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Title: The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus by John Dominic Crossan ISBN: 0-06-061660-1 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: February, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (35 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Excellent for the theologian, scholar...
Comment: I purchased this book with great expectations. The title and the author's credentials and reviews led me to believe I was ready, indeed eager to tackle it. I am a lay-reader, with a keen interest in the historical Jesus and the historicity of Christianity, especially as research reflects and illuminates my faith.
While I commend Crossan for his scholarship, I feel strongly that he needs to edit and refine his material for the lay-reader. Much of these book is a dialogue between the author and his scholarly colleagues in theological circles, especially the Jesus Seminar. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with such a dialogue, but the book shouldn't be marketed for the general public, except possibly as a reference source.
The author needs to compare his writing and editorial style to recent books by Dr. Marcus Borg.
Terms, historical personalities and theological works need to be clearly defined, with plenty of transition review between sections and chapters.
Crossan deserves a wide audience, especially among lay-persons.
This book is simply too advanced, and belongs primarily theology collections.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Marvelous handbook to discover the nature of your God
Comment: John Dominic Crossan, the leading contemporary scholar on the Historical Jesus, brings the disciplines of anthropology, history and archeology to bear in reconstructing life in the decades of the 30's and 40's AD. One intriguing thesis of the book is that the Christianity of the disciples may have been quite different from that handed down to us by Paul.
Exploring that thesis, Crossan stimulates the reader to rethink one's ideas on history and Christianity. Along the way, he challenges modern intellect by bringing into play current images and words like reconstruction and interactivity. Crosssan compares the process of reconstructing history with looking down a well at your reflection. When you see your reflection, you cannot know the character of the water in the well, you must disturb it to do so. Disturbing the surface of the water distorts ones reflection. So the process of historical reconstruction goes on, using current science and knowledge to reconstruct the past and drawing from ancient interaction, lessons that increase our understanding of the human condition. As a Real Estate professional, I especially identified with Crossans description of the convergence of the Roman culture that treated land as an exploitable commodity with first century Judaism that looked at land as a Gift from God. As a recent visitor to Israel, I witnessed to current manifestations of the same forces. Crossan's description of Roman commercialism and it's effect on Jewish peasants in the area of the Galilee in the early first century was, for me, a fascinating and illuminating experience.
From a firm, multi-discipline foundation, Crossan examines the Q Gospel, The Gospel of Thomas and the synoptic Gospels. He concludes that pre Paulian Christianity was more "Jewish." He emphatically denies that the God of the Old Testament was a God of anger and vengeance while the God of the New Testament was a god of love and mercy. Rather the first Christians experienced Yahweh as a God of justice and compassion. This complex, erudite exercise in reconstruction left me with more questions than answers, but with a commitment to learn more.
When you look down your well of faith and see there a perfect reflection of yourself, it is time to stir the water. The Birth of Christianity is a marvelous handbook to help discover what lies below the surface; the nature of your God and the depth of your commitment.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good but haven't we heard most of it before
Comment: I enjoy Crossan's excellent works on the historical Jesus - or rather the attempts to find such a person. But he has become somewhat redundant, seemingly raising arguments or reviewing ideas introduced in previous works.
Crossan continues to look for something he admits he cannot find - historical evidence for the person of Jesus and the early Jewish followers who first believed in him. Since there is no concrete evidence (the Gospels are not historical) he attempts to reconstruct an original view from two sources:
(1) the social and anthropological conditions of the time and (2) the events and institutions that emerged from this hidden time. It's is as if there were a nuclear holocaust and 1000 years lated one investigates the origins of flight by studying first the science of the early 20th century and then the wreckage of air craft from the 22nd century. Some conclusions can be reached using these methods. Communion can be seen as an evolution of an ancient Seder meal to a commemorative dinner to a lusty community meal before it was institutionalized into a sacrament reserved for the Church.
The work is difficult at spots - Crossan can be relentlessly tiring at time. Perhaps the saddest thing about his unending toil on this project is that so few will be affected by what he says or discovers or conjectures. Most will blindly "go with faith" without considering the foundations upon which it rests. And Crossan, who still somehwo calls himself a "Christian", will continue plodding onward.
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Title: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant by John Dominic Crossan ISBN: 0060616296 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Who Killed Jesus? : Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus by John Dominic Crossan ISBN: 0060614803 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 08 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan ISBN: 0060616628 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts by John Dominic Crossan, Jonathan L. Reed ISBN: 0060616342 Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Who Is Jesus?: Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus by John Dominic Crossan, Richard G. Watts ISBN: 0664258425 Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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