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Review of The Historical Jesus by J. D. Crossan
by Michael Turton (May 29, 2003)
"It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research
is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography
and call it biography."-- Crossan, The Historical Jesus, p xxviii
In The Historical Jesus: the Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant John
Dominic Crossan announced a program of what, in any other scholarly domain, might
be regarded as an act of either surpassing arrogance or unexcelled madness: the
singlehanded lifting of his field from the 19th century to the 21st. "Methodology
in Jesus research at the end of this century is about where methodology in archaeological
research was at the end of the last," he says. His book is intended as an attack
on the problem of "acute scholarly subjectivity" that infests historical Jesus
studies, and ultimately, discredits it.
Crossan approaches the problem of methodology by developing one of his own
that is exploits cross-cultural anthropology to establish a framework that serves
both in understanding what kind of environment produced Jesus, and in delimiting
the boundaries of plausibility for any historical Jesus the methodology constructs.
From there he moves to the text itself. This involves a three-step process of
inventory (what texts are used), stratification (their temporal context), and
attestation (what level of independence do we have for each datum?). This methodology
relies on assumptions laid out on page xxxi: namely, that the Jesus tradition:
...contains three major layers: one of retention, recording at least
the essential core of words and deeds, events and happenings; another of development,
applying such data to new situations, novel problems, and unforeseen circumstances;
and a final one of creation, not only composing new sayings and new stories,
but, above all, composing larger complexes that changed their contents by that
very process (pxxxi).
At first glance this methodology looks tiresomely familiar. After all, it still
depends on determining the date of the texts, and relies on multiple attestation.
It still treats Jesus as a tale that has grown with the telling. So Crossan has
dressed it up with some cultural anthropology. Big deal. Underpinning it still
is the historicist assumption that if we can only get at the earliest level of
the story, we will find the historical core, the events that actually occurred,
the ideas that Jesus actually promulgated. And beneath that, like the thousands
of constantly-shifting computer-adjusted jacks that hold up Kansai International
Airport in Osaka Bay, is the axiom that somewhere down there is a historical core
to be had.
Yet, against this, it is crucial to note that Crossan's methodology includes
a very interesting step: he has broken the narrative and the sayings down
into "complexes." Note that he does not explicitly state that he is performing
this act as part of his methodology, nor does he raise any defense of
the validity of this approach that dis-integrates complexes from the text in
order to re-integrate them into a cultural milieu. He doesn't even present us
with any guide to how to form complexes out of the larger story, he just
does it. The fact that it is rather widely done in NT studies does not excuse
the lack of a justification for its appearance in his methodological approach.
We will return to this problem in a moment.
One could of the real war what Barbara Foley has said of the Holocaust
-- not that it's "unknowable," but "that its full dimensions are inaccessible
to the ideological frameworks that we have inherited from the liberal era."
-- Paul M. Fussell, Wartime
For mythicists, such as Loisy, Leidner, Doherty, Wells, and Price, the focus --
regardless of the particular mythicist angle -- is largely on the narrative, reflecting,
I believe, an unconscious but nigh-on universal presupposition that history
is narrative. Discredit the narrative, the unstated premise runs, and you
discredit the history. Crossan, however, poses a conundrum. For there is no question
that for Crossan the narrative as such is, by and large, of dubious historicity.
Crossan proposes a methodology that treats the whole problem of narrative historicity
the way the panzers dismissed the Maginot Line: the narrative as such is
not merely ahistorical, it is rendered almost totally irrelevant to the problem
of determining who the historical Jesus was. Or so it appears.
Crossan's methodology is thus an answer to the problem of what to do with a
narrative that is obviously fictional, at least in part. And the answer is simple:
design the methodology so the importance of narrative as such is minimized.
Cut it up into "complexes" that can be treated each as a separate historical
datum, that instead of speaking to history as a narrative, speaks to cross-cultural
anthropology as a sociopolitical datum.
