Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus. - book reviews

Christian Century, Dec 13, 1995 by J. Christian Wilson

By John Dominic Crossan. Harper-San Francisco, 238 pp., $23.00.

THIS BOOK'S TITLE and subtitle are somewhat misleading, since who killed Jesus is never really in doubt, and the roots of anti-semitism in the passion narratives constitute a relatively minor theme. The book is primarily a rebuttal of Raymond Brown's two-volume The Death of the Messiah. While John Dominic Crossan acknowledges the breadth of Brown's research and the depth of his writing, he disagrees with many of Brown's premises and conclusions. That disagreement pervades every chapter of Crossan's book.

Crossan identifies six major disagreements with Brown, although two seem to me to be much more important than the others. First, Crossan says that Brown believes the passion narratives are roughly 80 percent history remembered and 20 percent prophecy historicized. Crossan reverses these percentages. Actually, he seems to consider even fewer than 20 percent of the passion narratives historical.

The author's second major point of disagreement concerns the value of the Gospel of Peter, which Brown, like most scholars, regards as a second-century composition dependent on the canonical gospels. Crossan thinks that the Gospel of Peter and the hypothetical Cross Gospel which he believes underlies it were written during the 40s of the first century, much earlier than the canonical Gospels. He regards the Cross Gospel as a source for the passion narratives of the canonical Gospels as well. Crossan thinks that the unknown author of the hypothetical Cross Gospel scoured the Old Testament for prophecies which could be brought to fulfillment through the creative writing of a passion narrative. The passion narrative is largely based on these prophecies rather than on the historical passion of Jesus.

Crossan himself turns out to be an even greater scourer of the Hebrew scriptures for historicized prophecies. For example, regarding the abuse of Jesus on the cross Crossan writes, "Any mention of scourging, buffeting, and spitting comes from Isaiah 50:6; any mention of piercing, seeing, mourning comes from Zechariah 12:10; any mention of disrobing, rerobing or crowning comes from Zechariah 3:1-5."

Crossan also disagrees with Brown on the following: he thinks that John is not independent of the synoptics in the passion narrative; he thinks that Brown is selectively rather than consistently contextual in his historical interpretation and that he hedges too much in historical reconstruction; and be thinks the Gospel of Peter is less anti-Jewish than the canonical Gospels. Also, Crossan sees the execution as the result of informal collusion between Pilate and Caiaphas rather than formal trials before Jewish and Roman courts.

The book contains a fascinating epilogue in which Crossan tells of his early life in Ireland, his ordination to and subsequent leaving of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and his coming to America. Crossan is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, the author of several books on the historical Jesus, and one of the major voices in the Jesus Seminar.

Reviewed by J. Christian Wilson, associate professor of religious studies at Elon College in Elon, North Carolina.