The Historical Jesus

At the center of this debate is John Dominic Crossan, one of the founding members of the Jesus Seminar and the author of a new book "The Birth of Christianity," which explores what happened in the years immediately following the death of Jesus. Professor Crossan is my guest today on Talk of the Nation. If you'd like to join us, call 1-800-989-TALK. Welcome, Professor Crossan. Good to have you with us.

JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN: Pleasure to be with you.

NEARY: And we're meeting just a few days before Easter, which of course is the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. So let's begin there, with your idea of what the resurrection is, and I - I have to admit right from the start that I don't know if I completely understand your interpretation of the resurrection. I want to read something from your book - your new book and then we can talk about it. You write: "Resurrection does not mean simply that the spirit or soul of Jesus lives in the world, and neither does it mean simply that the companions or followers of Jesus live on in the world. It must be the embodied life that remains powerfully efficacious in the world." What exactly does that mean? Did Jesus rise from the dead or not?

CROSSAN: Yes. The ques... - to your question, Lynn, the answer is yes, for Christians. There is a discussion going on at the moment, not about the fact of the resurrection, but about the meaning of the resurrection, and that's what that applies to. Let me give you a couple of negatives, and if you want to interrupt me, just stop me cold.

NEARY: OK.

CROSSAN: The easy negative: resurrection is not about the resuscitation of a corpse. That's an easy one. We know they didn't intend that in the 1st century, because they insist it was "on the third day," which for them meant, when he was really, securely dead. Neither did it mean, however, simply that there were visions, apparitions of Jesus, which there certainly were, by the way. In the 1st century, and that's what I'm asking, what did they mean when they said "Jesus has risen from the dead?" They meant that the justice of God was beginning to be evident in the world; that the general resurrection has begun. That's difficult for us to understand, but the hint is the first lines of the book where Luke says, and I'm quoting him, "if they do not believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe if somebody comes back from the dead." And we tend to think of the other ways - you know, apparitions, visions, that's the real proof.

The background to that is the Jewish expectation, throughout the entire Bible, that God will vindicate the just, especially the martyrs especially those who die in patent injustice. How on Earth is God - how on Earth is God going to vindicate the just? The belief in the general resurrection is that at that time, at the end of the world, God will vindicate the just, the martyrs. And when Christians say "Jesus is risen," what they're saying is: one, the general resurrection has begun; two, the end of the world has begun; three, the vindication of God's justice has begun. So, it's not about apparitions, it is about the justice of God made visible in the world.

NEARY: One question I had when you talk about visions and apparitions, immediately, I wondered if many Christians would take offense of even the idea of equating the resurrection with, you know, your average everyday vision or apparition. Is it really the same thing or is it something fundamentally different?

CROSSAN: It is something fundamentally different as far as I'm concerned, Lynn. But my suspicion, and it's a totally unscientific one, is if you go out and ask people in the streets: "what does resurrection mean?" Watch how fast what'll come up is apparition - watch how fast. "Jesus rose from the dead and he appeared." Then you would ask them: "well, is resurrection somewhat the same as apparition? What I'm saying in this book is it is not. Not in the 1st century. And should not be, at least in the 20th century. It's about something totally different.

NEARY: How do you account for the birth of Christianity - the immediate birth of Christianity, and not the growth of Christianity, 'cause you make a distinction between the two. But how do you - how do you account for that if it is - if it can't just be that the fact that this man rose from the dead was such an amazing thing, that people immediately began believing in him? You say that's not enough to explain it.

CROSSAN: No, my statement is that apparitions are not enough. There was already faith in Jesus. There were followers of there before he died, and what is extraordinary about Christianity is that what the Romans expected to happen didn't happen. The execution didn't finish it, which is what, of course, they planned to do. The people who are too committed to Jesus were still committed afterwards. In one sense I don't know, after 2000 years, if anyone has ever done better than the Jewish historian Josephus who said, "those who loved him before continued to love him afterwards." I don't know if anyone's done better than that.

NEARY: Who were these very early Christians? You call them - you say that it was a sect of Judaism.

CROSSAN: The term Christianity, or The Birth of Christianity, to take the title of the book, we would tend to think about that as the birth of a separate religion, possibly even hostile to Judaism, as it eventually became. As I use it, I'm thinking of the birth of one other group within Judaism. So, that when I use "Christianity" I mean Christian Jews like you might say Pharisiac Jews, or Sagisean (ph) Jews, or Dead Sea Scroll-type Jews. It's one more group within Judaism with its own vision and its own program for the future of the Jewish people.

