Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan

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I’ve heard some people say that this book is indeed revolutionary, and some say it’s not. But nobody can say that Crossan doesn’t present anything new. He roots around in texts, scholarship, and archaeology to present a persuasive account of who this Jesus of Nazareth guy really was. Did he live? Yes. Was some sort of preacher or healer? Yes. Did he get his disruptive-ass crucified? Yes. Other than that… Let’s just say that Crossan and Thomas Jefferson would’ve gotten along smashingly.

Sure, Crossan digs up some old goodies:

The Book of Isaiah is retroactively used to prophecy Jesus’s birth.
The demon Legion is a metaphor for Roman occupation
Jesus definitely had siblings
Much of the anit-Semiticism in the Gospels is because they were written after the Jewish riots of ca. 70 CE.

But then there’s a whole lot in there that even if you are really up on your Mediterranean history and archaeology, you probably haven’t thought about or even heard before. A few examples:

Crucified victims were not buried. They were left for dogs and carrion birds and served as a warning. If they were buried at all, it might have been in a shallow grave, dug by Roman soldiers. Anyone who had enough influence to get a burial probably wouldn’t have been crucified in the first place.
Part of Jeus’s radical nature is not only his mingling with women, but acting like one as well. For example, at the Last Supper, he breaks bread, and serves it to his followers, all of whom are peasants and have never been served by slaves, but have been served by women. He evokes this motherly, sisterly, daughterly, wifely memory in them by doing so.
There was no group of twelve apostles. Crossan gives various reasons to support this, both with the logistics of the times in which Jesus lived, and the fact that a group of twelve (thirteen if you include Jesus himself) was not known in the region. Furthermore, when Jesus sent his followers out in pairs, he was usually sending “healed healers” and often times a man and a woman who were not married, but acted as though they were for the protection of the woman.

Is Crossan always right? That remains for the reader to judge. And what’s more, for the reader to look deeply into his own faith and ask if it matters. I’ve often had problems with religious archaeology, precisely for this reason. I suggest that you read this in conjunction with Joseph Campbell’s Thou Art That in order to get a really good sense of whether you care that much if there were or were not twelve apostles, and if it is still difficult for you to believe that Joseph of Arimathea could have still persuaded the Roman guards to let him have Jesus’s body for burial. If on the other hand, you are not a Christian, then you will still get a good read on the life and times of the Historical Jesus.
Buy Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton by Thomas Merton
Thou Art That by Joseph Campbell
A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
Jefferson’s “Bible:” The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth by Thomas Jefferson
James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls by Robert Eismann
Lamb: A Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Book of Q by Jonathan Rabb
The Third Jesus by Deepak Chopra
Why I Became an Atheist by John Loftus

Other works by John Dominic Crossan:

The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images
God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now
A Long Way from Tipperary: What a Former Monk Discovered in His Search for the Truth
Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus
In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus
The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story
The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative
In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus
Cliffs of Fall: Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus
Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon
Finding Is the First Act: Trove Folktales and Jesus’ Treasure Parable
A Fragile Craft: The Work of Amos Niven Wilder

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Tags: archaeology, history, Middle Easten/Middle Eastern American, religion

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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