Games of Daze/Infomagic - Games of Daze (Summer 1995) (Disc 1 of 2).iso/x2ftp/books/yee/hisjesus.rvw

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The Historical Jesus -
The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
John Dominic Crossan
Harper Collins 1991
pp. 507
A$29.95
[ religion, anthropology, history ]

Books about Jesus have always been popular, but in recent years there
seems to have been a real glut of them.  Up till now none of those I've
seen have really tempted me: Barbara Thiering's _Jesus the Man_ seemed
like a rather sensationalist attempt to make the bestseller lists
(though still a huge improvement on such journalistic trash as _The Holy
Blood and the Holy Grail_), while a basic wariness about a biography of
such a controversial figure written by a non-specialist has kept me away
from A.N. Wilson's _Jesus_.  _The Historical Jesus_ is a completely
different kind of book.  The blurb on my copy describes it as a
"bestseller", but that seems a rather unlikely fate for a book that
begins with a survey of the social anthropology of honour-shame
societies and its relationship to the ecology of the Mediterranean!
Crossan's book is deeply scholarly.  It is also remarkably readable.

_The Historical Jesus_ is an attempt to reconstruct the life of Jesus -
who he was, what he did, what he said, and what it meant - using all the
evidence and all the available tools.  Crossan's reconstruction is based
on the triple pillar of social anthropology, history and textual
analysis.  The book is divided into three sections of unequal size.  The
first section (about 80 pages) uses cross-cultural and trans-temporal
anthropological studies to set the general background, the second (120
pages) narrows in on the history and society of first century Judaea and
the last (200 pages) uses textual analysis (along with more anthropology
and history) to focus on Jesus himself.  Crossan uses a balanced
combination of primary sources (mostly original texts, but with some
archaeological evidence) and secondary sources (the latest in
anthropological and historical studies).

Within the final section his methodology involves using what he calls
first stratum sources (those datable to 30-70 AD) and only considering
events and sayings with multiple independent attestations.  He is very
careful to make this methodology explicit, and when he does sometimes
violates it he is careful to point out that he is doing so.  He doesn't
make grandiose claims about either his methodology or the certainty of
the resulting conclusions.  In the prologue he says:

  "It is clear, I hope, that my methodology does not claim a spurious
  objectivity, because almost every step demands a scholarly judgement
  and an informed decision.  I a concerned, not with an unattainable
  objectivity, but with an attainable honesty."

A more general defense of reconstructive attempts in general is given in
the epilogue, which concludes:

  "This book, then, is a scholarly reconstruction of the historical Jesus.
  And if one were to accept its formal methods and even their material
  investments, one could surely offer divergent interpretative
  conclusions about the reconstructable historical Jesus.  But one cannot
  dismiss it or the search for the historical Jesus as *mere*
  reconstruction, as if reconstruction invalidated somehow the entire
  project.  Because there is *only* reconstruction.  For a believing
  Christian both the life of the Word of God and the text of the Word of
  God are alike a process of ... historical reconstruction... . If you
  cannot believe in something produced by reconstruction, you may have
  nothing left to believe in." [** represents italics in the original
  text.]

-

The first chapter is a very general introduction to the anthropology of
the first century Mediterranean.  Its main purpose is to give the reader
some help in overcoming the distorting perspective of temporal and
cultural separation.  As well as the above mentioned work on honour-shame
societies it places Nazareth geographically within the Mediterranean
world and uses extensive quotation from the Oxyrhynchus papyri to paint
a picture of the life of a group of weavers in first century Egypt.

Two chapters give a brief description of the Roman empire and the nature
of patron-client relations and slavery.  This is done by quotation from
classical sources (in particular Cicero, Petronius, and the Augustan
poets) and reference to the works of modern anthropologists and
historians (most notably Lenski and Carney).

The final chapter in the first section is about the Cynical tradition -
a religious/philosophical movement stressing withdrawal from the world.
The Cynics repudiated all worldly concerns and moved around with a cloak
and staff, begging or working for a living (the exemplar being that
Diogenes who lived in a barrel).  This chapter is important because
Crossan later argues that Jesus drew on elements of the Cynical
tradition.

-

Josephus is the major source for the history of Judaea during the period
in question.  The second section begins with a chapter describing his
life and writings, and the difficulties inherent in using him as a
source.  In the following four chapters Crossan traces particular aspects
of Jewish response to Roman rule, starting before the first century and
following through to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. during the first
Roman-Jewish war.  None of the chapters refer directly to the written
accounts of Jesus' life, as their purpose is to provide the context
within which to view it.

The first looks at the Jewish apocalyptic tradition as a form of
religio-political reaction to imperial domination, using cross-cultural
anthropological typologies of millenarian movements.  It traces the
history of opposition to the Romans within the scribal/retainer class up
to the Sicarii and the 1st Roman-Jewish war.  The sources used are
Josephus and other Hebrew texts from the period such as the Testament of
Moses and 1 Enoch.  The next chapter considers the nature of peasant
opposition to oppression, drawing parallels with other extractive
agrarian empires.

The chapter on prophets and magicians uses biblical and rabbinical
sources to trace an "alternative" (to that of the temple) religous
tradition from Elijah and Elisha through to Honi and Hanina Ben Dosa and
the first century millenial prophets described in Josephus.  This
tradition stressed personal and individual, rather than communal and
institutional access to divine power.

