Product Description

"He comes as yet unknown into a hamlet of Lower Galilee. He is watched by the cold, hard eyes of peasants living long enough at a subsistence level to know exactly where the line is drawn between poverty and destitution. He looks like a beggar yet his eyes lack the proper cringe, his voice the proper whine, his walk the proper shuffle. He speaks about the rule of God and they listen as much from curiosity as anything else. They know all about rule and power, about kingdom and empire, but they know it in terms of tax and debt, malnutrition and sickness, agrarian oppression and demonic possession. What, they really want to know, can this kingdom of God do for a lame child, a blind parent, a demented soul screaming its tortured isolation among the graves that mark the edges of the village?"

–– from "The Gospel of Jesus," overture to The Historical Jesus

The Historical Jesus reveals the true Jesus––who he was, what he did, what he said. It opens with "The Gospel of Jesus," Crossan's studied determination of Jesus' actual words and actions stripped of any subsequent additions and placed in a capsule account of his life story. The Jesus who emerges is a savvy and courageous Jewish Mediterranean peasant, a radical social revolutionary, with a rhapsodic vision of economic, political, and religious egalitarianism and a social program for creating it.

The conventional wisdom of critical historical scholarship has long held that too little is known about the historical Jesus to say definitively much more than that he lived and had a tremendous impact on his followers. "There were always historians who said it could not be done because of historical problems," writes Crossan. "There were always theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were always scholars who said the former when they meant the latter.'

With this ground–breaking work, John Dominic Crossan emphatically sweeps these notions aside. He demonstrates that Jesus is actually one of the best documented figures in ancient history; the challenge is the complexity of the sources. The vivid portrayal of Jesus that emerges from Crossan's unique methodology combines the complementary disciplines of social anthropology, Greco–Roman history, and the literary analysis of specific pronouncements, anecdotes, confessions and interpretations involving Jesus. All three levels cooperate equally and fully in an effective synthesis that provides the most definitive presentation of the historical Jesus yet attained.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41502 in Books
• Published on: 1993-02-26
• Released on: 1993-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

From Library Journal
This monumental work by a leading biblical scholar combines history, literary analysis, and social anthropology into a comprehensive picture of the historical Jesus. Crossan clearly addresses textual problems of the tradition, its chronology, and its attestation in a well-documented and succinct manner. The Jesus who emerges from the inclusive (rather than the exclusive) strain of Judaism resembles a magician more than a prophet, a messianic claimant, a bandit leader, or a nonviolent protestor. He preaches "a religious and economic egalitarianism" through "miracle and parable, healing and eating . . . calculated to force individuals into unmediated physical and spiritual contact with God . . . and one another." Essential for all academic and large public libraries.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New York Times
"[Crossan] argues that Jesus...became a wisdom teacher using Zen-like aphorisms and puzzling parables to challenge social conventions."

-- Marcus Borg, author of Jesus: A New Vision
"The most important scholarly book about Jesus in decades."

Customer Reviews

Disappointed
The first 100 or so pages enthralled me as Crossan analyzes the writings of Josephus and others in regard to Palestine for the 100 years prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70CE. Then in Chapter 7 Crossan sets the scene for the effect of Roman Colonialism. Chapter 8 is interesting as it discusses whether a person is miracle worker (magician per Crossan) or prophet. Crossan's overarching theme is to convince the reader that Jewish protests were normally peaceful but received savage reprisals from the Roman and that Jesus was another peaceful protester.

Crossan dates Thomas' Gospel much earlier than the normal 200 CE and dates Mark's Secret Gospel earlier than Mark's canonical Gospel. He then uses these non-canonical texts as 'first stratum' that is early and therefore with more authority than later stratum. Using an elaborate weighting system in which first stratum and most highly attested texts are given more authority, he then seeks to argue that Jesus was a rural cynic engaged in peaceful protest against Roman Colonial rule. He also argues, unconvincingly to my mind, against an apocalyptic Jesus. Further Crossan sheds doubt on the resurrection, but he appears to give small credence to Paul (1 Cor 15) who met James, Peter and John around 44CE

There is actually no evidence that rural cynics even existed. And as the book wore on, I felt less and less convinced by Crossan's massive super structure of elaborately mixed texts.

Due to Crossan's tendentious presentation, I would not recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about the historical Jesus from cover to cover. For this, I would recommend `A Marginal Jew' by Meier if you can find it. The three volumes are fascinating and demonstrate magnificent research. If you get hold of a copy of Crossan's book, you might keep it for the first 100 or so pages and its abundant references.

Incredible work of history and textual criticism
This is a very thorough textual analysis of primary documentation for the life of Jesus. It is also not a book for everyone. I would specify three possible types of reader, one of which should not read the book, another that doesn't need to, and those that will thoroughly enjoy the work.

