Rating: 
Summary: Crossan belongs on a box of Lucky Charms
Review: I have admired the work of John Dominic Crossan for some time. That is, until I really began to ponder what he taught. His theory that dogs ate the body of Jesus is absurd. Crossan would have us believe that dogs picked, in all Jerusalem, the exact grave of Jesus--who just happened to mention he'd rise from the dead--and were hungry enough to devour his body before Sunday. And Jesus' disciples apparently never saw any blood or body parts lying about the grave. For someone who is such a respected scholar, Crossan comes up with the most insane theories--all because he can't actually believe that maybe Jesus really did rise from the grave. You want a book that really puts Crossan and the other Jesus Seminar goofs with their little beads in their place? Read "Jesus Under Fire."
Rating: 
Summary: Groundbreaking!! Jesus as you have never seen him before
Review: I have made a life long study of Jesus and the Bible and NEVER have I read such an excellent and fascinating book. In fact,it was so good I actually read it TWICE!!! I have read a lot of books about Jesus by all sorts of people and I don't think there has ever been one like this. It's a cooperative effort between one of the worlds greatest archeologist(Jonathan L Reed) and one of the most respected Jesus scholars(John Dominic Crossan). They manage to put these two disciplines together in such a way that the life and teachings of Jesus literally come alive on the page. I learned so much. Plus the book reads like a great mystery novel. I could barely put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: James Ossuary shouldn't be here
Review: I must question the inclusion of the James Ossuary in the Top Ten list (#1 even) in this book. The authenticity of the inscription was dubious from the start, and has since been proven a forgery. Reading their reasons for including this bone box, I wondered why they didn't include other alleged artifacts about Jesus.
If authenticity isn't a high priority, then why didn't they include the Shroud of Turin? Or the hundreds of supposed nails to Jesus' cross that's being venerated in churches across the old world. Or some decayed piece of wood that was part of the cross where the son of man was executed. Religious relics are a dime a dozen if we throw away the criterion of authenticity, and James' bone box wouldn't make the top ten.
Very disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting attempt
Review: I would account this a good book, well worth the read. The noble attempt to fuse archaeological evidence with Biblical exegesis is very helpful in giving a much clearer vision of life in the first century and thereby putting a context to Jesus' life and preaching.It is not, however, free of flaws, and those have caused me to give it only three stars instead of four. One is that the jumping back and forth between archaeology and exegesis is sometimes confusing. Another is that whole paragraphs, whole physical descriptions, entire lines of argument, are sometimes repeated almost word for word. These are problems that superior editing could have and should have dealt with. Another issue involves not so much a flaw as a caveat, but it does matter. I freely admit to not being a believer; my interest is in the historical Jesus, the real, actual flesh-and-blood person who sought to bring a prophetic message to the ignored and exploited, who died likely thinking himself a failure and convinced, if the Gospels are to be believed at all, that even God had forsaken him - but whose life and death became the basis for one of the world's great religions (and political forces). In pursuing that interest, I've read several books on the Gospels and the life of Jesus by various authors (including Crossan) and I've noticed they all share one characteristic: Every author has his or her own Jesus, their own particular view of him and of how he himself saw his work and his intent, and they invariably interpret Biblical passages in ways that fit their notions. This is as true of devout believers as it is of dedicated debunkers. The current volume is no exception, and the caveat is thus that the book should be read with open eyes as well as open minds.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting archaeology and flawed scriptural interpretation
Review: I would buy this book for the archaeological sections by Reed, but I found Crossan's work here to be faulty almost beyond description, but let me try. Crossan is famous for slicing and dicing the Bible and reconstructing the pieces to fit his preconceived notions of the truth. He has done this again in this book, but this time his co-author (Reed) directly contradicts Crossan's fabrications with hard geological and archaeological evidence. For example, on page 29 Crossan correctly observes that a lethal attack on Jesus is described by Luke. Then on page 30 Crossan ignores Reed's undisputable evidence and states that it is 'simply false' that Jesus could have experienced a lethal threat of being hurled off a cliff to this death as described by Luke. Reed contradicts Crossan's fabrications when on page 34 Reed states that on the North end of Nazareth the town was confined by steep ravines. The Greek word used in Luke to describe the place where Jesus was threatened with being thrown to his death is 'ophrus'. 