4.12 Crossan (2012)
Crossan, John Dominic (2012) The Power of Parable: How Fiction By Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus. New York: Harper One.
Quick Look
Author
John Dominic Crossan is professor emeritus at De Paul University. He is widely regarded as the foremost historical Jesus scholar of our time. In the last forty years he has written twenty-five books on the historical Jesus, earliest Christianity, and the historical Paul. Five of them have been national religious bestsellers for a combined total of twenty-four months. The scholarly core of his work is the trilogy from The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991) through The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (1998), to In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, co-authored with the archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed (2004). His work has also been translated into twelve foreign languages, including Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Russian. He is served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature for 2011-2012. I've also reviewed on this site Crossan's Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts (2001) (see 4.2), God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007) (see 6.3), The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer (2010) (see 6.8) The Challenge of Jesus (DVD Set and Resource Guide) (2011) (see 4.14), How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling With Divine Violence From Genesis Through Revelation (2015) (see 4.18). |
This Resource’s Key Interpretations and Insights Related to the Purposes of This Website
Many consider Crossan the premier historical Jesus scholar of our generation. I consider this book to be the best guide to the heart of Jesus' teaching--his parables. This strikingly perspective on how and why Jesus used parables the way he did makes its impossible to view them as commonly understood ever again. Progressive Christians are provided with concrete guidelines for how each of the New Testament gospels, in its own unique way, distorts Jesus' purposes for them.
Crossan himself provides a very helpful summary and abstract of this book on his website. (Go to www.johndominiccrossan.com, click the Books tab, scroll down to this book's cover and click it.)
1. Like some other authors--like Kafka and Ricoeur--Crossan expands the conventional definition of the word "parable" to include certain kinds of book-length narratives, and uses the term "megaparable" to describe the four New Testament gospels.
2. The author describes in detail four types of parable, and says that the parables used "by" the historical Jesus were only one of those types--challenge parables. As part of developing his argument, he makes the striking assertion that three of the gospel writers were quite mistaken about this--Mark claiming that Jesus' parables were riddle parables, Luke that they were example parables and Matthew often portraying Jesus as using attack parables (John almost exclusively has Jesus teaching in long monologues, not parables).
3. In the second half of the book, Crossan describes the four gospels as different kinds of megaparables "about" Jesus. He says each author, in their own way, presents a distorted view of the historical Jesus. While this claim is common to all liberal/progressive biblical scholars, Crossan has a quite original way of describing the nature of the distortions--while Mark did present Jesus accurately as God's challenge megaparable, he mistakenly claimed the Jesus taught with riddle parables; Matthew presented him as God's attack parable; and Luke and John, in their different ways, presented him as a combination of God's challenge and attack parables.
4. Crossan develops a very helpful typology of violence, and asserts that what is absolutely essential to Jesus' identity is his nonviolent life and teaching (see quote, below). While I agree that non-violence is an important part of Jesus' "utopian vision" that all Christians are called to work toward; I question Crossan's implication that nonviolence should be seen as Jesus' challenge to all Christians, seen as an "ideological possibility" to be actualized here and now. (See 5.12 for Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the good and bad types of both utopia and ideology and their interrelationships.)
5. As the title of the book suggests, the author is keen to convey his view of the transcendent, transformation "power" of both the challenge parables used "by" Jesus and the life of the historical Jesus as God's challenge parable to the world. This comes very close to my understanding of the "symbolic" power of Jesus' life and teaching for Christians.
Many consider Crossan the premier historical Jesus scholar of our generation. I consider this book to be the best guide to the heart of Jesus' teaching--his parables. This strikingly perspective on how and why Jesus used parables the way he did makes its impossible to view them as commonly understood ever again. Progressive Christians are provided with concrete guidelines for how each of the New Testament gospels, in its own unique way, distorts Jesus' purposes for them.
Crossan himself provides a very helpful summary and abstract of this book on his website. (Go to www.johndominiccrossan.com, click the Books tab, scroll down to this book's cover and click it.)
1. Like some other authors--like Kafka and Ricoeur--Crossan expands the conventional definition of the word "parable" to include certain kinds of book-length narratives, and uses the term "megaparable" to describe the four New Testament gospels.
2. The author describes in detail four types of parable, and says that the parables used "by" the historical Jesus were only one of those types--challenge parables. As part of developing his argument, he makes the striking assertion that three of the gospel writers were quite mistaken about this--Mark claiming that Jesus' parables were riddle parables, Luke that they were example parables and Matthew often portraying Jesus as using attack parables (John almost exclusively has Jesus teaching in long monologues, not parables).
3. In the second half of the book, Crossan describes the four gospels as different kinds of megaparables "about" Jesus. He says each author, in their own way, presents a distorted view of the historical Jesus. While this claim is common to all liberal/progressive biblical scholars, Crossan has a quite original way of describing the nature of the distortions--while Mark did present Jesus accurately as God's challenge megaparable, he mistakenly claimed the Jesus taught with riddle parables; Matthew presented him as God's attack parable; and Luke and John, in their different ways, presented him as a combination of God's challenge and attack parables.
4. Crossan develops a very helpful typology of violence, and asserts that what is absolutely essential to Jesus' identity is his nonviolent life and teaching (see quote, below). While I agree that non-violence is an important part of Jesus' "utopian vision" that all Christians are called to work toward; I question Crossan's implication that nonviolence should be seen as Jesus' challenge to all Christians, seen as an "ideological possibility" to be actualized here and now. (See 5.12 for Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the good and bad types of both utopia and ideology and their interrelationships.)
5. As the title of the book suggests, the author is keen to convey his view of the transcendent, transformation "power" of both the challenge parables used "by" Jesus and the life of the historical Jesus as God's challenge parable to the world. This comes very close to my understanding of the "symbolic" power of Jesus' life and teaching for Christians.
Quotes from Text
"For me, the trajectory of human violence escalates almost inevitably from the ideological through the rhetorical to the physical. Granted that understanding of human violence, I see the challenge parable as an attempt to question ideological absolutes--whether they are ethnic or legal, social or cultural, religious or political--without reverting to an equally absolute countervision. A challenge parable is a narrative and, as such, can only tell a single story. But that single story dares you--with nonviolent rhetoric--to reconsider presumptions, presuppositions, and prejudices taken all to often as unalterable reality. The power of the challenge parable is the power of nonviolent rhetoric to oppose violence without joining it." (246-7)
"For me, the trajectory of human violence escalates almost inevitably from the ideological through the rhetorical to the physical. Granted that understanding of human violence, I see the challenge parable as an attempt to question ideological absolutes--whether they are ethnic or legal, social or cultural, religious or political--without reverting to an equally absolute countervision. A challenge parable is a narrative and, as such, can only tell a single story. But that single story dares you--with nonviolent rhetoric--to reconsider presumptions, presuppositions, and prejudices taken all to often as unalterable reality. The power of the challenge parable is the power of nonviolent rhetoric to oppose violence without joining it." (246-7)
Endorsements
"A remarkable and important book for all who seek to understand the Bible better--Crossan combines his customary literary and historical brilliance with fresh insights that illuminate not only the parables of Jesus but much of the Bible as a whole." ~Marcus J. Borg, back cover
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"Crossan combines acute historical investigation with challenging theological observation. In so doing, he recovers the profundity, and the provocation, of the biblical tradition." ~Amy-Jill Levine, back cover
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"A refreshing and stunningly insightful treatment of the gospels as parables. Crossan has solidified his reputation as the greatest New Testament scholar of our generation." ~John Shelby Spong, back cover
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