Rating: 
Summary: a must read for all lovers of Jesus
Review: I read this book while in school three years ago. I read it in one night, it was so good. Crossan makes Jesus larger than life as he tries to examine what was there about this simple Jewish peasant that made Him so unforgettable to the eleven disciples. Crossan presents a masterful, scholarly examination of the life of Christ and shows why Jesus should never be as famous as He now is. He compares Jesus' lack of achievement with Augustus' great achievements; he fails to show what made the disciples exalt Jesus instead of themselves, and even Paul. I enjoyed this book for what it affirmed with a silence which was replete with eloquence.
Rating: 
Summary: "Biography" : the latest Jesus Seminar flop
Review: I recently read Crossan's book for my college class, and Jesus' new biography according to Crossan is unsubstantial, vicious, and all the conclusions Crossan comes to verge on ludicrous. The main idea of this biography is that everything recorded in the Gospels is false, as Crossan strips Jesus naked of all the character currently attributed to him from deity to his literacy. One would expect some proof of Crossan's claims -- any proof at all -- but the book gives none when it tears down, and none when it rebuilds. It would seem Crossan expects his credentials to be "proof enough" of the accuracy of his biography. He is a respected, 25-year and counting scholar in his field, and the book is on target and inviting. However well-written, the reality is that the reader's spirituality and intelligence are insulted without quarter. One would, Christian are not, expect more from such a "scholarly viewpoint". It was a long, difficult task to read this "biography" over a few weeks without rolling my eyes. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Stunning
Review: I went on a search to learn what the heck really happened 2000 years ago with this great icon of Christianity? What do we really know about who Jesus really was? Where do our greatest contemporary historians stand today? Boy, did I strike gold with this book! Crossan takes you on a journey, methodically filtering through all of the agendas and miracles of historical sources, producing a most brilliant estimate of who Jesus might have been. Told in first person, he keeps you constantly aware of the fact that history is always subject to personal interpretation, and educated estimation. His sources are constantly revealed, keeping you clearly on track of how he derives his opinions. In the end, he removes much of the fog of history, giving the tiniest glimpse of a truly great figure -- and that tiny glimpse is a truly beautiful and powerful view. I could hardly put this book down. Thank you John Dominic Crossan for touching my intellect in such a profound way. The surprise for me was you also touched my heart with such a beautifully told story. Religious scholarship doesn't get better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Too many problems, too little time
Review: If Crossan's own standards of scholarship and authenticity were applied to this book, we would conclude that Crossan really didn't write the book because of so little formal corroborating evidence that he did. This obviously doesn't make sense when we apply his standards to his own book, it certainly doesn't make sense to do the same to the life of Jesus as presented in Scripture, yet that's what he does. He makes his conclusions based on tailoring theories and mythical documents written hundreds of years later than the original Gospels to conform with his preconceived naturalistic tendencies. The four Gospels are not discredited through sound scholarship or manuscript evidence, but by imposing a naturalistic standard upon them and arbitrarily concluding that they are metaphorical and not historical. That's not scholarship, that's an opinion which he does little to back up through independent evidence. The Jesus of faith is the Jesus of history, the mounting evidence showing the reliability of the Gospels and the implausibility that the Gospel of Thomas or "Q" can somehow be more authentic is too much for his theory to overcome. He's grasping at straws, not to mention mythical documents and admitted theories that haven't been proven as the entire basis for his work. There are several books out on the market which truly devastate Crossan's scholarship methods as well as his evidential sources. He creates a secularized Jesus not because that's where the body of evidence leads, but because that's what he wants to conclude.
Rating: 
Summary: Technical, Intriguing, yet, Too Academic
Review: If you want someone to hold your hand in your quest for understanding Jesus, don't read this book. Truth only brings comfort, if in fact, truth itself, brings comfort for you as an individual. That means in essence truth is not always a comfort. I am not saying this book is truth, although, it could be. My point is; your decernment is what is important. You don't need a book at all. But, if you enjoy learning new things and anthropological accepted truths about the place and customs that Jesus walked 2004 years ago, this book is absolutely wonderful and essential. If you do not understand the world was very different then how can you understand what was said back then? No one can argue with that - you cannot! This book does read a little too academic for my taste. It can shake your illusions, if you hold on to particular beliefs like a shield. You as a matter of course need to shatter illusions constantly in order to arrive to a truth or to a conclusion - if one must reach a conclusion. If you are tethered to a belief you will never see truth, only what you want to see. Truth unfolds in the moment so don't let words be 'king'. They do fall short.. One thing has got to be crystal clear if you read the Bible; the four gospels in the New Testiment are contridictory. Please read the Q gospels, the gnostic gospels, The John Dominic Crossan papers and many others if you want to get as close as you can to make up your own mind and get as close as you can to the real historical Jesus. (As close as you can.) You may not need a book at all .Also, read Krishnamurti, the Buddha and on & on. It can't hurt. After all, light is an absence of darkness. Then perhaps you will find 'truth is a pathless land'.
