It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

Indeed, if we commit to placing Jesus firmly within the social, religious, and political context of the era in which he lived – an era marked by the slow burn of a revolt against Rome that would forever transform the faith and practice of Judaism – then, in some ways, his biography writes itself.

There are striking similarities between the Christian and Quranic descriptions of the Apocalypse, the Last Judgment, and the paradise awaiting those who have been saved.

There would be no more record of who was rich and who was poor. Everyone in this new and divinely inspired world order would begin anew.

Festus allowed Paul to go to Rome because Paul claimed to be a Roman citizen. Paul was born in Tarsus, a city whose inhabitants had been granted Roman citizenship by Mark Anthony a century earlier. As a citizen, Paul had the right to demand a Roman trial. a Festus, who would serve as governor for an extremely brief and tumultuous period in Jerusalem, seemed happy to grant him one, if for no other reason than simply be rid of him.

In first-century Palestine, simply saying the words “This is the messiah,” aloud and in public, can be a criminal offense, punishable by crucifixion.

But Jesus’s message was designed to be a direct challenge to the wealthy and the powerful, be they the occupiers in Rome, the collaborators in the Temple, or the new moneyed class in the Greek cities of Galilee. The message was simple: the Lord God had seen the suffering of the poor and dispossessed; he had heard their cries of anguish. And he was finally going to do something about it.

Zeal implied a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master – to serve any human master at all – and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God.

To begin with, with the possible exception of the gospel of Luke, none of the gospels we have were written by the person after whom they are named.

Matthew implies that the kingdom belonging to the Son of Man is one and the same as the Kingdom of God. And since the Kingdom of God is built upon a complete reversal of the present order, wherein the poor become powerful and the meek are made mighty, what better king to rule over it on God’s behalf than one who himself embodies the new social order flipped on its head? A peasant king. A king with no place to lay his head. A king who came to serve, not to be served. A king riding on a donkey.