Rating: 
Summary: A useful myth, with footnotes.
Review: This book comes in an unusual long, narrow shape, as if to emphasize the unorthodox character of Crossan's approach. His argument is well-written and adorned with interesting background details, and even some good insights. But as a whole, I found that argument far more of a stretch than the book itself. Crossan begins by begging the question. Suppose, he asks, you wanted to go behind the "screen" of "credal interpretation" that are the Gospels for an impartial account of the historical Jesus "as distinct from the confessional Christ?" (Yes. But what if we first ask if the two are distinct, before we ask how they are distinct?) Crossan dismisses academics who come to orthodox conclusions as phoney scholars. But if, on that account, you expect a dispassionate and scholarly approach from Crossan, don't hold your breath. Crossan makes two assumptions in regard to Biblical material. 1) Don't trust materials from after 60 A.D. 2) No argument should stand on the strength of only one independent attestation. With that, unfortunately, a vast amount of non-Jesus seminar history slides into the abyss. The life of Confucius, for example, has only one near source, the Analects. Yet the vast majority of scholars believe, on the grounds of internal evidence of that source, that we have a basically reliable record of Confucius' life and teachings. (For reasons that apply even more strongly in the case of the Gospels.) Furthermore, the Mencius, written more than a hundred years later, is thought to contain accurate information about his life. Unlike Confucius, Jesus died young, and his followers were no doubt younger, and could easily have lived well past Crossan's arbitrary date. If my grandmother, who wrote poetry to the age of 95, had been the little girl Jesus raised from the dead, she could have written a first-hand account of the incident in 105 A.D. Living here in Nagasaki, Japan, were I to write an account of the nuclear holocaust 55 years later (=80 A.D.), I wouldn't even have to look for eyewitnesses, still in perfect health and with perhaps decades left to live. So it seems to me these two assumptions are fine pieces of nonsense. Crossan also commits gross fallacies of classification. For example, he says most Galilean peasants were illiterate. Jesus was a peasant; therefore he believes (despite Gospel accounts to the contrary) Jesus was illiterate. Consider what we can do with this method. Mohatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln were lawyers. Most lawyers are dishonest. Therefore Lincoln and Gandhi were untruthful. It staggers me to think a respected professor could call such an absurd piece of reasoning "scholarship." Crossan also liberally employs the age-old method of "reading between the lines" that C.S.Lewis so crushingly rebuked in his classic (and still devastating) essay, Fernseed and Elephants. Josephus and the Apostle John both wrote about John the Baptist. Crossans adds the two accounts, psychoanalyzes the principles, assumes they were lying about whatever facts they relate that fit their theologies, then fills the resulting holes with what he thinks they must have been covering up. Based on no real evidence, and denying what evidence we have, he concludes that John the Baptist was "not talking about Jesus at all" but was an "apocalyptic preacher" announcing the arrival of an "imperial conquerer." "We can almost guess what John must have been doing by reading between the lines." Of course we can, if we are endowed with such powers as John Crossan. We can even deduce "a huge web of apocalyptic expectations, a network of ticking timebombs all over the Jewish homeland" that was the following of the Baptist, whether they leave trace in the historical record or not. Come on, John. At least Joseph Smith had peep stones to work with. Such are Crossan's usual methods of reasoning. Were I to give all such examples, to paraphrase the apostle John, the World Wide Web itself might not contain all the evidences of Crossan's preturnatural powers. I cringe to think what my professors in grad school would have said if I had turned in arguments of the sort Crossan habitually employs. But in one sense, Crossan deserves his audience. He has created a useful myth with footnotes, a well-written and resourceful Humanist apocrypha that can be hugely useful to those who share his creed. Revolutionary Biography fits into a long tradition of religious spin doctors who sanitize Jesus for their various constituencies. For those who are interested in that tradition (and it is a very interesting story) my new book Jesus and the Religions of Man discusses the Humanist "historical Jesus" in the larger context of Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Marxist, and Mormon tall tales about Jesus. A few reviewers below argue that "No one can know what Jesus really said or did." I think, on the contrary, everyone can know. I do not think anyone would have made up the Gospel accounts as we have them. I don't think anyone could have made them up. Not everyone likes the Jesus who appears in them, but then, not everyone liked Jesus in person, either. Everyone had reason to disbelieve. Books like Crossan's are evidence that the world has come a long way since then in dealing with the problem of Jesus, in terms of scholarly refinement. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man d.marshall@sun.ac.jp
Rating: 
Summary: great work of fantasy, horrible work of scholarship
Review: This book, even to an amateur student of the historicity and reliability of the gospels' account of Jesus, is utterly ridiculous. Crossan works from the perspective that what the Bible says must be wrong, and tries to fit all his evidence to fit that perspective. Relying on a number of historical documents that date much later than the gospels themselves is awfully bias for a supposedly objective scholar. William Lane Craig's book The Son Rises easily surpasses this laughable work in both objectivity and scholarly research. Craig's book, in addition to a number of other more reliable texts, paint an entirely more accurate, logical, and astutely researched portrait of Jesus' life. On a side note, I recommend reading Jesus Under Fire, edited by JP Moreland, in response to the findings of Crossan's group, the Jesus Seminar.