Rating:
Summary: consistently thought provoking
Review: In this popular version of his more scholarly The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan attempts to pare Christ's life down to only those events for which we have the best evidence from: the Gospels; Gnostic Gospels; Roman history; archaeology; and anthropology. This makes for fascinating reading and he wields the various sources masterfully, but it leads to a Jesus whose centrality to world history seems to make little sense. Crossan presents his arguments for what is most likely and most unlikely to have occurred and what it all means. For instance, he traces the various translation possibilities in the term leper and looks at the Jewish kosher laws and concludes that healing the unclean may simply have meant being willing to break bread with them. Likewise, by examining Roman criminal law practices and burial traditions for convicts, he argues that none of the disciples could possibly have known what happened to the body of Christ after the crucifixion and that he must have been left to the dogs. Ultimately, by imposing such textual rigor, Crossan leaves us with a Jesus stripped of miracles, which is fine, but also one who is, oddly, stripped of godliness. Instead, he presents him as merely a radical egalitarian Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. This may also be the case, but how then do we explain his followers' belief in the miracles and in Christ's divinity? And how do we explain his subsequent influence on the course of human history? I disagreed with many of the interpretations and with this broader deChristifying of Jesus, but found Crossan's arguments to be consistently thought provoking. It is quite an enjoyable read. GRADE: B
Rating: 
Summary: Jesus for the secular Left
Review: Isn't it funny how "historico-critical" inquiry into traditional religion always winds up supporting a platform of radical egalitarianism, socialism, and "communitarianism"? See especially Jewish Renewal as espoused by Arthur Waskow and Michael Lerner, and Christianity as espoused by the Jesus Seminar -- including John Dominic Crossan. How convenient that the "essence" of the historical message of Jesus had to do with a program of "open commensality." The program of Jesus the "Mediterranean peasant Jewish cynic" looks wonderfully like the program of today's democratic socialists. But how sad that not one of the Jesus Seminar scholars -- including Crossan -- knows much of anything about economics. We might well have gotten a different book if Jesus's anti-imperial "program" had been responsibly analyzed by someone who actually understands how trade and markets work. "Jesus the Mediterranean Jewish libertarian." Now _there's_ a book I'd be happy to buy. Unfortunately, it would probably be as anachronistic and as full of special pleading as the works of left-leaning scholars. But it would be a nice break from the Derrida-like textual deconstructions of "historians" like Crossan.
Rating:
Summary: A good springboard to your own Jesus studies
Review: Judaica scholar Jacob Nuesner says we create God--and Jesus--after our own image. I think he's right in respect to Crossan and "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography." While I agree with Crossan's politics, I think he makes a mistake to so thoroughly secularize and 20th-Century-ize Jesus, as if he weren't a passionately religious 1st-Century Jew. I also think, however, that the passionate Judaism of Jesus would naturally translate into the kind of social activism and "radical egalitarianism" that Crossan describes in his book. Most valuable are Crossan's description of 1st-Century Mediterranean culture (and its phobia of body-, family-, culture-, and class-contamination), and his interpretation of the parables of Jesus (consistent, for a change, with Jesus's other more direct, less metaphorical, radical teachings). It's good to read this book along with "The Historical Figure of Jesus," by E.P. Sanders. In contrast to Crossan's strictly rationale, secular setting, Sanders describes a 1st-Century Mediterranean world where most people believe in religion and magic.
Rating:
Summary: Its the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Review: Many of Crossan's arguments seem to be built upon his own predetermined ideas. He flexs his scholarly muscle with the use of alot of smoke and mirrors. Crossan either simply can't believe in such miraculous events as a historical resurrection or he doesn't want to. Either way his conclusions are far more unbelievable than a literal account of such events...
Rating:
Summary: Its the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Review: Many of Crossan's arguments seem to be built upon his own predetermined ideas. He flexs his scholarly muscle with the use of alot of smoke and mirrors. Crossan either simply can't believe in such miraculous events as a historical resurrection or he doesn't want to. Either way his conclusions are far more unbelievable than a literal account of such events...
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