John Dominic Crossan
Encyclopedia
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American religious scholar and former Catholic priest known for co-founding the Jesus Seminar
. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology
, anthropology
and New Testament
textual
and higher criticism. He is also a lecturer who has appeared in television documentaries about Jesus
and the Bible
. He is a key figure in research into the historical Jesus
.
, a boarding high school
, in 1950, Crossan joined the Servites
, a Catholic
religious order
, and moved to the United States
. He was trained at Stonebridge Seminary, Lake Bluff
, Illinois
, then ordained a priest in 1957. Crossan returned to Ireland, where he earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1959 at Maynooth College, the Irish national seminary. He then completed two more years of study in biblical languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute
in Rome
. Thus equipped, he returned to the seminary where he had trained, and through four years of teaching he "first began to learn something about the Bible" as he puts it. In 1965 Crossan embarked on two additional years of study, this time in archaeology
based at the Ecole Biblique
in Jordan
ian East Jerusalem
. His work led him to journey through many Middle-Eastern countries before escaping just days prior to the outbreak of the Six Day War of 1967.
After a year at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein
, Illinois
, and a year at Catholic Theological Union
in Chicago
, Crossan chose to resign his priesthood. He cited as reasons both a desire for more academic freedom, and the freedom to be bound in matrimony. He married Margaret Dagenais, a professor at Loyola University
(Chicago) in the summer of 1969, and joined the faculty of DePaul University
that fall, where he taught undergraduates Comparative Religion for twenty-five years until retiring in 1995. His first wife died of a heart attack
in 1983. Crossan married Sarah Sexton, a social worker with two grown children, in 1986. Since his academic retirement, Crossan has lived in the Orlando
, Florida
, area, remaining active in research, writing, and teaching seminars.
Two of Crossan's briefer popular books are Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994) and Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (1995).
Crossan has also co-authored a book about Jesus and another about Paul with archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed (2001, 2004), which provide contextualization of the lives and times of these two men.
In 1985, Crossan and Robert Funk founded the Jesus Seminar
, a group of academics studying a historical Jesus
. Crossan served as co-chair of the Jesus Seminar for its first decade. He is also a member of the Society of Biblical Literature
(SBL). He is also featured in a number of Living the Questions programs, including "Eclipsing Empire" and "First Light."
was an illiterate "Jewish Cynic" from a landless peasant background, initially a follower of John the Baptist
. Jesus was a healer and man of great wisdom
and courage who taught a message of inclusiveness, tolerance, and liberation. "His 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."
Out of his study of cross-attestation and strata of the ancient texts, Crossan asserts that many of the gospel stories of Jesus are not factual, including his "nature miracles", the virgin birth, and the raising of Lazarus
. While pointing out the meager attestation and apparent belatedness of the miracles' appearance in the trajectory of the canon, Crossan takes the opposite view, that Jesus was known during earliest Christianity as a powerful magician, which was "a very problematic and controversial phenomenon not only for his enemies but even for his friends," who began washing miracles out of the tradition early on.
Crossan maintains the Gospels were never intended to be taken literally by their authors. He argues that the meaning of the story is the real issue, not whether a particular story about Jesus is history or parable. He proposes that it is historically probable that, like all but one known victim of crucifixion, Jesus' body was scavenged by animals rather than being placed in a tomb. Crossan believes in vision hypothesis
"resurrection" by faith but holds that bodily resuscitation was never contemplated by early Christians. He believes that the rapture
is based on a misreading of I Thessalonians.
Central to Crossan's methodology is the dating of texts. This is laid out more or less fully in The Historical Jesus in one of the appendices. He dates part of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas
to the 50s CE
, as well as the first layer of the hypothetical Q Document (in this he is heavily dependent on the work of John Kloppenborg). He also assigns a portion of the Gospel of Peter
, which he calls the "Cross Gospel," to a date preceding the synoptic gospels
, the reasoning of which is laid out more fully in The Cross that Spoke: The Origin of the Passion Narratives. He believes the "Cross Gospel" was the forerunner to the passion narratives in the canonical
gospels. He does not date the synoptics until the mid to late 70s CE, starting with the Gospel of Mark
and ending with Luke
in the 90s. As for the Gospel of John
, he believes part was constructed at the beginning of the 2nd century CE and another part closer to the middle of the century. Following Rudolf Bultmann
, he believes there is an earlier "Signs Source" for John as well. His dating methods and conclusions are quite controversial, particularly regarding the dating of Thomas and the "Cross Gospel." The very early dating of these non-canonical sources has not been accepted by many biblical scholars.
