of the world before about 1960 and the present. The Vietnam War was the first war in history where we could see what it actually looked like. Before then, we had to be content with what officials allowed for patriotic publication, plus (as of World War II) candid shots of soldiers, generally far behind the front lines. And not just for violence in war, but violence in all its peacetime forms, telephoto lenses have brought us first-hand records of how violence really looks. And other forms of conflict, too—the expressions on faces and bodies that give us clues to how conflict plays out, and enable us to cut through the rhetoric and the mythology that have obscured it since humans first began to tell lies about violence.

I would go so far as to say that the telephoto lens, even more than the advent of television, has changed our access to reality. Even more than the camcorder which in 1991 first showed the police beating Rodney King; even more than the ubiquitous mobile phone cameras that now flood the Internet-connected world with images. The reason I make this exorbitant claim is that all the other devices depend on being up close; the telephoto lens zooms in from a great distance. It can go where it is too dangerous or too private for other devices to go. Unlike TV, it gives us photos that are not posed, since no one knows there is a camera to pose for. And it can give photos of great detail—the emotional expressions on faces, the exact postures of bodies, that are so important for a micro-sociologist’s explanation.  The purpose of my writing, however, is not to pick a fight as to which visual technology is best; they all work together to make our times the golden age of visual sociology. 

Having extolled telephoto images, I want to raise a caveat about their limits. Taken out of context, they carry the danger of modern myth-making. To see what is distorted and what can be salvaged, let us examine the tank man photo in greater depth.

The Surrounding Context of the Tank Man Photo

The Beijing democracy demonstrations began on April 17, 1989, and went on for 50 days until they were crushed. The tank man photo was taken on day 51. Here I will summarize only the very last days. (More detail on the entire sequence is given in my post, Tipping Point Revolutions and State Breakdown Revolutions: Why Revolutions Succeed or Fail, The Sociological Eye, June 2013.) http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2013/06/tipping-point-revolutions-and-state.html

Over the 50 days, the size of the crowds at Tiananmen Square rose and fell. After most of the initial enthusiasm had fallen off, on day 28 (May 13), the remaining few hundred militants launched a hunger strike, which recaptured public attention, and brought hundreds of thousands of supporters to Tiananmen. On day 34 (May 19), the Communist elite purged its dissidents and declared martial law, and began to bring troops into Beijing.

The next four days were a showdown in the streets; crowds of residents blocked the army convoys; soldiers rode in open trucks, unarmed-- the regime still trying to use as little force as possible, and also distrustful of giving out ammunition-- and often were overwhelmed by residents. Crowds used a mixture of persuasion and food offerings, and sometimes force, stoning and beating isolated soldiers. On May 24 (day 39), the regime pulled back the troops to bases outside the city. The most reliable army units were moved to the front, some tasked with watching for defections among less reliable units. In another week strong forces had been assembled in the center of Beijing. 

Momentum was swinging back the other way. Student protestors in the Square increasingly divided between moderates and militants; by the time the order to clear the Square was given for June 3 (day 49), the number occupying was down to 4000. There was one last surge of violence-- not in Tiananmen Square itself, although the name became so famous that most outsiders think there was a massacre there-- but in the neighborhoods as residents attempted to block the army's movement once again. Crowds fought using stones and gasoline bombs, burning army vehicles and, by some reports, the soldiers inside. In this emotional atmosphere, as both sides spread stories of the other’s atrocities,  something on the order of 50 soldiers and police were killed, and 400-800 civilians (estimates varying widely). Some soldiers took revenge for prior attacks by firing at fleeing opponents and beating those they caught. In Tiananmen Square, the early morning of June 4, the dwindling militants were allowed to march out through the encircling troops.

The Tank Man Photo and What It Shows

The Tank Man photo was taken the following morning. The revolutionary crowds had been beaten. Massive arrests were being made, especially of workers, whom the government regarded as far more dangerous than students. Hundreds of thousands of security agents were beginning to spread across the country, picking off suspects one by one, ultimately arresting tens of thousands in the following months. The tipping point had passed, and the regime had clearly won.

What then was the point of the tank man protest?  By his white shirt and dark trousers, we can surmise that he was a government bureaucrat, a class of people whose sympathies were strongly on the side of the protestors. But it is also a category of persons, numerous in all demonstrations, who offer support but do not take part in the actual confrontations with authority.  In virtually all photos of demonstrations and riots everywhere in the world, a small portion of crowd is at the front doing the violence, while most stand at a distance and watch. Very likely tank man had seen or heard about the previous days’ violence, and came forward in the quiet atmosphere to do something to demonstrate his own commitment.

As we can see in the photo, the streets are virtually empty. He has no visible supporters, although a small audience gathered on the sidewalk to watch from a distance. On the other hand, the tank troops too are anonymous, hidden inside their armored stations. The tanks are moving slowly, making a show of force, not an actual military operation.  – One can know this, because the tanks are in column, a parade-like movement; deployed into combat they would go into line. I would surmise that the soldiers are calm; their action has been over for 24 hours or more.

Thus it is a symbolic confrontation: the lone man, respectably dressed in the garb of the urban apparatchik, stepping in front of the column of slow-moving tanks. In that atmosphere, there is little danger of being run over. The lead tank swerved to avoid him, but he kept in its path until it stopped. Very likely the troops had returned to the orders that prevailed during days 34-38, when unarmed troops were sent to assemble in the city as quietly as possible, and had given no resistance when crowds forced them back. On the whole, the regime had used a mixture of appeasing the crowds, waiting for them to dwindle away, and sporadic application of military force. On day 51, they were back into the mode of calm normality. The government machinery was operating again; bureaucratically organized investigations and individual arrests were the regime’s weapon now. The rebellious crowd has its best chance when it is assembled in huge numbers, in an atmosphere of emotional support that flows outward, dangerously lapping at the solidarity of the government apparatus. Now the crowd has dispersed; and it is in this configuration that bureaucratic authority can exercise its unrelenting and comparatively unemotional control.

And that is what happens. Tank man steps in front of the tank column; the lead driver stops; the tank drivers behind him stop because the tank in front stops. Two men in dark suits come and take tank man away.  The column grinds slowly on.

When Does Local Resistance Succeed?

It would have been an unknown incident except for the newsmen in the hotel with the telephoto lenses. Pictures of violence on the previous days were just making their way into Western newspaper and television, so little attention was paid to the exact sequence when things happened. A famous photo showed bicycles crushed in a street where fighting had taken place—and in the absence of photos of actual bodies, these were taken as emblems of how the revolution had been crushed. It was easy to conjure up a scenario of tanks rolling over a crowd of demonstrators. And then, in the midst of this—the heroic image of the man who stopped the tank column. All was not lost: the human individual still prevails.

We are living in the realm of symbolism here, not in the realm of history. Never mind that no one stopped the tanks, or more likely the trucks that rolled over the bicycles and carried troops into the streets where fighting had taken place 36 hours earlier.  It carries a nice message, although only through the more careful retrospect of micro-sociology do we actually see what it is:  the violent confrontations between crowds and army on June 3 and the early hours of June 4—confrontations in which violence was used on both sides—did not stop the army. But at the right moment, approached with the tools of non-violence, the army was stopped. 

Micro-sociology, above all, attempts to be realistic.  Violence cannot be stopped everywhere. Sometimes force rolls on and crushes everything in its path. But—sometimes violence is stopped. It happens locally, and by persons acting in local conditions.  This is something to build on. What are those conditions?

Comparisons:  Pockets of Successful Non-violent Peace-making in Riots

Turn now to the work of Dr. Anne Nassauer, of the Free University, Berlin. Using videos posted on-line from mobile phone cameras, plus GPS maps of streets, charting time-lines from police radio traffic, in short with the whole array of tools now available, she reconstructs protest demonstrations in Germany and the US.  With this cutting-edge media high-tech, she is able to reconstruct the micro-history of protests and to pin-point just when and where a demonstration will turn violent.  On the whole, I should mention, Nassauer finds that most demos stay peaceful, and their peacefulness can prevail even when militant protestors announce in advance that they will use force; or indeed, when police announce a tough crack-down-on-everything policy.  That is to say, whether a protest turns violent or not depends on local and emergent conditions; violence-threatening events can end up peaceful, and peaceful demos can turn violent.

I will not try to summarize here Nassauer’s findings of the several pathways that lead to violence. Let us concentrate on a single point:  if violence has already broken out, nevertheless all is not lost. It is not too late to stop the violence—not everywhere, but locally, at the place where human individuals use the right techniques.  What are those techniques?

When the police surge forward and the crowd starts running and ducking, people are likely to be beaten.  Photos often show clusters of police or soldiers, attacking anyone in their path—swinging clubs at women, old people, news reporters, anyone. 

 

Minsk demonstration 2006

Katmandu 2006

This is an emotional rush by the police, that I have called Forward Panic.  It is like the crowd contagion of running away, except in this case forces that have been pent up by confrontational tension, run forward into the vacuum left by a sudden weakness on the other side. It is an adrenaline surge that has been kept in suspense, suddenly released into action. That is why the police go out of control, swinging at anything in their path. It is important to see that this is a reciprocal emotion—the crowd running away is the counterpart of the police running forward, the display of emotional weakness feeding the surge of dominance of the attackers. In Nassauer’s data, she often finds that when one cop at the front swings at a target—it may be a person who has stumbled and fallen to the ground—the cops just behind will also swing at the same target. One policeman’s attack leads others to repeat the attack.

But—and here is the good news—Nassauer also finds that these attacks can be stopped locally.  When an individual stands still, directly facing the police, and calls out in a strong, clear voice:  “We are peaceful. What about you?” – or words to that effect, the attack almost always stops. 

This does not mean that the riot as a whole can be stopped in this way.  There can be hundreds or thousands of persons spread out over a considerable space. Violence in a riot is not like one huge rugby scrum, not like huge battle-lines of ancient phalanxes, but a series of little clusters of violence here and there.

Each one of these clusters may be checked, could be rendered no longer violent, by the right local action.

