Maker Versus the Takers review

The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics by Jerry Bowyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an excellent little book. It’s point: “Jesus confronted the takers of wealth, not the makers of it” (xiii). Thus the title: “The Maker (Jesus) Versus the Takers.”

Bowyer’s basic assumption is the same you will hear in any sound seminary: we need to understand what Scripture meant to its original audience, before you can translate and apply it today. He hones in on Jesus’ sayings about wealth, and discovers something startling. “Jesus’ conversations about money take on a more and more adversarial tone the closer He gets to His version of [Washington] DC: Jerusalem” (3).

The author is not a trained theologian, but he takes on passage after passage, and knocks it out of the park 9 out of 10 times. Some examples:

1. “The poor you will always have with you.” This is a reference to Deuteronomy 15, in which God promises Israel will not have any poor, if they follow His commands about debt forgiveness. Israel’s leaders were breaking that systematically in Jesus’ day, and Jesus’ words here were a rebuke to the greed behind it.

2. The promise in Isaiah 9:1-2 that Zebulun and Naphtali would be exalted, after being brought low before, points backward as well as forward to Jesus. Northern Galilee, where those tribes were located, was the first to suffer when the invasions came that led to Israel’s exile. They would be the first restored, with Jesus teaching and healing there first.

3. Part of Israel’s story was Jerusalem trying to exploit the rest of Israel. Think of Rehoboam, who planned to increase taxes. Israel killed the tax man he sent, and seceded! Bowyer points out, from trusted traditional sources like Edersheim and Josephus, that this same story was going on in Jesus’ day. The temple rulers concocted many ways to get as much money from the pious populace as possible. Jesus cleansed the temple of this “den of robbers.”

4. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus starts with the man who owes 10,000 talents. Pastors love to wow people with how big this is in modern terms, but miss Jesus’ main point. It’s roughly 6 times the size of Israel’s gross national product at the time! And this fits into Jesus telling Peter to forgive 70 times 7, just before. We think the number is just randomly crazy big, but 70 times 7 referred to Israel’s exile. The Bible makes a point that Israel will be in exile for 490 years – the time the land should have had its Sabbaths, but Israel never gave it. So the servant who owed all that money, is the whole nation, or its leaders! 6 years’ worth of productive economy, and in the 7th year, the law said the land should rest, and any debts should be forgiven. But the leaders used legal work arounds to avoid both. Jesus’ point is, you owed God big time, and He forgave you. But you squeeze every penny out of the people you can, with no mercy.

There’s a lot more.
And you don’t have to wade through academic jargon. Bowyer is to the point, though slightly repetitive and disorganized at times.

There are a couple things he gets wrong, or that are a stretch. This is a common failing of those who draw from historical context. History isn’t an exact science, and we can try to make it such, to make our preferred point. Bowyer asserts that “forgive us our debts” in the Lord's Prayer should not be spiritualized, but taken literally. His point that we spiritualize the text too often is a good one, but not in this case. Many times a spiritual sense exactly what the text intends, the earthly reference being a metaphor, and this is one of those.  Besides, how would God forgive our financial debts to others?  Also, I’m uncertain about the timing of Rome’s economic and political disturbance compared to the crucifixion. Bowyer (and Paul Meier in “Pontius Pilate”) makes the case that the economic crisis, and political downfall of Pilate’s Roman sponsor happen just before the crucifixion. So Pilate is politically vulnerable in Rome, and thus more willing to give the Jews what they want, when they demand Jesus’ death. Maybe. Bowyer’s point is a good one: God providentially uses national economic life, as much as anything else. But maybe not specifically in how Bowyer reads the crucifixion timing.

Even with those caveats, I highly recommend this book. It puts in fresh language the historical situation in Jesus’ day, and clearly sets forth what He said about it. The direct political implications are in the short conclusion. I won’t spoil it for you!


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