The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

I've never read a book like this one before, so I have no comparison to make in terms of rating it. I rated it a four because it holds my interest in terms of giving me an indication of how a researcher goes about researching a topic such as the historical Jesus. I was/am interested in knowing something about the life and times that Jesus lived in. That would include cultural traits. I had no idea of the scope necessary to try and piece together who Jesus was, what he stood for, and the message he felt called to share with his Jewish contemporaries. I'm not interested in his own beliefs related to a personalogy of Jesus. Through my own interest in Jesus, prior to his followers Christ-ing him, I have read several books on the historical Jesus that describe him and his message several different ways. Of course, all of the authors profess that their "Jesus" is the authentic one based upon faith and their interpretation of the gospel message. While each one asserts that their interpretation of scripture is the correct one, they deny that anyone else's interpretation could be correct based upon using the same logic and faith-based process. Hence, this is why I do find Crossan's book so interesting. I am gaining insight into how a scholar does his research prior to making an assertion. In the process of leaving Catholicism behind me, I was gaining insight into how the New Testament was creating a god who had way too many human characteristics. From my viewpoint, the Romans crucified Jesus the first time and the New Testament writers - in Christ-ing Jesus - crucified Jesus a second time.

In my system of book reviewing, five star ratings are rarely given, so that John Dominic Crossan's three stars is relatively high praise for his "Historical Jesus", and for an intrepid scholar who never fails to entertain. Crossan's reconstruction is both plausible and imaginative, serving to whet the reader's appetite for more historical Jesus study and leaving the impression that with this book, one has glimpsed only a very small tip of a much larger iceberg. Perhaps most fascinating are the indices at the back of the book, where units of Jesus tradition are tabulated according to their chronological layer of origin and the number of sources which testify to each unit during the earliest period of Christian history. This is one of those books that requires perservering amidst proposals with which one does not agree, but there are so many interesting ideas here that I found it well worth the effort. One of the hypotheses I am not sure about involves the interpretation of the units which Crossan calls "Into The Desert"/"Greater Than John" (Matt 11:7-11):(Luke 7:24-28),which are found together in both Matthew and Luke, and, so far as we can tell, in the Sayings Source Q before them. Crossan however pulls them apart, using one part(Matt 11:7-9): (Luke 7:24-26) to support his view of Jesus having supported the message of John the Baptist, and the other part(Matt 11:10):(Luke 7:27)to posit that Jesus at some point changed his mind and no longer considered John's message adequate(see pp.230-8). Evidently Crossan's main criterion for separating this ostensibly compact unit is the fact that the sayings are in fact separated in the apocryphal Gospel Of Thomas, whose independence from the Synoptic Gospels is far from certain(see Fitzmyer, "Essays On The Semitic Background Of The New Testament",p.360-1):(Meier,"A Marginal Jew" vol.1,p.127). In any case, the evidence of Mark gives us two units of tradition which call into question whether Jesus really changed his mind about the message of John.One unit of tradition says that,just before Jesus left Galilee, people there believed he was actually the now dead John come-back-to-life(8:28),and in the other Jesus,toward the end of his ministry,uses John's popularity with the masses as a shield against his opponents (11:27-33).Crossan according to his informational glossary considers neither of these pericopae as stemming from the historical Jesus,because "the discipline"of his book "is to work primarily with plurally attested complexes from the primary stratum of the Jesus tradition"(pp.409,439,445). This methodology I consider to be the strength of Crossan's work, and makes for some fascinating reading. However, the criterion of embarrassment has been promoted as a means of assessing authenticity(Meier,"A Marginal Jew",vol.1,p.168-9),since the post-Easter church would not have fabricated sayings and stories that would have been embarrassing to the Christian creed,and indeed the overall trajectory of the Gospels is clearly to diminish the importance of the Baptist and to magnify the importance of Jesus, as noted by several scholars (Webb,"John The Baptizer And Prophet",p.50-1,55):(Gundry, "Mark",vol.1,p.59-60):(Witherington,"The Christology Of Jesus",p.198-9):(Funk,Hoover;et.al., "The Five Gospels",p.4). So why would the church have fabricated traditions that have the public believe Jesus is only John "redivivus"(come-back-to-life),or have Jesus need to defer to John's (divine) authority in order to maintain his public support ? I for one am not convinced that the early church would do so, or that the aforesaid traditions are completely unhistorical, so that it is inherently less likely(or perhaps unlikely)that Jesus ever gave up belief in the Baptizer's proclamation. And what exactly was that proclamation anyway ? Was it really so very different from what Jesus preached ? To be sure, the Sayings Source Q depicts John as a "doom" prophet who threatens at least some of his contemporaries with "the wrath to come"(Matt 3:7):(Luke 3:7), but despite the fact that most Old Testament prophets preached judgment, some of them preached deliverance(Hanson and Horsley,"Bandits, Prophets, Messiahs",p.172-3).Indeed it seems that the responsible aspect of the prophetic office included not just warning against ineluctable judgment,but in admonishing, so that judgment may be averted (Rengstorf in Theological Dictionary Of The New Testament,vol.6,p.811). And so John is cast as "Elijah"(Mark 9:13),whom the pre-Christian sages foretold would come and allay God's wrath before it strikes the earth (Sirach 48:10), and whom the Hebrew prophets said would accomplish reconciliation,so that God would "not come and strike the land with a curse"(Mal 4:5-6).Thus the "voice in the wilderness"(Isa 40:3),John the Baptist (Matt 3:3),is a herald of good tidings(Isa 40:9):(Luke 3:18):(16:16),announcing the Kingdom of Heaven(Matt 3:2),"to give knowledge of the salvation of his people, by the forgiveness of their sins"(Luke 1:77). Render Unto Caesar: Jesus And The Secular Authority Of His Day

