 |
| |
| |
|
In Search of Paul : How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom
|
|
|
Average Rating:  out of 20 Reviews
|
Price: $29.95
|
|
Sale: $13.71
|
| |
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
|
|
Author: John Dominic Crossan::Jonathan L. Reed
|
|
Publication Date: 2004-11-01
|
|
Reading Level: 464
|
|
|
| |
|
Description: John Dominic Crossan, the eminent historical Jesus scholar, and Jonathan L. Reed, an expert in biblical archaeology, reveal through archaeology and textual scholarship that Paul, like Jesus, focused on championing the Kingdom of God––a realm of justice and equality––against the dominant, worldly powers of the Roman empire. Many theories exist about who Paul was, what he believed, and what role he played in the origins of Christianity. Using archaeological and textual evidence, and taking advantage of recent major discoveries in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Syria, Crossan and Reed show that Paul was a fallible but dedicated successor to Jesus, carrying on Jesus's mission of inaugurating the Kingdom of God on earth in opposition to the reign of Rome. Against the concrete backdrop of first–century Grego–Roman and Jewish life, In Search of Paul reveals the work of Paul as never before, showing how and why the liberating messages and practices of equality, caring for the poor, and a just society under God's rules, not Rome's, were so appealing. Readers interested in Paul as a historical figure and his place in the development of Christianity
•Readers interested in archaeology and anthropology
|
| |
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
Customer Reviews
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
Review Summary: Valuable Conjecture - read them all. |
Date: 2008-06-28 |
|
| |
Details: I wanted to really learn what we could say was true about the Bible and Christianity and discovered Crossan. I have not been let down. He and his colleagues - using scientific methods and Biblical scholarship - have the best there is to offer in terms of an informed opinion about how and why Christianity formed.
It would be best to read Crossan's previous books that form the basis of thinking for this book on Paul. They lead up to the point in history where Paul plays his role. And they create the informed mindset that will help you get the most of this study on Paul.
If I were organizing anything from an graduate/undergraduate course of study to a weekly Bible study, these are the books I would use to teach from.
If you want to really understand Jesus and Christianity - historically and or Spiritually - your search starts with Crossan. Look no further (for now), you have found what you were looking for. |
| |
|
Review Summary: Best of the bunch |
Date: 2007-05-15 |
|
|
| |
Details: I'm a non-specialist in this area, learning about New Testament scholarship over the past few years. This was my first Marcus Borg book, and my favorite of the 20 or so books I've read so far. Borg is warmer and more sympathetic than Bart Erhman, for example, but like Ehrman, faces the current scholarship squarely and honestly. I like Borg's faithful stance. It's non-traditional, in that the scholarship has led him to see Jesus differently. But the insights into Jesus's life and times - these hit you on almost every page.
Valuable lessons that stick out in my mind - why Jesus posed enough threat to be killed by authories; how his message was both politically and spiritually radical; separating the historical Jesus from the Jesus worshipped by the early communities and writers; how truly radical the message was for its time; how in contrast to Mohamed or the Buddha, Jesus made his mark in just 2-3 years.
The book captures a picture of Jesus that's based on current research, but doesn't overwhelm you with the diverse perspectives and methods debated by scholars. Only a few times does Borg let you into the current questions facing scholars - that's for another book. But that's what makes this book so valuable, as an honest snapshot of Jesus and his times, from a sympathetic but critical scholar of faith. |
| |
|
Review Summary: A Clash of Visions of World Peace |
Date: 2007-05-01 |
|
| |
Details: "This entire book is about the clash between ... alternative visions of world peace. One is Augustus's vision ... The other is Paul's vision ..." So write Crossan and Reed (page 74) about the central theme of their book. Although nothing is known *archaeologically* of the communities of Paul, the archaeological heritage left by the Roman imperial theology of Augustus is immense.
The authors begin with a description of the city of Aphrodisias, a Roman city in what is now southwestern Turkey. 2000 years ago before Augustus became emporer, he declared Aphrodisias to be the one city is all of Asia (probably the province) selected to be his own. Aphrodite was the Greek version of the Roman goddess Venus from which the lineage of Augustus was allegedly descended. Mixed between the carved and engraved scenes of Zeus, Poseidon, and Aphrodite are scenes of Aeneas along with Romulus and Remus. Readers familiar with stories of the origen of Rome may recall that the classical sources for many of these stories wrote *for* Augustus.
Once I was chatting with a friend a of mine who was also an eminent scholar. We were at the annual AAR-SBL conference and he had just delivered a paper. "Aren't you ever going to write a paper with a thesis sentence?" I asked. "Never!" he responded. Crossan and Reed have filled their book with much archaeological detail, detail which at times reads like a travel book for a tourist. At times they write "you walk" or "you find." In this way the authors hope to demonstrate the pervasiveness of imperial theology. For Cross and Reed there is an "absolute conjunction between religion and politics." In the epilogue the authors propse that Jesus and Paul were not trapped in a negative view of the world but offered a positive alternative in its replacement.
Some too casual readers will think that Paul is being portrayed as a political revolutionary. In fact this was not the case. At the turn of the era Rome was very tolerant of diverse religions. Notice above that Rome adopted and adapted Greek mythology. Similarly Cross and Reed tell the story of the cult of Isis and how it was adopted and adapted into the imperial cult. Likewise there are some readers who will maintain that early Christianity was a political movement even though the New Testament tries to distance itself from such thinking and in non-canonical writings, the only possible connection between Christiainity and politics is a term used in a Greek graffiti, a term also used to describe an association of plumbers.