NEARY: And how long did it take for - to move from being a sect of Judaism to being what we begin to think - we begin to know of as Christianity, would you say?

CROSSAN: I would say at least, minimally, 100 years. At least. So, there is no idea that as soon as Jesus spoke, immediately you had Christianity and Judaism, or as soon as Jesus rose, you immediately had Christianity and Judaism. If you think, for example, of James, brother of Jesus, living in Jerusalem, as far as we know peaceably not persecuted, until the year 62, that's 30 years after the death of Jesus. And when he is executed by a high priest the - "those who were zealous for the law," says Josephus, "toppled that high priest." That gives us a scene in which Christian Jews are living peaceably with their fellow Jewish Jews, if you will, and in fact, Jewish Jews are on the side of him against their own high priest.

NEARY: Give me a sense of the profile of this sect of Judaism, this Christian - these Christian Jews. How did they fit into that society? What was their profile in that society at that time?

CROSSAN: Think of the fast options. Josephus, for example, says that, in the name of God we should obey the Roman occupation, it is God's will that we obey Rome. "God's power now rests over Italy," as he put it. On the other extreme you had people who would take up arms in the name of God against the Roman occupation. Now, both of these are doing it in the name of God. In the middle, you would have people like say John the Baptist, for whom God is coming at any moment to end this unjust situation, and God is going to use violence; the violence of apocalyptic consummation.

Jesus and his group, The Kingdom Movement let's call it at this point, are talking about non-violent resistance to Roman injustice. It's not passive acceptance, it's resistance. But it is non-violent. And in doing that, they are going along with other Jewish groups, such as those who protested against Pilate, and were willing to be martyred if the Roman soldiers came against them. Those Jewish groups who rose against Caligula, putting a statue in the temple, and were willing to be martyred. So, you're in a tradition of nonviolent resistance to Roman injustice. That's what Jesus is about and he's declaring that that is the Kingdom of God.

NEARY: But, it's not completely a brand new idea, you're saying?

CROSSAN: It's not a brand new idea, because we have at least the two examples I mentioned, one for a crowd of apparently peasant Jews, go up to Caeseria, before the governor, and say "do not do what you're doing." And he surrounds them with soldiers and says "I'm going to slaughter you." And they say "well, all right you're going to have to." Now he backs down that time. Next time it happens, he's ready for them. He infiltrates soldiers in among them in disguise and stampedes them, declares a riot, and then attacks them. But yes, The idea of nonviolent resistance to Roman injustice is not novel of Jesus.

NEARY: Is there anything that fundamentally sets them apart, makes them really different at that time?

CROSSAN: I think we'd have to bring in the factor of class. I consider Jesus, coming from a peasant village, like Nazareth, to be a peasant. And I think the Kingdom of God movement begins as a movement of peasant resistance to Roman injustice, in the name of the justice of God. That doesn't mean that only peasants are involved, it does not mean that all peasants are involved. I'm sure there are scribes listening, some agreeing, some "saying no," some saying, "well, that's what the prophets said to." So, there are other classes involved, but I think it is especially beginning as a peasant movement.

NEARY: What begins to attract people to this movement?

CROSSAN: The ancient traditions of Judaism had insisted, all through the prophets, that God was about justice, and that justice was about the distribution of land, that protecting the peasants - for example, the idea that every 50 years all land that had been sold must be restored - even if that was a beautiful romantic ideal, never practiced - tells you that God is on the side of the small peasant proprietor, not the great land owner, who's accumulating more and more land. Jesus is operating, strictly, in the radical sense of the Jewish prophets. And I think the ordinary people who knew their tradition would accept that and hear it.

NEARY: We're talking with John Dominic Crossan. He's the author of "The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus." He's also one of the founding members of the - a former co-director of the Jesus Seminar, if you would like to join us on Talk of the Nation, you can call 1- 800-989-TALK. And we have some callers on the line now and joining us now is Jean in St. Louis. Hello, Jean.

CALLER: Hi, thanks for taking my call. Talk of the Nation is a great show.

NEARY: Thanks.

CALLER: I heard the promo for this show after yesterday's edition for Talk of the Nation and I just wanted to call right away. I personally was raised Roman Catholic and stopped practicing Catholicism when I became a feminist at about the age of 18 or 19, because it didn't speak to me as a woman any more. And in about 25 intervening years, I had the privilege of studying in a formal Native American School of Sacred Studies, and studying Tibetan Buddhism, and experiencing some other of the world's great religions and spiritual traditions.