'Ophrus' (Strong's 3790) means 'the brink of a precipice' Precipice (Webster) means 'a very steep or overhanging place or a hazardous situation'. Clearly if I would lead you to the North end of town and get you near the edge of a steep ravine, you would be in a hazardous situation. In another example, on page 29 Crossan states that Nazareth was 'most unlikely' to have had a synagogue in Jesus' time since no archaeological evidence for a synagogue building was found. This ostensibly negates Luke's statement that Jesus read scripture in the synagogue. Reed correctly states that on page 26 that at the time of Jesus the word synagogue referred to a gathering of people less than it refered to a physical building, so the absence of physical building remnants is not meaningful. Further more, the vast majority of Nazareth has not been excavated to the time of Jesus, so we can't say that the physical building of the synagogue does not exist buried under today's buildings. Archaeological and scriptural artifacts both require some degree of subjective analysis to bring meaning to those artifacts. Crossan admits that scriptural interpretation is more open to debate than archaeological interpretation. Crossan does not admit that his scriptural interpretations are biased to the point of directly contradicting the physical facts as documented by Reed just pages away from Crossan's faulty exegesis. If you are looking for a book where the physical facts of archeology are woven into the scriptural interpretations, forget this book. Not only are these two not integrated, they are often contradictory. Crossan twists the facts, overlooks obvious physical truths and re-writes the Bible to fit his preconceived ideas about the truth. The result of Crossan's academic and narcissistic speculation is an embarrassment to the Biblical scholarly community.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, disjointed
Review: The authors try to convince the reader that since archaeology involves peeling back the physical layers of ancient settlements, then exegesis should also peel back layers of the Gospels. This is not an obvious truth and requires a leap to accept. They then proceed to "peel back" layers in the Gospels, pretty much at random and without convincing me. They use circular reasoning, biased judgments and some fairly insulting claims about the Gospel writers. It makes a lot more sense and is certainly more intellectually honest to take the witnesses to Jesus's life as serious historians. Where do I go to get my money back? (Sorry, I bought the book elsewhere, not at amazon.com.)
Rating:
Summary: Relentlessly Digging For The Truth!
Review: The authors, one an exegete, the other an archaeologist, argue that understanding the historical Jesus is possible only by interweaving excavation of the relevant ground and texts. While "alternately written" by Crossan (emer., DePaul Univ., IL) and Reed (Univ. of La Verne, CA), each chapter demonstrates the potency of the interplay between archaeology and textual studies (on sociological questions, cf. Hanson and Oakman's Palestine in the Time of Jesus, CH, Feb'99). Despite the absence of any explicit reference to Jesus the Cynic philosopher, familiar themes from Crossan's The Historical Jesus (CH, Jun'92) do recur here, e.g., Jesus' nonviolent resistance to the normalized, structural oppression inherent in the Romanization, urbanization, and commercialization of Palestine. The excavation analogy, which assumes the stratification of both ground and gospels, comes with the acknowledgment that its application to the stratification of the gospels is problematic, something made evident to specialists by anticipation of the inevitable clamor that some of the exegetical items listed in the authors' "Top Ten Discoveries for Excavating Jesus" will raise. This interesting section suggests that this volume is not directed to specialists. Rather, the volume works well as an introduction to both the methodology and the scholarly background of the contemporary search for the historical Jesus. General readers; lower-division undergraduates.
Rating:
Summary: It was ok
Review: The first few chapters really grabbed me. But they lost me at the part where they began writting as if the theoretical "Q Gospel" was a reality. Several lengthy chapters dedicated to an imagined reality. And one might miss the single sentence that says "let's suppose..." Biblical scholars know Matthew's gospel is longer because Matthew was likely the only apostle who could write. He was a tax collector and probably knew shorthand. Luke's gospel varies because he learned second hand. Mark's gospel varies further as he learned from Luke. But what do I know? ;)
Rating:
Summary: Catchy Title Catches Readers
Review: The idea of "excavating" a text is an alien one for most of us so Crossan and Reed "dig" right into that matter in the very first chapter of their book. The Gospels are viewed as multi-layered documents like an archaeological mound, and it is the duty of Tradition Criticism to establish the successive layers. The idea is to get down to the "textual stratum of Jesus' life" (p xvii). For these layers C&R have given the names original, traditional, and evangelical. How does the method work? Since GMatt and GLuke do not share an infancy narrative with GMark and GJohn, what they relate is not original but draws on the traditional. GMatt and GLuke each handle the matter in their own ways and so the evangelical layer of the tradition. Ironically GMatt created the controversy concerning the birth of Jesus found in Celsus et al when the writer of GMatt attempted to create a parallel to Amram, the father of Moses. For me the first was the most interesting chapter. Subsequent chapters attempt to fill out the social world where Jesus lived. Rome like Jeroboam had established a "commercial kingdom." Jesus like Amos wanted to establish a "covenantal kingdom." Jesus' emphasis upon food rather than land was an economic necessity in the 20's. C&R add a few more chapters on the social world of Jesus. Early in the book C&R write that Jesus acted in opposition to the "localization of Rome." C&R