The theory that Jesus was mixed up with the movement or party of armed resistance to Rome commonly called the Zealots has never lacked proponents (cp. the following essay), but latterly it has achieved new force and publicity through a combination of factors: the excavation of the Zealot stronghold at Masada by Yigael Yadin, and the glorification of Zealot heroism;1 current concern as to the authentic Christian role in resistance to oppressive regimes; and the work of the late S. G. F. Brandon. In his Jesus and the Zealots (Manchester, 1967), which built on his earlier book, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (London, 1951), he claimed not that Jesus actually was a Zealot, a member of the party (if there was such a party in his time), but that Jesus and his disciples sympathised with the ideals and aims of the Zealot movement, and so did the earliest Christians.

Brandon's work was taken up as substantiating his own hunch by Colin Morris, formerly a Methodist minister in Zambia and adviser to President Kaunda, in a popular paper-back, Unyoung, Uncoloured, Unpoor (London, 1969). To quote the summary on the back,