I happen to now, in my 40s, have come back to the Catholic Church through some really great Jesuit thought and retreat opportunities and have been paying very close attention to Jesus. In fact, in this Lenten season, watched Frontline two nights earlier this week, which I think I recognize your guest's voice from, and I was just fascinated by the story of the time of Jesus and what happened historically to develop Christianity.

And so, between my personal experience of Catholicism and a message of unity coming from many great religions, and now coming back through Catholicism to meet Jesus again, there's a wonderful quality of mystery in there, that I'm kind of just listening to and paying attention to. And in talking about the history of Christianity, and your guest's perceptions of Jesus, I would like to invite you also to address - you guest, to address that quality of mystery, as you perceive it, or as you and fellow scholars and theologians find that....

NEARY: Can I ask you something...?

CALLER: Do you know what I am talking about "by mystery?"

NEARY: Yeah, I just want to ask you something, Jean, before we go to Professor Crossan. And that is: do you prefer to Jesus to be - do you - are you attracted more to the mystery of Jesus and you don't to know about the historical Jesus? Is that what you're saying?

CALLER: Oh, no, no. Not at all. The historical facts to me are very important, because I am - I am a logical thinker. I like to know how systems developed and where things came from, and I also am willing to take, on faith, things of the spirit. And so, religious study religious inquiries is very interesting to me, means a lot to me, is very appealing to me. And I'm coming to this discussion and to watching Frontline, for instance the other day, listening to your show today, experiencing Holy Week this year as a Catholic for the first time in many, many years, and there is this quality that I feel that I just can't identify anymore than "mystery." And I'm - I - that's what I'm - it's kind of inevitable thing to bring up, but I wanted to bring that to your discussion.

NEARY: Professor Crossan.

CROSSAN: Yes, Jean. Thank you very, very much. I hope nothing I'm doing really would be destroying mystery. But on the other hand, I do want to insist, as I think Jesus did, that spirit and flesh dance together in this world. That we are enfleshed spirit, or spiritual flesh, rather than, say, oh spirit as we're accidently living in the flesh. In other words, with the Jewish tradition, with Jesus, I don't think we can separate body and soul, religion and politics. And I want to keep the mystery in that exchange between them, not apart from them.

NEARY: Is that...

CALLER: I think one of the fascinating things to me about what you're presenting here and what I'm experiencing is the fact that those seemingly disparate elements - body and spirit, politics and spirit - they have been disconnected as dualities a lot. And yet, they live in us together every day, they live in the natural world.

I happen to be an environmental educator now, and I perceive that clearly. In fact, am in more - what can I say - intuitive perceptions, direct experience of the natural world. And how that mystery that I hear you addressing there - how that manifests? What that calls us to do or to learn - that is just a really fascinating phenomenon that I'm experiencing right now and wanted to bring up.

CROSSAN: Thank you very much, Jean.

NEARY: Thanks very much for calling, Jean. I'd like to turn now to Allen in Seattle, Washington. Allen, hello.

CALLER: Hello, how are you?

NEARY: Good, thanks.

CALLER: I had a couple of questions to ask. Is it - what historical evidence is there that Jesus even actually existed? And what motivates the question is, I've recently reread a book by a fellow named Carl Kowsky (ph) who was a Marxist scholar who was very interested in Christianity and did - and researched a lot of the great Protestant theologians in - and Christian scholars of the 19th and early 20th century. And apparently Albert Schweitzer was a - one of those scholars. And he wrote a book called "The Quest for the Historical Jesus," in which he came to the conclusion, I believe, that there really isn't any evidence that Jesus actually existed other than, you know, faith evidence. And I'm just curious, you know, what you all have to say about that? And, for instance, a lot of the stuff from Josephus apparently was pretty well put in their by pious monks, it's fairly well established, and I'm curious as to what you think about that.

NEARY: Professor Crossan.

CROSSAN: Thank you, Allen. No, Schweitzer didn't - really not say that. Schweitzer was completely convinced that Jesus did exist. Then - and that Jesus was important. That's what sent him to Africa. He left the... - He left Europe. He didn't leave the church when he....

CALLER: Oh, I did misspeak, I meant to say he found no historical evidence, but only evidence in, you know, like religious doctrine.

CROSSAN: All right, let me then go outside religious doctrines for the moment. Supposing we had no - forget the Christian documents....

CALLER: OK.

