The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant [Hardcover]

The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant is but one of a long list of controversial works that J. D. Crossan has produced. To be honest, I struggled through the first half of this 500+ page study--Jesus is barely mentioned until chapter 11. Instead, Crossan spends the first ten chapters carefully laying the groundwork for his research. By the time I reached page 225, I had covered social relationships unique to the Mediterranean region, a variety of peasant responses to political and religious oppression (especially in Palestine during the first century C.E.), Jesus' philosophical and religious contemporaries (especially from the poorest in society). Crossan approaches his study of Jesus armed with anthropological, sociological, historical and literary tools, and focuses especially on where all of his tools converge.

Especially noteworthy is his approach to the documentary evidence of Jesus' words and deeds. He draws upon 200+ years of New Testament exegesis and Christian Biblical studies to create "An Inventory of the Jesus Tradition by Chronological Stratification and Independent Attestation." I was probably more excited by this Appendix than by most of the book. The first stratum (30-60 C.E.) contains: several Pauline epistles; non-canonical gospels and fragments, including the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of the Hebrews; and finally sources now embedded in the canonical Gospels, including the Sayings Gospel Q, the Miracles Collection and the Cross Gospel. The Gospel of Mark, which I had always considered one of the oldest sources, falls into the second stratum (60-80 C.E.), and Matthew, Luke, and John fall in the third stratum (80-120 C.E.) (along with many other documents/fragments in these strata). He then creates a hierarchy of sayings and stories based on the strata and the level of independent attestation. The lower the stratum (i.e. the closer in time to Jesus) and the greater the number of independent sources, the greater the weight/probability that Crossan assigns to that tradition.

Armed with all of these powerful tools, Crossan reaches the following conclusion about the original Jesus of history: Jesus was a "peasant Jewish Cynic." He preached and practiced radical egalitarianism symbolized by an open table at which the despised and outcast (including women) were welcome, and where he, though teacher and healer, was also a lowly servant. At some point he left rural Galilee for Jerusalem, and after creating a disturbance at the temple, was promptly crucified. The passion and resurrection stories were slowly built up from scriptural exegesis as scribal followers tried to make sense of what had happened to their master.

The Historical Jesus is heavy reading on multiple levels (regarding both faith and scholarship). If you haven't read anything yet on the historical study of Jesus, I highly recommend the approachable (and much, much shorter) Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, which is a popularized and condensed version of The Historical Jesus.

This is a very thorough textual analysis of primary documentation for the life of Jesus. It is also not a book for everyone. I would specify three possible types of reader, one of which should not read the book, another that doesn't need to, and those that will thoroughly enjoy the work.

The first is that reader for whom the New Testament (NT) is the be all and end all on Jesus and his message. This person will see any confusion in the sources of the NT as being purely a problem of their own lack of understanding; if the texts say something that is internally inconsistant, it must be that only God or his elect are able to understand and lesser individuals are to accept on belief alone even if it doesn't make sense. For this person, the book will only serve to anger you. That will raise your blood pressure, and you don't need that. I would advise you not to read the book for your own health and safety.

The second type of reader is that for whom the story of Jesus as you learned it in Sunday school is your primary religious referent, and you rarely ever delve much into the actual NT. In short, you believe because you like the story as presented to you and the precepts it teaches as you were taught them, and you don't care if it's true or not. My advice for this reader is that you don't really need to read the book, but if you do, it won't upset you in the slightest. You might actually enjoy learning some new things you didn't know before about the history of the period.

The final category of reader is one who is passionately fond of history and enjoys a good textual criticism done by people who know how to do it well: ie. those people who know the languages in which the documents are written to such an extent that they are able to pull out every nuance of meaning from every word, and who know their history well enough to understand the significance of what is said in the primary texts. In fact, they know history so well, they actually know when they are being led astray by the agenda of the original author. This book was, in fact, actually written for this type of intellectually curious reader.

The author, Professor John Crossan, is a Biblical scholar of some note, whose credentials make him an adequate textual critic. He is also well up on the secondary sources in his field of study, both those that disagree with him as well as those that agree. He is also able to accept criticism logically rather than emotionally and emend his own point of view if he feels that the critic has a better take on the material. This shows an open mind and one that is able to assess the data dispassionately rather than assume a defensive posture toward a critic. Since individuals in history can be at times quite nasty in their criticisms, this is no mean feat in and of itself. He also tells the reader what he "used to believe" and what he now believes and why, so that one learns the thinking behind his scholarly decisions.

The first 200 pages of the book--it is a lengthy tome of 426 pages of actual text and 34 Roman numeral introductory pages--are actually preparatory chapters. That is, they are intended to make the beginner an "expert" in the history of the Mediterranean world from 100 BC/BCE to 100 AD/CE. They get rather lengthy and one begins to wonder just when Jesus will actually be part of the discussion.

Here one learns something of Roman imperialism, Hellenistic culture, Jewish culture, how Jewish culture had changed from the Mosaic period to the Temple Period and from that to the Period of Herod and the Second Temple, and about the violence that brought about the destruction of the Temple. One learns about the lives of the various classes in antiquity, how each perceived their world, what aroused them to action or even rebellion, and what happened when they did so.

One definitely learns that this was a very turbulent epic. As one of my professors in the History of Hellenistic Religions once said, "if the person of Jesus didn't exist, someone like him would have." In short, it was time. This book makes that statement even more apparent.

Although I enjoyed this material, I found myself eager to get on with the "good stuff" about Jesus. The point of the author's taking time and paper to put the data in front of me, became more apparent when I actually got to the "good stuff" because the textual critique was very confusing unless set against the background provided in those 200 pages I was so impatient to get through! Many of the stories from the Bible have seemed a little short on detail to me. In fact, some of them seem a little odd. Why would someone as important and distant as Herod and his wife care what a grungy old cynic like John the Baptist thought about their marriage? Why would they even know about him at all? This book tells the reader exactly why. It becomes abundantly clear why an army was sent to disburse his followers and take his head to the king. Why did the Temple authorities take so against John the Baptist and against his successor Jesus of Nazareth? Why would they care about either, and why go along with the execution of both? Here again the author makes it abundantly clear why, what was at stake, and what the two leaders were seen as doing.

In all an incredible work of history and scholarly criticism.

I do not claim to understand all of the subtleties of Crossan's scholarly methods, but it is his insistence on peeling away layers and centuries of mythology to seek the truth beneath that taught me that one does not have to check one's brain at the church door. That in itself was a revelation to me. Regardless of whether history vindicates Crossan or not, this book represents a path of inquiry that should be pursued further. The superstitions of the Middle Ages don't work anymore. I began the book as a curious atheist and finished it as a prayerful Christian.