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The Roman Empire
Crossan wrote of the assassination of Julius Caesar on March 15, 44 BCE, recorded details of Augustus becoming emperor, the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 CE, and all of Palestine reunited under direct Roman administration (Crossan 1991:34, 57, 178) (Crossan 1991:34; 1995:3; 1998a:xv; 1999:27). In Judea, ‘the war had not yet started there, and when Gallus [governor of the Roman province of Syria – SDG], marching southward in the fall of 66 C.E., sent forces into Galilee, only one battle against “rebels and brigands” is recorded … according to [Josephus’ – SDG] Jewish War 2.511-513’ (Crossan 1991:193; 1994a:137-144, 180; Borg & Crossan 2006:15). The dates for Octavius were all well known (Crossan 1994a:26). Julius Caesar’s nineteen-year-old ‘adopted son and legal heir, deified Caesar in January of 42, defeated Antony and Cleopatra in September of 31, and was declared Augustus in January of 27 B.C.E.’ (Crossan 1998a:xv; 1998a:413-414). Crossan provides other historical details for Octavian (Crossan 2007:10, 147), Julius Caesar, and Augustus (Crossan 2012:7, 158). He mentions these historical personages, Herod the Great’s three sons who assumed ‘different portions of their father’s domains after his death in 4 B.C.E’; Cato as one of Rome’s official censors; in 184 BCE, Lucius Quinctius Flaminius expelled from the senate, the orator Cicero who died in 43 BCE; the historian Livy, who died in 17 CE; ‘the aristocratic Roman historian Tacitus’ wrote ‘a biography of his fatherin- law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, governor of Britain between 77 and 84 C.E.’ (Crossan 1994a:33, 36, 39). There is more on Herod the Great: ‘In the 1960s, the famous Israeli archaeologist and statesman Yigael Yadin excavated Herod the Great’s palace on Masada’s northern edge’ (Crossan & Reed 2001:104; see also Borg & Crossan 2006:13-14). A traditional approach to history continues: The Roman poet, ‘Juvenal, who lived around 60 to127 C.E., was banished from Rome by the emperor Domitian’ (Crossan 1994a:97). The Syrian governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, needed three legions as well as auxiliary troops to quell revolts after Herod the Great’s death in 4 BCE (Crossan 1994a:125). This traditional historiography included a statement that on 28 October 312 CE the Roman emperor Constantine, following his victory at Rome’s Milvian Bridge, converted to Christianity (Crossan 1994a:201).
Secular evidence
Crossan uses the traditional historical method in citing Publius Cornelius Tacitus – senator, consul, provincial governor, orator, and historian – whom he claimed was prudent and always the aristocrat He wrote in the early years of the second century C.E.’ and one should ‘read Tacitus for history as aristocratic politics, dynastic intrigues, and imperial wars. Do not read him for anything about socioeconomic realities, about the lower classes…. His dislike for Judaism was matched, of course, by that for Christianity. He called it “a class of men, loathed for their vices”’ (Crossan 1991:91; 1995:15). Crossan wrote of the first incident of Archelaus (son of Herod the Great) at Passover in 4 BCE. There was a second incident at Passover in 44 CE; Ventidius Cumanus was governor between 48 and 52 CE. He stated that Christianity was possibly in Rome by the late 40s and certainly by the mid-50s. This ‘possibility stems from the emperor Claudius’s decree expelling Jews from Rome in 49 because of disturbances “at the instigation of Chrestus =Christus? = Jesus?],” as Suetonius recorded in The Lives of the Caesars: The Deified Claudius 25.4’ (Crossan 1995:54- 55; 1998a:416; emphasis in original). The above examples are statements of Crossan’s inconsistency over which model of historiography he wants to pursue. He states that his view of history is that of postmodern, reconstructive interactivism but these examples demonstrate that he is caught out by the philosophical crusher by using a traditional historical method.