To repeat: the details are important. The peace-making person must stand still, no longer moving. When almost everyone’s back is turned, he or she stands in direct eye contact with the on-coming forces. And one’s voice must be clear and steady, neither threatening nor fearful.

Especially important is not to scream.  Someone in the crowd, in the fear or rage of being attacked, can cry out the identical words:  “WE ARE PEACEFUL!! WHAT ABOUT YOU!!” but in this case it will not work.  The police perceive and feel the crowd as being out of control. To scream at the police does not correct this impression, but reinforces it. Screaming is an expression of being out of control; and that is precisely the problem with the interactional situation. Tension and fear pervades everything, and the violence is coming out of the situation of one-sided emotional dominance by the police. The victim who screams does nothing to change the emotional field. It is the strong, calm tone that changes it, back towards local equilibrium, where the violence stops.

A similar technique can work when it is not a confrontation of police (or soldiers) versus a protesting crowd, but a violent attack by one crowd upon another. David Sorge, in research at University of Pennsylvania (2014), shows that in an incident of communal violence in India, the technique was used that stopped violence in a specific location.  The individual under attack was a peace-maker, a citizen who had stood up in a town meeting the day before, to urge the Hindu populace not to pay attention to rumours and not to attack the local Muslims.  As often happens in the early phases of communal violence, the peace-maker became targeted as a traitor. A crowd gathered in front of his house and pelted it with stones, the usual preliminary to an attack. But the peace-maker came out of the front of his house carrying a chair. Before anyone could attack him—there is usually a time-lag of shouting before someone starts the personal assault—he stood up on the chair and started to make a speech in a loud voice. The crowd quieted down and eventually dispersed.

Notice the details. He stood up above the crowd, where he could be seen. He met them face to face. For the members of a violent crowd, usually the target is someone anonymous up there behind all the surging bodies; for the few in the front with clearer visibility, someone cringing, showing weakness and fear, usually cowering, hiding their face, or knocked to the ground where all we can see is their side and back. Standing up in a prominent position, in this instance the peace-maker remained a human individual. He spoke in a loud, strong voice, not in anger, but resolutely.  He spoke to them as individuals, and took apart the collective emotion of the crowd, where each relies on the others to carry out acts of violence that ordinarily would outrage our moral sensibilities.

Again, we must recognize, it was a local solution only.  The riot as a whole was not stopped. The crowd moved elsewhere, where emotional dominance was easier to establish. Nevertheless, this is a hopeful sign. The whole pattern of a riot consists in all its local parts; and the more of these parts that can be stopped, the less damage it does.

  

Practical Advice in Violent Crowd Situations

--Don't turn your back.

--In a situation of violent threat, don't hide your face.

--Don't run away in panic.

--Above all, don't fall down.

That is to say: your eyes and your face are your strongest weapon of defense.

--Keep up a clear confrontation with a potential attacker. But don't raise the level of tension; don't scream; don't make further threats; just keep it steady as you can.

--Don't get isolated as a single individual surrounded by a cluster of about half a dozen attackers. This is the configuration in photos where persons are badly beaten. Try to stay with at least a small cluster of your own side, but not in the panicky flight mode.

I should add that this advice is for non-violent participants. It is unclear that they will work if you are throwing rocks, fire-bombs, or engaging in other kinds of violence.

This advice is drawn from research on the micro-sociology of riots. Does it work in other kinds of threatening situations, both more organized or macro-structured violence such as massacres and war, and in more individualized confrontations like street fights?

Our field of research has much more to do in examining all these types. But so far, the results are optimistic. The desk clerk in the Atlanta school on August 20, 2013 [http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/21/us/georgia-school-gunshots/] who calmed down an armed man threatening a rampage shooting shows that even the most dangerous situations may be defused. Research colleagues have told me they have walked safely through a violent riot in Tehran, by keeping in mind what emotional tone they were projecting in their body language, playing neither attacker nor victim.  Stefan Klusemann's research (2010, 2012), on the tipping-points to genocidal ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and in Rwanda, shows that even in the midst of a mass-murder campaign, there are micro-situational stumbling blocks, and threatened victims sometimes escape by a timely show of emotional resoluteness.

Lowering the Tension: Putting the Situation Back in Emotional Equilibrium

When the confrontation is one-on-one, the prospects are especially optimistic that violence can be avoided.  We are accumulating a significant amount of data on such situations, and two patterns stand out.

First:  The audience has an important effect.  Public fights rarely get very far without audience support.  Most angry arguments stay at the level of bluster and insult, unless the audience shows that it wants them to fight. The audience that cheers and urges them on will almost always get a prolonged fight. A neutral or uneasy audience, standing at a distance, usually results in a brief fight without much damage. And when an audience (or part of it) tries to intervene, it is almost always successful in stopping a fight. This pattern is shown in my comparison of fight incidents with different audience reactions (Collins 2008); in British research using CCTV videos of fights in pubs (Levine et al. 2011); and studies of what network relationships result in successful third-party interventions (Phillips and Cooney 2005).

There are limits to this pattern. It applies to arguments and fights in public, but not to domestic violence, which often takes place without much of an audience. (But there is ongoing research here, too, investigating the effects of indoor audiences that may be present.)  Since domestic violence is a considerable portion of small-scale violence, that is a serious limitation on our optimistic news. On the other hand, the following point applies both to domestic and public violence:

Second:  Small-scale conflict and violence peters out when the emotional field is in equilibrium.  That means:  when both sides are showing the same amount of emotional energy, the same degree of bodily agitation, the same emotional intensity.  This equilibrating effect can take place at any level of intensity, as long as both sides are evenly matched.  Research on mobile phone videos of street fights (Jackson-Jacobs) shows that even in the case of fights that have already started (and where the audience is distant and neutral) tend to wind down after both sides have thrown a few blows. On the whole, evenly matched fights do not do very much damage; the high level of adrenaline arousal makes fighters sloppy and incompetent, and Jackson-Jacobs’s videos show the fighters who have thrown a few wild punches tend to let their swings carry themselves out of range, where the fight devolves into threats, and eventually into mutual disengagement.  After all, in an honor fight, it is showing one’s willingness to fight that counts, not the result.

Let me conclude with a favorite photograph.  It was taken in Jerusalem during the height of the second Intifada, and it shows an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian political leader locked in angry conflict.

Jerusalem stalemate 2000

The news story tells there was no violence at this flash point of sacred territories that day. The angry confrontation wound down and ended. How?

The photo shows the two men exactly mirroring each other. Reading the facial expression of emotions using Ekman’s methods, we see them displaying anger, and in an identical manner: both have the hard, staring eyes, the clenched eyebrows with the vertical line between them, the square, shouting mouth. As is characteristic of angry talk, both are vocalizing at the same time, not listening to what the other has to say. Their faces, like their bodies, are tensed like muscles about to strike. But they do not strike.

They are in equilibrium at a high level of intensity.  From similar incidents observed over a few moments of time, we can surmise that they eventually become tired of the situation. No one else in the crowd is taking up their level of intensity; they are doing all the audience’s work for it. It is boring to say the same thing over and over again, getting no intelligible response. They will deescalate, going down the scale of emotional intensity simultaneously, keeping in equilibrium step by step.

They will become bored. And in situations of conflict, boredom is the pathway to peace.

The Tank and the Human Face

Micro-sociology delivers some good news. Some kinds of violence we are able to mitigate. This is on the micro-level, face-to-face with a potential attacker.

Another level is harder to handle, or at least it will take another approach. This is violence at the level of the organization or bureaucracy. 

If we take the column of tanks as a symbol of the hundreds of military vehicles and thousands of soldiers in Beijing, we are seeing the public face of an organizational network stretching far off into the distance. Orders to advance are given somewhere else, by a face we never see, a voice we never hear. Techniques of human face-to-face confrontation will not work here.

  

This is not to claim that the distant strategists are purely rational and coolly calculating. Their decisions are made in an atmosphere of emotions pervading the network of organized power, in counterpoint to the waves of emotions among the crowds who come into the streets over a period of weeks. It may be a long-distance chess game, but one played in shifting moods of anger or fear, confidence or deflation, righteousness and revenge-- and occasionally magnanimity.  The macro-level pattern is one of counter-escalation and de-escalation, and it has its time-dynamics that spread over weeks and months (Collins 2012).

There may be grounds for optimism about what sorts of processes can head off violence on the macro level too, although in some phases there is a kind of steam-roller momentum that is extremely dangerous once it gets rolling. We are learning about these kinds of time-dynamics, hopefully adding more tactics to the toolbox for peace.

In the meantime, as individuals in threatening situations, we can do our bit.

Appendix: How to regain calm when your heart is pounding

It's all very well to say, turn and face your attacker, call out in a firm strong voice, don't run and don't panic. But how do you manage to do this if your adrenaline is pumping and your heart is going 160 beats per minute?

There is a technique that will bring your heartbeat down, and with it, the panicky effects of adrenaline and the inability to control your voice. A useful version is described by Dave Grossman, a psychologist formerly with the US Army:

Repeat the following sequence of breathing:

-- breathe in slowly, counting 4 seconds (one-alligator, two alligator, three-alligator, four-alligator)

-- hold your breath for 4 seconds (counting...)

-- breathe out slowly, counting 4 seconds

-- hold your breath out (lungs empty), counting 4 seconds

do it again:

-- breathe in slowly, 4 seconds

-- etc.

as many times as you need until your get your breathing and heart rate under control.

Remember the details. This is not the simple cliché, take a deep breath. It is the rhythm you are after, the timing of how long each breath and holding period is. Your goal is to change your body rhythm. And after you accomplish that, to change the rhythm of the person confronting you.


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 Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy  

 Micro-sociological secrets of charismatic leaders from Jesus to Steve Jobs

E-book now available at Maren.ink and Amazon

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References

Randall Collins. 2008. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory.

Randall Collins. 2012. “C-Escalation and D-escalation: A Theory of the Time-Dynamics of Conflict.” American Sociological Review  77: 1-20.