Hobsbawm's work on social banditry provides the background for a chapter
on banditry within Judaea.  The situation there is compared with that in
other agrarian empires and elsewhere in the Roman Empire.  Then the
particular history of Judaean banditry is narrated, up to the Zealots
and their role in the siege and fall of Jerusalem.

The final chapter in this section analyses the 1st Roman-Jewish war
(66-73 A.D.) as the culmination of the different forms of protest
described in the previous four chapters.  It is compared with other
revolts against Rome.  The idea is to make clearer the trajectories of
unrest during the preceding half century.

-

The final section is the one I found the most difficult to read.  That
was partly because literary and textual analysis is more foreign to me
than anthropology or history, and partly because Crossan sometimes
assumes a general familiarity with the canonical New Testament that I
lack.  The analysis is roughly chronological, beginning with Jesus'
relationship to John the Baptist and finishing with an analysis of the
Passion and Ressurection accounts.  Rather than describing the nitty
gritty of Crossan's analysis, I will give a very brief summary of his
conclusions.  In doing this I also draw on the "overture" to the book,
which is a kind of informal summary of his reconstruction, consisting of
a short "story" of the life of Jesus followed by thirteen pages of
sayings which he thinks can reliably be attested to Jesus (in the form
he reconstructs as original).

Jesus originally accepted John's authority and apocalyptic vision.
After John's death he developed his own vision of the Kingdom of God as
here and now among the poor and destitute.  His "ecstatic vision and
social program sought to rebuild a society upwards from its grass roots
but on principles of religious and economic egalitarianism".  The core
elements of his teaching were magical healing and shared meals (open
commensality).  His teaching opposed conventional morality and
conventional power-structures and tried to break down all barriers -
religious, social and economic.  Throughout the account Crossan uses
further anthropological work (in particular Bryan Wilson's work on
religious movements of protest throughout the world) to set the events
of Jesus' life in context.

In the penultimate chapter Crossan looks at the death and burial of
Jesus.  This is the part of his account which will be most controversial,
as he concludes that the entire passion narrative is a later
construction on Old Testament models.  There was no trial before Herod or
Pilate, and "it is difficult for the Christian imagination, then or now,
to accept the brutal informality with which Jesus was probably condemned
and crucified."  None of his followers witnessed his death and his burial
place was unknown.  The final chapter looks at the post-resurrection
accounts and argues that they are related to the pre-resurrection
miracle stories.  The "'nature' miracles of Jesus are actually credal
statements about ecclesiastical authority, although they all have as
their background Jesus' resurrectional victory over death, which is, of
course, the supreme 'nature' miracle."

-

I cannot really evaluate the final (and perhaps critical) part of this
book, as I know only a little about literary analysis and almost nothing
about the textual history of the New Testament.  However I do have a
solid grounding in social anthropology and ancient history, and I can
vouch for Crossan's general honesty of approach and correctness of
detail in those parts of the book that draw on those disciplines.  It
seems likely that his textual analysis is just as careful and
disciplined (especially as New Testament studies is his native field),
and his methodology seems reasonable.  Details of his conclusions are
clearly arguable, but it seems to me the general argument is robust, in
that small changes in the interpretations of texts or modifications to
current anthropological theories are not going to cause major changes to
the results.  Crossan's scholarship is impressive, and he is equally at
home quoting classical authors or the latest secondary sources.  At any
rate, those who wish to check the primary sources and look at the more
detailed arguments in the secondary sources used will find all the
information required to do so in the book.  _The Historical Jesus_ closes
with fourty pages of technical appendices on the textual Jesus tradition
and a full twenty page bibliography.

Obviously Christians from a range of theological positions will find the
conclusions of this book unacceptable.  Some of them may even perceive it
as an attack on Christianity, but I believe that is unreasonable, as it
is clear that the author is himself a devout Christian (though this is
nowhere stated explicitly) [1].  But only those who adopt an extreme
fundamentalist position and insist that the bible was written for them
personally as a member of a Western industrialised democracy (and
perhaps even in English :-) will find *nothing* of value in this book
[2].  (It is possible to reject reconstruction if one is prepared to
worship a particular text.)  Those Christians who who insist on viewing
Jesus from the perspective of later Church history (ie by insisting on
a uniquely special role of the canonical gospels), and those who hold
particular theological positions on non-historical grounds, will
probably find the first two sections interesting and the last
contentious.

But religious proclivities aside, if you are interested in the social
and historical background to the New Testament I can't recommend this
book too highly.  Crossan's breadth of knowledge is very impressive, and
his application of different theories, models and typologies in social
anthropology will be of interest to students of that discipline.  There
may be other books that present the same information, but I haven't seen
any and doubt whether they could improve on Crossan's either in
readability or in scholarship.  Anyone who genuinely cares about Jesus
and his teachings, and who is interested in what we know about what he
actually said and did, should read this book.

--
[1] For those who worry about such things, the author of this review is
himself an atheist.

[2] Literal, textual fundamentalisms are the only forms of Christianity
I find intrinsically abhorrent.  This is because they are almost
necessarily coupled with some kind of cultural imperialism.  Otherwise,
instead of providing the desired certainty, they lead to an extreme
relativism, since it is presumably reasonable for highland converts in
New Guinea to read the bible in the light of *their* culture...

Danny Yee ([e-mail])
27/8/93