CROSSAN: We have at the end of the 1st century, Josephus, and the beginning of the 2nd century, Tacitus. The documentation in Josephus has certainly been tampered with by those who passed it on, but there's enough there in Josephan language that tells us that Josephus and Tacitus agreed on four points concerning Jesus. Four points: there was a movement over there in Judea; we executed the founder of that movement to stop it; it didn't really work; the movement continued; and they both agreed that it's now all the to Rome. So, you have movement, execution, continuation, expansion. We would know that if no Christians ever told us anything about Jesus. I would say we're as sure he existed as we are that Julius Caesar existed. And we're as sure he was crucified as we are that Julius Caesar was assassinated.

CALLER: Huh. Well, that's interesting. I had heard that there were only a few references to Jesus in all of Josephus, and that they pretty well - "Acts of Jesus" has pretty well shown that, you know, they were later accretions.

CROSSAN: I would think that the present strong consensus of scholarship is that they have been added to, and adapted towards, the Christian understanding, but that, no, Josephus definitely did talk about Jesus.

NEARY: OK, thanks very much, Allen.

CALLER: OK, thanks a lot. I appreciate your input.

CROSSAN: Thank you, Allen.

NEARY: OK.

CALLER: Bye.

NEARY: Professor Crossan, why is it important to you personally to uncover the historical Jesus? I mean, this is really your personal quest it seems?

CROSSAN: Oh, Lynn, I wish I could really explain that one to you [laughs]. I started 30 years ago, and I think what fascinated me about Jesus - I began working on the parables and two things fascinated me. When Jesus spoke, it seems we had multiple versions of what he said. And when we looked at the Gospels, we had multiple versions of his importance. And he seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of multiplicity, and that's really what fascinated me: how - what was behind this shear plurality, multiplicity of interpretations? That's what started me.

NEARY: Do you feel satisfied after these 30 years that you have some sense of who the real Jesus was?

CROSSAN: I'd have to say yes. But I don't want to take away Jean's mystery, and I don't want to put myself out of a job.... [laughs] No, I think I can - I think I see more now than I did 30 years ago.

NEARY: What do you mean by that?

CROSSAN: Because 30 years ago, I didn't really know what Jesus was about I just knew a multiplicity of interpretations about him. I begin to see, slowly, a core out of which Mark could write this way, Matthew this way, John, Luke whatever.

NEARY: Mm-hmm. The whole tension between the mystery of Jesus and this idea of finding the real Jesus, do you see that as the tension of faith really? I mean, what is it - what do you see as that - what is that tension about?

CROSSAN: I've been always very careful not to use the term "the real Jesus." I talk about "the historical Jesus," which is Jesus as reconstructed by the best methods we can in public discourse. If I had a completely videotape of everything Jesus said and did, and I had it here today from the 1st century as it were, that would still not force faith. You could still look at this person, as people did, and say, well, he's a criminal; he should be crucified; he is in - upsetting the Roman order. Faith cannot exist - let me put it - let me back up. You can have history without faith, but you can't have faith without history. That's the challenge. You can have the historical Jesus and not believe in him, but I don't think you can believe in Jesus without having the historical Jesus.

NEARY: Your seminar - well, not your seminar, but the Jesus Seminar which you helped to found - it has been criticized for - it has been questioned - both its methods have been questioned, its scholarship and, you know, what's behind it. There are those who think that there is maybe even some sort of a political element to it. How do you respond to the critics of the Jesus Seminar?

CROSSAN: OK, let's take on motives first. The motive of the Jesus Seminar was to go public. It was a dissatisfaction - an ethical dissatisfaction with the fact that all of this discussion was going on within scholarly circles, we were talking to one another and none of us were saying anything that others were surprised by. But none of it was getting out to the public. And we didn't think that was right. So, deliberately, the program of the assembly was to do our research in public. That's why the colored beads and all the rest - it was an invitation for television to come look at us. So, yes. We were seeking publicity as an ethical demand. And we challenged, in a way, our peers to ask them: are they doing enough in public discourse? With regard to our methods. The methods we use, even if people do not like our conclusions, are exactly the same methods everyone use.

NEARY: I'm Lynn Neary, sitting in for Ray Suarez today. And you're listening to Talk of the Nation from NPR News. My guest today is John Dominic Crossan, he's the author of The Birth of Christianity, and a number of other books, but that's his latest one. If you'd like to joins us we're at 1-800-989-TALK. And let's talk with George in San Francisco...

CALLER: Yes...

NEARY: Hello, George.

CALLER: Professor Crossan.

CROSSAN: Hello, George.

CALLER: Yes, I'd like to speak to you about the confrontation and the events that led to that confrontation in Antioch with Peter and Paul. First of all, that Saint Elizabeth was the sister of the Virgin Mary. Her - she was married to Zacharias the prophet, who will prophetize Jesus entering Jerusalem with the Palm Sunday symbology. Their son was John the Baptist, all these people were related. And I submit, really, that this is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the population of the world.