Paul Ekman,  1985. Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage.

Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen,  1975. Unmasking the Face.  

Dave Grossman. 2004.  On Combat. The psychology and physiology of deadly combat in war and peace.

Curtis Jackson-Jacobs. 2011. "Social Organization in Violence." Research in progress, UCLA.

Stefan Klusemann. 2010. “Micro-situational antecedents of violent atrocity.”  Sociological Forum 25:272-295.

Stefan Klusemann. 2012. "Massacres as process:  A micro-sociological theory of internal patterns of mass atrocities." European Journal of Criminology 9: 438-480.

Mark Levine, Paul J. Taylor, and Rachel Best. 2011. “Third Parties, Violence, and Conflict Resolution” Psychological Science 22 (3) 406–412.

Anne Nassauer.  2013.  Violence in demonstrations.  PhD dissertation, Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences.

Scott Phillips and Mark Cooney. 2005.  "Aiding Peace, Abetting Violence: Third Parties and the Management of Conflict." American Sociological Review 70: 334-354.

JESUS IN INTERACTION: THE MICRO-SOCIOLOGY OF CHARISMA

What is charisma when you see it? Charismatic leaders are among the most famous persons of past history and today. What was it like to meet a charismatic leader? You fell under their spell. How did they do it?

One of the best-described of all charismatic leaders is Jesus. About 90 face-to-face encounters with Jesus are described in the four gospels of the New Testament.

Notice what happens:

Jesus is sitting on the ground, teaching to a crowd in the outer courtyard of the temple at Jerusalem. The Pharisees, righteous upholders of traditional ritual and law, haul before him a woman taken in adultery. They make her stand in front of the crowd and say to Jesus: “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Law commands us to stone her to death. What do you say?”

The text goes on that Jesus does not look up at them, but continues to write in the dirt with his finger. This would not be unusual; Archimedes wrote geometric figures in the dust, and in the absence of ready writing materials the ground would serve as a chalkboard. The point is that Jesus does not reply right away; he lets them stew in their uneasiness.

Finally he looks up and says: “Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.” And he looks down and continues writing in the dust. 

Minutes go by. One by one, the crowd starts to slip away, the older ones first-- the young hotheads being the ones who do the stoning, as in the most primitive parts of the Middle East today.

Finally Jesus is left with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightens up and asks her: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She answers: “No one.” “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus says. “Go now and sin no more.” (John 8: 1-11)

Jesus is a master of timing. He does not allow people to force him into their rhythm, their definition of the situation. He perceives what they are attempting to do, the intention beyond the words. And he makes them shift their ground.

Hence the two periods of tension-filled silence; first when he will not directly answer; second when he looks down again at his writing after telling them who should cast the first stone. He does not allow the encounter to focus on himself against the Pharisees. He knows they are testing him, trying to make him say something in violation of the law; or else back down in front of his followers. Instead Jesus throws it back on their own consciences, their inner reflections about the woman they are going to kill. He individualizes the crowd, making them drift off one by one, breaking up the mob mentality.

The Micro-sociology of Charisma

Jesus is a charismatic leader, indeed the archetype of charisma.  Although sociologists tend to treat charisma as an abstraction, it is observable in everyday life. We are viewing the elements of it, in the encounters of Jesus with the people around him.

I will focus on encounters that are realistic in every respect, that do not involve miracles-- about two-thirds of all the incidents reported. Since miracles are one of the things that made Jesus famous, and that caused controversies right from the outset, some miracles will be analyzed. I will do this mostly at the end.

(1) Jesus always wins an encounter

(2) Jesus is quick and absolutely decisive

(3) Jesus always does something unexpected

(4) Jesus knows what the other is intending

(5) Jesus is master of the crowd

(6) Jesus’ down moments

(7) Victory through suffering, transformation through altruism

(Appendix) The interactional context of miracles

(1) Jesus always wins an encounter

When Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, the chief priests and elders came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”

Jesus replied: “I will also ask you a question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism-- where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human  origin?”

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why don’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ the people will stone us, because they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”

So they answered, “We don’t know where it was from.”  Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.” (Matthew 21: 23-27; Luke 20: 1-8) He proceeded to tell the crowd a parable comparing two sons who were true or false to their father. Jesus holds the floor, and his enemies did not dare to have him arrested, though they knew the parable was about themselves.

Jesus never lets anyone determine the conversational sequence. He answers questions with questions, putting the interlocutor on the defensive. An example, from early in his career of preaching around Galilee:

Jesus has been invited to dinner at the house of a Pharisee. A prostitute comes in and falls at his feet, wets his feet with her tears, kisses them and pours perfume on them. The Pharisee said to himself, “If this man is a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him-- that she is a sinner.”

Jesus, reading his thoughts, said to him: “I have something to tell you.” “Tell me,” he said. Jesus proceeded to tell a story about two men who owed money, neither of whom could repay the moneylender. He forgives them both, the one who owes 500 and the one who owes 50. Jesus asked: “Which of the two will love him more?” “The one who had the bigger debt forgiven,” the Pharisee replied. “You are correct,” Jesus said. “Do you see this woman? You did not give me water for my feet, but this woman wet them with her tears and dried them with her hair... Therefore her many sins have been forgiven-- as her great love has shown.”

The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7: 36-50)

Silencing the opposition

Jesus always gets the last word. Not just that he is good at repartee, topping everyone else; he doesn’t play verbal games, but converses on the most serious level. What it means to win the argument is evident to all, for audience and interlocutor are amazed, astounded, astonished: they cannot say another word.

He takes control of the conversational rhythm. For a micro-sociologist, this is no minor thing; it is in the rhythms of conversation that solidarity is manifested, or alienation, or anger. Conversations with Jesus end in full stop: wordless submission.

His debate with the Sadducees, another religious sect, ends when “no one dared ask him any more questions.” (Luke 20: 40)  When a teacher of the Law asks him which is the most important commandment, Jesus answers, and the teacher repeats: “Well said, teacher, you are right in saying, to love God with all your heart, and to love your neighbour as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on, no one dared ask him any more questions. (Mark 12: 28-34)

A famous argument ends the same way:

The priests send spies, hoping to catch Jesus in saying something so that they might hand him over to the Roman governor. So they asked: “Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Jesus knowing their evil intent, said to them, “Show me the coin used to pay taxes.” When they brought it, he said, “Whose image is on it?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”  And they were astonished by his answer, and were silent.  (Luke 20: 19-26; Matthew 22: 15-22)

As with the woman taken in adultery, again there is an attempted trap; a turning of attention while everyone waits; and a question-and-reply sequence that silences everyone. Jesus does not just preach. It is at moments like this, drawing the interlocutor into his rhythm, that he takes charge.

(2)  Jesus is quick and absolutely decisive

As his mission is taking off in Galilee, followers flock to hear him. Some he invites to come with him. It is a life-changing decision.

A man said to him: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus replied: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”

It is a shocking demand. In a ritually pious society, there is nothing more important that burying your father. Jesus demands a complete break with existing social forms; those who follow them, he implies, are dead in spirit.

To another would-be recruit he underlines it: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9: 57-62; Mark 8: 19-22)

Charisma is total dedication, having it and imparting it to others. There is nothing else by which to value it. Either do it now, or don’t bother.

This is how Jesus recruits his inner circle of disciples. He is walking beside the Sea of Galilee, and sees Simon and Andrew casting their net into the lake. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. A little further on, he sees James and his brother John preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father in the boat and followed him. (Mark 1: 16-20; Matthew 4: 8-22.  Luke 5: 1-11 gives a longer story about crowds pressing so closely that Jesus preaches from a boat, but it ends with the same abrupt conversion; here the influence of the crowd is more visible than in the truncated versions.)

Jesus recruits not from the eminent, but from the humble and the disreputable. Among the latter are the tax collectors, hated agents of the Roman overlord. There is the same abrupt conversion: As Jesus is passing along the lake with a large crowd following, he sees a man sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said, and the man got up, left everything, and followed him.

They have a banquet at his house (Luke 5: 27-32; Mark 1: 13-17; Matthew 9: 9-13), with many tax collectors and others eating with the disciples. The Pharisees complained, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 

Jesus perceives who will make a good recruit, and who will not.

(3) Jesus always does something unexpected

Being with Jesus is exciting and energizing, among other reasons because he is always surprising. He does not do or say just what other people expect; even when they regard him as a prophet and a miracle-worker, there is always something else.

Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled. They asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

Jesus replied, “You Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But as to what is inside you-- be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.”

He goes on with further admonitions, and his opponents accuse Jesus of insulting them. Jesus called the crowd to him to hear. The disciples came to him privately and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” Jesus replied: “Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

           

Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.” “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? ... But out of the heart come evil thoughts-- murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” (Matthew 15: 1-20; Mark 7: 1-23; Luke 11: 37-54)

Ritual purification is what concerns the pious and respectable of the time; Jesus meets an accusation with a stronger one. Even his closest disciples do not escape the jolt. “Are you still so dull? Don’t you see?” Everyone has to be on their toes when they are around this man.

How does Jesus generate an unending stream of jolts? He has a program: mere ritual and the righteous superiority that goes with it is to be brought down and replaced by humane altruism, and by spiritual dedication. When his encounters involve miracles, or rather people’s reaction to them, the program bursts expectations:

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, and a women was there who was crippled for 18 years, bent over and unable to straighten up. Jesus called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Indignant that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not of the Sabbath.”  Jesus answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham... be set free on the Sabbath from what bound her?” When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted.  (Luke 13: 10-17.  Similar conflicts about healing on the Sabbath are in Luke 6: 6-11; Matthew 12: 1-14; and Luke 14: 1-6, which ends by silencing the opposition.)

It is not the miracle that is at issue; what makes the greater impression on the crowd is Jesus’ triumph over the ritualists. It is also what leads to the escalating conflict with religious authorities, and ultimately to his crucifixion.

Nearer the climax, Jesus enters Jerusalem with a crowd of his followers who have traveled with him from Galilee in the north, picking up enthusiastic converts along the way. He enters Jerusalem in a triumphant procession, greeted by crowds waving palm fronds. Next morning he goes to the temple.

