John Dominic Crossan
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John Dominic Crossan (born Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, 1934) is an Irish American biblical scholar known for co-founding the Jesus Seminar. As a major figure in the fields of Biblical archaeology, anthropology and New Testament textual criticism, he is a popular lecturer, but is dismissed by those critical of his historical methodology. He has appeared in many television documentaries about Jesus and the Bible.
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[edit] Life
Though his father was a banker, Crossan was steeped in the rural Irish life experienced in frequent visits to the home of his paternal grandparents. On graduation from St. Eunan's College, a boarding high school in 1950, Crossan joined the Servites, a Roman Catholic religious order and moved to the United States. He was trained at Stonebridge Seminary, Lake Bluff, Illinois, then ordained a priest in 1957. Crossan returned to Ireland where he earned his Doctorate of Divinity in 1959 at Maynooth College, the Irish national seminary. There followed two more years of study in biblical languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. Thus equipped, he returned to the seminary which ordained him, and through four years of teaching he "first began to learn something about the Bible" as he puts it. In 1965 Crossan embarked on two additional years of study, this time in archaeology based at the Ecole Biblique in Jordanian East Jerusalem. His work led him to journey through many Middle Eastern countries before escaping just days prior to the outbreak of the Six Day War of 1967.
After a year at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois, and a year at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Crossan chose to resign his priesthood. He cited as reasons both a desire for more academic freedom, and the freedom to be bound in matrimony. He married Margaret Dagenais, a professor at Loyola University (Chicago) in the summer of 1969, and joined the faculty of DePaul University that fall, where he remained until retiring from teaching in 1995. His first wife died of a heart attack in 1983. Crossan married Sarah Sexton, a social worker with two grown children, in 1986. Since his academic retirement, Crossan has lived in the Orlando, Florida area, remaining active in research, writing, and teaching seminars.
[edit] Career
Crossan suggests Jesus may have been an illiterate peasant, but also a man of great wisdom and courage who taught a message of inclusiveness, tolerance, and liberation.
Crossan was, along with Robert Funk, a cofounder in 1985 of the Jesus Seminar, a group of academic scholars who seek, following Rudolf Bultmann, to "demythologize" Jesus. Crossan has also done much with the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). He served as co-chair of the Jesus Seminar for its first decade.
[edit] Books
- Scanning the Sunday Gospel,1966
- The Gospel of Eternal Life, 1967
- In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, 1973, reprinted 1992, ISBN 0-06-061606-7
- The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story, 1975, reprinted 1988, ISBN 0-944344-06-2
- Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges, 1976
- Finding Is the First Act: Trove Folktales and Jesus' Treasure Parable, 1979
- Cliffs of Fall: Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus, 1980
- A Fragile Craft: The Work of Amos Niven Wilder, 1981
- In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus, 1983
- Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon, 1985, reprinted 1992, ISBN 0-86683-959-3
- Sayings Parallels: A Workbook for the Jesus Tradition, 1986
- The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative, 1988
- The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, 1991, ISBN 0-06-061629-6
- The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images, 1994, reprinted 1998, ISBN 0-7858-0901-5
- Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 1994, ISBN 0-06-061662-8
- Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus, 1995, ISBN 0-06-061480-3
- Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions about the Historical Jesus , edited with Richard Watts, 1996, ISBN 0-664-25842-5
- The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus, 1998, ISBN 0-06-061660-1
- Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up?: A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, 1999, ISBN 0-8010-2175-8
- The Jesus Controversy: Perspectives in Conflict (Rockwell Lecture Series), with Luke Timothy Johnson, Werner H. Kelber, 1999, ISBN 1-56338-289-X
- A Long Way from Tipperary: A Memoir, 2000, ISBN 0-06-069974-4
- Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, with Jonathan L. Reed, 2001, ISBN 0-06-061634-2
- In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, with Jonathan L. Reed, 2004, ISBN 0-06-051457-4