There are a lot of interesting comments from previous readers re the scholarly style. I think that it was really written for the small cadre of scholars in the "historical Jesus" field. The cross referencing system to other works needed explanation. While struggling with all the anthropological, sociological, historical disciplines I learned of several topics, the Q Gospels, the two different works by Josephus, the Hebrew theological history of the period, and on and on. The book by Reza Aslan "Jesus the Zealot" was simpler and more focused on history. One really needed to be a scholar in the subject because Crossan seemed to think we were all familiar with the subjects and never explained them. How in explaining anthropological customs in the Mediterranean area and then saying the same customs are noted in Indonesian islands blows my mind. I learned much although not easily; the last few paragraphs could have been the executive summary of the book. There was an historical Jesus, and some enterprising followers created a more worldly gospel some 60 or later yrs after his death which became Christianity. The author is a believer although many more simple believers would find him a heretic at best. I am getting closer to finding how a street corner preacher or prophet wound up as the founder of a major religion, but the more I learn the more questions I have.

Minha relação com este livro é de amor e ódio: amor porque eu acho o autor brilhante em suas colocações, análises e clareza metodológica; ódio porque, apesar de tudo isso, não consigo aceitar suas conclusões.Partindo de três camadas interdisciplinares (antropologia intercultural, história romana e judaica e arqueologia), Crossan busca separar textos de contextos para reconstruir (uma palavra-chave para o autor) o Jesus da história.Após o uso das três camadas (antropologia, fontes históricas da época e arqueologia) de forma cruzada, o Jesus de Crossan surge reconstruído como um Camponês Cínico Judeu, alguém que, em suas atitudes e estilo de vida, fazia oposição às elites da época: "O Jesus histórico era, então, um camponês cínico judeu. Sua aldeia camponesa ficava perto o suficiente de uma cidade greco-romana como Séforis, de modo que a visão e o conhecimento do cinismo não são inexplicáveis ​​nem improváveis. Mas seu trabalho estava entre as fazendas e aldeias da Baixa Galiléia. Sua estratégia, implícita para si mesmo e explicita para seus seguidores, era a combinação de cura gratuita e as refeições compartilhadas, um igualitarismo religioso e econômico que negava por igual e ao mesmo tempo as normalidades hierárquicas e patronais da religião judaica e do poder romano."O Jesus reconstruído por Crossan, dessa forma, está longe de ser um profeta apocaliptico judaico como João Batista; ele não está dentro do movimento apocaliptico, esperando a intervenção imediata de Deus que traria o reino escatológico do fim dos tempos, como os primeiros cristãos e Paulo; o Jesus de Crossan está mais próximo de um hippie antigo que pregava a paz, o igualitarianismo e a relação direta com Deus.Por alguns motivos, eu não consigo concordar com Crossan (embora ache sua reconstrução digna de todo respeito): primeiro, porque, mesmo sendo próxima de cidades aparentemente gregas, Nazaré, como qualquer vila do interior hoje em dia, não seria culturalmente influenciada por um movimento estritamente estrangeiro apenas pela proximidade: o fator cultural judaico certamente falaria muito mais alto na matrix (para usar uma palavra preferida de Crossan) de Jesus de Nazaré -- não me parece fazer muito sentido, usando a analogia natural, imaginar que Jesus estaria tão longe do imaginário de seus correligionários; depois, porque reconstruir o que Jesus pensava através da veracidade histórica de algumas falas pode ser perigoso: você corre o risco de favorecer apenas os logions que lhe parecem coniventes com aquilo que já pressupõe sobre Jesus -- esse, a meu ver, é um equívoco primordial do Jesus Seminar.Apesar de ser uma reconstrução brilhante, o Jesus Histórico de Crossan me parece muito mais com o mestre ideal desse antigo padre chamado Dominic do que com um judeu que realisticamente teria vivido há dois mil anos atrás no interior da Galiléia e que foi crucificado com a acusação de pretenso rei dos judeus.

In this volume Crossan meticulously analyses the available material on the historical Jesus, including the "Q" and Thomas gospels and most importantly placing it within its first century context. To know and understand what Jesus most likely said, did and meant, means looking at that material from the point of view of a first century inhabitant of Palestine occupied by the Romans, overshadowed by an old and recent scriptural/ritualistic tradition and the complex social dynamics of Jewish society - the haves and have-nots, the rural and the urban, male and female. This book is not for the casual reader, it is quite dense as compared with Ehrman's work, it requires some commitment but it really will pay off and make you think about Jesus and the Christian history in a completely different, and ultimately more fascinating way.

I am happy with this book. It came on time and I’ve started reading it.

The book is not as expected. I was expecting the author will stress on the Historical jesus but it's not as expected.

good read