In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” (Another text quotes him:) “Is it not written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of thieves.’”  The chief priests and teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. (John 2: 13-16; Mark 11: 15-19)

One text gives a tell-tale detail: Immediately after entering Jerusalem in the palm-waving crowd, Jesus went into the temple courts.  He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to the nearby village of Bethany with the Twelve. (Mark 11: 11)  Jesus clearly intends to make a big scene; he is going to do it at the height of the business day, not in the slack time of late afternoon when the stalls are almost empty. Jesus always shows strategic sense.

Why are the animals and the money changers in the temple in the first place? Because of ritualism; the animals are there to be bought as burnt sacrifices, and the money changers are to facilitate the crowd of distant visitors. But also it was the case, throughout the ancient world and in the medieval as well, that temples and churches were primary places of business, open spaces for crowds, idlers, speculators, merchants of all sorts. In Babylon and elsewhere the temples themselves acted as merchants and bankers (and may have originated such enterprises); in Phoenicia and the coastal cities of sin anathema to the Old Testament prophets, temples rented out prostitutes to travelers; Greek temples collected treasure in the form of bronze offerings and subsequently became stores of gold. Jesus no doubt had all this in mind when he set out to cleanse the temple of secular transactions corrupting its pure religious purpose.

Jesus is not just shocking on the large public scene; he also continues to upend his own disciples’ expectations. In seclusion at Bethany, he is reclining at the dinner table when a woman came with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of the disciples said indignantly to each other, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly. 

“Leave her alone,” Jesus said. “She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want.  But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare me for my funeral.” (Mark 14: 1-10; Matthew 26: 6-13)

A double jolt. His disciples by now have understood the message about the selfishness of the rich and charity to the poor. But there are circumstances and momentous occasions that transcend even the great doctrine of love thy neighbour. Jesus is zen-like in his unexpectedness. There is a second jolt, and his disciples do not quite get it. Jesus knows he is going to be crucified. He has the political sense to see where the confrontation is headed; in this he is ahead of his followers, who only see his power.

(4) Jesus knows what the other is intending

Jesus is an intelligent observer of the people around him. He does not have to be a magical mind-reader. He is highly focused on everyone’s moral and social stance, and sees it in the immediate moment. Charismatic people are generally like that; Jesus does it to a superlative degree.

He perceives not just what people are saying, but how they are saying it; a socio-linguist might say, speech actions speak louder than words.

So it is not surprising that Jesus can say to his disciples at the last supper, one of you will betray me, no doubt noting the furtive and forced looks of Judas Iscariot. Or that he can say to Peter, his most stalwart follower, before the cock crows you will have denied me three times-- knowing how strong blustering men also can be swayed when the mood of the crowd goes against them in the atmosphere of a lynch mob. (Mark 14: 17-31; Matthew 26: 20-35; John 13: 20-38)

Most of these examples have an element of Jesus reading the intentions of his questioners, as when they craftily try to trap him into something he can be held liable for. Consider some cases where the situation is not so fraught but he knows what is going on:

Invited to the house of a prominent Pharisee, Jesus noticed how the guests vied for the places of honor at the table.  He told them a parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than yourself may have been invited... and, humiliated, you will have to move to the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Then Jesus said to the host, “...When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you-- as your relatives and rich friends would by inviting you back-- you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14: 7-16)

It is an occasion to deliver a sermon, but Jesus starts it with the situation they are in, the unspoken but none-too-subtle scramble for best seats at the table. And he makes a sociological point about the status reciprocity involved in the etiquette of exchanging invitations.

Jesus sees what matters to people. A rich young man, inquiring sincerely about his religious duties, ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked, as usual answering a question with a question.  “No one is good-- except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor give false testimony, nor defraud; honor your father and mother.’”

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, and sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.”

At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great riches. (Mark 10: 17-22; Luke 18: 18-30; Matthew 19: 16-26)

Jesus knows who to recruit, who is ready for instantaneous commitment, by watching them. As his crowd of followers passed through Jericho, a chief tax collector wanted to see Jesus, but because he was short he could not see over the heads of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a tree. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” People began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus said to Jesus, “Here and now I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will pay him back four times the amount.” (Luke 19: 1-10) 

This is the theme again, recruiting among sinners. But Jesus is a practical leader as well as an inspirational one. He normally sends out forerunners to line up volunteers to lodge and feed his traveling followers (Luke 10: 1-16; Matthew 26: 17-19;); in this case, he has picked out a rich man (class distinctions would have been very visible), and someone who is notably eager to see him. No doubt Jesus’ perceptiveness enables him to pick out early disciples like Peter and the other fishermen.

Jesus’ perceptiveness helps explain why he dominates his encounters. He surprises interlocutors by unexpectedly jumping from their words, not to what conventionally follows verbally, but instead speaking to what they are really about, skipping the intermediate stages.

(5) Jesus is master of the crowd

The important events of Jesus’ life mainly take place in crowds. Of  93 distinct incidents of Jesus’ adult life described in the gospels, there are at most 5 occasions when he is with three or fewer other people. *  When he is outdoors, he is almost entirely surrounded by crowds; in the early part of his mission in Galilee he periodically escapes the crowds by going out on boats and climbing remote mountainsides in order to pray in solitude. The crowds increase and follow him wherever he goes. Indoors, 6 incidents take place at banquets, including an overflow wedding party; 3 in synagogues; 2 are hearings before public authorities. There are also 9 occasions when he is backstage with his disciples, although often there is a crowd outside and people get in to see him.  Altogether, for Jesus a relatively intimate gathering was somewhat more than a dozen people, and most of his famous interactions took place with twenties up through hundreds or even several thousands of people amidst whom he was the center of attention.

* John 1: 35-42; two of John the Baptist’s disciples seek out Jesus after John has pointed him out in the crowd of the Baptist’s own followers, and the two spend the afternoon visiting Jesus where he stays. This is before Jesus is baptized and starts his own mission.  Luke 9: 28-30; Matthew 17: 1-13; Mark 9: 2-13; Jesus with three disciples go up on a mountain to pray, where they see him transfigured.  John 4: 31-42; Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well while his disciples have gone into town for provisions; they have a one-on-one conversation, and many in her village become believers that he is the Savior of the world, among other reasons because he has broken the taboo on Jews associating with Samaritans.  John 3: 1-21; Jesus is visited at night by a Pharisee who is a member of the ruling council; no one else is mentioned as present, although the conversation leads to some of the most famous Bible passages, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Presumably someone heard this and wrote it down; not unlikely since Jesus always stayed in a house full of his disciples. Mark 14: 32-42; Matthew 26: 36-46; Jesus goes with his disciples (the Twelve minus Judas) plus at least some others to pray at Gethsemane. He then takes three close followers, goes a little further into the garden, and prays in anguish while the others fall asleep. This is the one important place in the narration where Jesus is alone, and the one time that he shows anxiety. I do not count the 40 days he spent praying in the wilderness before beginning his ministry; the only incidents described for this period are not pinned down in time and circumstance and all involve talking with the devil. I will discuss these below in the section on apparitions.

Crowds are a major source of Jesus’ power. There is a constant refrain: “The crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”  (Matthew 7: 29) His enemies the high priests are afraid of what his crowd of followers will do if they attack Jesus. As the challenge mounts in Jerusalem on the last and greatest day of the Passover festival, Jesus preaches in the temple courts in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.” The crowds are divided on whether he is the Messiah. The temple guards retreat to the chief priests, who ask them, “Why don’t you arrest him?” “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards reply.  “The mob knows nothing of the law,” the Pharisees retort, “there is a curse on them.” (John 7: 37-49)

Judas’ betrayal of Jesus consists in telling the priests when and where Jesus will be alone, so that he can be arrested. Alone, relatively speaking; there are at least a dozen of his followers with him at Gethsemane, but it is for arranging the absence of the crowd that Judas receives his 30 pieces of silver. (Luke 22: 2-6) The signal is to mark Jesus with a kiss, so the guards will know whom to seize in the dark.

Charismatic leaders live on crowds. There is no such thing as a charismatic leader who is not good at inspiring crowds; and the micro-sociologist adds, being super-energized by them in turn. Crowd and leader are parts of a circuit, emotional intensity and rhythmic coordination flowing from one to the other: charisma as high-amp electric current. It is what the Bible, especially in the Book of Acts, calls the holy spirit.

Jesus as archetype of the charismatic leader also shows how a charismatic movement is organized. His life moves in three spheres: crowds; the inner circle of his twelve disciples; and withdrawing into solitude. The third of these, as noted, does not figure much in the narration of important events; but we can surmise, from sociological research on prayer, that he reflects in inner dialogue on what is happening in the outer circles, and forms his resolve as to what he will do next.

The inner circle has a practical aspect and a personal aspect. Jesus recruits his inner disciples, the Twelve, because he wants truly dedicated followers who will accompany him everywhere. That means giving up all outside commitment, leaving occupation, family, home town. It means leaving behind all property, and trusting that supporters will bring them the means of sustenance, day after day. In effect, they are monks, although they are not called that yet. Thus the inner circle depends on the outer circle, the crowds of supporters who not only give their emotion, but also food, lodging, whatever is needed. Jesus is the organizer of a movement, and he directs his lieutenants and delegates tasks to them. Early in his mission, when the crowds are burgeoning, he recognizes that “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” and sends out the Twelve to preach and work miracles on their own, accelerating the cascade of still more followers and supporters. (Luke 9: 1-6; Mark 6: 7-13; Matthew 9: 35-38; 10: 1-20.)

