Jesus Goes to McDonald's

Theology and Consumer Society

Luiz Alexandre Solano Rossi

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781610972536
  9781498259774
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630874773
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This book demonstrates that Latin American liberation theology continues to produce substantial biblical exegesis, absorbing theological reflection, and a sharp social critique that enhances the worldwide church. In Jesus Goes to McDonald's, Rossi asserts that the book of Job protests against the devastating effects of imperial Persian rule in postexilic Judah--effects seen as the stimulus for the theology of reward so severely criticized by Job. Not since Gustavo Gutierrez's On Job has there been such a compelling reading of the book of Job as a literary mirror of oppressive socioeconomic and political conditions. Rossi uses Job to offer a critique of the prosperity theology that is so dominant in parts of the church today. The second half of the book offers a radical critique of "the McDonaldization" of society and church. Free market capitalism has become an all-embracing worldview to the detriment of society and church. As counter-speech, Rossi proposes a theology that favors life, a life in which solidarity with the poor is central.

1

The Empire Fights Back

Job and the Origin of the Poor’s Suffering

Introduction: Job as Everyman

Job is a legitimate representative of all human beings. His experience is that of an individual sufferer whose story becomes a typical one that reflects the inequality of the community struggling in historical conditions that seem to put in doubt the justice of God. Therefore it is important and necessary to try to recover as much as possible the socio-economic environment in which the Book of Job was written, as well as the theological environment of the various speeches presented in the book. In this sense, Job addresses God and describes the human condition through his own example. Thus, we should not see Job as a solitary person; we should not look at him as an exception. On the contrary, he is the spokesman of a history and a society that are full of contradictions. His outcry is not the cry of a lone man, but the first outcry of many—including our own—that throughout history have been joined in such a way as to reveal that pain, even intense pain, can be overcome with solidarity. Job’s painful outcry is a clear warning for us to look at his experience if we truly wish to meet God and to find a theological speech that is relevant to our days.

The author of the Book of Job deliberately created a character who is not an Israelite, does not live in Israel, seldom refers to God as Yahweh, and makes no allusions to the history of Israel’s covenant with God. Job is everyman; his innocent suffering is a challenge to retributive ideas of God’s justice, especially favored in exilic and postexilic meditations on the catastrophe of 586 BCE. It is possible to establish the date of this book between 450 and 350 BCE of postexilic period, during the domination of the Persian Empire.1

Exploring Judea in the Persian Period—Background to Job

Persian Politics—The Big Picture

Unfortunately, the sources of information concerning Jewish daily life during that period are sparse. However, the writings preserved under the names of Ezra and Nehemiah, and possibly also some late addenda to prophetic books, do allow some conclusions. Also, according to Gerstenberger, “the Jewish legal documents and letters found in Elephantine, an island in the Nile River, offer a glimpse into the life of that particular Jewish military colony in Persian service.”2

The Persians were an Indo-European people who had settled in Parsa by the sixth century BCE, in the mountainous lands, east of the Persian Gulf’s northern coastline. At that time, the Persians were vassals of the Medes, another Indo-European group that occupied the Iranian north plateau of the Zagros Mountains and established their capital at Ecbatana. In 550 BCE Cyrus (who began his career in 560/559 BCE) rebelled against his overlord, the aging Median warrior-king Astyages. Cyrus successful uprising won for him the territories of the Medes and provided him with a substantial pool of army recruits. Cyrus’s next target was the Lydian kingdom of Croesus, an ally of Babylonia. In 546 BCE Cyrus effectively destroyed Lydian sovereignty by a surprise winter assault on Sardis.

With a combination of hard combat, self-interested leniency, and propaganda, Cyrus brought the Greek cities on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor into his realm. Cyrus briefly turned his attention to his eastern front, but soon aimed his military might at the principal unconquered power in his path: Babylonia and its king, Nabonidus. As neighbors of the Medes and formal allies of Croesus, the Babylonians (and their Jewish populations) could be hardly unaware of Cyrus’s relentless accumulation of territory. While the Persian conquest of Babylonia in 539 BCE was not the quick and easy victory suggested by some of the sources, the capital Babylon fell without any casualties. Cyrus’s success is credited to military acumen, to judicious bribery, and to an energetic publicity campaign waged throughout Babylonia that portrayed him as a lenient and religiously tolerant overlord.

With the reign of Darius, (522–485 BCE), Persian and Jewish history takes a new turn. To consolidate his control and to further integrate the political and social order of conquered territories into his imperial system, Darius embarked on a series of administrative reforms. His empire was divided in regions called satrapies that were administrated by satraps. This basic political administrative unit, around which the empire worked, had its origin with the Medo king Quiaxares. Nevertheless, this model was improved by Darius I3 and gave to that large empire its definitive organization. According to Cazelles,4 at the end of Darius’s reign, it was possible to count thirty-one satrapies, but Herodotus, by 450 BC, knew only twenty satrapies, each one with one satrap who was usually a Medo or Persian noble, nominated by the king. (Though absolute precision eludes us. Cazelles points that in inscription of Darius the Great in Behistun twenty-three provinces that would turn out satrapies were numbered. He adds that on the trilingual structural text found in Suza—that would have been written in Egypt by 495 BC—twenty-four satrapies were counted.)

The satraps were quite autonomous and the local rulers were dependent on them. In spite of that, military commanders nominated by the king rigorously supervised them. These commanders were responsible for a complex bureaucracy and for a system of itinerant inspectors who also had to account to the king.5 They were called “the king’s eyes” and supervised the tax payment as well as the way the rebellions were controlled. Inside their well-defined regions, they had more power than the satraps and also established the tax value that each dominated region should pay. Even when the king was absent, people knew the commanders would inform him about their actions.

Judah was a “beyond the river” or a “Trans-Euphrates” satrapy category, that included the group of Syria and Palestine. As Gottwald points out, it is not clear whether Judah had the status of a province, separated since the beginning, or whether it was subjected to the authority of the Province of Samaria, at least until Nehemiah’s period.6

Darius’s organization judicially equalized all the satrapies. It meant that all of them—Judah included—should pay tribute. Judah was now just a small province or sub-province of a gigantic empire that virtually dominated all the world known by the peoples of the ancient Near East.

Tribute—Funding the Empire

Tunnermann’s analysis about that time sheds some light on the issue and helps us to understand the increasing level of exploitation. He notices that, during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, the interest taxes were around 10 percent per year and rose over 20 percent during Cyrus’s and Cambyses’s reigns. During the fifth century, the taxes reached levels of 40 to 50 percent per year and in Judea the interest tax was about 60 percent per year.7 He also claims that the increase of slave commerce in the Mediterranean in this period was a direct consequence of the debts caused by the Persian tributary system.8

Herodotus, the Greek historian, gives us a good example of the heavy burden of tribute laid upon the shoulders of the peasants. His account shows that Judea had to pay 350 silver talents of tribute to the emperor each year.9 We know that one talent was wor...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Empire Fights Back
• Chapter 2: Theology and Anti-Theology in the Book of Job
• Chapter 3: The Theology of Prosperity
• Chapter 4: Building Solidarity on the Road of Defeat
• Conclusion
• Bibliography