Here you have the confrontation in Antioch, with this extension of new Judaism, made palatable by baptismal rites, instead of circumcision, in order to gain revenues - collect revenues and this is - I - corroborated by the 1962 The World Book Encyclopedia - Luke, Mark, Acts - and you find that you have the sister of the Virgin Mary promoting the annunciation, telling everybody that Christ is going - that Jesus was going to be the Christ, when in fact in New Testament has Jesus and his brothers collecting revenues. And James, who was expecting all these revenues, to lead this insurrection against Rome.

Really, what Christianity was about was a movement to expel Romans from Judea. And it's been turned into a religious dogma in order to subjugate the people and to collect revenue - continue to collect revenues from them. And I find this whole thing one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated.

CROSSAN: Sorry, George, I must disagree with you completely on that. I don't think it was about getting money. I think it was establishing the justice of God on this Earth. Rome was in the way and therefore it was against Rome.

CALLER: Well then why was James - why was Jesus and his followers collecting revenues, being collected by his brothers, which the New Testament - you know, this was never talked...

CROSSAN: No, no, sorry George. Let's get the facts. They were not being collected by James. In fact, they were being collected by Paul, from the pagan churches, for the poor of Jerusalem. Paul was doing it, not James.

CALLER: Well, James was expecting this money, was he not in Jerusalem?

CROSSAN: And according to Acts 21, when Paul came with the money, James did not accept it, because he was suspicious of Paul's theology, actually. So, theology was more important than money.

CALLER: But all this led to an insurrection, which was the point of the entire movement. It wasn't about God...

CROSSAN: It did not lead to an insurrection, actually. There was no - no insurrection that we know of at that time.

CALLER: Well, I mean 25 years after, when James was expecting this money. That was according to what I had seen on the PBS documentary that they just had. So he's collecting this money, or wanting to collect this money.

NEARY: All right, George, thanks very much for calling. You're listening to Talk of the Nation from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary. My guest today is John Dominic Crossan. We're going to take a short break right now. When we return, we'll talk to a professor of New Testament interpretation who teaches the traditional Biblical history of Jesus, and we'll also take more of your calls. To contact us here at Talk of the Nation, you can either send us e-mail at totn@npr.org or regular mail. Our address is: Talk of the Nation Letters NPR News 635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20001 At 33 minutes past the hour, this is Talk of the Nation from NPR News.

Welcome back. I'm Lynn Neary. Today, we're talking about the historical Jesus versus the Biblical Jesus. Joining us now on the phone from Wilmore, Kentucky is Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary and the author of The Jesus Quest. Welcome, Professor Witherington.

BEN WITHERINGTON: Good to be with you.

NEARY: Thanks for joining us. I think you've been listening to us for the last about half hour, and I'm just wondering if there's anything in particular that you've heard that's at odds with what you might - the way you might interpret who Jesus is - the interpretation of the resurrection?

WITHERINGTON: Well, I guess that - just what Dominic Crossan has shared on this particular show, I wouldn't see myself as in any sort of drastic disagreement with just the soundbites that we've heard from this particular show. I have to also say I have not yet seen The Birth of Christianity. Dom is producing books quicker than I can read, but I would like to say that I think if you look at his broader body of work and some of the stuff that's come out of the Jesus Seminar, there would be some differences. But one of those that I would point to - the points that he made about the resurrection of Jesus, I think I would be largely in agreement with, except that I would also want to say that the resurrection of Jesus is in fact about what happened to his body.

Now, in another work, Who Killed Jesus?, Professor Crossan says that those who cared about his body didn't know what happened to his body, and those who knew what happened to his body, didn't care about his body. In other words, he dismisses the historical substance of the stories of the visits to the tomb and the appearances of Jesus with the tomb being empty and those kinds of traditions.

And what I would want to say is that, especially in an early Jewish milieu where resurrection meant a body coming back from the dead, Professor Crossan was quite right in saying that it's not merely about subjective visions. This is what was believed to have happened to Jesus, and in this indeed is the claim of the New Testament - that this same Jesus, in the body, reappeared to various of his disciples in various venues and they were shocked because they weren't expecting it.

And so, this was not an example of wish projection. So, I think there are some important nuances there about the resurrection of Jesus on which we would differ. On the issue of the birth and development of early Christianity, I think he's right. Early Christianity begins as a subset or sect of Judaism. Where I think I would certainly differ is how soon along the historical timeline Christianity really had, for all intents and purposes, a pretty much independent existence.

