The Kingdom of God and Empires

This research offers a contemporary Palestinian Christian contextual biblical interpretation of Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels. Introducing Palestinian Christians and highlighting their context historically and geopolitically is an imperative to demonstrate their significance for biblical scholarship. Accordingly, the research develops a hermeneutical ethnography in its endeavor to tackle its leading question: How do Palestinian Christians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories interpret Jesus’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God in the context of the Israeli imperial colonization and the marginalization of Palestinians? Palestinian Christian voices are important for biblical scholarship due to their historical religious and geopolitical context as a continuation of the ancient people of Palestine and the first Christian groups. Their experience under Israeli imperial colonialism provides a lens to read and interpret Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom. In some circles, Jesus and the kingdom have been spiritualized and apoliticized, overlooking the charged context of Jesus proclamation under the Roman Empire and first-century Judaism. Furthermore, an apocalyptic interpretation of the Kingdom in western scholarship has been one of the driving factors fueling Jewish and Christian Zionist ideologies and the colonization of Palestine. The research therefore reads Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom cross-culturally and contextually. It interprets three biblical texts, Matthew 5:3-12; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 4:16-19, to highlight the ways Palestinian Christian interpretation(s) shed light on the conditions and contexts first-century Palestine. It also criticizes western ideologies of dominance and power. Rather than replicating the same power and dominance structures, the research advocates for and advances dialogue between the West and Majority World, and between scholars and ordinary readers, as a reflection of virtues of humility and open-mindedness.