Who Killed Him?

Rachel Asare

Professor Ford

Humanities 2830

February 9, 2005

Crossan, John Dominic. Who Killed Jesus? : Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus. SanFrancisco:

HarperSanFrancisco, 1995. Pp.XII+238, Hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 0-06-061479-X (cloth:alk. paper).

Who Killed Jesus? Is a book written by John Dominic Crossan, a professor of Religious Studies at a Chicago university. The book is a boldly written account of Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion. At the onset of this book Crossan sets out to prove that Christians have held the Jewish community responsible for the death of Jesus resulting in anti-Semitism. "As long as Christians were the marginalized and disenfranchised ones, such passion fiction about Jewish responsibility and Roman innocence did nobody much harm. But once the Roman Empire became Christian, that fiction turned lethal"

Crossan boldly states that Jews are not responsible for the death of Jesus, but rather the Roman government should be held guilty. Moreover, Crossan goes on to disprove the charge that led to Jesus' arrest. Crossan's book begins with an epilogue in which he summarizes his rhetoric to Raymond Brown and his publications on Jesus. Crossan states that Brown's work is "prophecy historicized" rather than "history remembered". He sums up key differences in their re-constructions of Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion. No historical record of Jesus' condemnation exists besides the New Testament. Crossan asserts that there was no trial before Pilate or Herod, and that none of Jesus' followers witnessed his death. Moreover that his body was eaten by dogs and crows or stolen by his followers. On page 84 of Crossans book, he says that the trial of Jesus was historicization of Psalm 2. That Jesus' students gathered information about the details of Jesus' abuse from prophecies in Isaiah and Zechariah to understand and make sense of what happened to Jesus.

Crossan asserts that Jesus was arrested and executed because of a movement that he was leading against Roman rule, founded on the basis of peasants against aristocrats, and the restoration of land to its original owners. Crossan says the Jesus' program was an sapiential eschatology and not on accounts of being the Son of God. Crossan agrees that the flight of Jesus' disciples was historical and also that the betrayal of Judas was historical. However Crossan argues very plainly that no trial ever occurred in front of Herod or Pilate. One of Crossans theories is that the trial would have happened on a Sabbath when no Jew was allowed to work, much less conduct a trial for a capital charge, with a death penalty hanging in the balance.

The Christian sources used by Crossan include the Gospel