ETS 2003, Atlanta, Georgia
Excavating Jesus or Inventing a Jesus?
8
Crossan has naturally not been without his critics, even from what would be called
the liberal side of Christian scholarship. One scholar called his layering scheme trick-
ster-like
29
and another has called his assimilation of material from social science criticism
plagiarism.
30
Scholars in the more conservative or evangelical camp (those he would label
as fundamentalists) will likely be more concerned with the practical outworking of his views
which relegate to unhistorical, or more precisely, fiction, all of the essentials of Biblical
Christianity (e.g., the Virgin Birth, the deity of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, the bo-
dily resurrection and the second coming, etc.). While in the realm of soteriology Crossan is
perhaps best classified as a universalist,
31
in terms Biblical studies his position on the Bible
itself is that of a minimalist, or perhaps better a radical minimalist.
32
In that position, his col-
laborator, Jonathan Reed would echo a similar viewpoint,
For the most part, biblical scholarship has been the domain of literary studies and text-
centered. The text of the Bible was the primary object of study, and exegesis the chief
goal. This near myopic focus on words, perhaps a remnant of Christian and particularly
Protestant theology, rendered archaeology biblical studies handmaiden, whose role
was to assist exegesis or discover new written materials.
33
For Crossan and Reed then the role of the Scriptures in the quest to excavate Jesus is
minimal at best, since the text is largely a collection of fictional or error-strewn accounts.
Although speaking about issues related to the Old Testament, the opinion of the noted arc-
haeologist and theologian G. Ernest Wright are appropriate, In Biblical faith, everything de-
nation of what he means by that is entirely a muddle. He moves inspiration from the authors of the text to the
readers of the text.
29
Pearson, The Gospel According to the Jesus Seminar, p. 13
30
Bruce J. Malina, Social-Scientific Methods in Historical Jesus Research, in The Social Setting of Jesus and
the Gospels. Wolfgang Stegemann, Bruce J. Malina and Gerd Theissen, (ed`s). (Minneapolis, Minnesota: For-
tress Press, 2002): 4.
31
Halstead, The Orthodox Unorthodoxy, p. 517.
32
For an excellent summation of the issues of minimalism, particularly as it relates to the Old Testament, but
certainly by extension, the New Testament, see William G. Dever, What Did the Bible Writers Know and When
Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel. (Grand Rapids, Michi-
gan: Eerdmans, 2001).
33
Reed, Galilean Jesus, p. 1