When Jesus travels, it is not just with the Twelve, but with a larger crowd (who are also called disciples), somewhere between casual supporters and his inner circle. These include some wealthy women-- an ex-prostitute Mary Magdalene, women who have been cured by Jesus, the wife of a manager of King Herod’s household-- and they help defray expenses with their money. (Luke 8: 1-3) Even the Twelve have a treasurer: Judas Iscariot, pointing up the ambiguity of money for a movement of self-chosen poverty.  With  big crowds to take care of, Jesus expands his logistics staff to 70.  (Luke 10:1-16) He concerns himself about whose house they will eat in. Jesus accepts all invitations, even from his enemies the Pharisees; he especially seems to choose tax collectors, since they are both rich and hospitable and recognize their own need of salvation. It is the size of his peripatetic crowds that bring about the need for multiplying loaves and fishes and turning water into wine. Jesus’ crowds are not static, but growing, and this is part of their energy and excitement.

The inner circle is not just his trusted staff.  It is also his backstage, where he can speak more intimately and discuss his concerns and plans.  “Who do people say I am?” Jesus asks the Twelve, when the movement is taking off. They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”           

“But what do you say?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone. Jesus goes on to tell them that the Son of Man will be rejected by the chief priests, that he must be killed and rise again in three days. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Jesus turned and looked at the rest of the disciples. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” he said. “Your mind is not on the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Mark 8: 27-33;  Matthew 16: 13-23)

There is a certain amount of jostling over who are the greatest of the disciples, the ones closest to Jesus. Jesus always rebukes this; there is to be no intimate backstage behind the privacy shared by the Twelve. Jesus’ charisma is not a show put on for the crowds with the help of his staff; he is charismatic all the time, in the backstage as well. Jesus loves and is loved, but he has no special friends. No one understands what he is really doing until after he is dead.

Jesus is famous for speaking in parables. Especially when referring to himself, he uses figurative expressions, such as "the bread of life," "the light of the world," "the shepherd and his sheep." The parables mark a clear dividing line.  He uses parables when he is speaking to the crowds, and especially to potential enemies such as the Pharisees. Their meaning, apparently, did not easily come through; but audiences are generally impressed by them-- amazed and struck speechless, among other reasons because they exemplify the clever style of talking that deflects questions in unexpected directions. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear!” Jesus proclaims. (Mark 4: 9)

His Twelve disciples are not much better at deciphering parables, at least in the earlier part of his mission; but Jesus treats them differently. It is in private among the Twelve that he explains the meaning of parables in ordinary language, telling “the secret of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4: 10-34; Matthew 13: 34-52; Luke 8: 4-18 ) They are the privileged in-group, and they know it. Jesus admonishes them from time to time about their pride; but he needs them, too. It is another reason why living with Jesus is bracing. There is an additional circuit of charismatic energy in the inner  circle.

But it is the crowds that feed the core of the mission, the preaching and the miraculous signs. As his movement marches on Jerusalem, opposition mobilizes. Now Jesus begins to face crowds that are divided or hostile.

The crowd begins to accuse him: “You are demon-possessed.” Jesus shoots back: “Stop judging by appearances, but instead judge correctly.” Some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask each other, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Here he is speaking publically, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded he is the Messiah? But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes no one will know where he is from.” Jesus cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”  At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him... Still, many in the crowd believed in him. (John 7: 14-31)

Another encounter: Those who heard his words were again divided. Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?” But others said: “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (John 10: 19-21)

The struggle shifts to new ground. The festival crowd gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”  Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you did not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish... My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s  hand. I and the Father are one.”

Again his opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “...Why do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?  Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. (John 10: 24-42)

Jesus can still arouse this crowd, but he cannot silence it. He does not back off, but becomes increasingly explicit. The metaphors he does use are not effective. His sheep that he refers to means his own crowd of loyal followers, and Jesus declares he has given them eternal life-- but not to this hostile crowd of unbelievers. Words no longer convince; the sides declaim stridently against each other. The eloquent phrases of earlier preaching have fallen into cacophony. Nevertheless Jesus still escapes violence. The crowd is never strong enough to dominate him. Only the organized authorities can take him, and that he does not evade.

(6) Jesus’ down moments

Most of the challenges to Jesus’ charisma happen during the showdown in Jerusalem. A revealing occasion happens early, when Jesus visits his hometown Nazareth and preaches in the synagogue. First the crowd is amazed, but then they start to question: Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Aren’t his mother and brothers and sisters among us? Where did he get these powers he has been displaying in neighbouring towns? When Jesus reads the scroll and says, “Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” they begin to argue. Jesus retorts: “No prophet is honored in his home town,” and quotes examples of how historic prophets were rejected. The people in the synagogue are furious.  They take him to the edge of town and try to throw  him off the brow of a cliff. “But he walked right through the crowd and went his way.” (Luke 4: 14-30; Matthew 13: 53-58) Even here, Jesus can handle hostile crowds.  Including this incident of failure gives confidence in the narrative.

Another personal challenge comes when he performs one of his most famous miracles, bringing back Lazarus from the dead. Jesus' relationship with Lazarus is described as especially close. He is the brother of the two sisters, Mary and Martha, whose house Jesus liked to stay in; and Lazarus is referred to as "the one you (Jesus) love." Jesus had been staying at their house a few miles outside Jerusalem, a haven at the time when his conflict with the high priests at the temple was escalating. When the message came that Lazarus was sick, Jesus was traveling away from trouble; although his disciples reminded him that the Jerusalem crowd had tried to stone him, he decided to go back. Yet he delayed two days before returning-- apparently planning to wait until Lazarus dies and then perform the miracle of resurrecting him. First he says to his disciples, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to wake him up." When this figure of speech is taken literally, he tells them plainly, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe."

When he arrives back in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days.  A crowd has come to comfort the sisters. Why were they so popular? No doubt their house was strongly identified with the Jesus movement; and thus there is a big crowd present, as always, when Jesus performs a healing miracle.

But this is the public aspect. For the personal aspect: Each of the two sisters separately comes to meet Jesus, and each says, "If you had been here, my brother would not have died." After Mary, the second sister, says this, Jesus sees her weeping and the crowd who had come with her also weeping, he is deeply moved. (The King James translation says, "groaning in himself.") "Where have you laid him?" Jesus says. "Come and see," she answers. Then Jesus wept.

They come to the tomb; Jesus has them roll away the stone from the entrance. Again deeply moved, Jesus calls out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"  For some time afterwards, people come to Bethany to see Lazarus, the man who had been raised from the dead. (John 11: 1-46)

Leaving aside the miracle itself and its symbolism, one thing we see in this episode is Jesus conflicted between his mission-- to demonstrate the power of resurrection-- and his personal feelings for Lazarus and his sisters. Jesus let Lazarus die, by staying away during his sickness, in order to make this demonstration, but in doing so he caused grief to those he loved. The moment when he confronts their pain (amplified by the weeping of the crowd), Jesus himself weeps. It is the only time in the texts when he weeps. It is a glimpse of himself as a human being, as well as a man on a mission.

Jesus’ next moment of human weakness comes in the garden at Gethsemane.  “Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” Though he left his disciples nearby with instructions to “pray that you will not fall into temptation,” they all fell asleep, exhausted from sorrow. Jesus complains to Peter, “Couldn’t you keep watch with me for one hour?” But he adds, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” But their eyes were heavy, and they did not know what to say to him. (Luke 22: 39-46; Mark 14: 32-42; Matthew 26: 36-46) Everybody’s emotional energy is down.

Particularly personal is the passage when Jesus on the cross sees his mother standing below, “and the disciple whom he loved standing near by. Jesus said to her: ‘Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, the disciple took her into his house.” (John 19: 25-27)  What is so telling about this is the contrast to an event during Jesus’ early preaching in Galilee, when his mother and siblings try to make their way to him through a crowd of followers. Someone announces, “Your mother and your brothers are outside waiting to see you.” Jesus looks at those seated in a circle around him and says: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Luke 8: 19-21; Mark 3: 31-35) But on the cross he is not only thinking of fulfilling scripture, but of his own lifetime relationships.

Pierced by pain, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “And with a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.” (Mark 15: 21-41; Matthew 27: 30-55)  Ancient myths of dying and annually resurrecting nature-gods are not described like this-- i.e. humanly; nor are the heroic deaths of Plutarch’s noble Greeks and Romans.

Other than in the anxious hours of waiting at Gethsemane, and the torture of the crucifixion, Jesus confronting his accusers is in form and on message.  When the high priests and temple guards approach to arrest him, Jesus calmly asks who they want. “Jesus of Nazareth,” they reply. When he says, “I am he,” they shrink back. Jesus takes the initiative: “If you are looking for me, let these men go.” When they seize Jesus, one of his followers draws a sword and cuts off the ear of a priest’s servant. “Put away your sword!” Jesus says to him, “for all who live by the sword will die by the sword.” To the hostile crowd, he says, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not dare to arrest me. But this is your hour.” (Matthew 26: 47-56; Luke 22: 47-55; John 18: 1-12)

Then all his disciples deserted him and fled. Peter, the boldest of them, followed at a distance to the outer courtyards when Jesus was being interrogated within.  But Peter too is intimidated when servants question whether he isn’t one of Jesus’ followers. Peter denying Jesus shows how Jesus’ own crowd has been dispersed, broken up and unable to assemble, and in the face of a hostile crowd lose their faith.  Strength is in the crowd, and now the opposing crowd holds the attention space.

But indoors, in a smaller setting of rival authorities, Jesus holds his own. Before the assembly of the high priests, Jesus wins the verbal sparring, if not the verdict. Many hostile witnesses testify, but their statements do not agree. The priests try to get Jesus to implicate himself, but he keeps a long silence, and then says: “I said nothing secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me.”  When Jesus said this, an official slapped him in the face. “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” Jesus replied, “If what I said is wrong, testify as to what is wrong. If I spoke the truth, why do you strike me?” The chief priest asks him bluntly: “Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” “You have said so,” Jesus replies. (Mark 14: 53-65; Matthew 26: 57-63; John 18: 19-24)

Finally Jesus is taken before Pilate, the Roman governor. Jesus gives his usual sharp replies, and indeed wins him over. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks. “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asks in return, “or did others talk to you about me?” Pilate: “Your own people and chief priests have handed you over to me. What is it you have done?” Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would prevent my arrest.” “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered: “You say I am a king. In fact, I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”  “What is truth?” Pilate replied, and breaks off before an answer. (Mark 15: 1-5; Matthew 27: 11-26; John 18: 24-40)

And he goes to the crowd gathered outside the palace to say he has found no basis for a charge against Jesus. Pilate tries to set him free on a legal loophole but gives in to the crowd demanding crucifixion. After Jesus dies, Pilate gives permission for a sympathizer to take the body away instead of leaving it for ignominious disposal. Pilate’s style of behavior, too, comes across the centuries as real.