This sets up a "hidden" reply to the mythicists in Crossan, a sort of declaration
that no matter how thoroughly the gospel narrative has been discredited -- and
I think it has reached the point that it can safely be declared almost entirely
ahistorical -- you have not disposed of the historical data. You must confront
both the sayings collections in the gospels as historical data and
the narrative as sociopolitical data. No mythicist has done that in any kind
of systematic way. Indeed, most go the opposite route, dismissing the sayings
as inventions of interested communities or imports from earlier times and climes,
and focusing on the narrative as historical data. This is, in light of Crossan's
methodology, only a step up from puncturing holes in biblical inerrantism. By
thus shifting the ground, Crossan apparently renders the mythicists impotent
in an entirely different way from writers like Meier or Sanders. Or so it appears.
Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound
an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report
the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power
remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear
the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire
awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.
Crossan's prose is one of the great pleasures of interacting with Crossan. So
firm in its knowledge, so knowing in its persuasiveness, so persuasive in its
certainty, so certain in its moral weight, it presents itself to the reader as
a safe harbor in a sea of fraudulent documents, unreliable texts, uncertain dating,
and unconvincing methodologies. Early in the book Crossan declares:
I talk of original, developmental, and compositional layers, or of
retention, development, and creation, but I reject absolutely any pejorative
language for those latter processes. Jesus left behind him thinkers, not memorizers,
disciples, not reciters, people, not parrots.
The poetic force of the passage is so powerful one misses that fact that Crossan
has failed to present any rational argument as to why we should forego labeling
"creativity" what it is: forgery. The reader could be forgiven for thinking that
Crossan has not actually conceded that Jesus followers forged and fictioned in
his holy name. Since the contrary position is indefensible, Crossan's only move
is to refuse to countenance any realistic language on the matter, thus denying
the forces of critical thought a toehold by deploying a massive airstrike of moral
indignation against the artillery of realistic description.
But where he suppresses the tongue, he also seduces the ear. Listen:
Is the passion narrative from history or from prophecy?...I remind
you of the difference between prophecy and history by comparing these twin texts
on the passion of Jesus:(p375)
Crossan sternly reminds us, in case our thinking has strayed into territory
forbidden to us, and we sit dumbly like Theoden at Orthanc before Saruman and
Gandalf, awaiting his judgment. And what does he remind us with?
(1) For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. (1 Corinthians
15:3).
(2) Our Lord is...truly nailed [to a tree: not in the Greek text] in
the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch. (Ignatius
of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans 1:2)(p375, emphasis in original).
Crossan than lays down his definition:
In both cases Jesus died for us, but in the former according to the
Scriptures, in the latter according to the decree of Pilate and Antipas.
So deftly is the parallel drawn, so economically does the prose uncoil, so swiftly
does the thought strike, that the reader hardly notices that the second quote
does not say that at all. Crossan simply declares that it does.
And therein lies a major problem.
"At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of
these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope,
and now for the past nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California,
declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U.S...."
The most troubling aspects of The Historical Jesus intertwine like snakes
in spring mating: the use of declarations as a substitute for argument, the suspension
of the methodology where it specifically disallows the conclusions Crossan desires,
the failure of Crossan to supply any clear method for determining the independence
of attestation in the texts, and the lack of compelling connections between the
plausibility of a particular historical Jesus reconstruction and the reality
of Crossan's assertions.
Consider the long passage on p. 358 and p. 359 where Crossan considers the
problem of "destroy the temple -- raise it three days" predictions.
That is surely a fascinating unit. its importance is signaled by the
double "his disciples remembered" after each of its two component parts. That
gloss indicates, I presume, some trouble with those twin units, some initial
lack of understanding or misunderstanding that had to be explained by later
comprehension.
Three paragraphs than follow. Remember, Crossan has presumed that the differing
treatments of this problematic saying arise from a misunderstanding of
putative original words of Jesus by the community and its authors.