In God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007), Crossan starts with the presumption of reader familiarity 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,' 'Son of God
,' 'God,' and 'God from God,' whose titles were 'Lord,' 'Redeemer,' 'Liberator,' and 'Saviour of the World.'" "(M)ost Christians probably think that those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to Christ. But before Jesus ever existed, all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus." Crossan cites the adoption of them by the early Christians to apply to Jesus as denying them of Caesar the Augustus. "They were taking the identity of the Roman emperor and giving it to a Jewish peasant. Either that was a peculiar joke and a very low lampoon, or it was what the Romans called majestas and we call high treason." He ends the book asking the question "Is Bible-fed Christian violence supporting or even instigating our imperial violence as the New Roman Empire?"
Jesus Seminar
The Jesus Seminar is a group of about 150 critical scholars and laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk under the auspices of the Westar Institute....
. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology
Biblical archaeology
For the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see The Bible and history....
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
textual
Textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...
and higher criticism. He is also a lecturer who has appeared in television documentaries about Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
and the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. He is a key figure in research into the historical Jesus
Historical Jesus
The term historical Jesus refers to scholarly reconstructions of the 1st-century figure Jesus of Nazareth. These reconstructions are based upon historical methods including critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for his biography, along with consideration of the historical and...
.
Life
Though his father was a banker, Crossan was steeped in the rural Irish life experienced in frequent visits to the home of his paternal grandparents. On graduation from St. Eunan's CollegeSt. Eunan's College
Saint Eunan's College is an all-male voluntary secondary school. Located in Glencar, Letterkenny , County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, the building is a three-storey castle with four round towers at each corner of the building. The school is named after the Abbot of Iona St...
, a boarding high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, in 1950, Crossan joined the Servites
Servite Order
The Servite Order is one of the five original Catholic mendicant orders. Its objects are the sanctification of its members, preaching the Gospel, and the propagation of devotion to the Mother of God, with special reference to her sorrows. The members of the Order use O.S.M. as their post-nominal...
, a Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
religious order
Religious order
A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice. The order is composed of initiates and, in some...
, and moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He was trained at Stonebridge Seminary, Lake Bluff
Lake Bluff, Illinois
Lake Bluff is a village in Lake County, Illinois. It is the closest moderate-sized town near the Great Lakes Navy Base and is North of Lake Forest. The population is 6,056 according to the 2000 census. The town has a police department and volunteer fire department.-History:In 1836, John and...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, then ordained a priest in 1957. Crossan returned to Ireland, where he earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1959 at Maynooth College, the Irish national seminary. He then completed two more years of study in biblical languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute
Pontifical Biblical Institute
The Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, Italy is an institution of the Holy See run by the Jesuits that offers instruction at the university level...
in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. Thus equipped, he returned to the seminary where he had trained, and through four years of teaching he "first began to learn something about the Bible" as he puts it. In 1965 Crossan embarked on two additional years of study, this time in archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
based at the Ecole Biblique
École Biblique
The École Biblique, strictly the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, is a respected French academic establishment in Jerusalem, founded by Dominicans, and specialising in archaeology and Biblical exegesis.-Foundation:...
in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
ian East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem refer to the parts of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War...
. His work led him to journey through many Middle-Eastern countries before escaping just days prior to the outbreak of the Six Day War of 1967.
After a year at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein
Mundelein, Illinois
Mundelein is a village in Lake County, Illinois, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the village population was 31,064.-History:The community now known as Mundelein has been inhabited since at least 1650, when the Potowatami Indians were known to have been trading with French fur traders....
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, and a year at Catholic Theological Union
Catholic Theological Union
The Catholic Theological Union, located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, is one of the largest schools of theology in the world and trains men and women for lay and clerical ministry within the Roman Catholic Church...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Crossan chose to resign his priesthood. He cited as reasons both a desire for more academic freedom, and the freedom to be bound in matrimony. He married Margaret Dagenais, a professor at Loyola University
Loyola University Chicago
Loyola University Chicago is a private Jesuit research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1870 under the title St...
