Rating: 
Summary: Leaving the priesthood... without leaving the religion
Review: It's too easy to write off Crossan as another "priest who left", but his candid biography makes that task even more difficult, demonstrating that he still and always takes his religion seriously even when his role in it is uncertain.Crossan's memoir answers almost all the questions I'd have asked him if I could, and more. As another reviewer commented, the passages about the death of his first wife show sweetly (but not sickeningly!), that in leaving the priesthood, Crossan began the proceess of becoming more fully human. For Crossan, reconstructing himself was part of the task of reconstructing Jesus, for it is in Jesus' full humanity that he finds the deepest roots of his faith. As a Jew, I can't connect with that belief on a theological level, but as a person of faith, I found Crossan's search, both for himself and for the Jesus he was never introduced to in seminary, to be moving in the most profound way. Though his story might have been more sensationalistic if he'd "lost his faith" and gone on to condemn Christianity, Crossan has taken the nobler path and revitalized Christian thought in the process. This memoir is an excellent springboard to his other, more theological works, creating a context for his beliefs and presenting a portrait of the kind of sympathetic teacher every religion needs.
Rating:
Summary: Leaving the priesthood... without leaving the religion
Review: It's too easy to write off Crossan as another "priest who left", but his candid biography makes that task even more difficult, demonstrating that he still and always takes his religion seriously even when his role in it is uncertain. Crossan's memoir answers almost all the questions I'd have asked him if I could, and more. As another reviewer commented, the passages about the death of his first wife show sweetly (but not sickeningly!), that in leaving the priesthood, Crossan began the proceess of becoming more fully human. For Crossan, reconstructing himself was part of the task of reconstructing Jesus, for it is in Jesus' full humanity that he finds the deepest roots of his faith. As a Jew, I can't connect with that belief on a theological level, but as a person of faith, I found Crossan's search, both for himself and for the Jesus he was never introduced to in seminary, to be moving in the most profound way. Though his story might have been more sensationalistic if he'd "lost his faith" and gone on to condemn Christianity, Crossan has taken the nobler path and revitalized Christian thought in the process. This memoir is an excellent springboard to his other, more theological works, creating a context for his beliefs and presenting a portrait of the kind of sympathetic teacher every religion needs.
Rating:
Summary: Searching For Clues
Review: John Dominic Crossan has led an adventurous life which included twenty years spent as a Roman Catholic monk and thirty years reconstructing the historical Jesus. The challenge for me in reading this book is searching for clues as to what factors in his background have influenced his studies and conclusions. His descriptions of his parents, boyhood teachers and youthful life in an Ireland recently freed from its colonial past are fairly interesting but too superficial. More intriguing are those parts of the book which deal with his profound anger directed at the church hierarchy and the chapter which describes the evolution of his early research on the sayings and parables of Jesus into a wider quest focusing on the life of Jesus.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a great book!
Review: John tries to help us know Jesus and himself, but no true feelings come through. When he gets a little close to some strong feelings within himself for example, leaving the seminary, falling in love, losing that love, John switches over to talking about Jesus. It's as if he needs to hide his true feelings behind his study of Jesus. John, unless you are willing to look within yourself, you will never be successful in finding Jesus.
Rating: 
Summary: Unrevieling
Review: John tries to help us know Jesus and himself, but no true feelings come through. When he gets a little close to some strong feelings within himself for example, leaving the seminary, falling in love, losing that love, John switches over to talking about Jesus. It's as if he needs to hide his true feelings behind his study of Jesus. John, unless you are willing to look within yourself, you will never be successful in finding Jesus.
Rating:
Summary: Good - but no punch, no oomph!
