One of the highlights of my time in Jerusalem last week was spending time with John Dominic Crossan and his wife Sarah. They were in the country filming for a upcoming Discovery television special on Jesus that is to air this Christmas. We had wanted to get together to discuss the Talpiot tomb face to face, but I had also invited him to come and spend an evening with me, Shimon Gibson, and my students to talk about his views of the “last days of Jesus,” and particularly how he reads the narratives in the Synoptics and John regarding the empty tomb of Jesus. We gathered last Saturday evening in the lovely courtyard of Beit Schmuel, the Guesthouse that is part of the “Progressive Judaism” center (known as “Reform” in the US) and spend a couple of stimulating and delightful hours together. Most of my students had read Crossan’s major books on Jesus, as we used them in a course I taught last Fall on the “historical Jesus,” so he was addressing a highly motivated and prepared group.

If there is any one thing that Crossan’s work on the historical Jesus and Christian Origins has made clear it is that everything turns on the question of method. In working with our New Testament Gospels, as well as other materials such as the reconstructed Q source, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Thomas, one has to formulate a clear understanding of how such materials will be weighed and evaluated and the methods one will use to try and get at what is historical and what is theological, mythological, or parabolic.

To those outside the field of critical biblical studies who read the Bible “literally,” it means what it says and it says what it means. But the historian must properly ask, given Mark’s core narrative of Jesus last week in Jerusalem, which sections most likely reflect actual history, and which were created by Mark or his community for theological purposes? Did Jesus ride down the Mt. of Olives on a donkey, was he examined by Pontius Pilate, did Joseph of Arimathea take him corpse and bury it in a nearby tomb, and did women visit that tomb Sunday morning and find it empty? And when Jesus speaks or teaches to what degree do we have what he actually said and to what degree are we hearing the theological memory of his followers four or five decades after his death who are passing on traditions from Jesus relevant to their own concerns and times? In other words, to what extent is Mark, our core story, reflecting the situation related to the devastation of 70 CE and the first Jewish Revolt (see Mark 13 sandwiched within the narrative), and interpreting Jesus as the Christ he came to be? Or alternatively, to what extent is Mark’s story related to the historical Jesus and his own situation 40 years earlier–and how would one know? Further, since Matthew and Luke basically follow Mark’s passion narrative, what about John? Is John an independent source from Mark, or is his heavily theologized narrative of the last days of Jesus essentially Mark written over with his own vision of things? Crossan is convinced John has no independent story but represents further theological embellishment rather than “history.” It is the “how would one know” that has to do with method. The choices scholars such as Crossan make might seem arbitrary to the casual reader, but as much as anyone in the field Crossan has sought to set forth his method and the assumptions he employs therein, and has challenged colleagues to offer critique and evaluation. And they have surely done that.

In terms of the arrest, trial, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus as related by Mark, Crossan is very skeptical. He does not think that Jesus knew beforehand that he was to die in Jerusalem and that he purposely offered himself as a sacrifice for sins to fulfill Isaiah “Suffering Servant” image, or that he asked followers to sacramentally “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood” at a Last Supper.He has no doubt that Jesus was crucified, but he thinks the accounts of the trial before the “whole Sanhedrin,” and the scene before a somewhat sympathetic Pilate are constructed by Mark. He also is doubtful of the Joseph of Arimathea burial story. He would see each of these elements as constructed by Mark and the post-70 CE community to fit their developing view of Jesus as Christ, Lord, and Savior, much in keeping with Paul’s theology. Crossan does not think we can ever know what happened to the body of Jesus, since he understands the entire “empty tomb” narrative to be a late apologetic contruction in an effort to push a more “literal” view of the resurrection of Jesus. Here he would go to Paul, where we find the earliest traditions on faith in Jesus as resurrected, but in a “spiritual body” with appearances akin to that Paul claims he had years after Jesus’ death–not a resusitated corpse walking about but a heavenly vision of power and glory.

