Crossan, John Dominic

▪ 1995

      "Jesus was not born of a virgin, not born of David's lineage, not born in Bethlehem," and "there was no stable, no shepherds, no star, no Magi, no massacre of the infants, and no flight into Egypt." These assertions were made not by a fire-breathing atheist but by John Dominic Crossan, a bookish Roman Catholic teaching biblical studies at DePaul University in Chicago. In 1994 his research came "out of the ivory towers" with publication of the volume Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, with the theories that he and the 73 other members of the Jesus Seminar put forth in a book titled The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? and with a discussion of his own work by other scholars in a collection titled Jesus and Faith: A Conversation on the Work of John Dominic Crossan.

      Born on Feb. 17, 1934, in Ireland, Crossan moved to the U.S. in 1951 and began his study of the life and teachings of Jesus. In 1969, while on the faculty of the Chicago Catholic Theological Union, he resigned from the Servite priesthood. As he explained later, he "wanted to be free from the irritation of having been trained to think critically but being in constant trouble for doing it."

      Crossan first gained notice outside academe with a 1992 work, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. The book sold more than 60,000 copies, a surprise to Crossan, whose previous works had sold about 2,000 copies each. That book, and its 1994 successor, made Crossan one of the key figures in the latest version of an old controversy—trying to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of the Gospels.

      In Crossan's view, "Jesus' divine origins are just as fictional or mythological as those of Octavius. Neither should be taken literally, both must be taken metaphorically." Crossan said that his views need not be taken to mean that the Bible was worthless or that Jesus was not unique. "I see no problem with the [biblical] stories as metaphors and myths," he said. "I want people to face the truth about the relationship between history and faith, and not to let one masquerade for the other."

      Amid the flurry of analyses of his works and those of his colleagues in both the academic and popular media, Crossan began work on another major volume, this one dealing with the early years of Christianity. "We're talking about the period before Paul," Crossan told Publishers Weekly. "Right now, we only see early Christianity through his glasses. I think there is plenty to learn about those immediate decades following Christ's death." (DARRELL J. TURNER)

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