Contemporary examples
‘The Easter issues of Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report, April 8, 1996, all had cover stories on the historical Jesus’ (Crossan 1998a:39; 1999:46). He wrote of Margaret Alexiou’s classical study of the Greek ritual lament and Bruce Metzger’s reports for the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (Crossan 1998a:530; 1999:14). ‘In a paper presented to the 1995 spring meeting of the Jesus Seminar, Stacy Davids summarized recent psychiatric literature on grief and bereavement’ (Crossan 1999:31). Again, he regarded this as narrative history that did not need a reconstructionist application Jonathan Schell wrote about Gandhi’s goals of ‘ending untouchability, cleaning latrines, improving the diet of Indian villagers, improving the lot of Indian women, making peace between Muslims and Hindus – through all of which he believed he would find God’. Crossan and Reed’s comment was that ‘that is why Gandhi was assassinated not by a British imperialist, but by a Hindu fundamentalist’ (Crossan & Reed 2004:410; Crossan 2007:192).
‘I had read and been persuaded by Mann’s fourfold analysis of social and imperial power before the terrorist attacks against our country on September 11, 2001, but that day confirmed it for me’ (Crossan 2007:13). There was no postmodern, reconstructive, interactive methodology in ‘the most obscenely egregious177 invocation of God as Divine Punisher’ that occurred in his conversation on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Show The 700 Club between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson immediately after 9/11. Crossan wrote of John F. Harris who reported in the Washington Post, September 14, 2001, where he cited ‘Falwell’s claim that the 9/11 tragedy was simply God’s punishment on America’ for the actions of pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians who have ‘tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen”’ (Crossan 2007:71). Another recent historical example was Mel Gibson’s movie, The passion of the Christ, that made the death of Jesus ‘big news’ in the United States and elsewhere. There were cover stories in national news magazines, features on prime-time television shows, and major stories in newspapers across the country, dealing with this movie (Borg & Crossan 2006:VII; Crossan 2007:130). Crossan wrote of Paul Boyer citing Hal Lindsey’s claim that ‘when he spoke at the American Air War College “virtually the entire school turned out, including many officers accompanied by their wives, and that, at the Pentagon, ‘hundreds … jam[med] the room” with more crowding outside’ (Crossan 2007:199). A citation of Augustine of Hippo ‘was magnificently misquoted by Desmond Tutu of Cape Town in 1999: “St Augustine says, God, without us, will not: as we, without God, cannot”’ (Crossan 2012:135).
Crucifixion and other means of death
‘We know from Josephus that thousands of Jewish victims were crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem in the first common era century This includes two thousand by Varus in 4 BCE., according to Joseph Antiquities 2.75 to five-hundred or more a day by Titus in 70 CE according to Jewish War 5.450 but ‘only one crucified skeleton has so far been found in that area for that or any other period’ (Crossan 1991:391). He continued with traditional historiography: ‘The Jewish historian Josephus and the pagan historian Tacitus both agree that Jesus was executed by order of the Roman governor of Judea’ (Crossan & Watts 1996:122).
