In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6. Galilean Questions to Crossan's Mediterranean Jesus Sean Freyne 1. Introduction In this paper I would like to engage in an exercise of intertextual reading of a kind. I read John Dominic Crossan's book, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, with great enjoyment and not a little profit, as I hope will emerge from this discussion.1 It would be naive, however, to suggest that I was a disinterested reader. At every step of the way I found myself interacting in the light of my own preoccupation with many of the themes and issues with which he has dealt in such a lucid and challenging way. This paper is then a report on the light that has been generated for this critical reader by rubbing Crossan's book against my own perspective on Jesus and his ministry (to borrow Harold Bloom's image for the reading process in which I have been engaged). Although disagreeing with him in many fundamental respects, I have been forced to revise and sharpen my own construal of Jesus by critically interacting with his persuasively-argued positions. In the book's preface the author asks those colleagues who disagree with his moves to replace them with better ones. I am not sure that my moves are better, nor would I be certain by what criteria I could come to such a judgment. But my moves are certainly different, for reasons which will become explicit as my argument develops. 2. Some Queries about Crossan's Categories 2.1 The Question of Sources I have followed the work of the Jesus Seminar from a distance—some might say a safe distance—and was therefore familiar with the meticulous concern for bedrock tradition that has marked the discussions of its members. Crossan has clearly been one of the main fashioners of the rigorous methodology that has been developed, and the present study aims to put the results of that methodology to the test.2 While the logic of his approach might appear to be impeccable in dealing with individual items of the Jesus tradition, I do have 1 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). 2 See John Dominic Crossan, Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985); and "Materials and Methods in Historical Jesus Research," Forum 4/4 (1988): 3-24. 64 Whose Historical Jesus? serious reservations about its advisability when it comes to building an edifice from the scattered bits and pieces that eventually get the red, or even the pink, votes. Only those items that have a double attestation from the earliest stratum will be used in the reconstruction, we are told, and on the whole this stringent criterion is followed. But how realistic is this almost squeamish concern with bedrock and whence this almost obsessional desire for unimpeachable criteria? The elaborate stratification of all the early Jesus traditions, canonical and noncanonical alike, is of course a matter that could be debated as regards details. I could not help but note in passing that all of Crossan's "stratum one" material is either extra-canonical or not very helpful in the quest for Jesus (the Pauline material). Mark finds himself relegated to stratum two, and even then supplanted by Secret Mark. At least the 19-century questers were kinder in their judgment of Mark. At all events the difficulties with claiming that only the earliest documents can serve as genuine sources in historical reconstruction have been exposed for a long time now. No amount of refinement of criteria can overcome the epistemological problems inherent in such an approach. Rather than entering into debate on matters of detail I would prefer to query the very model that is being used—stratification—which is drawn from archaeology and shows a predilection for so-called hard facts. In dealing with a living and oral tradition I suspect that it is an unhelpful, and in the end a potentially damaging, model in identifying literary sources for historical writing. Reminiscences, quotations of pithy sayings, reports of incidents and the like all occur in lived and living contexts. Nothing is frozen in time, awaiting the arrival of the modern historical critic with his or her trowel to release it from the later "fill" that has obscured it from view for centuries. In his concern to arrive at bedrock Crossan freely admits that he may well be ignoring important pieces of evidence...

Share