I mean, I think you already see this in the letters of Paul, which were written in - from about 50 AD to about 62 or so AD. I think Paul himself is able to distinguish those who are in Christ from, A, Jews, and B, non-Christian gentiles. And so I think at least one would have to say that you already see the parting of the ways much earlier than the end of the 1st century AD. And thirdly, and lastly, I'd want to say that probably the most fundamental disagreement between myself and Professor Crossan is that I think that Jesus did view himself in a messianic light. The things that Professor Crossan shared in his show about the historical Jesus, I would think it was basically correct, but the problem is with what he did not say. And I think that Jesus did in fact view himself in a messianic light. I think in fact this is part of what got him crucified. He was crucified as King of the Jews. And so...

NEARY: What does that mean exactly? That Jesus viewed himself in a messianic light? What - and how is that so different from what Professor Crossan is saying?

WITHERINGTON: Well, I think he did see himself as the person who had been sent by God to redeem Israel; that Israel was lost - had lost its way along the path of history, and that he came to save the least and the last and the lost, not only among Israel, but Israel as a group. He gathered twelve disciples to himself as a symbolic gesture of the gathering of the twelve tribes of Israel. And there was an intent all along to not only proclaim the coming of the justice of God, but also to proclaim the salvation of God for God's people - which has a justice component, but it's not merely that.

NEARY: Professor Crossan, I mean, do you feel that the idea of Jesus as a messiah came completely after the death of Jesus? That he never saw himself in that way at all?

CROSSAN: No. What I think is that Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God. And he said quite clearly: "this is the Kingdom of God; that is not the Kingdom of God." That is an absolutely stunning statement right there, and it's one that most scholars agree on. The Kingdom of God, we're certain of, comes from Jesus, 'cause that means that Jesus is claiming to know, as Matthew glossed it in the Our Father, "the will of God for this Earth." I find titles such as "messiah" even "son of God" all implicitly contained in that, and receiving their content from that. If Jesus stood up and said "I am the messiah," he would then have to do a lot of explaining to give the content of that. That could be taken as "let us rise up in the name of God and attack the Romans." What Jesus talks about - the titles that are given to Jesus - are to be explained by what he says about the kingdom, not vice versa. So, I do disagree with Ben that Jesus said: "I am the messiah."

NEARY: All right. Let me go back to our callers now. We are talking with John Dominic Crossan today on Talk of the Nation. He's the author of The Birth of Christianity; and Ben Witherington III, a professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminar, is also on the line with us now. If you'd like to join us in our discussion, you can call 1-800- 989-TALK. And let's talk with Gillian, who's calling us from Clayton, California. Hello, Gillian.

CALLER: Hello. Golly, I'm really excited to be on the show. I feel like I could ask you questions all day. But I'll just ask two. I watched the Frontline program and I found it really fascinating, but two things that were not cleared up for me were: one, where did the Jews who began following Jesus get the idea that he was going to return? I may have missed it in the program, but did he ever say that he was going to come back? Because they've been waiting for nearly 2,000 years, I guess at this point.

And my second question is: how - you know, maybe at what point - and how did that sect turn into such a major religion? Based on what I saw on Frontline, they seemed like quite a minority. A lot of people thought they were crazy. If something like that was happening today and has happened, people would say they were a cult and that they were wackos.And so how did that - how did that turn into what it is today?

NEARY: All right. Thanks very much for your call, Gillian.

CALLER: Thank you.

NEARY: Were they considered a cult, Professor Crossan?

CROSSAN: The proper sociological term for them - within Judaism, they would be a sect; that is, a group within Judaism struggling with their own religion. With regard to Roman paganism, the proper term for them is a cult. Now, I don't think it's right to just presume that cults are always wacko. It's the content of your cult or the content of your sect that makes you wacko. So what these people are doing is what determines whether they are "wacko" or not, as Gillian said.

NEARY: Her other question, really though, is how did this - how did this small group of followers of Jesus - how did it become Christianity? How did it become this huge religious movement?

CROSSAN: Two decisions - since the book talks about the '30s and '40s - two decisions that were made before Paul, and independently of Paul, were crucial for that. We find Christians not only in Galilee, and we don't even find them in the cities of Galilee such as Sephreus (ph) and Tiberias. But we find them almost immediately, in the first years of the '30s, in Jerusalem, in Damascus, in Antioch. They've gone to the cities. The first urban Christians are not in the churches of Paul. Now, I think that's a stupendous step - to move to the cities. Without that, this could have died out in the hills of Galilee in one generation.