(Chicago) in the summer of 1969, and joined the faculty of DePaul University
DePaul University
DePaul University is a private institution of higher education and research in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul...
that fall, where he taught undergraduates Comparative Religion for twenty-five years until retiring in 1995. His first wife died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in 1983. Crossan married Sarah Sexton, a social worker with two grown children, in 1986. Since his academic retirement, Crossan has lived in the Orlando
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, area, remaining active in research, writing, and teaching seminars.
Career
Crossan writes books for both academic and popular audiences. His two lengthiest books are The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991) and The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (1998).Two of Crossan's briefer popular books are Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994) and Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (1995).
Crossan has also co-authored a book about Jesus and another about Paul with archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed (2001, 2004), which provide contextualization of the lives and times of these two men.
In 1985, Crossan and Robert Funk founded the Jesus Seminar
Jesus Seminar
The Jesus Seminar is a group of about 150 critical scholars and laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk under the auspices of the Westar Institute....
, a group of academics studying a historical Jesus
Historical Jesus
The term historical Jesus refers to scholarly reconstructions of the 1st-century figure Jesus of Nazareth. These reconstructions are based upon historical methods including critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for his biography, along with consideration of the historical and...
. Crossan served as co-chair of the Jesus Seminar for its first decade. He is also a member of the Society of Biblical Literature
Society of Biblical Literature
The Society of Biblical Literature, founded 1880, is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies , with the stated mission to "Foster Biblical Scholarship"...
(SBL). He is also featured in a number of Living the Questions programs, including "Eclipsing Empire" and "First Light."
Views and methodology
Crossan suggests JesusJesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
was an illiterate "Jewish Cynic" from a landless peasant background, initially a follower of John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
. Jesus was a healer and man of great wisdom
Wisdom
Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...
and courage who taught a message of inclusiveness, tolerance, and liberation. "His 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."
Out of his study of cross-attestation and strata of the ancient texts, Crossan asserts that many of the gospel stories of Jesus are not factual, including his "nature miracles", the virgin birth, and the raising of Lazarus
Lazarus of Bethany
Lazarus of Bethany, also known as Saint Lazarus or Lazarus of the Four Days, is the subject of a prominent miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death...
. While pointing out the meager attestation and apparent belatedness of the miracles' appearance in the trajectory of the canon, Crossan takes the opposite view, that Jesus was known during earliest Christianity as a powerful magician, which was "a very problematic and controversial phenomenon not only for his enemies but even for his friends," who began washing miracles out of the tradition early on.
Crossan maintains the Gospels were never intended to be taken literally by their authors. He argues that the meaning of the story is the real issue, not whether a particular story about Jesus is history or parable. He proposes that it is historically probable that, like all but one known victim of crucifixion, Jesus' body was scavenged by animals rather than being placed in a tomb. Crossan believes in vision hypothesis
Vision hypothesis
The vision hypothesis is a term used to cover a range of theories that question the physical resurrection of Jesus, and suggest that sightings of a risen Jesus were visionary experiences. As the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus is a cornerstone of Christian belief, the vision hypothesis is...
"resurrection" by faith but holds that bodily resuscitation was never contemplated by early Christians. He believes that the rapture
Rapture
The rapture is a reference to the "being caught up" referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet "the Lord"....
is based on a misreading of I Thessalonians.
Central to Crossan's methodology is the dating of texts. This is laid out more or less fully in The Historical Jesus in one of the appendices. He dates part of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...
to the 50s CE
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
, as well as the first layer of the hypothetical Q Document (in this he is heavily dependent on the work of John Kloppenborg). He also assigns a portion of the Gospel of Peter
Gospel of Peter
The Gospel According to Peter , commonly called the Gospel of Peter, is one of the non-Canonical gospels which were rejected by the Church Fathers and the Catholic Church's synods of Carthage and Rome, which established the New Testament canon, as apocryphal...
, which he calls the "Cross Gospel," to a date preceding the synoptic gospels
Synoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
, the reasoning of which is laid out more fully in The Cross that Spoke: The Origin of the Passion Narratives. He believes the "Cross Gospel" was the forerunner to the passion narratives in the canonical
Canonical
Canonical is an adjective derived from canon. Canon comes from the greek word κανών kanon, "rule" or "measuring stick" , and is used in various meanings....
gospels. He does not date the synoptics until the mid to late 70s CE, starting with the Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...
and ending with Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
in the 90s. As for the Gospel of John
Gospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
, he believes part was constructed at the beginning of the 2nd century CE and another part closer to the middle of the century. Following Rudolf Bultmann
Rudolf Bultmann
Rudolf Karl Bultmann was a German theologian of Lutheran background, who was for three decades professor of New Testament studies at the University of Marburg...