First of all, however, is the fact that "house" appears in all three
independent sources, in Gospel of Thomas...Mark 11:17... and John 2:16.
In both those later cases it is appended as immediate explanation of the action
of Jesus. I conclude, provisionally, that the action was originally --
that is, at least prior to those three sources -- accompanied by some saying
about "house."
The problem here should be clear. Are Thomas, Mark, and John
independent? Mark and Thomas are almost certainly related somehow, either directly
or throw a common source, John and Mark are almost certainly directly related,
and some scholars have seen connections between John and Thomas. Second, and much
worse, he is now waffling between literary analysis and historical exegesis. To
the extent that Crossan's sayings complexes represent sociopolitical attitudes,
they cannot represent historical events. If the saying has undergone modification
and redaction by the authors, than any context it has is pointless as narrative
-- though it might be useful as a sociopolitical datum. In other words, with this
interpretation, Crossan wants to maintain that the saying has undergone literary
evolution but the context, action+saying, has not. Clearly that is indefensible
-- the complexes cannot be literary-cum-sociopolitical data when Crossan wants
them to be, and then suddenly revert to narrative history whenever he requires.
Worse still, as he points out, only two of the sources -- John and Mark -- retain
the action. According to his methodology, two probably dependent sources
--which he regards as independent -- would be very weak indeed.
It should be clear, then, why Crossan chose misunderstanding to be the
problem he was trying to solve. Almost any other choice would have required
him to chose both the saying and its context for literary analysis, threatening
the narrative history. By choosing misunderstanding, Crossan limited
the problem to the saying itself, retaining the context without judgment so
as to preserve historicity. We'll return to misunderstanding in a moment.
The next paragraph:
Second, that double "his disciples remembered" in John 2:17, 22 draws
attention to the fact that his account has both an action accompanied
by a "house" saying to be explained by later remembrance in 2:14-17 and,
separately, another saying to be explained also by later remembrance
in 2:18-22....[goes on to explain differing treatments by Mark and John]
and then proposes a solution:
Behind all that development, I propose the following trajectory. The
earliest recoverable stratum involved an action symbolically destroying
the Temple, as in Mark 11:15-16 and John 2:14-16a, and a saying announcing
what was happening, "I will destroy this house utterly beyond repair," as in
Gospel of Thomas 71. Thereafter, the tradition tended to separate action
and saying along separate lines of interpretation. That original saying
was replaced by positive by divergent biblical references, attached to and explaining
the action. And the original but now separated saying itself was
recast to apply either to parousia, as rejected by Mark, or to resurrection,
as accepted by John, in whom both streams are present.
Having presented the development of the saying, he then offers his conclusion:
I conclude, therefore, that an action and equal saying involving the
Temple's symbolic desruction goes back to the historical Jesus himself but that
any biblical references or applications to the Temple's actual destruction,
the resurrection, or the parousia are later explanations of an action considered
enigmatic to begin with and rendered even more so by the Temple's actual destruction
in 70 CE.
Remember, Crossan began with the idea that the saying had been misunderstood.
He then gives a history of what happened to the saying, in his view, and concludes
that the changes are due to it being an enigmatic saying to begin with. After
a whirlwind tour of three gospels in Crossan's lucid, liquid prose, studded with
strong, convincing sentences cascading forth one after another like railway track
laid with mad speed in a Roadrunner cartoon, the reader could perhaps be forgiven
for not noticing that Crossan never demonstrated the saying
was enigmatic anywhere in the discussion. He simply bypasses the whole problem.
Nor does he supply any methodological principle or concept of preservation
that would compel his conclusion about the split between action and saying.
Indeed, looking at Thomas 71, it is easy to see the terse "I will [destroy
this] house beyond repair" as an attempt to clean up the verse by removing its
embarrassing reference to raising it up again in three days, a later, not earlier,
evolutionary development. It is also noteworthy that many scholars take the commonsense
view that the entire saying was invented after the destruction of the Temple.
