Paul the Pharisee: A Vision Beyond the Violence of Civilization

by John Dominic Crossan

Paul the Pharisee celebrates not just the New-Paul as Jew but the New-New-Paul as Jewish Pharisee. Granted past Christian, Jewish, and Roman matrices of interpretation, this book explores the historical Paul through the fourth matrix of Evolution. (Think of those matrices as four Russian nesting Matryoshka dolls.) We are not on the Titanic; we are the iceberg. What, then, does Pauline “resurrection” have to do with human evolution?

263 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 31, 2024

About the author

John Dominic Crossan is generally regarded as the leading historical Jesus scholar in the world. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Historical Jesus, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, The Birth of Christianity, and Who Killed Jesus? He lives in Clermont, Florida.

John Dominic Crossan was born in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1934. He was educated in Ireland and the United States, received a Doctorate of Divinity from Maynooth College in Ireland in 1959, and did post-doctoral research at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome from 1959 to 1961 and at the École Biblique in Jerusalem from 1965 to 1967. He was a member of a thirteenth-century Roman Catholic religious order, the Servites (Ordo Servorum Mariae), from 1950 to 1969 and was an ordained priest in 1957. He joined DePaul University in Chicago in 1969 and remained there until 1995. He is now a Professor Emeritus in its Department of Religious Studies.

Reviews

[Ron at Rockhaven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and informative, and up to date scholarly, as usual.

I will say I get the layering in of the "Evolution Matrix" for more contemporary relevance (and as frame for the laudable project here of writing on Paul for atheists and agnostics as well as the usual suspects like me) but felt it was the weakest part of the book. More on it in my last graph.

What worked well was to take all of his (and Marcus Borg as former co-author) previous general explorations of The Authentic/First Paul in opposition to Roman Empire civilization values and truths and in this book show them through the particular lens of the major differences of how Paul and his mission and vision and life is portrayed between Luke-Acts and Paul's own seven letters. It deepens our ability to understand Luke-Acts and Paul, together the majority of the canonical Christian scriptures

As he does in "Render Unto Caeser" and God vs. Empire and many others, Crossan shows how early Jesus followers (Messianic Christic jews and gentiles of the first century c.e.) resisted the Empire for the same reasons we are called to resist the "normalcy of civilization" in its guise of fascism and unmoored capitalism and environmental genocide today.

The call for Paul, which Crossan takes up, is a cosmic one: to evolve personally and structurally in line with a justice-oriented Evolutionary process. I hope he delves into the theology of this more in a future work. I know he might feel it is moving from his historical and biblical scholarship background, but it would be making front and center more of what has been added onto in this and previous work.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid companion to 'Render Unto Caesar". I preferred the former book, however. This book continues the fascinating analysis of Pauline scripture. I particularly enjoy how the New Testament captures, according to Crossan, the dynamism and tension in the early church. I also find it a bit discouraging and unfortunately likely that the author of Luke/Acts deradicalized Paul's message in order to function within the dangerous and violent Roman empire of the late 1st century. Crossan concludes with meticulous detail that Paul's message (and Jesus's message) was radical non-violent resistance to Roman violence used to maintain the inequality of empire. In addition, Paul attacks the law of the Empire itself as designed to maintain an unjust system. Powerful stuff.

But the author of Luke/Acts found this too radical and watered it down so that Paul is portrayed as supported by Rome. In addition, unknown authors inserted text into Paul's letters and manufactured letters in his name after his death to make Paul's message more palatable.

So the ideas in the book are fascinating and worth reading. My objection to the book is the excruciating detail of Paul's travels. In addition, I found the prose a bit convoluted. Pretty good writing for someone in his 90's though. Crossan is an impressive guy.

[Bruce Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, but slow, read, for several reasons. I read the paperback edition, and it’s in tiny print for my damaged eyes. Crossan is way more a biblical scholar than I’ve ever been, so I had to think about and review the history and geography that flows freely from Crossan.

Covering Paul through his own writing as well as the writing of the author of Luke-Acts, it was an exercise to face these as different authorships, with different purposes, which are both obviously the case, and commonly ignored. This is a great case study in how to do that.

I think I’ll have to get a kindle edition so the print size is adjustable when I revisit this.

[Neal Salan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crossan's Paul the Pharisee is a thoroughly researched monograph. He offers a well-argued thesis that Paul is gradually expunged from the Scriptures by the writer of Luke-Acts and later Scriptures. I found the argument convincing. Crossan also argues that Paul's concept of resurrection is a realised eschatology, a here-and-now resurrection to a new life in the present as followers of Jesus.