Oppression in the New Testament

In the OT, in English translations, one finds the word oppression around 125-135 times depending on the translation. According to the Hebrew scholar, Thomas Hanks (God So Loved the Third World: The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression), oppression and its synonyms occur 555 times in Hebrew. So it is strange that in English translations of the NT, one finds oppression only 3 or 4 times. Hanks asserts that the number of occurrences would rise somewhat if thilpsis were translated oppression instead of affliction; in James 1:27, the widows and orphans would be oppressed, not just afflicted.

To explain the mystery of the near disappearance of oppression in the NT, I float this hypothesis; the word rich (wealth, money, possessions) replaces and specifically identifies the oppressors (see the gospel of Luke). And the temple is identified by Jesus as THE system of oppression; he called it "a den of robbers". Once a person is sensitized to the concept of oppression in the OT, and once a person brings this understanding into the NT, and once a person sees the different ways that oppression is expressed in the NT, she will see that oppression is as widespread in the NT as it is the OT. And oppression is sometimes expressed as injustice (adikia).

Over the years the religio-politico-economic elite had turned the operation of the Temple into a religiously legitimated system of oppression. In addition to its religious function, the Temple was also an economic institution. A French scholar may have exaggerated somewhat to make his point, but he claimed that the Temple functioned as follows: it played the combined roles of the Federal Reserve System, Wall Street and the U.S. treasury. Enormous amounts of tithes and oferings flowed into the Temple coffers, especially from the over 2,000,000 Jews scattered around the Roman Empire. There was so much gold in the Temple when the Romans sacked and destroyed it in 70 AD that the price of gold dropped 50 percent in nearby Syria as the Romans began to circulate the gold.

Though the oft brutal Romans added to the oppression in Palestine, Jesus never identified Rome as the main enemy of the Jews. The real enemy came from within; it was the corrupt religio-politico-economic elite who controlled Judaism, Jerusalem and the Temple (See Kraybill, The Upside-Down Kingdom). Church and State were not separate in Palestine. The religio-politico folk also controlled the economic system, giving them enormous power and this power corrupted the whole nation. In my judgment, conditions were worse in Jesus' time than during the times of Amos and Isaiah.

After Jesus said (Luke 16:13), "No servant can serve two masters. . . . You cannot serve both God and Money," Luke states, "The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering/scoffing at Jesus." The Pharisees had been serving both God and Money all their lives and made a darn good living. So in Mt. 23 and Luke 11---the Woe to the teachers of the law and Pharisees chapters---Jesus, in the strongest possible language, exposes and condemns the elite and their neglect of justice and the love of God.

James echos Jesus as he also condemns the oppression of the poor in James 1:27; 2:6 and 5:1-5; he identifies the oppressors as the rich, the landlords, and the oppressed as the widows and orphans, the poor, the day laborers.

The whole Bible severely condemns all forms of oppression; the just kingdom of God is the biblical answer.