My own approach, method, and conclusions are quite different from that of Crossan as readers of The Jesus Dynasty know. I do consider John an independent source from Mark, though I think the author of John knows Mark’s gospel and writes his own account aware thereof. But by and large I accept the basic narrative framework of Mark as historical, i.e., Jesus rode into the city and allowed himself to be proclaimed king, he taught in the Temple all week and confronted the religious authorities, he ate a last supper in the lower city, was arrested in Gethsemane, betrayed by Judas, tried at the house of Caiaphus, taken before Pilate, crucified, and buried by Joseph of Arimathea. None of these events themselves do I have reason to doubt, though I do accept fully that Mark’s theological thread of interpretation runs through them all, and when we encounter Christological interpretation closer to Paul than to what we know of the teachings of Jesus, I agree with Crossan that we are dealing with theology not history.

One element I try to include in my book is the question of how these narrative frames fit within what we can reconstruct of Herodian Jerusalem today. In other words, how do the texts read “on the ground”? Shimon Gibson has devoted years to this subject and though we disagree on some of the “locations” or settings for a few of the events (he thinks the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is likely the place of crucifixion, I put it on the Mt of Olives), I have learned much from him. The morning after our gathering at Beit Schmuel, Gibson and I took Crossan and his wife Sarah around the Old City to highlight this “on the ground” side of the Markan story. We looked at the rock hewn tombs (now empty!) in Akeldama, the site of Pilate’s judgment seat along the Western Wall of the Old City, outside Herod’s Palace area, and of course, the Talpiot tomb, as a potential place of “secondary burial” for Jesus and his family.

Crossan in Front of “an” Empty 1st Century Rock Hewn Tomb

My impression was that being “at the scene” in these ways, including passing by the newly discovered Pool of Siloam mentioned only in John, did give Prof. Crossan some new perspectives to think about as he continues to read his texts and refine his methods. It seems to me that the “realistic” narratives that Mark and John offer, that conform so closely to what we can see today, go a long way toward supporting an approach of “eyewitness” testimony along the lines that Richard Bauckham has been developing. In other words, Mark and John have received much of their narrative framework and teaching materials from traditions and communities who lived in the place where it all happened. This would be particularly true for the “last days of Jesus,” when we get to Jerusalem, and perhaps less true for the Galilean materials. My own approach is a strange mixture in that I doubt the theological overlay but tend to trust the essential narrative framework, and ironically, I find time and time again the narrative framework helps one to peel back the later theology.

Gibson showing Dom and Sarah the original 1st century steps that led up to Pilate’s Judgment Seat at the Western Wall of the Old City

As for the Talpiot tomb, I think Dom Crossan remains curious and open, wanting to know more. He does not find the idea that Jesus would have been given such an honorable burial by devoted followers to be farfetched, and I think I was able to convince him that it is more in Matthew, who makes the tomb “belong” to Joseph the “rich man,” where one finds the theological overlay regarding Jesus’ burial, not in the burial itself, which would be expected. Sarah, Dom’s wife, seems to be quite convinced on her own that Talpiot has a high liklihood of being the “real thing.” I look forward to discussing with her some of her reasoning in this regard and how she and her husband might differ on the subject, though Crossan did issue a formal quote back in March on the subject of the Talpiot tomb in which he said it was “The final nail in the coffin of biblical literalism?” His main concern, as I understand it, is that if the tomb was disturbed in antiquity, which appears to be the case, how might that effect what we see and interpret today?

At the “garden tomb” in east Talpiot with Gibson,Dom, and Sarah Crossan

I have always found Dom Crossan to be one of the most gracious scholars in our field, despite his heatedly controversial stands. He treats his opponents with respect and it becomes obvious in any conversation with him that his views of Jesus, his teachings, his death, and his “parabolic” resurrection, are life and breath to him, not detached academic excercises. How and why Jesus lived and died deeply matters to him. His parting word to my students, when we showed him a 1st century Roman crucifixion nail, was that he would not care a whit if the bones of Jesus were found, in the Talpiot tomb or otherwise, but he would care very much if there was evidence Jesus was never really crucified and died comfortable and happy in old age–with Mark’s entire story being fiction. This reminded me of a story Norman Perrin told us at the University of Chicago back in 1972. He was pressed by conservative students who objected to the way he insisted, much like Crossan, that much of the Markan narrative was constructed and not historical. They asked him, given his minimal view of the historical Jesus, what was the bottom line with him. In other words, if so much of the passion narrative is constructed, what is the historical core, without which we would have nothing. He replied, “If it could be shown that rather than forgiving his enemies, Jesus was dragged to the cross, kicking and screaming and cursing his enemies, then everything would change.”

Comments are closed.