In the crises, Jesus’ interactional style remains much the same as always; but the speaking in parables and figurative language has given way to blunt explanations. Parables are for audiences who want to understand. Facing open adversaries, Jesus turns to plain arguments.

Charisma, above all, is the power to make crowds resonate with oneself. Does that mean charisma vanishes when the power over crowds goes away? *  But that would mean charisma would not be a force in drawn-out conflicts; more useful to say that charisma has its home base, its center in enthusiastic crowds, even when the charismatic leader is sometimes cut off from base.

* Historical examples include the public popularity of Gorbachev rocketing like fireworks in the middle of the 1980s in a movement for Soviet reform, but dissipating rapidly in 1991 when he is overtaken by political events and shunted aside. Jesus is a stronger version of charisma that survives adversity. More on this in a future Sociological Eye post on theory of charisma.

Charisma is a fragile mode of organization because it depends on enthusiastic crowds repeatedly  assembling. Its nemesis is more permanent organization, whether based on family and patronage networks, or on bureaucracy. Jesus loses the political showdown because the authorities intimidate his followers from assembling, and then strike at him with a combination of their organized power of temple and state, bolstered by mobilizing an excited crowd of their own chanting for Jesus’ execution. But even at his crucifixion, Jesus wins over some individual Roman soldiers (Luke 23: 47; Matthew 27: 54), although that is not enough to buck the military chain of command. This tells us that the charismatic leader relates to the crowd by personally communicating with individuals in the crowd, a multiplication of one-to-one relationships from the center to many audience-members. But charismatic communication cannot overcome a formal, hierarchic organization where individuals follow orders irrespective of how they personally feel.**

**  The “cast the first stone” incident shows, in contrast, how a charismatic leader takes apart a hostile crowd by forcing its members to consult their own consciences. 

As we have seen, Jesus can handle hostile questioning from crowds in the temple courts, even if opponents have been planted there by an enemy hierarchy. It is not the crowd calling for crucifixion that overpowers Jesus, but the persistent opposition of the priestly administration. Sociologically, the difference is between charismatic experience in the here-and-now of the crowd, and the long-distance coordination of an organization that operates beyond the immediate situation.

(7) Victory through suffering, transformation through altruism

When Jesus is arrested in the garden at Gethsemane, he tells his militant defenders not to resist. “Do you think I cannot call my Father, who will send twelve legions of angels? But how would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”  (Matthew 26: 47-56) Jesus does not aim to be just a miracle worker; he is out to transform religion entirely.

Miracles, acts of faith and power in the emotionally galvanized crowd, are ephemeral episodes. As Jesus goes along, his miracles become parables of his mission. He heals the sick, gives the disabled new life, stills the demonic howling of people in anguish. He lives in a world that is both highly stratified and callous. The rich are arrogant and righteous in their ritual correctness-- a Durkheimian elite at the center of prestigious ceremonials. They observe the taboos, and view the penurious (and therefore dirty) underclass not just with contempt but as sources of pollution. Jesus leads a revolution, not in politics, but in morals. From the beginning, he preaches among the poor and disabled, and stirs them with a new source of emotional energy. Towards the rich and ritually dominant, he directs the main thrust of his call for repentance-- it is their attitude towards the wretched of the earth that needs to be reformed. The Jesus movement is the awakening of altruistic conscience. *

* It does not start with Jesus. John the Baptist also preaches the main points, concern for the poor, against the arrogance of the rich. Earlier, Jewish prophets like Isaiah and Amos had railed against injustice to the poor. Around Jesus' time, there may have been inklings of altruism in the Mediterranean world but if so they had little publicity or organization. Greek and Roman religious cults and public largesse were directed to the elite, or at most to the politically active class, and do not strike a note of altruism towards the truly needy. Ritual sacrifices of children for military victory carried out by the Carthaginians took place in a moral universe unimaginable to modern people.  Middle-Eastern kingship was even more rank-conscious and ostentatiously cruel. See my post, “Really Bad Family Values”  The Sociological Eye, March 2014.

The moral revolution has three dimensions: altruism; monastic austerity; and martyrdom.

Altruism becomes an end in itself, and the highest value. Giving up riches and helping the poor and disabled is not just aimed at improving material conditions for everyone. It is not a worldly revolution, not a populist uprising, but making human sympathy the moral ideal. Blessed are the poor, the mourning, the humble, Jesus preaches, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Luke 6: 17-23) Altruism comes on the scene historically as the pathway to otherworldly salvation. ** What is important for human lives is the change in the moral ideal: it not only gives hope to the suffering but calls the elite to judge themselves by their altruism and not by their arrogance.

** The mystery cults of the Hellenistic world (Orphics, Hermeticists, Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists, various kinds of Gnostics etc.) had the idea of otherworldly salvation, but not the morality of altruism. Their salvation was purely selfish and their pathways merely secret rituals and symbols. They were still on the ancient side of the revolution of conscience.

The movement is under way at least a little before Jesus launches his mission at age 30.  John the Baptist preached repentance before the coming wrath. “What should we do?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they said, “what should we do?” John replied, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.” Soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”  He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely-- be content with your pay.” (Luke 3: 1-14) Repentant sinners were baptized in the river.  To the Pharisees and Sadducees-- who will not repent and be baptized-- John thunders, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”  Later, when John’s disciples come to visit Jesus’ disciples, Jesus speaks to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? ... A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces. But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, and more than a prophet.” Jesus goes on to compare his mission to John’s.  “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But wisdom is proved right by all her children.”  (Luke 7: 18-35)  Jesus not only amplifies John’s mission, he also moves into another niche: not the extreme asceticism of the desert, but among the lower and middle classes of the towns and villages.

Monastic austerity.   Jesus’ disciples give up all property, becoming (as John the Baptist did *) the poorest of the poor. But they are not as the ordinary poor and disabled. They retain their health, and have an abundance of the richness of spirit, what they call faith-- i.e. emotional energy.  Committed disciples who have left family, home and occupation, rely on the enthusiasm of a growing social movement to provide them with daily sustenance. They live at the core of the movement. Since this location is the prime source of emotional energy, there is an additional sense in which living by faith alone is powerful.

*  Matthew 3: 1-8 stresses John’s asceticism, a wild man living in the wilderness on locusts and honey, dressed in clothes of camel’s hair.

Later this arrangement became institutionalized as the relationship between monks and lay people. ** During the missionary expansion of Christianity, monks were the pioneers, winning converts and patrons on the pagan frontiers through personal impressiveness-- their institutionalized charisma, which is to say Christian techniques of disciplined austerity generating emotional strength. Still later, movements like the Franciscans, deliberately giving up monastic seclusion to wander in the ordinary world among the poor and disabled, combine austerity with a renewed spirit of altruism and thereby create the idealistic social movement. Altruistic movements first used modern political tactics for influencing the state in the late 1700s anti-slavery movement, but the lineage builds on the moral consciousness and social techniques that are first visible with the Jesus movement.

** There were precedents of monasticism in the 300s BC such as the Cynics, who lived in ostentatious austerity--- such as Diogenes living in a barrel. Cynics denounced the pitfalls and hypocrisy of seeking riches and power, but they lacked any concern for the poor and did not advocate altruism.

Martyrdom.  The crucifixion of Jesus becomes, not the end of the movement, but its rallying point. The cross becomes the symbol of its members, and a source of personal inspiration for individuals in times of suffering and defeat. We are so used to this symbol that the enormity of the shift is lost on us. Crucifixion, which existed for several hundred years previously in the authoritarian kingdoms of the Middle East before spreading to Rome, was an instrument of death by slow torture, a visible threat of state terrorism. When the Sparticist revolt of gladiators was put down in 71 BC, the Romans crucified captured gladiators for hundred of miles along the roads of southern Italy. To turn the cross into a symbol of a movement, and of its triumph, was a blatant in-your-face gesture of the moral revolution: we cannot be beaten by physical coercion, by pain and suffering, it says; we have transformed them into our strength. Martyrs succeed when they generate movements; and are energized by the emotional solidarity of standing together in a conflict, even in defeats.

That is why ancient cultural precedents of fertility gods who die by dismemberment but are resurrected like the coming of the crops in the following year do not contain the social innovation of Christianity.  Fertility gods may be depicted as suffering but their message is not moral strength, and their cult concerns recurring events in the material world, not otherworldly salvation. **

** Euripides is the nearest to an altruistic liberal in the Greek world; but his play The Bacchae-- depicting an actual contemporary movement of frenzied dancers that challenged older Greek religious cults--  breathes an atmosphere of ferocious violence and revenge, the polar opposite of the Christian message of forgiveness and charity. Euripides’ plays focus the audience’s sympathy on the sufferings of individual characters, but these are members of elite families who suffer in from shifting fortunes of the upper classes. There is not even a glance at the poor.

Martyrdom also becomes institutionalized in the repertoire of religious movements. In its early centuries, Christianity grows above all by spectacular and well-publicized martyrdom of its hero-leaders. (There is also a quieter form of conversion through networks attracted to its moral style, its care for the sick, and its organizational strength.  Stark, The Rise of Christianity).  Martyrdom becomes a technique for protest movements, and movement-building.

“What does not kill me, makes me stronger,” Nietzsche was to write. Ironically: for all his attacks on the moral revolution of Christianity, this is a Christian discovery he is citing. Religious techniques set precedents for modern secular politics. Protest movements win by attracting widespread sympathy for their public sufferings, turning the moral tables on those who use superior force against them. This too is world-changing. It is little exaggeration to say that the moral forces of the modern world were first visible in the Jesus movement.