In June 1968, four tombs were excavated at Giv’at ha-Mivtar in northern Jerusalem. Three tombs held fifteen ossuaries containing the bones of thirty-five different individuals…. Professor Haas of the Hebrew University / Hadassah Medical School’s Department of Anatomy has observed that “evidence of death by violence was found in five cases’ (Crossan 1998a:544). The crucified skeleton of Jesus’ contemporary Jehochanan from this tomb ‘still bears an iron nail about four and a half inches long in his right heel bone but he was honorably interred in ossuary and tomb’ (Crossan 1999:17; 1994a:124). Crossan accepted the narrative giving a traditional understanding of history provided by Martin Hengel, who stated that ‘crucifixion was aggravated further by the fact that quite often its victims were never buried. It was a stereotyped picture that the crucified victim served as food for wild beasts and birds of prey. In this way his humiliation was made complete. What it meant for a man in antiquity to be refused burial, and the dishonour which went with it, can hardly be appreciated by modern man’ (Hengel 1977:87-88, in Crossan 1994a:124; 1999:17; Crossan 1995:162). Hengel’s further language was that in crucifixion, the body was ‘fastened [and] nailed … [as] evil food for birds of prey and grim pickings for dogs’ and was used to ‘feed the crows on the cross’ and was ‘hung … alive for the wild beasts and birds of prey’ (Hengel 1977:9, 58, 76, in Crossan 1994a:127). What was Crossan’s application of this research by Hengel to Jesus’ crucifixion? There was no reconstructive interactivism here. How does this compare with the account in the Gospels? It will be shown in the following assessment that this kind of information is in contrast to that gleaned through an inductive study of Christ’s death and burial in the biblical material. ‘The Judeo-Roman history of crucifixion can be summarized over four stages. The first stage is biblical crucifixion – the traditional Jewish method, which is quite different from the later Roman system. Jewish crucifixion was dead crucifixion. An executed and already-dead criminal was hung upon a cross…. The second stage is Roman crucifixion. Contrary to the biblical tradition, this was live crucifixion…. The third state is Hasmonean crucifixion. The biblical and Roman traditions were clearly contradictory…. The fourth stage is Essene crucifixion’ (Crossan 1998a:541-542; emphasis in original). Note his language: ‘The Judeo-Christian history of crucifixion’ (emphasis added). ‘Josephus mentions three major incidents of corporate crucifixion in the decades before and after Jesus. The Roman governor Varus crucified “about two thousand” in 4 B.C.E…. The Roman procurator Florus crucified “about three thousand six hundred” in 66 C.E…. The Roman general Titus crucified “five hundred or sometimes more … daily” in 70 C.E…. Yet only a single crucified skeleton has been found so far from that terrible first century in the Jewish homeland’ (Crossan 1998a:543).
‘Jesus’ contemporary Philo, the Jewish philosopher from Alexandria in Egypt, observed in his Flaccus 83 that decent governors sometimes had crucified criminals “taken down and given up to their relations, in order to receive the honours of sepulture” at the time of the emperor’s birthday since “the sacred character of the festival ought to be guarded”‘ (Crossan 1999:17).
In the Mishnah, a Jewish code from around 200 BCE and in it, Sanhedrin 6:5-6 notes that ‘“they used not” to bury executed criminals in their ancestral tombs but kept two burial places in readiness, one for those “beheaded and strangled,” the other for those “stoned or burnt”’ (Crossan 1999:20). The above statements from Crossan indicate he is using the traditional historical method and not postmodern, reconstructive interpretations of historiography.
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Definition of terms
1.2 Why choose John Dominic Crossan?
1.3 Identifying the research gap
1.4 The problem to be investigated
1.5 Hypothesis
1.6 How this study will proceed
CHAPTER 2 ESTABLISHING HISTORICAL METHOD
2.1 Introductory matters
2.2 The methodological approach
2.3 The specific methodological task
2.4 Criteria or indices for historical method
2.5 Two divergent approaches to sources for the historical Jesus
2.6 Proforma for identification of presuppositions
2.7 Summary of Chapter 2
CHAPTER 3 CROSSAN’S PRESUPPOSITIONS FOR JESUS’ RESURRECTION TRADITION
3.1 Methodology
3.2 J D Crossan’s anti-supernaturalism
3.3 J D Crossan and the resurrection tradition: I formulate it as I see it
CHAPTER 4 ISOLATING AND TESTING CROSSAN’S PRESUPPOSITIONS ON JESUS’ RESURRECTION
4.1 Testing the validity of Crossan’s prominent presuppositions for his teaching on Jesus’ resurrection tradition
4.2 Testing hypothesis 10: The resurrection narratives in the New Testament are not historical .
4.3 Testing hypothesis 9: The divine manifestation for Christianity is interpreted by reconstruction for a postmodern world. It is not once for all but is reinterpreted for each generation’s issues
4.4 Testing hypothesis 12: It does not matter whether a person believes Jesus’ tomb was empty or not. The importance is the meaning of the empty tomb, which is independent of factuality
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS REACHED
WORKS CONSULTED
