John Dominic Crossan is the leading contemporary scholar on the historical Jesus, which means that his vocation is to look behind, around, and through Christ's resurrection, toward the goal of establishing what can be known about the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

His search for the historical Jesus, however, takes place in the larger context of the life of the church. Among the goals of The Birth of Christianity is to teach readers how our habits of worship have created false gods. To that end, Crossan attempts to unearth the religion's earliest forms. What did Christianity look like, Crossan asks, between the crucifixion and the conversion of Paul? And what might Christianity look like today had Saul never set off toward Damascus?

Crossan's conclusions don't come from newly discovered documents; they come from freshly-minted academic methodologies. He uses anthropology, history, and archaeology to construct his arguments about the essential nature of both Jesus' religion and Paul's. The 25-cent summary of his conclusion is that Jesus did not recognize the dualism between spirit and flesh that formed the basis of Paul's apocalyptic Christianity. In other words, Jesus was more Jewish than Paul.

The ramifications of this argument are huge. Crossan says much of Christian worship--and many of the world's injustices--are based on the dualistic Christ that Paul preached. Though Crossan doesn't bully readers into accepting his conclusions, he does press hard for them to situate their own beliefs in relation to his interpretations of Jesus and Paul. At every point in the evolution of his argument, he asks readers questions such as "How do you understand a human being?" and "What is the character of your God?" Then he proceeds to answer these questions himself. Finally, he tells readers what he thinks these answers mean.

It's an incredibly civilized style of argument--both spiritually and intellectually respectful and always rhetorically engaging. Though The Birth of Christianity weighs in at almost 600 pages of text, you'll probably want to read every word. And after that, you'll probably be hungry for more.

From Library Journal
In his latest book, Crossan (New Testament, DePaul Univ.) asks, "What in that original interaction [between Jesus and his first companions] made continuation from before to after [the Crucifixion] possible or even inevitable?" As with his massive The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (LJ 2/1/92), Crossan incorporates crosscultural anthropology, literary analysis, and the history and archaeology of Roman Judea in the first century C.E. to answer his pivotal question. Reading early Christian texts against a background he rigorously establishes in the first half of the book, Crossan teases out a picture of infant Christianity. Though he may not convince all readers?his case rests heavily upon the priority and independence of questionable documents?Crossan's work cannot be rejected out of hand. Recommended for seminary and academic libraries.?Craig W. Beard, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times
"[John Dominic Crossan is] excellent and timely in drawing on aspects of social anthropological theory to elucidate the thought processes and human relationships behind the extant sources. He and his colleagues in American biblical studies have done a great service in recent years in bringing these perspectives to bear on the origins of Christianity...Mr. Crossan paints his Jesus with great warmth and power."

The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Robert L. Wilken
...a self-absorbed academic exercise, the product of a cramped and airless world in which theories feed on theories, scholars are endlessly commenting on the views of other scholars, and words intertwine without a footing in historical reality.

Boston Globe
"This book is about the lost decades of Christianity, the 30s and 40s, about what the faith must have been like before it was Greco-Romanized by Paul, Luke, and others.... Crossan is at his most persuasive here...reconstructing the melody of Christianity before the lyrics were written. It is for him an earthly, Palestinian tune, one full of lament, joy, and a thirst for justice."

From Booklist
Of the many recent books about the historical realities of earliest Christianity, none have been more successful than Crossan's Historical Jesus (1992) and Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994). Crossan's new book is the direct sequel to those biographies. He begins it by explaining, as he did not in the previous books, why the endeavor to ascertain what happened in the first century to give rise to the most pervasive of world religions is important. Basically, it is important (necessary is Crossan's word) because the Catholic, as distinguished from Gnostic (not Protestant), belief in the incarnation ("the Word of God made flesh") obliges Christian scholars to consider the material realities within which the faith arose and grew. In the rest of a massive book, Crossan exhibits what his sources are, how he uses them, and what findings they lead him to. This is heavy-duty scholarship, of a sort that usually discourages a popular readership. But Crossan's clear, convivial style and his habit of engaging in dialogue with his sources and other writings make his work dazzling and engrossing, and the novelty of his subject--Christianity after the Crucifixion but before the evangelism of Paul--should draw ancient as well as religious history enthusiasts like sugar draws wasps. Ray Olson

San Francisco Chronicle
"Flashes of genius. . . . He writes with deep understanding and compassion."

Toronto Star
"Ambitious and groundbreaking, The Birth of Christianity is a must read for those with a serious interest in Jesus and the early church."


"Crossan's theology is breathtaking, stunning, and compelling."


"Crossan can be credited with an exceptional command of the tools of a first-rate public intellectual."

Elaine Pagels, Princeton University, author of The Gnostic Gospels
"The works of John Dominic Crossanlearned, original, and often controversialhave stimulated some of the most intense discussion among New Testament scholars today."

National Catholic Reporter
"In The Birth of Christianity, Crossan pries open some familiar assumptions that help us avoid the ongoing surprise of the gospel and the radical claims it makes on us. ... Crossan...has added his share of both light and salt to an often stolid field only specialists can access."

America magazine
"In The Birth of Christianity Crossan has once again shown his impressive breadth of interest and depth of analysis. The amount of detail is breathtaking ... there are many new and rewarding insights here"

A. K. M. Adam, professor of New Testament theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, Trenton Times
"Crossan's work is ... in certain respects positively brilliant. [His] research itself is a fascinating addition to the literature on early Christianity...[he] is refreshingly honest about the force of his claims."

St. Louis Post Dispatch
"Crossan can be credited with an exceptional command of the tools of a first-rate public intellectual."

Book Description
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.

FROM OUR EDITORS

A preeminent scholar in the historical Jesus field, Crossan provides an engrossing new understanding of the birth of the Christian faith.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

John Dominic Crossan, 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 new understanding of the birth of the Christian church.

FROM THE CRITICS

Toronto Star

A must read for those with a serious interest in Jesus and the early church.

Elaine Pagels

Crossan's works have stimulated some of the most intense discussion among New Testament scholars today.

St. Louis Post Dispatch

Crossan has an exceptional command of the tools of a first rate public intellectual.

Christian Century

Crossan's theology is breathtaking.

San Francisco Chronicle

Flashes of genius.... He writes with deep understanding and compassion.Read all 16 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Christianity arose out of the interaction of the historical Jesus and his first companions. It was not invented by Paul. That is the stunning hypothesis of Crossan's The Birth of Christianity. Like the master craftsman he is, Crossan has forged a picture of earliest Christianity--of the dark years, the 30s and 40s--in debate with other scholars and in the combination of social science theory, Galilean archaeology, close textual analysis, and historical reconstruction. No one controls the issues, the data, and the options as well as Crossan. His reconstruction is essential reading for anyone serious about Christian origins and its fate in the third millennium. — Robert W. Funk

Crossan's work is ... in certain respects positively brilliant. [His] research itself is a fascinating addition to the literature on early Christianity...[he] is refreshingly honest about the force of his claims. — A. K. M. Adam