"With dusty, tired, much-traveled Paul came Rome's most dangerous opponent,not legions but ideas, not an alternative force but an alternative faith. Paul too proclaimed one who was Lord, Savior, Redeemer, and Liberator. He announced one who was Divine, Son of God, God, and God from God. But Paul's new divinity was Christ, not Caesar. His was a radically divergent but equally global theology." -- from the Prologue
Many theories exist about who Paul was, what he believed, and what role he played in the origins of Christianity. Using archaeological and textual evidence, and taking advantage of recent major discoveries in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Syria, John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed show that Paul was a fallible but dedicated successor to Jesus, carrying on Jesus's mission of inaugurating the Kingdom of God on earth in opposition to the reign of Rome. Against the concrete backdrop of first-century Greco-Roman and Jewish life, In Search of Paul reveals the work of Paul as never before, showing how and why the liberating messages and practices of equality, caring for the poor, and a just society under God's rules, not Rome's, were so appealing.
Crossan and Reed's concise, engaging prose conjures up the complex and rich world of Paul's time, from the imperial intrigues of Rome to the theological infighting among Christian communities in Greece and Turkey to the beautiful landscapes and the cultural conflicts of the Middle East. The illustrations and short, rich, "you are there" descriptions help the reader to follow in the footsteps of Paul and, indeed, in the footsteps of Christianity.

In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom

Crossan, John Dominic

Reed, Jonathan L.

Religion & Spirituality

HarperOne

WHO KILLED JESUS

A wide-ranging study examines key theological issues and argues that the popular--and historically inaccurate--acceptance of the biblical version of Jesus's execution has resulted in dangerous anti-Semitic practices. 30,000 first printing. $40,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus

Harpercollins

The death of Jesus is one of the most hotly debated questions in Christianity today. In his massive and highly publicized The Death of the Messiah, Raymond Brown -- while clearly rejecting anti-Semitism -- never questions the essential historicity of the passion stories. Yet it is these stories, in which the Jews decide Jesus' execution, that have fueled centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. 
 Now, in his most controversial book, John Dominic Crossan shows that this traditional understanding of the Gospels as historical fact is not only wrong but dangerous. Drawing on the best of biblical, anthropological, sociological and historical research, he demonstrates definitively that it was the Roman government that tried and executed Jesus as a social agitator. Crossan also candidly addresses such key theological questions as "Did Jesus die for our sins?" and "Is our faith in vain if there was no bodily resurrection?" 
 Ultimately, however, Crossan's radical reexamination shows that the belief that the Jews killed Jesus is an early Christian myth (directed against rival Jewish groups) that must be eradicated from authentic Christian faith.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

SanFran

A critical analysis of the form and content of Jesus' parables of advent, reversal, and action. Bibliogs

In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus.

Harpercollins College Div

Offers a historical look at the life of Jesus Christ, portraying him as a courageous Jewish Mediterranean peasant and a radical social revolutionary

The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

Biographies & Memoirs

"He comes as yet unknown into a hamlet of Lower Galilee. He is watched by the cold, hard eyes of peasants living long enough at a subsistence level to know exactly where the line is drawn between poverty and destitution. He looks like a beggar yet his eyes lack the proper cringe, his voice the proper whine, his walk the proper shuffle. He speaks about the rule of God and they listen as much from curiosity as anything else. They know all about rule and power, about kingdom and empire, but they know it in terms of tax and debt, malnutrition and sickness, agrarian oppression and demonic possession. What, they really want to know, can this kingdom of God do for a lame child, a blind parent, a demented soul screaming its tortured isolation among the graves that mark the edges of the village? " 
 –– from "The Gospel of Jesus," overture to The Historical Jesus
 The Historical Jesus reveals the true Jesus––who he was, what he did, what he said. It opens with "The Gospel of Jesus," Crossan's studied determination of Jesus' actual words and actions stripped of any subsequent additions and placed in a capsule account of his life story. The Jesus who emerges is a savvy and courageous Jewish Mediterranean peasant, a radical social revolutionary, with a rhapsodic vision of economic, political, and religious egalitarianism and a social program for creating it. 
 The conventional wisdom of critical historical scholarship has long held that too little is known about the historical Jesus to say definitively much more than that he lived and had a tremendous impact on his followers. "There were always historians who said it could not be done because of historical problems," writes Crossan. "There were always theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were always scholars who said the former when they meant the latter.

Leaders & Notable People

Can the stones of ancient Palestine speak to us about the real Jesus and his message? Are there ways to discover the historical Jesus by sifting through the layers of the Gospels and other early texts? In Excavating Jesus Bible expert John Dominic Crossan and Galilean field archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed take an exhilarating look at Jesus and his world from their two different perspectives. While the phenomenal advances in our historical and textual understanding of the origins of Christianity are well known, the equally significant archaeological discoveries are much less familiar. Drawing on evidence from the ten most significant textual discoveries of biblical studies and the ten most significant archaeological digs in the cities and villages of ancient Palestine, Crossan and Reed provide a fuller portrait of Jesus, his teachings, and his followers. Together they bring to life the struggle between Roman power and the people's passionate belief in a just God.
Join Crossan and Reed as they explore sites such as the house of the apostle Peter at Capernaum, a first-century fishing boat from the Sea of Galilee, and the skeleton of a crucified man -- plus textual discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Thomas. The authors reveal a world where life could end instantly and violently on the whim of a king, a governor, or an ordinary Roman soldier. They show us a people willing to fight, and even die, for the right to live according to their beliefs.
Excavating Jesus includes a full-color insert featuring twelve drawings by Balage Balogh, the best archaeological artist in Israel today, and black-and-white illustrations throughout. These historically accurate recreations of first-century sites reflect the most recent archaeological discoveries, telling us more about the world Jesus, his followers, and his enemies inhabited than we have ever known before. This fresh examination of the world of the Gospels offers readers a unique and fascinating opportunity to examine the evidence and decide for themselves what they believe about the nature of Jesus and his message.

Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts

History

World

The premier historical Jesus scholar joins a brilliant archaeologist to illuminate the life and teaching of Jesus against the background of his world.
There have been phenomenal advances in the historical understanding of Jesus and his world and times, but also huge, lesser known advances in first–century Palestine archaeology that explain a great deal about Jesus, his followers, and his teachings. This is the first book that combines the two and it does it in a fresh, accessible way that will interest both biblical scholars and students and also the thousands of lay readers of Biblical Archaeology Review (150,000+ circulation), National Geographic, and other archaeology and ancient history books and magazines. Each chapter of the book focuses on a major modern archaeological or textual discovery and shows how that discovery opens a window onto a major feature of Jesus's life and teachings.

Ancient Civilizations

"This book is about the lost years of earliest Christianity, about the 30s and 40s of the first century, about those dark decades immediately after the execution of Jesus...The obscurity of the 30s and 40s can be emphasized by the comparative brilliancy of the 50s. From that later decade we have the letters of Paul...From them, above all else, we receive the temptation to gloss speedily over the 30s or 40s and move swiftly to those better-documented 50s...Before there was Paul the apostle in the early 50s, there was Paul the persecutor in the early 30s. What was there for him to persecute?" -from The Birth of Christianity
In this long-awaited companion to his landmark The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan, the world's foremost expert on the historical Jesus, explores the lost years of earliest Christianity, those immediately following the execution of Jesus. He establishes the contextual setting by an interdisciplinary combination of anthropological, historical, and archaeological approaches. He identifies the textual sources by a literary analysis of the earliest discernible layers within our present gospels, both inside and outside the New Testament. Context and text come together to challenge long-standing assumptions about the role of Paul and the meaning of resurrection, and to forge an eloquent and powerful new understanding of the birth of the Christian church.
John Dominic Crossan, one of the most influential figures in biblical scholarship, combines innovative scholarship with compelling insight in illuminating the mysteries of the origins of Christianity. Crossan's meticulous research into the anthropological milieu within which Christianity arose, and his study of the emergence of early Christian communities, form the basis for his stunning and original theory. Separating history from theology and redaction, he presents a vivid account of early Christianity's interaction with the world around it, and of the new traditions and communities established as Jesus' companions continued their movement after his death.
With ancient traditional Judaism under increasing pressure from both Roman commercial exploitation and Greek cultural domination, the Kingdom-of-God movement of Jesus and his followers establish radical but non-violent resistance in the Lower Galilee of the late 20s. As early Jewish and Greek-influenced schools of thought present competing visions of the nature of the spirit and the flesh, it is the message brought by Jesus during his life that creates the spiritual center of the early church. 
The Resurrection, while essential to the story of Christ as told through the centuries, is understood in a different light when presented in the setting of a Mediterranean culture in which events such as apparitions by the dead and ecstatic visions were far from unusual. While the eschatological teachings of Paul play a large role in the growth and development of the church, they are seen to follow, rather than define, the moment of its birth.
Ground-breaking and brilliantly crafted, The Birth of Christianity is an indispensable addition to our understanding of the origins of the Christian faith.
John Dominic Crossan is the author of The Historical Jesus, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, Who Killed Jesus?, and Who Is Jesus? He chairs the Historical Jesus section of the Society of Biblical Literature and was codirector of the Jesus Seminar. John Dominic Crossan, the world's foremost expert and best-selling author on the historical Jesus, presents a fascinating and essential inquiry into the rise of Christianity in the years preceding and immediately following the Crucifixion. Crossan's interdisciplinary approach sheds new light on the cultural and theological context in which the Christian church arose, and raises essential questions about the role of St. Paul and the significance of the Resurrection.

The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened In the Years Immediately After the Execution Of Jesus

In this national bestseller, John Dominic Crossan, the world's leading expert on the historical Jesus, reveals how Christianity emerged in the period following Jesus' death. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Crossan shines new light on the theological and cultural contexts from which the Christian church arose. He argues powerfully that Christianity would have happened with or without Paul and contends that Jesus' "resurrection" meant something vastly different for his early followers than it does for many traditional Christians today-what mattered was Christina origins finally illuminates the mysterious period that set Western religious history in its decisive course.

The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Crossan, John Dominic. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Crossan, John Dominic

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Crossan, John Dominic. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom

Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus

WHO KILLED JESUS

In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus.

The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant

Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts

Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts

The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened In the Years Immediately After the Execution Of Jesus

The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus