John Dominic Crossan

At the heart of the Bible is a moral and ethical call to fight unjust superpowers, whether they are Babylon, Rome, or even America. From the divine punishment and promise found in Genesis through the revolutionary messages of Jesus and Paul, John Dominic Crossan reveals what the Bible has to say about land and economy, violence and retribution, justice and peace, and, ultimately, redemption. In contrast to the oppressive Roman military occupation of the first century, he examines the meaning of the non-violent Kingdom of God prophesized by Jesus and the equality advocated by Paul to the early Christian churches. Crossan contrasts these messages of peace with the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the Book of Revelation, which has been misrepresented by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify U.S. military actions in the Middle East. In God and Empire Crossan surveys the Bible from Genesis to Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation, and discovers a hopeful message that cannot be ignored in these turbulent times. The first-century Pax Romana, Crossan points out, was in fact a "peace" won through violent military action. Jesus preached a different kind of peace—a peace that surpasses all understanding—and a kingdom not of Caesar but of God. The Romans executed Jesus because he preached this Kingdom of God, a kingdom based on peace and justice, over the empire of Rome, which ruled by violence and force. For Jesus and Paul, Crossan explains, peace cannot be won the Roman way, through military victory, but only through justice and fair and equal treatment of all people.

Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now

God and Empire

Marcus J. Borg

Top Jesus scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan join together to reveal a radical and little-known Jesus. As both authors reacted to and responded to questions about Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion. Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced by Borg and Crossan is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings. The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice and to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor. In this vein, at the end of the week Jesus marches up Calvary, offering himself as a model for others to do the same when they are confronted by similar issues. Informed, challenged, and inspired, we not only meet the historical Jesus, but meet a new Jesus who engages us and invites us to follow him.

What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem

The Last Week

The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

The Historical Jesus

In this four-color illustrated journey that is part travelogue and part theological investigation, bestselling author and acclaimed Bible scholar John Dominic Crossan and his wife Sarah painstakingly travel throughout the ancient Eastern church, documenting through text and image a completely different model for understanding Easter's resurrection story, one that provides promise and hope for us today. Traveling the world, the Crossans noticed a surprising difference in how the Eastern Church considers Jesus' resurrection -- an event not described in the Bible. At Saint Barbara's Church in Cairo, they found a painting in which the risen Jesus grasps the hands of other figures around him. Unlike the Western image of a solitary Jesus rising from an empty tomb that he viewed across Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the Crossans saw images of the resurrection depicting a Jesus grasping the hands of figures around him, or lifting Adam and Eve to heaven from Hades or hell, or carrying the old and sick to the afterlife. They discovered that the standard image for the Resurrection in Eastern Christianity is communal and collective, something unique from the solitary depiction of the resurrection in Western Christianity. Fifteen years in the making, Resurrecting Easter reflects on this divide in how the Western and Eastern churches depict the resurrection and its implications. The Crossans argue that the West has gutted the heart of Christianity's understanding of the resurrection by rejecting that once-common communal iconography in favor of an individualistic vision. As they examine the ubiquitous Eastern imagery of Jesus freeing Eve from Hades while ascending to heaven, the Crossans suggest that this iconography raises profound questions about Christian morality and forgiveness. A fundamentally different way of understand the story of Jesus' rebirth illustrated with 130 images, Resurrecting Easter introduces an inclusive, traditional community-based ideal that offers renewed hope and possibilities for our fractured modern society.

how the West lost and the East kept the original Easter vision

Resurrecting Easter

Meet Paul Again . . . for the First Time Continuing in the tradition of The Last Week and The First Christmas, world-renowned New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan use the best of biblical and historical scholarship to expose the church's conspiracy to silence Jesus's most faithful disciple, the apostle Paul.

Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon

The First Paul

Every Sunday, the Lord’s Prayer echoes in churches around the world. It is an indisputable principle of Christian faith. It is the way Jesus taught his followers to pray and distills the most essential beliefs required of every one of the world’s 2.5 billion Christians. In The Greatest Prayer, our foremost Jesus scholar explores this foundational prayer line by line for the richest and fullest understanding of a prayer every Christian knows by heart. An expert on the historical Jesus, Crossan provides just the right amount of history, scholarship, and detail for us to rediscover why this seemingly simple prayer sparked a revolution. Addressing issues of God’s will for us and our response, our responsibilities to one another and to the earth, the theology of our daily bread, the moral responsibilities that come with money, our nation-states, and God’s kingdom, Crossan reveals the enduring meaning and universal significance of the only prayer Jesus ever taught.

Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer

The Greatest Prayer

The acclaimed Bible scholar and author of The Historical Jesus and God & Empire—“the greatest New Testament scholar of our generation” (John Shelby Spong) —grapples with Scripture’s two conflicting visions of Jesus and God, one of a loving God, and one of a vengeful God, and explains how Christians can better understand these passages in a way that enriches their faith. Many portions of the New Testament, introduce a compassionate Jesus who turns the other cheek, loves his enemies, and shows grace to all. But the Jesus we find in Revelation and some portions of the Gospels leads an army of angels bent on earthly destruction. Which is the true revelation of the Messiah—and how can both be in the same Bible? How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian explores this question and offers guidance for the faithful conflicted over which version of the Lord to worship. John Dominic Crossan reconciles these contrasting views, revealing how different writers of the books of the Bible not only possessed different visions of God but also different purposes for writing. Often these books are explicitly competing against another, opposing vision of God from the Bible itself. Crossan explains how to navigate this debate and offers what he believes is the best central thread to what the Bible is all about. He challenges Christians to fully participate in this dialogue, thereby shaping their faith by reading deeply, reflectively, and in community with others who share their uncertainty. Only then, he advises, will Christians be able to read and understand the Bible without losing their faith.

Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation

How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian

Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus

Who Killed Jesus?

N. T. Wright

Robert B. Stewart

John Dominic Crossan And N.T. Wright in Dialogue

The Resurrection of Jesus

Jonathan L. Reed

The premier historical Jesus scholar joins a brilliant archaeologist to illuminate the life and teaching of Jesus against the background of his world. There have been phenomenal advances in the historical understanding of Jesus and his world and times, but also huge, lesser known advances in first–century Palestine archaeology that explain a great deal about Jesus, his followers, and his teachings. This is the first book that combines the two and it does it in a fresh, accessible way that will interest both biblical scholars and students and also the thousands of lay readers of Biblical Archaeology Review (150,000+ circulation), National Geographic, and other archaeology and ancient history books and magazines. Each chapter of the book focuses on a major modern archaeological or textual discovery and shows how that discovery opens a window onto a major feature of Jesus's life and teachings.

Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts: Revised and Updated

Excavating Jesus

In The First Christmas, two of today's top Jesus scholars, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, join forces to show how history has biased our reading of the nativity story as it appears in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. As they did for Easter in their previous book, The Last Week, here they explore the beginning of the life of Christ, peeling away the sentimentalism that has built up over the last two thousand years around this most well known of all stories to reveal the truth of what the gospels actually say. Borg and Crossan help us to see this well-known narrative afresh by answering the question, "What do these stories mean?" in the context of both the first century and the twenty-first century. They successfully show that the Christmas story, read in its original context, is far richer and more challenging than people imagine.

What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Birth

The First Christmas

“Borg and Crossan reveal a figure who, besides being neither anti-Semitic, anti-sex, nor misogynist, stresses social and political equality among Christians and between them and others. A refreshing and heartening exculpation of a still routinely maligned figure of the first importance to culture and civilization.” — Booklist (starred review) John Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg—two of the world’s top-selling Christian scholars and the bestselling authors of The Last Week and The First Christmas—once again shake up the status quo by arguing that the message of the apostle Paul, considered by many to be the second most important figure in Christianity, has been domesticated by the church. Borg and Crossan turn the common perception of Paul on its head, revealing him as a radical follower of Jesus whose core message is still relevant today.

John Dominic Crossan's In Parables demonstrated how Jesus's parables demolished an idolatry of time. In this book, he shows how the parables likewise preclude an idolatry of language. In a new, creative synthesis, Raid on the Articulate juxtaposes the sayings and parables of Jesus with the works of modern Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges to reveal fresh interpretations. Crossan locates both men as literary iconoclasts, parablers who can evoke for us the other side of silence. The gift they bring is "cosmic eschatology," the ability to "stand on the brink of nonsense and absurdity and not be dizzy." The discussion begins with Comedy and Transcendence, "a comedy too deep for laughter." Language is seen most openly and acknowledged most freely as structured play, opening the narrow gate to transcendence. This precludes language being mistaken for the gate itself. This in turn raises the question of Form and Parody. As Crossan writes, "Why mock the craftsman skilled in silver and gold and not mock the artisan skilled in form and genre? What if the aniconic God became trapped in icons made of language?" In Jesus we find the most magisterial warning against graven words and encapsulation of God in case law, proverb, or beatitude. When Jesus says, "Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it" he presents a paradox insoluble by faith in language. Borges performs a similar function in literature when he inserts footnotes referring to nonexistent books. Both are arguing against the idolatry of imprisoning reality in the words that point to it. Parable and Paradox makes the case for parable as paradox formed into story. It is in this context that Jesus and Borges must be understood. Analyzing many of Jesus's parables, especially "The Good Samaritan," and comparing them structurally to Borges's work, Crossan sees them as single or double reversals of their audiences" most profound expectations. It is these that lend them both their power and their paradox. Raid on the Articulate concludes with considerations of the plasticity of time in Jesus and Borges and what, finally, we can say about them as men from their "fragile and aphoristic art." Emphasizing both biblical and literary materials, John Dominic Crossan achieves a deepened understanding of New Testament texts and forms, an understanding possible only when the unique literary aspect of Jesus's sayings is acknowledged.

Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges

Raid on the Articulate

The aphoristic form conveys universal truths in a distinctive, compressed format. Such sayings go straight to the heart of the matter and linger long afterward in the memory. Curiously enough, the greatest aphorist of all time, Jesus, often goes unrecognized as such; and, more importantly, his aphorisms--a major part of his teachings--have been largely overlooked by biblical scholars. Now, In Fragments offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jesus's aphorisms as an area of study distinct from, but equal in importance to, the parables and dialogues. The heart of Crossan's groundbreaking work is his discussion and interpretation of over one hundred thirty aphorisms of Jesus culled from the narrative Gospel of Mark, the discourse Gospel Q, their dependent versions in Matthew and Luke, and their independent versions in such works as the Gospel of John, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Apostolic Fathers. This representative selection inaugurates a landmark discussion of Jesus's aphorisms, raising the aphoristic tradition to the level of interest that the parabolic tradition has always received. In Fragments offers an original method for identifying, organizing, and correlating these sayings that results in a whole new analysis of the stages of New Testament development for this genre. Crossan suggests answers to a variety of critical questions about the historical transmission of these sayings of Jesus, including the shift from the spoken to the written tradition; analyzes their internal structure and dynamic; shows how individual aphorism can be grouped to shed light on each other; discusses how they are transformed into dialogues and stories, and the effect on the original sayings; and, above all, distinguishes what is the "peculiar gift" of the aphoristic mode, as opposed to teachings embodied in the narrative or dialogue forms.

The Aphorisms of Jesus

In Fragments

An imaginative and illuminating study, Finding Is the First Act places historical thinking in creative tension with literary appreciation. The structures of Jesus's parable of the hidden treasure (Matt 13:44) are examined by mapping its plot options (finding, acting, buying) in view of other Jewish treasure stories and the vast array of treasure plots in world folklore. Startling differences emerge in the plot options chosen by Jesus that point to a new understanding of the directive to give up all one has for the Kingdom of God. Why Jesus' treasure parable? For three reasons that I am aware of. First, . . . the story has always fascinated me. . . . Second, in recent work on parables there has often been a tendency to concentrate especially on the longer parables of Jesus. I wanted deliberately to move in theopposite direction and to give full emphasis to a very short parable . . . . Third, this particular parable, in contrast, for example, to that of The Mustard Seed, does not furnish much grist for the diachronic mill of biblical studies. I was deliberately choosing an item which, in isolation from its Matthean context, could hardly sustain a monograph study along the standard lines of tradition criticism. --from the Preface

Trove Folktales and Jesus' Treasure Parable

Finding Is the First Act

The death of Jesus is one of the most hotly debated questions in Christianity today. In his massive and highly publicized The Death of the Messiah, Raymond Brown -- while clearly rejecting anti-Semitism -- never questions the essential historicity of the passion stories. Yet it is these stories, in which the Jews decide Jesus' execution, that have fueled centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. Now, in his most controversial book, John Dominic Crossan shows that this traditional understanding of the Gospels as historical fact is not only wrong but dangerous. Drawing on the best of biblical, anthropological, sociological and historical research, he demonstrates definitively that it was the Roman government that tried and executed Jesus as a social agitator. Crossan also candidly addresses such key theological questions as "Did Jesus die for our sins?" and "Is our faith in vain if there was no bodily resurrection?" Ultimately, however, Crossan's radical reexamination shows that the belief that the Jews killed Jesus is an early Christian myth (directed against rival Jewish groups) that must be eradicated from authentic Christian faith.