Review: The book covers the span of his childhood, adolescence, his entering and then leaving the seminary, his first wife, his scholarly output at Depaul, all the way up to his current retirement with his second wife. We get glimpses of his youth - needing to memorize classic poetry for class, loving climbing trees, his voracious appetite for reading. As he continues through the book, the first thing I was struck by was the easygoing, confident style of his writing style. There is no trace of anger or resentment in this theologian who left the priesthood because he wanted complete intellectual freedom. He is loose, occasionally witty, and sincere when he discusses such events as his first wife's heart attack. It's an easy read, personal and informal. But this is exactly my problem with the book. I know his conclusions - this is the man who once was a traditional, obedient Roman Catholic priest - who later stated that Jesus wasn't resurrected, more likely his body was eaten by dogs. The reason I wanted to read his memoirs was so I could learn about the man and his journey - how did he end up at such an incredibly unorthodox, controversial position? I assume that this is also one of the central reasons other people are reading it too. After all, it's why he is so (in)famous. Here we have this man who says things very straightforwardly that conflict with traditional Christianity such as: "For myself, therefore, I admit a total disinterest in afterlife options, either to affirm or to deny them. Either way, they distract me from ... the Kingdom of God." "I refuse to accept Heaven from a God who could invent hell.... Hell is an obscenity.... Mrs. Job had the only proper answer: Curse God and die." Whoa! Strong words! When Crossan himself explains why he turned to historical Jesus research, he says he wishes that there was some 'sexy answer ready for media consumption', but that it is actually a long process. His path went from seminary to becoming interested in parables, the nature of story, and Jesus's words - to proper historical methodology and a growing interest in Jesus's deeds. I read and reread his account , and it is all so bloodless and uninvolving. It's merely an intellectual odyssey. Yes, I too am fascinated by the nature of parable, etc. But even for a mild mannered academic, how could he have not felt some sturm and drang over concluding that Jesus was a normal human who had been mythologized? Traditional Christians take it for granted that Jesus is NOT merely some archetype or representation of the perfect man - he WAS perfect, he WAS god. Presumably, Crossan thought that at one point too. He never mentions anything in the book to suggest his concept of Jesus was anything but mainstream until his research began. We don't get anything about his sense of purpose or piety before the break, either. It is as if his scholarly conclusions didn't register emotionally to him. This made the book totally unsatisfying for me. It didn't ring true. Did Crossan truly experience no stress over this? We actually get more on his worries over not being employable after leaving the prieshood! In his "The Birth of Christianity", Crossan discusses how he does not believe that people get up and walk out of graves, ever. What? Where did this come from? We get none of it. Crossan says at one point that believers could not get past the question: " 'So the Gospel stories are just fictions? ' It was all still negative. There was still no grasp of the positive power of parable." I empathized with how journalists and believers could not really listen to him because they were focused on the destructive element to Crossan position. But I must admit - it just didn't make sense to me how he didn't understand the literal approach, either. I am not a Christian - but I fully relate to the desire to know who Jesus was literally, concretely, historically. That quest MATTERS to me, I feel strongly about it. Creative, accepting, postmodern theologians like Crossan and Bishop John Shelby Spong don't seem to understand that metaphor is NOT what we want, deep down. (At least it's not ALL we want.) We also want to think that our metaphysical beliefs are TRUE, not just 'true for me' or meaningful, no matter how scared we might be into actually questioning them. Crossan states he believes in God - and I believe him. But he doesn't address what that leaves for his own unique version of Jesus. Was Jesus still special? If not actual part of the trinity, then maybe blessed as the voice of god? Crossan DOES have some interesting things to say on metaphor, the Trinity, to be sure, and I enjoyed them What I love most about his work is the thrill of his honesty and integrity - how he tries to construct this rigorous, explicit interdisciplinary methodology that spans the cross cultural anthropology of peasant societies, archaelogy, cognitive psychology, the philosophy of social science - the list goes on. Here we have a theologian who has said again and again that his primary motivation in writing his opus "Jesus: The Life of a Mediterrainean Jewish Peasant" was to redefine method in his field , and we get none of his journey on that, either. Puzzling. Crossan asks himself if he harbors any ill will from his quest, and he says: "Hurt, anger, hate? I do not think so, because I cannot find those feelings anywhere in my heart, but I will let you judge for myself." Unfortunately, I agree - his memoir is strangely casual and passionless. He was this passive, obedient priest who took this abstract, quantum leap right over into postmodern, 'sarcophilic' theology. I still love his other works. This book - it's light, easy reading. But it won't answer any big questions you have about his path.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: This book would have gotten just one star if it weren't for the last chapter, which is brilliant. Some of the theological musings are interesting but most of this book was just surface level. There is no passion in this book. This book makes Crossan look very shallow. Never does he go into his own spiritual journey or even really his own personal feelings. Much of the details in his life are quite boring as well. Leaving the priesthood is interesting, but he never really goes into why he left the priesthood. Very dissapointing. I'd suggest that if someone still wanted to read this book, get it used and know what to expect.
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