The blurb on the front cover of _In Search of Paul_ says that this is a "new vision" of the Apostle Paul. After thinking about the matter for a while, I would have to disagree. Has not the Gospel always maintained that the peace of God will always be at odds with the peace of the world? Perhaps another reader's faith would say it slightly different, but is this not the case? |
| |
|
Review Summary: Paul vs Rome |
Date: 2007-02-10 |
|
| |
Details: I was a little pleased to see that John Dominic Crossan (the main author, I'd say) turns out to be something of a fan of Paul. I had been prejudiced, I suppose, to expect something of a desacralising of the apostle and perhaps some questioning of his state of mind, such as I'd read in books by Burton Mack and, perhaps, Jerome Murphy O'Connor. However, though Crossan sees Paul as a vulnerable human being like the rest of us, he presents him as a genius of politico-sociological analysis (sorry about the jargon) on the one hand and as a theologian with a very clear, very challenging understanding of Christ's purpose as saviour of the world and messenger of peace through justice.
Like an earlier reviewer, I too began skipping the detailed bits about archaeological finds and the material culture of the Roman Empire, though I stayed with any discussion of what these revealed about social stratification, the production and distribution of social influence, and the living arrangements of people in the "insula" (suburbs and blocks of dwellings) and residences of people at the time, because I thought that would tell me something about the structure and practices of the early "house churches" - Paul's audiences. Which it did.
I think the book is very helpful at revealing the political, social and physical context in which Paul worked. It also has a powerful political and theological message that the authors believe is crucial for America in her attempts to impose and defend Pax Americana throughout the world.
Crossan proposes that Paul understood the death and resurrection of Jesus as significant because Jesus was executed violently by imperialist forces. This was seen as necessary to defend the Pax Romana in Judea. Jesus' resurrection, therefore, in Paul's view was an act of triumph over violence and over the imperial belief that peace can be achieved through victory and conquest. It wouldn't have had the same significance had Jesus died peacefully at home and then rose from the dead. Paul confronted the Empire with a model based on faith (surrender to God's will), justice (carrying out God's laws) and equality (within the Christian community at least). This model opposed the Augustan one of piety (cultic devotional practices), victory (violence), consolidation and peace. The latter may be interchanged in sequence, but they rest on continued actual or threatened violence, foundation of the cult of the Emperor as divine and the establishment of patronage and hierarchy - also interchageable - where the pecking order and the privileges attending it were based on access to powerful patrons. There was not much place for women, slaves or minorities in this hierarchy until they had broken through the hierarchical barriers (ceilings?) by one means or another, but Paul's vision of the Christian community itself was egalitarian ("neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek", etc). (The Pauline texts cited in favour of sexism and the like are insertions or from the pseudo-Pauline letters written after his death.)
Something the Publishers' Weekly review seems to have not picked up, but which is a critical component of Crossan's thesis is that Paul was not in fact preaching primarily to the Jews, or to the gentiles. Rather he was trying to capture the constituency knows as "God-fearers" or "believers". They were the pagans attached to synagogues, converted to the monotheism and laws and ethics of the Jews in their towns, but the males were not circumcised, they may not have observed kosher and they probably joined in with other citizens in performance of the sacrifices that were built into much civic ritual. They were sometimes relatively wealthy and perhaps able to provide a degree of protection to the Jewish community. Paul saw them as potential and valuable converts and addressed them as such. As you could imagine, this aroused much hostility to the apostle from the Jews in the cities he targeted.
This review has gone on too long - perhaps an indication of how helpful the book might be. I found it worthwhile and reasonably easy to read. Crossan's message to America is Paul's, that peace through victory does not liberate. It doesn't work, at least in the long term. That philosophy brought us the Pax Romana for a while, but, after centuries of war and destruction, it culminated in 19th century imperialism, 20th century totalitarianism and 21st century terrorism. |
| |
|
Review Summary: Disappointing -- but with some good insights |
Date: 2007-01-09 |
|
|
| |
Details: I've read three or more books by Crossan. They always look fascinating and they always disappoint. The man (and his co-author, an archaelogist) can simply not stay on the subject he promises to tell us about. His book on Jesus hardly mentions Jesus until after page 200. Is this book, Paul is sort of a straw man set up so that Crossan can give us a travelogue to various places he visited around the Mediterranean. There's far too much here about ancient ruins and far too little about early Christianity and Paul's role. The question is asked on the bookjacket: did Paul invent Christianity? I never found the answer in this book.
There are, however, some interesting speculations in this book and, on occasion, a startling insight. For example, Crossan speculates that Judiasm, rather than Christianity, might have become the official religion of the Roman Empire had events transpired a bit differently. And he talks about the "God-worshippers" who occupied a sort of halfway house between paganism and Judaism -- and were Paul's targets for evangelism.
So, like Crossan's other books this is worth leafing through to look for the good parts and skipping the dross. If you read the book expecting a biography of Paul, you'll be disappointed. You will learn more about the Roman empire and its architecture, and you will find pearls of wisdom about Paul hidden about.
Smallchief |
| |
|
| |
Similar Products
|
|
|
| |
This Product is similar to and may be found in the Following Categories:
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
