The Historical Jesus (Paperback)

That is why John Dominic Crossan's book is all the more remarkable. It shines out like a beacon, against a morass of many other comparable books with far less scholarly qualities.

At the outset, let me say the book is not easy reading, in terms of mastering insights into textual analysis and their import for interpretation. What helped me immensely, however, is that I'd already read two key books before coming to Crossan's. Those were:

'The Dead Sea Scrolls' by John Allegro (Penguin, 1956)

and

'The Gnostic Gospels', by Elaine Pagels, Vintage-Random House, 1979

In addition, while attending Jesuit-run university in New Orleans, I'd taken courses in biblical exegesis, Quadriform Gospel analysis and Comparative Religion. This put me in a better position to read and evaluate Crossan's book.

Allegro's (earlier) book sets the tableaux for understanding the ferocious animosity of the Qumran sect to the spiritual leaders in Jerusalem. (p. 127, Allegro). This is crucial to understand, since it allows one to make more sense of Crossan's conclusions.

Harvard scholar Pagel's book extends this even further. Noting how the Gnostics (the probable authors of the Nag Hammadi scrolls) were totally and completely averse to any notion of a unique "god-man", as later Pauline Christianity would assert.

As Pagels notes (p. 102) the Catholic orthodoxy and tradition saw fit to consistently denounce the Gnostics:

"while suppressing and virtually destroying the Gnostic writings themselves."

And of course, we had the likes of the doctrinnaire Church Father Irenaeus calling them 'frauds'. (Pagels, p. 17) To serve his own purposes of course!

As Pagels also notes, p. 124 (Pagels, 1979):

"While Pauline Catholics taught a reality of 'sin' and that 'Jesus alone could deliver healing and forgiveness of sins, the Gnostics on the contrary, insisted that ignorance, not sin, is what involves a person in suffering. The gnostic movement shared in this certain affinities with contemporary methods of exploring the self through psychotherapeutic techniques."

And (Pagels, p. 125):

"Whoever remains ignorant... cannot experience fulfilment. Gnostics said that such a person 'dwells in deficiency'. For deficiency consists of ignorance."

Perhaps the most daring, and threatening proposition of the Gnostics, was their belief in gnosis, or the 'de-localization' of Christhood. Why? Because if the ('Institutionalized') Church accepted this, they would have to surrender their coveted power wielded via intermediaries (priests, bishops, cardinals, etc.). Paul knew this full well, which is why he had to fight against the Gnostics' egalitarian Christhood with all his might.

Pagels goes on (ibid.):

"We can see, then, that such gnosticism was more than a protest movement against orthodox Christianity. Gnosticism also included a religious perspective that implicitly opposed the development of the kind of institution that became the early Catholic Church. Those who expected to 'become Christs' themselves were not likely to recognize the institutional structures of the church -its bishop, priests, creed, canon, or ritual - as bearing ultimate authority."

This fits in precisely with Crossan's take on Jesus(p. 422):

"His strategy, implicitly for himself and explicitly for his followers, was the combination of *free healing* and *common eating*, a religious and economic egalitarianism that negated alike and at once the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power.

And lest he himself be interpreted as simply the new broker of a new God, he moved on constantly, settling down neither at Nazareth or Capernaum. He was neither broker nor mediator but, somewhat paradoxically, the announcer that neither should exist between humanity and divinity or between humanity and itself. Miracle and parable, healing and eating wwre calculated to force individuals into *unmediated* physical and spiritual contact with God and unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another.

He announced, in other words, the borderless kingdom of God."

Jesus' historical person, in other words, entirely fit within the egalitarian Gnostic scheme - as opposed to the Pauline 'god-man/Savior' theme.

What or who was Jesus, at the end of the day?

From the weight of Allegro's insights, Pagels and Crossan's - not to mention the consensus of The Jesus Seminar Project- he was an extraordinary man. But a flesh and blood human nonetheless.

In Crossan's final conclusion - with which I wholeheartedly concur from everything I've seen- Jesus was a "peasant Jewish Cynic". (As Crossan points out, p. 421, a 'Cynic' embodied "a life-style and mindset in opposition to the cultural heart of Mediterranean civilization, a way of looking and dressing, of eating and living and relating, that announced its contempt for honor and shame, for patronage and clientage. ....Hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies.")

Little wonder then that Jesus' habits would infuriate not only Jewish orthodoxy but the Roman government. Leading ultimately to execution for what they'd have perceived as "subversion" of the Empire.

Geza Vermes, a scholar of ancient Judaism concurs with this take. He is a Jewish Studies professor at Oxford University.

According to Vermes ('Jesus Killing a Political Act, Scholar says', in The Colorado Springs Gazette, Oct. 4, 2003, p. 5)
Yeshua (Jesus) was crucified because he "clashed with Jewish and Roman leaders" and was regarded as a "potential threat to law and order and consequently to the welll being of the Jewish people".

They thus decided he "had to be eliminated for the common good."

Vermes goes on to note the 'spark' that ignited the hostility was probably Yeshua doing the "wrong thing" by tossing out the money changers, "in the wrong place" (the Temple). At the "wrong time" (Passover).

Vermes' (like Crossan and other researchers of the Jesus seminar Project) thus rejects implicitly the facile explanation that the dispute involved the claim of being a unique Son of God who "exercised divine powers".

Vermes doubts seriously (as scholar Elaine Pagels of Harvard notes vis-a-vis the Gnostics) that those 'Savior' beliefs and words were part of the original message. They were added later on. Probably by disciples or biographers eager to inflate the rebel peasant Cynic into a divine entity, and God-man. The erstwhile reason was to "convert unbelievers to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, or God" (cf. Rev. Thomas Bokenkotter, in 'A Concise History of the Catholic Church', notes, p. 17)

At the same time, Vermes - and others (Pagels, Crossan) are willing to grant that Jesus could spell bind a crowd with his words, and could "lay bare the inmost core of spiritual truth".

The central problem for the conventional Christian believer inevitably arises: how to reconcile his/her faith in a 'God-Man/Savior' Jesus, with the actual historical person. Who was more a radical, "liberal" freedom-fighter against the Roman state.

Crossan offers a hint ('Epilogue', p. 423):

"Is an understanding of the historical Jesus of any permanent relevance to Christianity itself? I propose that at the heart of any Christianity there is always, covertly or overtly, a dialectic between a historically read Jesus and a theologically read Christ. Christiany is always, in other words, a Jesus/Christ/ianity."

and finally (ibid.)

"This book challenges the reader on the level of formal method, material investment, and historical interpretation. It presumes there will always be divergent historical Jesuses, that there will always be divergent Christs built upon them, but above all, it argues that the structure of a Christianity will always be: *this is how we see Jesus as Christ now*."

For any reader with an open mind, this book is a worthwhile excursion into the intricacies of textual analysis, and diligent comparison of ancient scrolls, sources. Its intellectual journey is breathtaking, and its conclusions even more so.

It goes without saying that it can't be everyone's 'cup of tea' because the (implied) threat to the pre-determined beliefs of many will likely overcome their ability to pursue open inquiry.

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