Rating:
Summary: great work of fantasy, horrible work of scholarship
Review: This book, even to an amateur student of the historicity and reliability of the gospels' account of Jesus, is utterly ridiculous. Crossan works from the perspective that what the Bible says must be wrong, and tries to fit all his evidence to fit that perspective. Relying on a number of historical documents that date much later than the gospels themselves is awfully bias for a supposedly objective scholar. William Lane Craig's book The Son Rises easily surpasses this laughable work in both objectivity and scholarly research. Craig's book, in addition to a number of other more reliable texts, paint an entirely more accurate, logical, and astutely researched portrait of Jesus' life. On a side note, I recommend reading Jesus Under Fire, edited by JP Moreland, in response to the findings of Crossan's group, the Jesus Seminar.
Rating: 
Summary: Crossan is the reasoned voice of religion - excellent!
Review: This is a wonderful work that has now been taken further by Richard Patton in his awe-inspiring work "THE Autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth and the Missing Years". Crossan, wonderful as always, has presented the reasonable portrait of the MAN that was Jesus, based on what we know to be true - not what we are told by religion. Patton takes this further and has dared to get inside the head of the founding figure of Christianity. If you want to go further than what is preached from the pulpit, both these excellent works MUST be read. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: For ye of little faith.
Review: This is not a work that a pious Christian will find very productive to read, largely because Crossan is not a believer, and therefore is seeking to describe the human, historical Jesus rather than the divine Jesus. But to those of little faith, it is a fascinating, yet often flawed look at the historical Jesus.
Written for a popular audience, those of a somewhat more scholarly bent might be appalled by the paucity of footnotes, although the book was meant somewhat to be a distillation of his more scholarly works.
The book overall is an intriguing look at the conditions of 1st Century Judea, which might have brought forth a figure such a Jesus. Crossan supports plausible hypotheses about which parts of the gospels should be treated as fact and which of fiction; he discounts the birth in Bethlehem (a tribute to David), the flight to Egypt (a tribute to Moses), painting the picture of a radical, intransient healer, who disrupted the temple prior to passover and was crucified as a result.
The book also contains a few major red herrings; comparisons of Jesus to the Cynics and a pointless parallel to Augustus (divi filius) come to mind. He often makes complicated arguments on the basis of comparative anthropology, but cites only a single study to support his radical conclusions. Furthermore, although he makes a great deal about the effect of Roman imperialism, and the resistance to that Imperialism, he engages in no serious exploration of the nature of Roman administration in Judea, particularly as it would have touched the peasants that he claims Jesus ministered to.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful
Review: This is perhaps the easiest book to understand Crossan's insights of the Historical Jesus. He uses the same frame of reference of previous works (Antrhopology, History, Literature), but unlike his other books this is readable, and one can appreciate his insight into the life of Jesus, whether we agree or disagree with his conclusions. In my case, "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography",was a helpful introduction to other Crossan's major works.
Rating:
Summary: Best biography since Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo
Review: This was an exceptionally informative read. Crossan manages to raise some compelling questions without forcing his own interpretation on the reader. Yes, there is much here that will unnerve both the theologian and those of rigid faith, but nothing that isn't explored with reasoned and compassionate insight. As to the Kirkus review above, it falls prey to its own criticism - telling us more about the critic than the book itself. Read Crossan. He will open yours eyes.
Rating:
Summary: The Reviews Say it All
Review: This work of Crossan's is speculative in the extreme, and admittedly so. However, no matter how unsound the conclusions may be, the research is sound, and one is left with a few good questions and a few good ideas about how to approach them. I see that the power of this book lies in its ability to spark controversy, and from there, spark innovative thought. Read the other reviews. All of the reviewers, whether they agree with Crossan's speculations or not, at least were compelled to react!
Rating:
Summary: at the least, it's very thought-provoking
Review: To be frank and honest I find it very difficult to critique a book such as this. With the author's attempt to debunk the position that the Gospels are not intended to be taken literally as historical fact, this book is likely to outrage a very "conservative" Christian and fascinate a liberal one. He admits to a bit of speculation in his reconstructions, and I cannot state whether or not they were well reasoned as a whole. To be sure, they are very original. I thought his comparisons between the Greek Cynics and the Apostles were excellent, and more relevant than most people would imagine. The chapter arguing against a regal burial for Jesus was perhaps more lurid than necessary. His analyses of some of the famous parables (such as the feeding of the five thousand, the mustard seed) and moments in the Gospels (such as Emmaus in Luke 24) were well presented, although one may not be persuaded by them. The epilogue seemed to me a dissapointment, where he introduced the Nicea conference and left the reader up in the air, as it were. The weight of exposition is excellent, and the book is very readable, unlike some other material. I think this work posed as many questions as it attempted to answer, and left me curious for more investigation. I think it's definitely worth reading, although it will not appeal to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Read Horsley Instead
Review: To say that this is a work on the historical Jesus is simply a fallacy. Instead of adressing Jesus within his social context, through using the tools of archeology and the many textual sources available, Crossan abstracts the sayings of Jesus and then imposes modern sociological theory back onto Jesus. It's one thing to do a sociological analysis of first century Palestine, it's quite another to use general (western modernist) sociological theory and then fit Jesus into it. Crossan's sources can hardly be seen as credible in his "reconstruction" of Jesus' social context. (Precisely because such a recontruction is lacking. Instead, we end up with more abstraction and psycho-analysis, though a weak one). The cynic theory is long ago dead to legitimate sholarship (see Arnal, Reed and Horsley among others) because it simply does not deal with Jesus' context. Galilee was not a thriving pagan anything. There is no archeological support for large numbers of pagans. This book is so utterly immaterial that to put it in the historical Jesus category is deceptive. Perhaps this is why Crossan's newer work is done with Reed, an archeologist and excellent scholar, who in his own work is critical of Crossan's thesis. I have recently started "Excavating Jesus" by these two and have much higher hopes for it b/c it is material and as material, in the first few pages alone it contradicts some of Crossan's points. For example, Crossan claims in this book that crucified people were simply left to the wild animals after possibly being thrown into shallow graves. So, therefore, the early Jesus followers (who lived in a way very similar to sociolism, but were even more radical though non-violent) made the whole thing up. He's right of course to say that it was common to leave the bodies for wild animals, but he ignores the possibility of particularity since Jesus had Joseph of Arimethea,a prominant Pharisee, requesting the body. (He also assumes this is made up, though he lacks a decent reason for thinking so, other than that it doesn't agree with his presuppositions.) Through archeological discoveries, we now have a crucified man in a tomb. There were exceptions and this demonstrates that point. "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography" is simply sloppy scholarship. Read Wright, Horsley, Moxnes, Sanders, Reed, Arnal, and Oakman for a more accurate picture of the "historical" Jesus. For more theological examinations of his work in terms of its social aspects see Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus." Ched Myers has an excellent poltical reading of Mark called "Binding the Strong Man."
|