, he believes there is an earlier "Signs Source" for John as well. His dating methods and conclusions are quite controversial, particularly regarding the dating of Thomas and the "Cross Gospel." The very early dating of these non-canonical sources has not been accepted by many biblical scholars.
In God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007), Crossan starts with the presumption of reader familiarity 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,' 'Son of God
Son of God
"Son of God" is a phrase which according to most Christian denominations, Trinitarian in belief, refers to the relationship between Jesus and God, specifically as "God the Son"...
,' 'God,' and 'God from God,' whose titles were 'Lord,' 'Redeemer,' 'Liberator,' and 'Saviour of the World.'" "(M)ost Christians probably think that those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to Christ. But before Jesus ever existed, all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus." Crossan cites the adoption of them by the early Christians to apply to Jesus as denying them of Caesar the Augustus. "They were taking the identity of the Roman emperor and giving it to a Jewish peasant. Either that was a peculiar joke and a very low lampoon, or it was what the Romans called majestas and we call high treason." He ends the book asking the question "Is Bible-fed Christian violence supporting or even instigating our imperial violence as the New Roman Empire?"
Books
- Scanning the Sunday Gospel,1966
- The Gospel of Eternal Life, 1967
- In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, 1973, reprinted 1992, ISBN 0-06-061606-7
- The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story, 1975, reprinted 1988, ISBN 0-944344-06-2
- Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges, 1976, ISBN 0-06-061607-5
- Finding Is the First Act: Trove Folktales and Jesus' Treasure Parable, 1979 ISBN 0-80061509-3
- Cliffs of Fall: Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus, 1980, ISBN 0-81640113-6
- A Fragile Craft: The Work of Amos Niven Wilder, 1981, ISBN 0-89130424-X
- In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus, 1983, ISBN 0-06-061608-3
- Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon, 1985, reprinted 1992, ISBN 0-86683-959-3
- Sayings Parallels: A Workbook for the Jesus Tradition, 1986, ISBN 0-80062109-3
- The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative, 1988, ISBN 0-06-254843-3
- The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, 1991, ISBN 0-06-061629-6
- The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images, 1994, reprinted 1998, ISBN 0-7858-0901-5
- Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 1994, ISBN 0-06-061662-8
- Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus, 1995, ISBN 0-06-061480-3
- Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions about the Historical Jesus , edited with Richard Watts, 1996, ISBN 0-664-25842-5
- The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus, 1998, ISBN 0-06-061660-1
- Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up?: A Debate between William Lane CraigWilliam Lane CraigWilliam Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, philosophical theologian, and Christian apologist. He is known for his work on the philosophy of time and the philosophy of religion, specifically the existence of God and the defense of Christian theism...
and John Dominic Crossan, 1999, ISBN 0-8010-2175-8 - The Jesus Controversy: Perspectives in Conflict (Rockwell Lecture Series), with Luke Timothy Johnson, Werner H. Kelber, 1999, ISBN 1-56338-289-X
- A Long Way from Tipperary: A Memoir, 2000, ISBN 0-06-069974-4
- Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, with Jonathan L. Reed, 2001, ISBN 0-06-061634-2
- In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, with Jonathan L. Reed, 2004, ISBN 0-06-051457-4
- The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem with Marcus J. BorgMarcus BorgMarcus J. Borg is an American Biblical scholar and author. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, holds a DPhil degree from Oxford University and is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, an endowed chair, at Oregon State University, from which he retired in 2007...
, HarperSanFrancisco (February 28, 2006) ISBN 978-0-06-084539-1 - God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, HarperSanFrancisco, 2007, ISBN 978-0-06-084323-6
- The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon, co-authored with Marcus BorgMarcus BorgMarcus J. Borg is an American Biblical scholar and author. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, holds a DPhil degree from Oxford University and is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, an endowed chair, at Oregon State University, from which he retired in 2007...
, 2009; ISBN 0-06-143072-2 - "The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of The Lord's Prayer", 2010; ISBN 978-0-06-187567-0
External links
- Crossan's website (Promotional)