Secondly, they have decided to allow gentiles - that is, pagans - to become part of their communities along with Jews, without demanding that their males be circumcised or that they observe kosher. Now, there are fights about this, but that second movement, which also happens before Paul, that is what makes this movement highly volatile for the future.

NEARY: OK. We have some e-mails here and I'd like to read at least one of them. And Professor Witherington, if you want to join in on answering this - these questions, you're welcome to as well. This is from Michael Michelchik I believe is the name, and he asks two questions: "what is the authenticity of the gospels excluded from the Bible by Paul - the gospels according to Thomas, Mary, and the Book of Enoch? And the second is: how would you answer those who say that the Bible is the literal and flawless word of God - there are no contradictions, just mysteries and deeper levels of understanding?" And a comment following these questions - he says: these are issues that frequently enter conversations that I have with fundamentalist Christians and I'd like to hear a scholar's point of view. Professor Crossan?

CROSSAN: As a historian, I have to treat all documents that come from the first century, for example, and I will put the Gospel of Thomas in there, as historical documents. I try not to privilege one over the other. But I do include them all, and that may seem that I'm de-privileging the canonical four, which some - only some people concentrate. How would he answer the question about literal? What is crucial for me and a vast majority, possibly even a huge majority of scholars, is, for example, that Matthew and Luke use Mark as a major source. And if you run them in parallel columns as we do, you can actually see Matthew and Luke changing Mark before your eyes. Mark says Jesus says this; they say Jesus says that. They don't just make it up for fun. They change Jesus to suit their own communities in their own places. So the gospels themselves, as the inspired word of God for Christians, allow a certain amount of what we might call today, and I'll use it just for its shock value, "plagiarism." Call is "inspired plagiarism," if you will. So I cannot take them literally, because I've seen what they do.

NEARY: Professor Witherington?

WITHERINGTON: Well, I guess - let's deal with the latter point first. I think that, as Professor Crossan says, that all documents must be viewed in their historical context. And I also agree, in principle, that we should examine all the sources that we have. We shouldn't rule out, in advance, any source.

But having said that, my personal view is that the historical worth of the sources that this particular e-mail message was mentioning are considerably less than the canonical gospels. And indeed, I would say, apart from one or two saying in the Gospel of Thomas, they have really little or no historical worth in telling us anything about the historical Jesus. What they do tell us about is what some religious folks in the second century thought about various issues.

In regard to what Professor Crossan was talking about, about the differences in the gospels, I think you have to, whatever your theory of God's word or inspiration, you have to deal with the facts of the text. And I quite agree that when you line them up in parallel columns, there are differences. What I would want to say is that the differences that we find there are the sort of the same kind of editorial differences that we see in other ancient historiographical works, whether we're talking about historical monographs or ancient biographies. And if you read the documents within their historical context, you would discover, I think, that these documents are making significant historical claims and presenting significant historical substance. And therefore, they must be judged in terms of their intentions, not in terms of our own modern predilections about this, that, or the other.

NEARY: We're talking about the historical Jesus today on Talk of the Nation. If you'd like to join us, the number to call is 1-800- 989-TALK. And we're going to Tara in Portland, Oregon now. Hello, Tara.

CALLER: Hi. How are you? I have a perspective that I'd like to Professor Crossan to look at, and that is is that Jesus, rather in this century at this time, is more of an event - a process - than an historical figure. And by that, I mean that people now relate with Jesus as they do in the context of their everyday life, which is so far removed from the source that of course we can examine history, and we can consider it, but we should not say, as Professor Crossan said, that if we don't have an historical Jesus, we don't have a basis for faith. And I would also further say that in the - isn't it possible that in the mind of God, all phenomena arises - all of the material of the world arises in the mind of God, in thought, word, and deed? And so, Jesus - couldn't Jesus, in fact, be a platform at this point, and couldn't he in fact be a process, rather than an event. That's what I have to say.

NEARY: OK, thanks for calling, Tara. Professor Crossan?

CALLER: OK.

CROSSAN: I would insist, Tara, on the dialectic - the inter- weave between history and faith. If Jesus is just a thought process, then he might be a thought process that we should go out and kill people who are non-Christians. And if that is the thought process, I'm going to judge that against the historical Jesus. So, I want to hold onto both. The risen Jesus is the historical Jesus in a new, more powerful mode in the world. But I won't let go of either of them because otherwise, this process that you're talking about could turn lethal.