Appendix.  The Social Context of Miracles.

Some modern people think that Jesus never existed, or that the stories about him are myths. The details of how Jesus interacted with people in the situations of everyday life consistently show a distinctive personality. All texts about the ancient past are subject to distortion and mythologizing tendencies; but an objective scholar, with no axe to grind one way or the other, would conclude that what we read of Jesus is as valid as what Plutarch summarizes from prior sources about Alexander or Pericles, or what other classical writers reported about exemplary heroes. The gospels have an advantage of being written closer to the lifetime of their subject, and possibly by several of Jesus’ close associates.

What about the miracles? I will focus on what a micro-sociologist can see in the details of social interaction, especially what happens before and after a miracle. I will examine only those miracles that are described as happening in a specific situation, a time and place with particular people present. Summaries of miracles by Jesus and his disciples do not give enough detail to analyze them, although they give a sense of what kinds of miracles were most frequent.

Let us go back to a question that has been hanging since I have discussed the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus attracts big crowds, by his preaching and by his miracles. He preaches an overthrow of the old ritualism; an ethic of humility and altruism for the poor and disabled; and the coming of the true kingdom of God, so different from this rank-conscious world. He also performs miracles, chiefly medical cures through faith-healing; casting out demons from persons who are possessed; and bringing back a few people from the cusp of death. There are also some nature miracles and some apparitions, although these should be considered separately because they almost never occur among crowds.

The roster of miracles described in detail include:

22 healing miracles, all happening in big crowds;

3 logistics miracles, where Jesus provides food or drink for big crowds;

5 nature miracles, all happening when Jesus is alone with his inner Twelve disciples, or some of them;

2 apparitions: 1 with 3 close disciples; 1 in a crowd.

So is Jesus chiefly a magician? And as such, are we in the realm of wonders, or superstition, or sleight of hand tricks? I will confine the discussion to some sociological observations.

Which comes first, the preaching or the miracles? The gospels are not strictly chronological, and sequences vary among them, but clearly there are a lot of miracles early on, and this is one of the things that attracts excited crowds to Jesus. People bring with them the sick, the lame, blind, and others of the helpless and pathetic. This is itself is a sign of incipient altruism, since on the whole ancient people were quite callous, engaging in deliberately cruel punishments, routinely violent atrocities, and a propensity to shun the unfortunate rather than help them. Jesus’ emphasis upon the lowly of the earth meshes with his medical miracles; they are living signs of what he is preaching in a more ethical sense.

Jesus’ healing miracles always happen in the presence of crowds. If that is so, how did the first miracles happen? What brought the first crowds together must have been Jesus’ preaching. This is particularly likely since John the Baptist was attracting large crowds, and had his own movement of followers. John did not perform medical miracles or any other kind, and he preached the same kind of themes as Jesus at the outset: humility and the poor; repentance; the coming kingdom of God, except that John explicitly said someone else was coming to lead it.

The plausible sequence is that Jesus attracted crowds by his preaching, and it was in the midst of the crowds’ enthusiasm-- their faith--  that the healing miracles take place. * That miracles depend on faith of the crowd is underscored by Jesus’ failure in Nazareth, his home town.  “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” (Luke 4: 14-30; Matthew 13: 53-58) 

* Origins of the word enthusiasm are from Greek enthous, possessed by a god, theos.

Jesus’ healing miracles divide into: 4 cures of fever and other unspecified sickness; 9 events where he cures long-term disabilities (3 with palsy/paralysis, crippled, or shriveled hand; 2 blind, 1 deaf/mute; 1 with abnormal swelling; 1 leper, and later a group of 10 lepers); 6 persons possessed with demons; 3 persons brought back from death. The various types may overlap.  The 3 who are brought back from death include the 12-year-old daughter a rich man whom he thinks is dead, but Jesus tells him she is not dead, but asleep (Luke 8: 41-42,49-56); a widow’s son who is on his funeral bier, i.e. recently pronounced dead (Luke 7: 11-17); and finally Lazarus (John 11: 1-46).  Their illnesses are not described, but could have been like the cases of fever in Jesus' other miracles.

The disabilities that Jesus cured also overlap with the persons described as possessed by demons: one is “robbed of speech” and foams at the mouth (Mark 9: 14-29; Matthew 17: 14-21; Luke 9: 37-43); another has a mute demon and is also blind (Luke 11: 14-28; Mark 9: 32-34; Matthew 12: 22-37); another is vaguely described as a woman’s daughter possessed by an unclean spirit (Mark 7: 24-30; Matthew 14: 21-28).  At least one of these appears to have epileptic fits.  Another is a naked man who sleeps in tombs, and has been chained up but breaks his chains (Luke 8: 26-39; Mark 5: 1-20; Matthew 8: 28-34). Casting out demons appears to be one of the most frequent things Jesus does, mentioned several times in summaries of his travels “preaching in synagogues and casting out demons” (Mark 1: 39) “many who were demon-possessed were brought to him” (Matthew 8: 16). This is a spiritual power that can be delegated; when his disciples are sent out on their own they come back and report “even the demons submit to us in your name.” (Luke 10: 17; Matthew 10: 1).**  One of his most fervent followers, Mary Magdalene, is described of having 7 demons cast out (Luke 8: 2); possibly this means she went through the process 7 times. She is also described as a prostitute, one of the outcasts Jesus saves; we might think of her as having gone through several relapses, or seeking the experience repeatedly (much like many Americans who undergo the “born again” experience more than once). 

** Sometimes the disciples fail in casting out a demon. In one case, the boy’s father says the spirit throws him to the ground, where he becomes rigid and foams at the mouth. When Jesus approaches, the boy goes into convulsions. The father says to Jesus, “If you can, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus replies: " 'If you can’? All things are possible for one who believes." Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed: “I do believe;  help me overcome my unbelief.” When Jesus saw a crowd running to the scene, he commanded the spirit to leave the boy and never enter again. The spirit shrieked and convulsed him violently. the boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took his hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. (Similar to raising from the dead.) After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” Jesus replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” (Mark 9: 14-29)  Jesus recognizes different kinds of cases and has more subtle techniques than his disciples.

What does it mean to be possessed by a demon? A common denominator is some serious defect in the social act of speaking: either persons who shout uncontrollably and in inappropriate situations (like the man who shouts at Jesus in a synagogue, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are-- the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1: 21-28); or who are silent and will not speak at all.  We could diagnose them today as having a physiological defect, or as mentally ill, psychotic, possibly schizophrenic.  But in ancient society, there was no sharp distinction between sickness and mental illness. There were virtually no medical cures for sicknesses, and religious traditions regarded them as punishments from God or the pagan gods; seriously ill persons were left in temples and shrines, or shunted onto the margins of habitation. Left without care, without human sympathy, virtually without means of staying alive, they were true outcastes of society.

Here we can apply modern sociology of mental illness, and of physical sickness. As Talcott Parsons pointed out, there is a  sick role that patients are expected to play; it is one’s duty to submit oneself to treatment, to put up with hospitals, follow the authority of medical personnel, all premised on a social compact that this is done to make one well. But ancient society had no such sick role; it was a passive and largely hopeless position. Goffman, by doing fieldwork inside a mental hospital, concluded that the authoritarian and dehumanizing aspects of this total institution destroys what sense of personal autonomy the mental patient has left. Hence acting out-- shouting, defecating in the wrong places, showing no modesty with one’s clothes, breaking the taboos of ordinary social life-- are ways of rebelling against the system. They are so deprived of normal social respect that the only things they can do to command attention are acts that degrade them still further. Demon-possessed persons in the Bible act like Goffman’s mental patients, shouting or staying mute, and disrupting normal social scenes.*

* This research was in the 1950s and 1960s, before mental patients were controlled by mood-altering drugs. The further back we go in the history of mental illness, the more treatments resemble ancient practices of chaining, jailing or expelling persons who break taboos.  

One gets the impression of a remarkable number of such demon-possessed-- i.e. acting-out persons-- in ancient Palestine. ** They are found in almost every village and social gathering. Many of them are curable, by someone with Jesus’ charismatic techniques of interaction. He pays attention to them, focusing on them wholly and steadily until they change their behavior and come back into normal human interaction; in every case that is described, Jesus is the first person in normal society with whom the bond is established. Each acknowledges him as their savior and want to stay with him; but Jesus almost always sends them back, presumably into the community of Christian followers who will now take such cured persons as emblems of the miracles performed.

** A psychiatric survey of people living in New York City in the 1950s found that over 20% of the population had severe mental illness. (Srole 1962)  It is likely that in ancient times, when stresses were greater, rates were even higher.

Notice that no one denies the existence of demons, or denies that Jesus casts them out. When Jesus meets opposition (John 10: 19-21; Luke 11: 14-20) the language of demons is turned against him. Jesus himself, like those who speak in an unfamiliar or unwelcome voice, is accused of being demon-possessed. The same charge was made against John the Baptist, who resembled some demon-possessed persons by living almost as a wild man in the wilderness. The difference, of course, is that John and Jesus can surround themselves by supportive crowds, instead of being shunned by them.

Similarly, no one denies Jesus’ medical miracles. The worst that his enemies, the religious law teachers and high priests, can accuse him of is the ritual violation of performing his cures on the Sabbath. This leads to Jesus’ early confrontations with authority; he can point to his miracles to forcefully attack the elite as hypocrites, concerned only with their own ritually proper status but devoid of human sympathy.

Jesus’ miracles are not unprecedented, in the view of the people around him; similar wonders are believed to have taken place in the past; and other textual sources on Hellenistic society refer to persons known as curers and magicians. Jesus works in this cultural idiom. But he transforms it. He says repeatedly that it is not his power as a magician that causes the miracle, but the power of faith that people have in him and what he represents.