All of this simply goes by the board.
On page 310 Crossan once again suspends his methodology at will. He writes
about miracles:
We have no textual gospel of miracles similar to that textual Gospel
of sayings. Furthermore, while we have as high as sixfold independent attestation
in the primary stratum of sayings, we never get higher than twofold for that
of the miracles. And the closest we get to a triple attestation is in the second
stratum (appendix 6). One might almost conclude that miracles come into the
tradition later rather than earlier, as creative confirmation rather than as
original data. I think, however, that such a conclusion would be completely
wrong. The better explanation is just the opposite. Miracles were, at a very
early stage, being washed out of the tradition and, when retained, were being
very carefully interpreted.
In other words, even where methodological concerns compel certain conclusions,
we are free to disregard them if we don't like the conclusions or where somebody
else has another methodology. Note too the ambiguity: does tradition refer
to some putative oral matrix, or does it refer to the later literature? It would
be hard to imagine that the miracles were pared down and controlled in the oral
versions! When he wants to, Crossan can deploy ambiguity as deftly as clarity.
Here we also encounter that constant tension in The Historical Jesus
between complexes as sociopolitical data and complexes as narrative history.
Crossan rejects the Passion Narrative as narrative history because it is built
up out of OT proof-texts. However, as many scholars have noted, so are the
miracle stories. Crossan wants them to go back to a tradition of Jesus-as-healer
stories. Yet Randel Helms observes in Gospel Fictions (1988) that the
healing stories are also drawn from OT tradition as well and appear to be inventions
of the Gospel writers. Crossan apparently wants his sociopolitical complexes
to do double duty as historical narrative, which requires that he ignore a methodological
stance he adheres to in other situations.
In tackling this complex, Crossan flop-flips between these two positions. On
one hand he reads the story about the Temple as sociopolitical data, symbolically
-- Jesus spoke of the destruction of the Temple in symbolic terms, and then
later it was physcially destroyed, and the two stories merged.
But at the same time Crossan won't give up the narrative history. He just can't
let it go. On the very next page, like a killer performing mouth-to-mouth on
his victim, he then goes on to try to revive the narrative by speculating that
Jesus made this speech (or some other egalitarian speech) in the Temple during
festival and that is what got him arrested. This preserves the sequence of Temple-Disturbance-Arrest
in the gospels, which he has just discredited by treating it as a mix-up between
the symbolic and the real.
For an extremely large percentage of the history of the world,
there was no California. That is, according to the present theory. I don't mean
to suggest that California was underwater and has since come up. I mean to say
that of the varied terranes and physiographic provinces we call California nothing
whatever was there. -- John McPhee, Assembling California
Central to Crossan's methodology are questions of stratigraphy, yet the whole
issue is dealt with in a single paragraph in the introduction. In an appendix
Crossan parcels out the NT literature to various chronological strata. This appears,
on the surface, to be a rational move. The question of how dates are arrived at
is really almost secondary; as Crossan notes in The Birth of Christianity,
since there's no escape from making decisions about dates. Setting the question
of chronology aside for the nonce, how is it possible to assign "strata" to documents
that have been redacted and edited for decades over the course of early Christian
history? The gospels do not exist as rough slabs in a chronological matrix, but
are more like intrusive features in the province of NT literature, vast dikes
of accretion and redaction, borrowing and recasting that slash across two centuries,
as incestuously familiar with each other as the in-clique at a school dance. This
familiarity, in my view, is fatal to Crossan's idea of multiple attestation: it
just doesn't exist.
"Greek?" said Michelson, "is he Greek, then?"
"Oh, don't you know? chuckled Britt, "Listen. There was once a part of Greek
thinkers -- this was around the time of Aristotle -- who sat up all night having
a furious argument about the number of teeth in a horse's mouth. Unable to agree,
they went out and collared a passer-by -- an Arab. He listened attentively to
all their arguments, and then without saying a word, he walked away. He returned
in a few moments, however, and told them the correct answer. 'How did you decide?'
they cried. 'Whose was the better argument, the sounder logic?' 'Logic be damned,'
he says, 'I've just been round the back to the stable and counted 'em.'"
