Up to this point, Part II has considered Origen’s approach to particular Gospel passages without invoking parallel narratives from more than one Gospel. In the process, it has become clear that Origen’s view of the figurative nature of the Gospels does not originate merely in noticing discrepancies among the four received Gospels. Having established this more fundamental point, we may now attend to the occasions where his reading does proceed by way of comparative reading of parallel pericopes. The cluster of narratives surrounding Jesus’s ascent(s) to Jerusalem provides an especially textured model of Origen’s approach to Gospel difference. Here, Origen does not simply exhibit an inchoate awareness of the various critical difficulties that arise when one reads the four Gospels synoptically; he engages these challenges in great detail and develops a sophisticated account of the Gospels’ literary formation in light of them. Still, whatever differences or discord one discovers among the Gospels on the level of history, narrative, and even in their very ideas of Jesus, there remains, for Origen, a more fundamental agreement – a harmony of spirit – among the four Evangelists’ visions.

Part II of this study finds itself advantaged by Origen’s presence near the epicenter of another epochal seism in the history of Gospel criticism: the controversy surrounding Gotthold E. Lessing’s editing and publication of “fragments” from Hermann S. Reimarus’s previously unpublished “Apology or Defense of the Rational Worshippers of God.” In the midst of publishing (and defending the publication of) the seminal sixth and seventh extracts, Lessing composed “On the proof of the spirit and of power” (1777) – an essay that has proved, in its own way, at least equally iconic for the emergence of modern historical consciousness.

Chapter 3 explores the relationship between increased social tension and the emergence of nascent conflict and finds traces of this stage in the Damascus Document. This chapter continues to examine how the emergence of violence in New Religious Movements such as the People’s Temple or the Branch Davidians can serve as an analytical lens for understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Chapter 7 focuses on the War Scroll, the most sustained portrait of the imagined end-time war against the Sectarian enemies. Alongside its elements of fantasy, the War Scroll simultaneously contains many prescriptive details for the eschatological war that the Sectarians believed was imminent. This chapter characterizes the War Scroll using the language of social anthropologists as a violent imaginary and argues that it functions as a propagandistic tool to prepare the Sectarians for this war.

Origen’s surprising presence within David F. Strauss’s genealogy of the critical examination of the life of Jesus ought to stir contemporary readers from slipping into their own forms of presumption regarding when, exactly, reading of the Gospels first became critical or what the term “critical” even means. Strauss’s presentation also underscores the difficulty of fashioning a portrait adequate to such a unique figure and introduces the need to retrieve Origen’s own first principles of Gospel reading. Here, I lay the requisite groundwork for addressing Part I’s overarching question (“What is a Gospel?”) by showing that, for Origen, the term “Gospel,” strictly speaking, does not designate just any discourse bearing the early Christian proclamation, but rather one that does so under the form of narratives of the life of Jesus. The stage is thus set for the more pivotal – and tortuous – question: What kind of narratives are they?

This chapter places the Dead Sea Scrolls into dialogue with social-scientific scholarship on violence in New Religious Movements. It introduces the sociological model of a multipart process of escalating tension (latent tension, nascent conflict, intensified conflict) based on a complex set of internal and external factors that potentially ends in what he refers to as violent dramatic denouements. Chapter 2 focuses on the first stage of the process, which provides a framework in which to situate the nonviolent origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls Sectarians and explains how a movement born in social tension develops into a movement steeped in violence. This chapter argues that Miqṣat Ma‘ase HaTorah is reflective of a protest movement in its earlier stages.

This chapter provides general concluding thoughts on the book and insights into larger contributions to the scholarly fields in which it interacts.

This book began after a series of conversations with Ayesha Jalal on the nature of reform and religious life on the campus of Tufts University over a decade ago. An extension, of sorts, of the many discussions with her on the topic since my days as her PhD student twenty years ago, I was struck by the need to study religion in the era of nineteenth-century reform not with an eye toward communalism that developed later in time, but to the many meanings of religion, especially comparative religion, in the nineteenth century.

Another important moment emerged at a 2014 conference on the occasion of the anniversary of the Centre for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University, convened by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal. In a panel on religion in nineteenth-century India in which I discussed religious reform, I fell into a long conversation with the great scholar Professor Susannah Heschel on various aspects of religion, history, and approaches to empire. This chance encounter led me to think seriously about religion's many historical guises. For that generative discussion and for ongoing friendship and fellowship, I am grateful.

Ideas developed in this book grew after the ‘Religion and Its Others: Power, Sovereignty, and Politics in Indian Religions Past and Present’ workshop, funded by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute at the University of Victoria in March 14–15, 2019. This workshop featured the generative work of Rinku Lamba, A. Azfar Moin, J. Barton Scott, Shruti Patel, Brian Hatcher, Uday Chandra, and Ramesh Bairy.

5.1 [338] The blessed David reveals that the inability to control one’s tongue is the most shameful of diseases. For example, he even used to offer prayers about it, saying: “Place a guard on my mouth, O Lord, and a gate of constraint about my lips. Do not turn my heart away to words of wickedness.”1 In fact, I would say that it is priceless to make the wise choice of keeping one’s mind focused upon the thoughts that are appropriate for truly sensible people and, indeed, to use irreproachable speech in this endeavor. For it has been written that, “If a person does not stumble in his speech, he is a perfect man, capable of reining in the rest of his body too.”2 On the other hand, how could anyone not find fault, and quite understandably so, with someone using a carefree and relaxed tongue that has free rein to proceed to each and every [339] reprehensible thing?

2.1 [85] Because we considered it not at all unreasonable, or rather thought it useful and essential, to begin with the required account of who was chronologically born before whom and indeed also what sort of theological views each of them held, we have given the most precise explanation possible of these matters [in the previous book].

3.1 [163] Julian has, therefore, slandered all the habits, customs, and mysteries of Christians, and there is not one thing done well or even said correctly in the God-breathed scripture that he does not unabashedly surround with accusations for the purpose of debasing it. He exults only in those things that would naturally cause no small amount of distress to the truly intelligent and lead them to turn to a better course. And, just as unreservedly, he is in awe of Plato’s speech, which he has appropriated for himself in order to defame the divine and supernatural glory.