The first is that reader for whom the New Testament (NT) is the be all and end all on Jesus and his message. This person will see any confusion in the sources of the NT as being purely a problem of their own lack of understanding; if the texts say something that is internally inconsistant, it must be that only God or his elect are able to understand and lesser individuals are to accept on belief alone even if it doesn't make sense. For this person, the book will only serve to anger you. That will raise your blood pressure, and you don't need that. I would advise you not to read the book for your own health and safety.

The second type of reader is that for whom the story of Jesus as you learned it in Sunday school is your primary religious referent, and you rarely ever delve much into the actual NT. In short, you believe because you like the story as presented to you and the precepts it teaches as you were taught them, and you don't care if it's true or not. My advice for this reader is that you don't really need to read the book, but if you do, it won't upset you in the slightest. You might actually enjoy learning some new things you didn't know before about the history of the period.

The final category of reader is one who is passionately fond of history and enjoys a good textual criticism done by people who know how to do it well: ie. those people who know the languages in which the documents are written to such an extent that they are able to pull out every nuance of meaning from every word, and who know their history well enough to understand the significance of what is said in the primary texts. In fact, they know history so well, they actually know when they are being led astray by the agenda of the original author. This book was, in fact, actually written for this type of intellectually curious reader.


The author, Professor John Crossan, is a Biblical scholar of some note, whose credentials make him an adequate textual critic. He is also well up on the secondary sources in his field of study, both those that disagree with him as well as those that agree. He is also able to accept criticism logically rather than emotionally and emend his own point of view if he feels that the critic has a better take on the material. This shows an open mind and one that is able to assess the data dispassionately rather than assume a defensive posture toward a critic. Since individuals in history can be at times quite nasty in their criticisms, this is no mean feat in and of itself. He also tells the reader what he "used to believe" and what he now believes and why, so that one learns the thinking behind his scholarly decisions.

The first 200 pages of the book--it is a lengthy tome of 426 pages of actual text and 34 Roman numeral introductory pages--are actually preparatory chapters. That is, they are intended to make the beginner an "expert" in the history of the Mediterranean world from 100 BC/BCE to 100 AD/CE. They get rather lengthy and one begins to wonder just when Jesus will actually be part of the discussion.

Here one learns something of Roman imperialism, Hellenistic culture, Jewish culture, how Jewish culture had changed from the Mosaic period to the Temple Period and from that to the Period of Herod and the Second Temple, and about the violence that brought about the destruction of the Temple. One learns about the lives of the various classes in antiquity, how each perceived their world, what aroused them to action or even rebellion, and what happened when they did so.

One definitely learns that this was a very turbulent epic. As one of my professors in the History of Hellenistic Religions once said, "if the person of Jesus didn't exist, someone like him would have." In short, it was time. This book makes that statement even more apparent.

Although I enjoyed this material, I found myself eager to get on with the "good stuff" about Jesus. The point of the author's taking time and paper to put the data in front of me, became more apparent when I actually got to the "good stuff" because the textual critique was very confusing unless set against the background provided in those 200 pages I was so impatient to get through! Many of the stories from the Bible have seemed a little short on detail to me. In fact, some of them seem a little odd. Why would someone as important and distant as Herod and his wife care what a grungy old cynic like John the Baptist thought about their marriage? Why would they even know about him at all? This book tells the reader exactly why. It becomes abundantly clear why an army was sent to disburse his followers and take his head to the king. Why did the Temple authorities take so against John the Baptist and against his successor Jesus of Nazareth? Why would they care about either, and why go along with the execution of both? Here again the author makes it abundantly clear why, what was at stake, and what the two leaders were seen as doing.

In all an incredible work of history and scholarly criticism.

Massive Scholarship, But Not Concise Enough
This is an enormous collection of material about the world at the time of Jesus. It's difficult and very long reading. Many of the ideas about Jesus and the text are conjectural. That's fine, but there are ways to at least cover the texts we have more clearly. Crossan writes about Roman lifestyle, modern scholarship about anthropological views of revolts, --it's very wide ranging and, ironically, very far from the historical Jesus.

Crossan has the habit of using complex prose, and witty section headings. Those section headings, while insightful, don't allow you to get a sense of what the section covers. That just adds to the sense of rambling over a very wide focus.

This text brings an almost encyclopedic amount of material together that helps to build a picture of the world at the time of Jesus of Nazareth. Be prepared, it's very slow going. I feel that this text is more a collection of historical notes, than a finished product. I did not find that it was succinct enough to warrant the effort to read every word.

The scholarship is fine and the writing is interesting (if dense at times). It pulls together some of the ideas of a major NT scholar. I'm still looking for a readable and comprehensive work that covers this material a bit more succinctly. This work, which is worth looking at, to say the least, didn't quite fit what I am looking for. I think most readers are also looking for something more informative and clear.