A Roman centurion pleads with Jesus to save his servant, sick and near death. The centurion calls him Lord and says he himself is not worthy that Jesus should come under his roof. But as a man of authority, who can order soldiers what to do, he recognizes Jesus can say the word and his servant will be healed. Jesus says to the crowd, “I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” Whereupon the servant is found cured. (Luke 7: 1-10; Mark 8: 5-13)

In the midst of a thick crowd pressing to see Jesus, he feels someone touch him-- not casually, but deliberately, seeking a cure. It is a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years.  Jesus says “I know that power has gone out from me.” The woman came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of the crowd, she told why she had touched him and that she was healed. Jesus said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”  (Luke 8: 43-48; Mark 5: 21-43; Matthew 9: 20-22.)  While passing through Jericho, a blind man in the crowd calls out repeatedly to Jesus, although the crowd tells him to be quiet. Jesus stopped and had the man brought to him, and asked what he wanted from him. “Lord, I want to see,” he replied. Jesus said, “Receive your sight, for your faith has healed you.” (Luke 18: 35-43; Mark 10: 46-52; Matthew 20: 29-34)

Failure to produce a miracle is explained as a failure of sufficient faith. In another version of  the demon-possessed boy, the disciples ask privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” Jesus replied, “Because you have so little faith. If you have faith, you can move mountains. Nothing is impossible for you.” (Matthew 17: 19-20) The message is in the figurative language Jesus habitually uses, the mastery of word-play which makes him so dominant in interaction. 

The faith must be provided by his followers. When asked to perform a miracle-- not because someone needs it, but as a proof of his power, a challenge to display a sign-- Jesus refuses to do it. (Luke 11: 29-32; Matthew 12: 38-39; 16: 1-4) 

As Jesus’ career progresses, he becomes increasingly explicit that faith is the great end in itself. The goal of performing miracles is not to end physical pain, or to turn it into worldly success. Jesus is not a magician, or conjurer.  Magic, viewed by comparative sociology, is the use of spiritual power for worldly ends. For Jesus it is the other way around.  Healing miracles have an element of worldly altruism, since they are carried out for persons who need them; but above all those who need to be brought back into the bonds of human sympathy. Miracles are a way of constituting the community, both in the specific sense of building the movement of his followers, and in the more general sense of introducing a spirit of human sympathy throughout the world. Miracles happen in the enthusiasm of faith in the crowd, and that combination of moral and emotional experience is a foreshadowing of the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus presents it.

Jesus’ logistics miracles consisted in taking a small amount of food and multiplying it so that crowds of 5,000 and 4,000 respectively have enough to eat and many scraps left over (Luke 9: 10-17; Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 30-44; Mark 8: 1-10). It has been suggested that the initial few fishes and loaves of bread were what the crowd first volunteered for the collective pot; but when Jesus started dividing them up into equal pieces and passing them around, more and more people contributed from their private stocks. (Zeitlin) The miracle was an outpouring of public sharing. Jesus does something similar at a wedding party so crowded with guests that the wine bottles are empty. He orders them to be filled with water, whereupon the crowd becomes even more intoxicated, commenting that unlike most feasts, the best wine was saved for last (John 2: 1-11). Possibly the dregs of wine still in the casks gave some flavour, and the enthusiasm of the crowd did the rest. Party-goers will know it is better to be drunk with the spirit of the occasion than sodden with too much alcohol.

Miracles show the power of the spirit, which is the power of faith that individuals have in the charismatic leader and his intensely focused community. Such experiences is to be valued over anything in the world; it transcends the ordinary life, in the same way that religion in the full sense transcends magic.

The significance of miracles is not in a particular person who is cured, but a visible lesson in raising the wretched of the earth, and awakening altruistic conscience. After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus says to a crowd that is following him eagerly, “You are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life.”  They ask him, “What sign will you give that we may see it and believe you?” Jesus answered: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” He goes on to talk about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, speaking in veiled language about the coming crucifixion. It causes a crisis in his movement: “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”  (John 6: 22-52) Those who wanted to take miracles literally were disappointed.

Jesus’ nature miracles differ from the others in not taking place in crowds, but among his intimate disciples. Here the role of faith is highlighted but in a different sequence. Instead of faith displayed by followers in the crowd, bringing about a healing miracle, now Jesus produces miracles that have the effect of reassuring his followers.

A storm comes up while the twelve disciples are on a boat in the weather-wracked Sea of Galilee. They are afraid of drowning, but Jesus is sleeping soundly. “Oh ye of little faith, why are you so afraid?” he admonishes them, after they wake him up and the storm stills. (Matthew 8: 23-27; Mark 4: 35-41; Luke 8: 22-25)  Jesus is imperturbable, displaying a level of faith his disciples do not yet have.  In another instance, he sends his disciples out in a boat while he stays to dismiss the crowd and then to pray in solitude on the mountainside. They are dismayed while Jesus is away and the water grows rough and they cannot make headway with their oars. After a night of this, just before dawn they are frightened when they perceive him walking across the water, and some think he is a ghost.  Jesus calms them by saying, “It is I; don’t be afraid.” He enters the boat and the wind dies down, allowing them finally to make it to shore. (Mark 6: 45-52; John 6: 16-21) In one account, Peter says, “Lord if it is truly you, let me come to you on the water.” Jesus says, “Come,” and Peter begins to walk. But he becomes afraid and begins to sink. Jesus immediately catches him with his hand: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14: 22-33)

The pattern is: for his disciples, who are supposed to show a higher level of faith, Jesus performs miracles when they feel in trouble without him.*

* Other miracles on the Sea of Galilee: when Jesus recruits Simon and Andrew, first by preaching from their boat, then pushing off from shore, whereupon they make a huge catch of fish. (Luke 5: 1-11); and when  Jesus responds to a tax demand by telling Peter to fish in the lake, where he will catch a fish with a coin in its mouth to pay their taxes. (Matthew 17: 24-27)  At the end of the miracle of curing a demon-possessed man, Jesus sends the demons into a nearby herd of swine (presumably polluted under Jewish law), whereupon they rush madly off a cliff and drown themselves in the lake. (Luke 8: 26-39; Mark 5: 1-20; Matthew 8: 28-34) One nature miracle happens on dry land: on his way into Jerusalem to cleanse the temple he curses a fig tree which has no fruit for him and his followers; and when he returns in the evening, it has withered. (Mark 11: 15-19; Matthew 21: 18-21) The miracle is a living parable on the withered-up ritualists whom Jesus is attacking.

Apparitions, finally, are subjective experiences that particular people have at definite times and places. There is nothing sociological to question about their having such experiences, but we can notice who is present and what they did. The event called the Transfiguration happens when Jesus takes three close disciples up a mountain to pray--  a special occasion since he usually went alone. They see his face and clothes shining with light, see historic persons talking to Jesus and hear a voice from a cloud. The disciples fall on the ground terrified, until Jesus touches them and tells them not to be afraid, whereupon they see that Jesus is alone.  Jesus admonished them not to tell anyone about what they had seen. (Luke 9: 28-30; Matthew 17: 1-13; Mark 9: 2-13)

When Jesus' mission in Jerusalem is building up towards the final confrontation between his own followers and increasingly hostile authorities and their crowds. Jesus announces “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” A voice from heaven says “I have glorified it.” Some in the crowd said that it thundered, others that an angel spoke. Jesus tells them that the vision is for their benefit, not his; and that “you will have the light only a little while longer.” When he finished speaking, he hid from them. (John 12: 20-36) The crowd was not of one mind; they disagree about whether Jesus is the Messiah who will rule and remain forever, while Jesus sees the political wind blowing towards his execution. The subjective feeling of a thunderous voice in the crowd, but variously interpreted, reflects what was going on at this dramatic moment.

Finally I will venture an interpretation of what happened when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. (Matthew 4: 1-11; Luke 4: 1-13) This happens after hearing John the Baptist preaching about the coming Son of God, and Jesus must have decided he was the one. The next thing he does is to imitate John the Baptist by going to live alone in the desert. Here he has apparitions of the devil (which we read about because presumably he later told his disciples). Living in the desert for 40 days is a life-threatening ordeal, and at some point he considers that he has the power to turn stones into food. He rejects this as a thought coming from the devil, since his aim is not to be a magician; the internal dialogue ends with the kind of aphorism that Jesus would pronounce throughout his mission: "Man shall not live by bread alone." Up on the mountain cliffs, he considers whether he should jump down and fly, and rejects that too; another devil-temptation to use magic for trivial marvels like entertaining stories in the Arabian Nights. He envisions the devil showing him the whole world spread out below, and giving him the evil thought that the Kingdom of God would make him the mightiest of worldly kings. 

Mt. Temptation, traditionally where Jesus spent 40 days in wilderness

Modern research shows that internal dialogue takes place not only through talk but also visual images taking their turn in the argument. (Wiley 1994; Collins 2004) Through these apparitions, Jesus is thinking out what kind of power he has and what he will do with it. It is the power to inspire crowds, to recruit followers, to work a moral revolution, and reveal a life-goal that is not of the world as people hitherto knew it. It is, in short, the power of charisma.

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References

Randall Collins. 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies. (chapter 3 on ancient religious and philosophical movements)

Randall Collins. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains.  (chapter 5 on internal dialogue)

Randall Collins. 2010.  “The Micro-sociology of Religion.” (research on prayer) http://www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers/Collins.asp

Emile Durkheim. 1912.  The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Michel Foucault.  1965.  Madness and Civilization.

Erving Goffman. 1961. Asylums; 1971 “The Insanity of Place,” in Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order.

Paolo Parigi.  2012. The Rationalization of Miracles. (16th century Catholic Church focus on medical miracles when nominating saints)
Leo Srole. 1962.  Mental Health in the Metropolis.

Rodney Stark. 1996. The Rise of Christianity.

Geoffrey de Ste. Croix. 1983. Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World.

Norbert Wiley. 1994.  The Semiotic Self.  (research on internal dialogue)

Charles Tilly. 2004.  Social Movements 1768-2004.

Irving Zeitlin. 1984.  Ancient Judaism. Biblical Studies from Max Weber to the Present.
Lindsay Olesberg. 2012. The Bible Study Handbook. (very contemporary methods)