The Sword of the Messiah and the Concept of Liberation in the Fourth Gospel The complex political history of post-exilic Judaism reveals that the Jews were under the rule of various foreign nations. There is little evidence that the Jews attempted any sort of revolt under Persian and Ptolemaic rule, but from the Maccabean revolt in 168/167 B.C.E. to the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 C.E., a period that is sometimes called “revolutionary Judaism”, Palestinian Jewish society was characterized by oppression, conflict, injustice, resistance and occasional violent outbursts (1). Especially Horsley has provided an important corrective to the older picture of first-century Palestine as a “hotbed of violent rebellion”, in arguing that the Jewish resistance to Roman rule was basically non-violent (2). An important response to the oppression under Antiochus IV was an upsurge of apocalypticism amongst faithful Jews in order to find purpose and meaning in their present situation (3). Apocalypticism was at the very heart of Palestinian Judaism and provided the vehicle of eschatological convictions by offering comfort, hope and a perspective, rooted in the power, faithfulness and justice of God (4). As an essentially non-violent “quietist” reaction to foreign rule (and often to the Jewish aristocracy), Jewish apocalyptic literature depicted “a vast struggle in which the people of God are spectators of a cosmic (1) See, e.g., F.J. MURPHY, The Religious World of Jesus. An Introduction to Second Temple Palestinian Judaism (Nashville 1991); R.A. HORSLEY, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence. Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (Minneapolis 1993); R.A. HORSLEY – J.S. HANSON, Bandits, Prophets & Messiahs. Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus (Harrisburg 1999); L.L. GRABBE, An Introduction to First Century Judaism. Jewish Religion and History in the Second Temple Period (Edinburgh 1996). (2) HORSLEY, Jesus, chap. 3-5. (3) HORSLEY – HANSON, Bandits, 16-20; cf. M. HENGEL, Judaism and Hellenism. Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (Philadelphia 1974) I, 253. (4) Cf. HORSLEY, Jesus, 143-145; HORSLEY – HANSON, Bandits, 16-20; C. ROWLAND, Christian Origins. An Account of the Setting and Character of the Most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism (London 22002) 54-61.