John Dominic Crossan's In Parables demonstrated how Jesus's parables demolished an idolatry of time. In this book, he shows how the parables likewise preclude an idolatry of language. In a new, creative synthesis, Raid on the Articulate juxtaposes the sayings and parables of Jesus with the works of modern Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges to reveal fresh interpretations. Crossan locates both men as literary iconoclasts, parablers who can evoke for us the other side of silence. The gift they bring is cosmic eschatology, the ability to stand on the brink of nonsense and absurdity and not be dizzy. The discussion begins with Comedy and Transcendence, a comedy too deep for laughter. Language is seen most openly and acknowledged most freely as structured play, opening the narrow gate to transcendence. This precludes language being mistaken for the gate itself. This in turn raises the question of Form and Parody. As Crossan writes, Why mock the craftsman skilled in silver and gold and not mock the artisan skilled in form and genre? What if the aniconic God became trapped in icons made of language? In Jesus we find the most magisterial warning against graven words and encapsulation of God in case law, proverb, or beatitude. When Jesus says, Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it he presents a paradox insoluble by faith in language. Borges performs a similar function in literature when he inserts footnotes referring to nonexistent books. Both are arguing against the idolatry of imprisoning reality in the words that point to it. Parable and Paradox makes the case for parable as paradox formed into story. It is in this context that Jesus and Borges must be understood. Analyzing many of Jesus's parables, especially The Good Samaritan, and comparing them structurally to Borges's work, Crossan sees them as single or double reversals of their audiences most profound expectations. It is these that lend them both their power and their paradox. Raid on the Articulate concludes with considerations of the plasticity of time in Jesus and Borges and what, finally, we can say about them as men from their fragile and aphoristic art. Emphasizing both biblical and literary materials, John Dominic Crossan achieves a deepened understanding of New Testament texts and forms, an understanding possible only when the unique literary aspect of Jesus's sayings is acknowledged.

An imaginative and illuminating study, Finding Is the First Act places historical thinking in creative tension with literary appreciation. The structures of Jesus's parable of the hidden treasure (Matt 13:44) are examined by mapping its plot options (finding, acting, buying) in view of other Jewish treasure stories and the vast array of treasure plots in world folklore. Startling differences emerge in the plot options chosen by Jesus that point to a new understanding of the directive to give up all one has for the Kingdom of God. "Why Jesus' treasure parable? For three reasons that I am aware of. First, . . . the story has always fascinated me. . . . Second, in recent work on parables there has often been a tendency to concentrate especially on the longer parables of Jesus. I wanted deliberately to move in theopposite direction and to give full emphasis to a very short parable . . . . Third, this particular parable, in contrast, for example, to that of The Mustard Seed, does not furnish much grist for the diachronic mill of biblical studies. I was deliberately choosing an item which, in isolation from its Matthean context, could hardly sustain a monograph study along the standard lines of tradition criticism." --from the Preface

Amy-Jill Levine

Dale C. Allison Jr.

The Historical Jesus in Context is a landmark collection that places the gospel narratives in their full literary, social, and archaeological context. More than twenty-five internationally recognized experts offer new translations and descriptions of a broad range of texts that shed new light on the Jesus of history, including pagan prayers and private inscriptions, miracle tales and martyrdoms, parables and fables, divorce decrees and imperial propaganda. The translated materials--from Christian, Coptic, and Jewish as well as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian texts--extend beyond single phrases to encompass the full context, thus allowing readers to locate Jesus in a broader cultural setting than is usually made available. This book demonstrates that only by knowing the world in which Jesus lived and taught can we fully understand him, his message, and the spread of the Gospel. Gathering in one place material that was previously available only in disparate sources, this formidable book provides innovative insight into matters no less grand than first-century Jewish and Gentile life, the composition of the Gospels, and Jesus himself.

The Historical Jesus in Context

The aphoristic form conveys universal truths in a distinctive, compressed format. Such sayings go straight to the heart of the matter and linger long afterward in the memory. Curiously enough, the greatest aphorist of all time, Jesus, often goes unrecognized as such; and, more importantly, his aphorisms--a major part of his teachings--have been largely overlooked by biblical scholars. Now, In Fragments offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jesus's aphorisms as an area of study distinct from, but equal in importance to, the parables and dialogues. The heart of Crossan's groundbreaking work is his discussion and interpretation of over one hundred thirty aphorisms of Jesus culled from the narrative Gospel of Mark, the discourse Gospel Q, their dependent versions in Matthew and Luke, and their independent versions in such works as the Gospel of John, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Apostolic Fathers. This representative selection inaugurates a landmark discussion of Jesus's aphorisms, raising the aphoristic tradition to the level of interest that the parabolic tradition has always received. In Fragments offers an original method for identifying, organizing, and correlating these sayings that results in a whole new analysis of the stages of New Testament development for this genre. Crossan suggests answers to a variety of critical questions about the historical transmission of these sayings of Jesus, including the shift from the spoken to the written tradition; analyzes their internal structure and dynamic; shows how individual aphorism can be grouped to shed light on each other; discusses how they are transformed into dialogues and stories, and the effect on the original sayings; and, above all, distinguishes what is the peculiar gift of the aphoristic mode, as opposed to teachings embodied in the narrative or dialogue forms.

John Dominic Crossan

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