Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts

By John Dominic Crossan,  L. , Jonathan L. Reed

Book Overview

Can the stones of ancient Palestine speak to us about the real Jesus and his message? Are there ways to discover the historical Jesus by sifting through the layers of the Gospels and other early texts? In Excavating Jesus Bible expert John Dominic Crossan and Galilean field archaeologist Jonathan L. Reed take an exhilarating look at Jesus and his world from their two different perspectives. While the phenomenal advances in our historical and textual understanding of the origins of Christianity are well known, the equally significant archaeological discoveries are much less familiar. Drawing on evidence from the ten most significant textual discoveries of biblical studies and the ten most significant archaeological digs in the cities and villages of ancient Palestine, Crossan and Reed provide a fuller portrait of Jesus, his teachings, and his followers. Together they bring to life the struggle between Roman power and the people's passionate belief in a just God. Join Crossan and Reed as they explore sites such as the house of the apostle Peter at Capernaum, a first-century fishing boat from the Sea of Galilee, and the skeleton of a crucified man -- plus textual discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Thomas. The authors reveal a world where life could end instantly and violently on the whim of a king, a governor, or an ordinary Roman soldier. They show us a people willing to fight, and even die, for the right to live according to their beliefs. Excavating Jesus includes a full-color insert featuring twelve drawings by Balage Balogh, the best archaeological artist in Israel today, and black-and-white illustrations throughout. These historically accurate recreations of first-century sites reflect the most recent archaeological discoveries, telling us more about the world Jesus, his followers, and his enemies inhabited than we have ever known before. This fresh examination of the world of the Gospels offers readers a unique and fascinating opportunity to examine the evidence and decide for themselves what they believe about the nature of Jesus and his message.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060616334
• ISBN13: 9780060616335
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.1" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Impressive Work Of Scholarly Thought, Though Evidence-Based Claims Might Rattle Some Faithful

I'm not necessarily stating my beliefs, just reporting the claims of this book and also in some cases extending to logical conclusions the authors' theories and suggestions as I felt them to be. I hope I neither offend anyone, nor misrepresent what Crossan was attempting to say. Jesus was of rural, small-town origins. Jesus was born into one of the most desolate areas of his homeland. Galilee of that era was the sticks and Nazareth was not a community so much as a commune. It was around twenty buildings housing circa a dozen families, their livestock, their possessions. There was no road leading to it, merely a footpath many miles through the wilderness. There was a communal well, but no public buildings such as a house of worship, law court or marketplace. The people of Galilee spoke in a "rural" accent so thick it was all-but incomprehensible to the more urbane Jews of Jerusalem. Jesus was from such an off-the-beaten-path place it is unlikely many living more than a few miles from it had even heard of Nazareth. In other words, we're talking remote. Jesus was possibly an illiterate. Before this sounds impossible, remember, even in a Jewish population that prized education among males, most people at that time and place were probably illiterates. This is not to say Jesus was unintelligent. The quotes and parables attributed to him suggest he was anything but mentally deficient. Jesus would have had a strong background in the oral traditions of his people and like most illiterates, the parts of his brain that dealt with memorization would have been highly stimulated, giving him a keen memory and immediate grasp of verbally-presented facts. Jesus' parentage. Jesus may have been conceived without sex and born to a virgin. The realm of religion makes amazing claims that cannot be proven or disproven. That being the case, I will say little on this claim except it bears much more resemblance to the Hellenistic purity cults' tales of virgin birth, a thing all-but unknown among the Jewish religious history. Sociologically speaking, I was surprised to learn in this book that it was a tradition among Jews of that era for an engaged couple to conduct sexual relations without dishonor, and a marriage took place only when the man was able to provide lodging for his wife. However, some Jews at this time had begun to rebel against this unscriptural conduct. These eschewed sex until the actual marriage, as pious Jews are supposed to today. The more rural Jews were especially known for this throwback to earlier piety, and since Jesus was of rural heritage, it seems likely the story in the Gospels of Joseph wanting to "quietly" break his engagement to Mary when she was found to be pregnant shows how Joseph was more concerned with making it clear he had not slept with her before marriage than with the fact his fiancée was pregnant with another man's child. In other words, he was a conservative person who would have been likely to give Jesus and his brothe

Getting at the Facts

People argue and argue about this philosophy or that. It's nice to see someone try to correlate the root of the philosophy with the facts at the time. This does not detract from the philosopy, but rather improves the liklihood that it is in fact authentic and not just something someone put together at a later date.

