The New Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom, Student Workbook, SW13

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T H E N E W T E S T A M E N T W I T N E S S T O C H R I S T A N D H I S K I N G D O M

Readings on Christ (continued)

he was. Publicans, sinners, children, the crowds–all found in Jesus one whom they enjoyed being near. It was therefore not only what he taught but also who he was that attracted people to hear him. . . . The what of his message and the who , i.e., the “personality” and “authority” of the messenger, all played a part in making Jesus an exciting teacher.

~ Robert H. Stein. The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings . Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1978. pp.7-8.

The Challenge of the Biblical Stories John Dominic Crossan

The Gospels are normative, I think for us as Christians not just in their production, in what they have created, but in the way they are written. A Gospel goes back, as it were, to the twenties. It writes Jesus from the 20s into the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. A Gospel always takes the historical Jesus and laminates him together with the Christ we believe in–the two of them together. John rewrites the 20s as Mark had done before him. The historical Jesus remains crucial for Christianity because we must in each generation of the Church redo our historical work and redo our theological work. We can’t skip it. . . . When I look a Buddhist friend in the face, I cannot say with integrity: “Our story about Jesus’ virginal birth is true and factual. Your story that when the Buddha came out of his mother’s womb, he was walking, talking, teaching, and preaching (which I must admit is even better than our story)–that’s a myth. We have the truth; you have a lie.” I don’t think that can be said any longer, for our insistence that our faith is fact and that others’ faith is a lie is, I think, a cancer that eats at the heart of Christianity.

John Dominic Crossan is an original member and former co-chair of the Jesus Seminar as well as chairman of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. He earned a doctorate in divinity from Maynooth College, Ireland. His postdoctoral studies have been in biblical research at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, and in archeological research at the Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem. Crossan has Chicago area and was professor of religious studies at DePaul University for twenty-six years. He has written over a dozen books on the historical Jesus. taught at several seminaries in the

~ William F. Buckley, Jr. Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? Paul Copan, ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998. p. 39.