Crowds and Power in the Early Palestinian Tradition

This article draws on critical crowd theory to explore how historical Jesus research can benefit from a more robust understanding of the crowds that engulf Jesus as subjects of historical change. Conventional approaches to the crowds within New Testament scholarship are complicit in heightening Jesus' individual exceptionalism. Rather than envisaging the crowds as part of the anonymous background to Jesus' ministry, or as a literary invention by the Gospel authors, we should instead regard the crowds as a collective expression of underlying social, political, and economic antagonisms.