No Need For Christians To Fear New Discoveries

Believing Christians need not fear any new discoveries about the life of Jesus and the birth of Christianity. New advances in textual understanding and future archaeological finds will only make the historical Jesus more real and the living Christ even more remarkable. I recommend this book to anybody who is seeking the truth.

Relentlessly Digging For The Truth

EXCAVATING JESUS is a very ambitious book. In order to fully appreciate the depth and seriousness of the effort it is essential to gain a good understanding of the authors' methods of research as described in the book's Introduction.The most important thing I am learning from Crossan and Reed is that there is much more left to be uncovered about the historical Jesus. What I see in Crossan and Reed's studies are the possibilities for further explorations. However, I am sure they will be the first to admit that their approach may be refined in the future as more progress is made in archaeological finds and textual exegesis.Crossan and Reed emphasize the itinerancy and commensality of the earliest Christians. Their theories are based on the existence of the Q Gospel and the independence of the Gospel of Thomas. In the future both of these assumptions may be altered due to additional discoveries. Meanwhile their greatest contribution may be simply in showing us the possibilities that lie in relentlessly digging for the truth.

Archaeology Meets Exegesis--A Splendid Union!

The world's premier Historical Jesus expert and a brilliant young archaeologist of the Galilee team up together in a fascinating new book that digs down through the complex layers of ancient ruins and ancient texts to uncover a fuller portrait of Jesus and the first century Palestine where he lived. In their unique collaboration, *Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts*, John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed explore and weave together the ten most significant archaeological findings from ancient Palestine with the ten most significant textual discoveries of modern biblical studies. The result of their combined efforts is an unforgettable glimpse into the everyday life of Jesus of Nazareth as we've never seen before. Crossan, the best-selling author of several authoritative books on the Historical Jesus including *The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant* and *The Birth of Christianity*, marries his exhilarating and provocative portrait of Jesus as a counter-cultural itinerant Jewish preacher of a radically just and egalitarian Kingdom of God with the phenomenal advances in biblical archeology and cultural anthropology that have revolutionized those disciplines over the last one hundred years. Reed, author of the highly-praised study *Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence* and lead archaeologist at the current Sepphoris excavations in the Galilee, provides compelling descriptions of first century material culture that persuasively paint a clear picture of the clash of two kingdoms--the earthly imperial Kingdom of Rome as practiced by the Herods and Caesar with tacit cooperation of leading Jewish elites, and the divine but also earthly Kingdom of God as preached by Jesus and his peasant followers. Reed highlights the stark contrast between the lavish palaces and marble basilicas of the Roman client-king Herod the Great and his tetrarch son Herod Antipas with the grinding poverty and agricultural exploitation of Jesus'peasant neighbors in Nazareth who lived only an hour's walk from the Romanized city of Sepphoris, Herod's glorious capital in the Galilee. The authors demonstrate how the ubiquitous ritual baths, ritually pure stone vessels, absence of imperial icons and specialized burial chambers found throughout Palestine indicate the steadfast determination of first century Jews to resist non-violently and hold onto their distinct religious practices and covenental way of life under the divine rule of the Jewish God of Justice, even as those practices set them on a direct collision course with the distributive injustice of Roman-Herodian commercialization in the name of empire-building. Crossan and Reed lead us on a pilgrim's view tour of Jerusalem's magnificent Second Temple that fills our senses with the sights, smells and sounds of the priestly sacrificial rites occurring there on a daily basis as Jewish and Gentile pilgrims from all over the Roman Empire crowded there