ETS 2003, Atlanta, Georgia
Excavating Jesus or Inventing a Jesus?
6
of the old New Quest, with its neo-orthodox theologyand its ultimate bankruptcy.
19
As the co-author of the work in question, Crossan`s views on Scripture in general and
the gospels in particular are noteworthy. Crossan is a prolific author and has championed the
position that the historical or real Jesus was a peasant Jewish Cynic,
20
a wandering sort of
philosopher who talked about the Kingdom of God, but was neither broker nor mediator
21
of that kingdom. The kingdom in Crossan`s view consists of unmediated physical and spiri-
tual contact with God and unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another.
22
His view of the Gospel accounts is also rather complex. He would assert that the tradi-
tional texts contained in the Bible are essentially fiction, made up by the people who would
use the person of Jesus to create the religion now know as Christianity.
23
In support of that
claim he has presented his concept of layering and he has been using the analogy of arc-
haeological excavation for his views of the various layers he sees in the text of the gospels
for some time. Discussing historical Jesus research he stated,
Without scientific stratigraphy, that is, the detailed location of every item in its proper
chronological layer, almost any conclusion can be derived from almost any object. But
although contemporary archaeology knows very well the absolute importance of strati-
graphy, contemporary Jesus research is still involved in cultural looting, in attacks on the
mound of Jesus tradition that do not begin from any overall stratigraphy, do not explain
why this or that item was chosen for emphasis over some other one, and give the distinct
impression that the researcher knew the result before beginning to search.
24
19
Pearson, The Gospel According to the Jesus Seminar, p. 43.
20
John Dominic Crossan. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. (San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Pub-
lishers, 1994): 198.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid., p. 145. In commenting about the passion narratives, Crossan call them not history remembered but
prophecy historicized, and continues that by prophecy he does not mean texts, events, or persons that pre-
dicted or foreshadowed the future, that projected themselves forward toward a distant fulfillment. I mean such
units sought out backward, as it were, sought out after the events of Jesus` life were already known and his fol-
lowers declared that texts from the Hebrew Scriptures has been written with him in mind. Prophecy, in this
sense, is known after rather than before the fact (italics in original).
24
John Dominic Crossan. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. (San Francisco,
California: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991): xxviii.