claim that this is what caused Jesus to be executed. "Pilate got it exactly right, from the point of view to his imperial responsibilities: Jesus and his kingdom were a threat to Roman law and order" (p 274). Crossan and Reed have presented their arguments well. A book review is too short of a space to do more than suggest a few items that would lead to another conclusion. C&R describe the Jesus movement as a non-violent movement and say that only its leader was executed. To me this does not make sense. Had the message of Jesus been that volatile in its "original" stage, it must have been even more so in a "traditional" stage and even more so in an "evangelical " stage. First of all, the writings of the New Testament point toward another picture of Jesus and Christianity. John 18.36 has Jesus saying that his kingdom is not of this world. Mark 10.14 and the parallel texts in Matt and Luke have Jesus saying that children are such of the domain of God/heaven. These point toward a Christianity that is other than one identified as political. Second of all, in non-Christian writings, Jesus and Christianity are not identified are political entities with the possible exceptions of a reference in Josephus and one in Pliny. Both of these may be explained as non-political. Rather Jesus is known as a wise man and wonder worker. Early Christians are portrayed as worshipers of a deity. Third of all, the portrayal of the followers of Jesus as a political entity fails to explain how it became otherwise known. Therefore I suggest that Pilate did not get it right. What I suggest instead is that Pilate executed Jesus out of expedience. Excavating Jesus. Catchy idea. Catchy title. Catchy book. Don't get hooked.
Rating:
Summary: Archaeology Meets Exegesis--A Splendid Union!
Review: The world's premier Historical Jesus expert and a brilliant young archaeologist of the Galilee team up together in a fascinating new book that digs down through the complex layers of ancient ruins and ancient texts to uncover a fuller portrait of Jesus and the first century Palestine where he lived. In their unique collaboration, *Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts*, John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed explore and weave together the ten most significant archaeological findings from ancient Palestine with the ten most significant textual discoveries of modern biblical studies. The result of their combined efforts is an unforgettable glimpse into the everyday life of Jesus of Nazareth as we've never seen before. Crossan, the best-selling author of several authoritative books on the Historical Jesus including *The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant* and *The Birth of Christianity*, marries his exhilarating and provocative portrait of Jesus as a counter-cultural itinerant Jewish preacher of a radically just and egalitarian Kingdom of God with the phenomenal advances in biblical archeology and cultural anthropology that have revolutionized those disciplines over the last one hundred years. Reed, author of the highly-praised study *Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence* and lead archaeologist at the current Sepphoris excavations in the Galilee, provides compelling descriptions of first century material culture that persuasively paint a clear picture of the clash of two kingdoms--the earthly imperial Kingdom of Rome as practiced by the Herods and Caesar with tacit cooperation of leading Jewish elites, and the divine but also earthly Kingdom of God as preached by Jesus and his peasant followers. Reed highlights the stark contrast between the lavish palaces and marble basilicas of the Roman client-king Herod the Great and his tetrarch son Herod Antipas with the grinding poverty and agricultural exploitation of Jesus'peasant neighbors in Nazareth who lived only an hour's walk from the Romanized city of Sepphoris, Herod's glorious capital in the Galilee. The authors demonstrate how the ubiquitous ritual baths, ritually pure stone vessels, absence of imperial icons and specialized burial chambers found throughout Palestine indicate the steadfast determination of first century Jews to resist non-violently and hold onto their distinct religious practices and covenental way of life under the divine rule of the Jewish God of Justice, even as those practices set them on a direct collision course with the distributive injustice of Roman-Herodian commercialization in the name of empire-building. Crossan and Reed lead us on a pilgrim's view tour of Jerusalem's magnificent Second Temple that fills our senses with the sights, smells and sounds of the priestly sacrificial rites occurring there on a daily basis as Jewish and Gentile pilgrims from all over the Roman Empire crowded there to admire Herod the Great's architectual handiwork, all overseen by ever-vigilant Roman soldiers from the nearby Antonia fortress. But the beauty and majesty of Herod's Temple and its highly politicized elite cult of wealthy land-owning priests clashed ambiguously with the sacred Torah's insistence that land, the material basis of life itself, belonged to God, not Caesar. Through its highly readable exploration of stones and texts, material remains and textual remains, ground and gospel, *Excavating Jesus* helps us thoroughly understand what Jesus of Nazareth's radical life, ignoble death and vindicating Resurrection were really about--enacting a vision of a Eutopian world of justice and equality under a covenental God who wants us to fairly share the bounty of the earth and the material basis of life among all God's children in both the first century and the twenty-first. After reading this book, you will never again see Jesus or the message of the Gospels in the same light.
| 
