The Figure of Jesus in Palestinian Oral Traditions
When we speak of historical Jesus, what is history and what is theology? Is Jesus a symbol of empire or of resistance against empire? Is he a colonizer or the colonized? A crusader or a freedom fighter? When we encounter Jesus in the living heritage of peoples, what is cultural memory and what is indoctrinated consent? If we are to decenter hegemonic, imperialist, orientalist, and racializing paradigms, how is Jesus remembered, recalled, and portrayed among the natives of his geopolitical homeland?
In her project, Abeer seeks to explore Jesus—Yeshu, Yasu, Issa—not through the Christ tradition of the institutional churches of the West but rather as integral to Palestinian epistemes and epistemologies. Aspiring to illuminate oral traditions as history yet to be acknowledged, she aims to examine how Jesus is dwelling, imagined, followed, inspired by, and loved among Palestinians today. Through an anthropological lens, direct engagement with communities and individuals is designed to capture grassroots portrayals of Jesus as a historical figure, a political Jew, an underprivileged rebel, a Muslim prophet, or a Palestinian martyr, thereby enabling the emergence of narratives that remain ungraspable by dogma-dependent or Western-centric methodologies and epistemologies.