John Dominic Crossan
John Dominic Crossan | |
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St Patrick's College, Maynooth | |
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John Dominic Crossan (born 17 February 1934) is an Irish-American
Crossan is a major scholar in contemporary historical Jesus research.[1][3] In particular, he and
Life
Crossan was born on 17 February 1934,
After a year at
Crossan married Margaret Dagenais, a professor at Loyola University Chicago in the summer of 1969. She died in 1983 due to a heart attack. In 1986, Crossan married Sarah Sexton, a social worker with two grown children. Since his retirement from academia, Crossan has continued to write and lecture.[1]
Views and methodology
Crossan portrays Jesus as a healer and wise man who taught a message of inclusiveness, tolerance, and liberation. In his view, Jesus' strategy "was the combination of free healing and common eating . . . that negated the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power . . . He was neither broker nor mediator but . . . the announcer that neither should exist between humanity and divinity or humanity and itself."[2]
Central to Crossan's methodology is the dating of texts.
In God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007), Crossan assumes that the reader is familiar with key points from his earlier work on the nonviolent revolutionary Jesus, his Kingdom movement, and the surrounding matrix of the Roman imperial theological system of religion, war, victory, peace, but discusses them in the broader context of the escalating violence in world politics and popular culture of today. Within that matrix, he points out, early in the book, that "(t)here was a human being in the first century who was called 'Divine,' '
In Who Killed Jesus (1995), he draws together a wide range of sources to demonstrate that the Jews not only did not crucify Jesus but that they were not consulted by Pontius Pilate. Further, they did not have a meeting on the eve of Passover (meetings were and are forbidden on that day). He then discusses why these tales appear in the Gospels.
In The Power of Parables: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus, Crossan proposes a new interpretation of the biblical text: according to his thesis, the Gospels should be seen not as an actual biography, but as "megaparables", in the sense that the life of Jesus was shaped by his teachings, therefore creating some "megaparables", neither completely historical nor completely fictitious. At the end of the book, Crossan states "I conclude that Jesus really existed, that we can know the significant sequence of his life...but that he comes to us trailing clouds of fiction, parables by him and about him, particular incidents as miniparables and whole gospels as megaparables."[9] His contemporary and fellow faith-focused academic Ben Witherington III called Crossan's thesis "a category mistake".[10]
Works
Books
- Crossan, John Dominic (1966). Scanning the Sunday Gospel. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Company.
- ——— (1967). The Gospel of Eternal Life: reflections on the theology of St. John. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Company.
- ——— (1973). In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus. New York: Harper & Row. OCLC 693801.
- ——— (1975). The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story. Niles, IL: Argus Communications. OCLC 1959364.
- ——— (1976). Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges. New York: Harper & Row. OCLC 2331585.
- ——— (1979). Finding Is the First Act: Trove Folktales and Jesus' Treasure Parable. Scholars Press. ISBN 9780685116531.
- ——— (1980). Cliffs of Fall: Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus. New York: Seabury Press. OCLC 717736309.
- ——— (1981). A Fragile Craft: The Work of Amos Niven Wilder. Chico: Scholars Press. OCLC 602969648.
- ——— (1983). In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus. San Francisco & Cambridge: Harper & Row. OCLC 715272028.
- ——— (1985). Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon. Minneapolis: Winston Press. OCLC 11829589.
- ——— (1985). Sayings Parallels: A Workbook for the Jesus Tradition. Polebridge Press. OCLC 948579023.
- ——— (1988). The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. OCLC 472804565.
- ——— (1991). The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 23692728.
- ——— (1994). The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 29876817.
- ——— (1994). Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 28180716.
- ——— (1995). Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 31409853.
- ———; OCLC 981372236.
- ——— (1998). The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 37843686.
- ———; OCLC 39633978.
- ———; OCLC 475079971.
- ——— (2000). A Long Way from Tipperary: A Memoir. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 473423727.
- ———; OCLC 52127660.
- ———; OCLC 46951948.
- ———; OCLC 56835410.
- ———; OCLC 62341611.
- ———; OCLC 154686566.
- ——— (2007). God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. OCLC 238826840.
- ———; OCLC 232978219.
- ———; ISBN 9780830838684.
- ——— (2010). The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of The Lord's Prayer. New York: HarperOne. OCLC 813123177.
- ——— (2012). The Power of Parable: How Fiction "by Jesus" became fiction "about Jesus". New York: HarperOne. OCLC 855993872.
- ——— (2015). How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne. OCLC 900332685.
- ———; OCLC 1088599858.
Edited by
- ———; OCLC 492979404.
- ———, ed. (1991). Religious Worlds: Primary Readings in Comparative Perspective. Department of Religious Studies, DePaul University. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. OCLC 472827588.
- ———; OCLC 1059012359.
Journal articles
- ——— (2004). "Crowd Control". The Christian Century. 121 (6): 18, 21–22.
- ——— (Summer 2005). "A Woman Equal to Paul: Who Is She?". Bible Review. 21 (3): 29–31, 46–47.
- ——— (2005). "New Testament and Roman Empire: Shifting Paradigms for Interpretation". Union Seminary Quarterly Review. 59 (3–4): 1–15.
- ———; Borg, Marcus (2007). "Jesus' Final Week: Collision Course". The Christian Century. 124 (6): 27–31.
- ——— (2007). "The Message of the Historical Jesus and Contemporary American Imperialism". Rivista di Teologia dell'Evangelizzazione. 11: 395–406.
- ——— (2013). "A Vision of Divine Justice: The Resurrection of Jesus in Eastern Christian Iconography". Journal of Biblical Literature. 132: 1–32.
References
- ^ a b c d "John Dominic Crossan". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 13 Jan. 2016
- ^ a b The Historical Jesus, p 421-22
- ^ a b c Theissen, Gerd and Annette Merz. The historical Jesus: a comprehensive guide. Fortress Press. 1998. translated from German (1996 edition). Chapter 1. The quest of the historical Jesus. p. 1–15.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8006-3122-2. footnote
- ^ Official website, Diary showing 14th birthday Archived 7 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Retrieved 2 April 2013.
- ^ A Long Way from Tipperary: A Memoir (2000)
- ^ Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 44–62. Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1996.
- ^ a b Crossan, John Dominic, God and Empire, 2007, p. 28
- ISBN 978-0-06-209833-7.
- ^ Culture, The Bible and (10 June 2012). "Bart Ehrman on 'Did Jesus Exist?' Part Six". The Bible and Culture. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
- OCLC 3098979.
- OCLC 394542.