NEARY: John Dominic Crossan is the author of The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. I'm Lynn Neary, sitting in for Ray Suarez. And you're listening to Talk of the Nation from NPR News. If you'd like to join our discussion today about the historical Jesus, you can reach us by calling 1-800-989-TALK. Steve in Tallahassee is on the line now. Hello, Steve.

CALLER: Hello.

NEARY: How are you? And what's your question?

CALLER: Well, my - fascinating talk - and I wanted to - Professor Crossan mentioned before about how in what Christ says and his life and whatever, he emphasizes that the flesh and the spirit dance, in a sense. And I wanted to ask him to comment on the relationship that the church has taken, especially the Catholic Church, in adopting a lot of older stuff into Christianity like, for instance, 5th century Athens. And, you know, how - how the old philosophers, especially Platonists, with the notions of the separation of reality in some superhuman realm - how that's been blended into the church in the sense that maybe Christ was no Christian after all, you know?

CROSSAN: Thank you, Steve, very much because I was tempted to bring in Platonic Dualism earlier. I think we would be much better in Christianity today with a large dose of - more of Judaism than of Platonism, to put it very bluntly. I think the Platonic Dualism that separates spirit and flesh and makes spirit triumphant over flesh, and flesh is sort of an accidental motel room with the spirit dwelling in it, you know, almost by chance - I think that is profoundly damaging. And there is too much of it, for my taste, in Paul...

CALLER: I'm sorry?

CROSSAN: And there is too much of it, Steve, for my taste, in Paul, by the way.

CALLER: Hmm.

CROSSAN: Platonic Dualism, we're talking about.

NEARY: Professor Witherington, did you want to join in?

WITHERINGTON: Yes, I certainly wouldn't want to see Paul as Platonic Dualism - dualist, especially since he was the strongest of the advocates of the resurrection, both Jesus' and the future resurrection of those who are in Christ. But there is a dualism - a moral dualism - not an ontological dualism, but a moral dualism in Paul between good and evil. There's no doubt about that. That's very different from a material dualism of flesh and spirit.

I'm profoundly convinced, when you actually look at Paul's anthropological terms, when he talks about things like heart and mind, he's talking about the control center of the whole personality. He doesn't simply buy into the Greek immortal soul versus body kind of dualism, with the soul being good and the body being bad. After all, the doctrine of resurrection is the ultimate affirmation of the goodness of the body.

So, I would see Paul as a good first century Jew, much like Jesus on these issues. And I quite agree with Professor Crossan: we could do with a whole lot more of the Jewish perspective and a lot less of the Platonic perspective on all these issues.

NEARY: Thanks, Steve. And Professor Crossan, you wanted to add something?

CROSSAN: Mostly to Ben - I would still be a little nervous, Ben, about Paul. Now, we're talking about First Corinthians 15 - precisely when he says Jesus has a spiritual body and flesh and blood will not inherit the Kingdom of God. That gets me a little nervous.

WITHERINGTON: Well, what I would say about that is: he means, if you look at "pneumaticon" (ph) - a Greek word - it means a body empowered by the spirit. It doesn't mean a body made out of spiritual substance. That would be almost a contradiction in terms. But - and I would also want to say that he means, of course, that flesh and blood as we now have it - the decaying flesh that we've got are certainly not going to enter the Kingdom of God in that condition. So, he's not talking about any kind of transformed body. He's talking about the kind we've got now.

NEARY: Let's see if we can quickly get one more caller in. Ron in Mountain View, Arkansas - I think you had a question about Paul.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, in regard to Paul, in the first four gospels - or first four books, we hear a lot about Jesus. The rest of the New Testament is a lot of Paul. And I've often thought: are we sometimes - should we be called Paulists or something because so much of it is Paul? And I wanted to have them discuss, you know, the influence Paul had. Are we seeing Jesus - is it just an interpretation of Paul's? And how true is Paul to Jesus' words? As the first four gospels are....

NEARY: Professor Crossan, I'm going to ask you respond to the caller quickly 'cause we're running out of time.

CROSSAN: Ron, you're going to love my book because it's about the 30s and the 40s. It's about what was there before Paul and without Paul. It's important that the gospels come first. Paul comes second in the New Testament. They got it right.

NEARY: All right. I'm afraid that's all we have time for today. And I want to thank everybody who called and my guests: John Dominic Crossan is the chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, and the author of The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. He joined us here in Washington in studio 3A. Ben Witherington III is a professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary and the author of The Jesus Quest. He joined us by phone from his office in Wilmore, Kentucky. Thanks to both of you for joining us today.