-- Ian Williamson, Chemical Plant
In The Birth of Christianity Crossan asks of Meier's famous criteria: "First,
how are those five criteria theoretically based?" (p144). One could as well ask
the same question of Crossan's methodology. What "theory" links cross-cultural
anthropology and the Gospels? What theory links plausible constructions
of Jesus to the reality of his existence? None of this is underpinned by theory,
but by a not-very-well explicated mixture of common sense, accepted techniques
of literary and NT analysis, and other empirical methods. In short, Crossan's
methodology has no more theoretical underpinning than Meier's. Perhaps the whole
issue of theory should be suspended until someone develops a methodology that
actually works. We can worry about theory when we have a success to validate it.
Does Crossan offer us this success? No. A working assumption of his, denied
in the introduction but common throughout the text, is apparently that the earliest
stratum contains items that are somehow connected to the historical Jesus, but
the topology of connection varies with each complex of sayings. In most cases
he simply declares, like Emperor Norton, what the situation should be
after examination of the verses in question. The reader's critical thinking
apparatus is treated like Austria confronting Hitler; it is simply adumbrated
and obliterated by Crossan's confident certitude.
This certitude is, I think, the result of Crossan's methodology. It forces
him to make a twofold move, from the wider issues of Palestinian and Mediterranean
culture to the nails-and-wood and bread-and-fish of the early Christian movement,
and from historical possibility to historical probability. In performing this
double dance, from macro to micro, and from plausibility to actuality, stumbling
is almost inevitable, for the macro-micro relationship is one of the thorniest
and most contested in the social sciences. The Historical Jesus, already
hefty at more than 500 pages, is probably too short to even touch on the problem.
Yet there it is: Crossan's methodology nowhere proffers a way to look at specific
complexes and extract the Jesus of history, to bridge that macro-micro, plausibility-actuality
gap. That is why, too often, he is forced to slip in phrases like "I presume..."
and "It is not impossible that..." or "but the original saying, as in the Sayings
Gospel Q version, goes back to Jesus" which simply register an interesting
but methodologically sterile opinion. It is all he can offer.
Crossan shuttles between literary analysis being mined for sociopolitical data,
and historical analysis being mined to build narrative history. But his methodology
trips him up on this point: to read each and every word as charged with sociopolitical
significance is to deny the narrative any possibility of historicity; it treats
each item in the gospels as though one were analyzing each shot of a film, all
carefully controlled by the director. In other words, Crossan's methodology
not only explicity denies the historicity of the narrative, it implicity affirms
that the gospels in every aspect are theopolitical constructions. If they were
not, his methodological approach would fail. If they were not, the complexes
would track actual history and could not be analyzed as complexes spun into
narrative for theological and political purposes. In other words, what emerges
instead is not a trajectory of history, but a cat's cradle composed of strands
of theological politicking. The alert reader will note that for his security
of fact he's forced to travel outside the NT and visit Josephus and Tacitus.
The moral: there's no secure history anywhere in the NT. It's turtles all the
way down.
Ultimately, because Crossan's methodology is driven by a combination of ambiguous
empirical factors, unsupported methodological assumptions and, above all, his
brilliantly expressed opinion, its resolution is too low to bring the historical
Jesus into focus. Indeed, it is hard to determine whether Crossan has Jesus
under his microscope, or whether, like the hapless Thurber in his humorous recollections
of college biology, he has simply drawn the reflection of his own eye. The fact
is that there is nothing in the Christian traditions about Jesus that is not
amenable to explanation as post hoc invention by furiously scribbling theological
writers involved in internal political struggles and external conversion processes.
Except, perhaps the "brute fact of Crucifixion." Just whose crucifixion, of
course, remains the question that no methodology has yet approached.
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