Chapter 3 Jesus and John Ball: Millenarian Prophets

As Dale Allison has shown, the cross-cultural study of millenarianism is an especially fruitful way to illuminate the eschatological teaching of Jesus.1 I want to develop a political angle to such cross-cultural studies with a direct comparison between Jesus and another leader with thoughts on the end time in a predominantly agrarian context: John Ball, the most famous priest of the English uprising of 1381, commonly (and arguably misleadingly) referred to as the Peasants’ Revolt. In particular, I want to address the issue of eschatology or millenarianism and accompanying ideas about social change, upheaval, and the hierarchies involved in the envisaged new world order. It is common in both the cases of Jesus and Ball to romanticise or exaggerate the nature of egalitarianism, which often seems (somewhat conveniently) far ahead of its time. To perhaps overstate the case, it would be anachronistic to claim that either of the millenarian figures would have been able to think in such modern terms. Indeed, the very category of “millenarian” can help us think through this point further. It is to this point I first turn before moving to John Ball and the useful similarities his millenarianism has with Jesus’.