INTERVIEWER
Can you draw any parallels between the time Jesus lived and our own?
ALLEN DWIGHT CALLAHAN
There are some parallels. I would want to make arguments for some parallels between the economic, religious, and social dimensions of first century Palestine and some areas of our contemporary lives. If we look globally, for example, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. More and more people becoming poorer and poorer. This was a problem in first century Palestine. The wealthy people are becoming wealthier and that wealth has achieved a level of ostentation and arrogance that's just a bit too much to bear.
Historians have observed that it takes a lot to make a people revolt. The masses generally don't undertake revolutions unless they're really, really desperate. They're a desperate people in Palestine in the first century. The people were hungry. We know that Jesus was reputed to have practiced miracles that produced food. Food was a big thing for Jesus. I think food is a big thing for anybody who doesn't have it regularly, or can't depend on getting it, or can't just open a refrigerator and reach in and get it.
There were a lot of people in Palestine that were like that. So we had a lot of people who were hungry, a lot of people who were poor, a lot of the very wealthy and the very poor sort of cheek by jowl geo-politically - several centers that are sucking in all the wealth, and really controlling people's lives, millions of people being controlled by the decisions of the very few. I discern that there are some parallels between that situation and our own.
