Jesus and Justice: Organizing for God’s Reign on Earth Then and Now

by John Dominic Crossan, Michael Okinczyc-Cruz

110 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 17, 2026

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

[Nicholas]

This was my spiritual reading for the Easter Triduum this weekend, and I enjoyed it very much -- particularly the elucidation of the economic and political reality of Galilee during Jesus' time. (Herod Antipas, eager to be considered the King of the Jews as his father Herod the Great had been, decided upon Tiberius's ascension as Caesar to move the provincial capital from inland Sepphoris to a lakeside location he called Tiberias, where he could enrich the Roman empire by exacting tribute from the impoverished fishermen whose industry he monopolized. Jesus, accordingly, moved from Nazareth, a backwater of Sepphoris, to Capernaum, a seaside village, in order to be close to those most exploited by empire.)

Of course, since Crossan doesn't believe that Jesus is divine, the section on "Resurrection" fails to deliver a robust connection between "the matrix of time and space" in which Jesus lived and the religion that grew up around him. At most, it offers parallels between Jesus' revolutionary life and those of contemporary figures like Dr. King, Fred Hampton, and Ella Baker. (The comparison between the cruelty of Pilate and that of Joe Arpaio is also apt.) Still, these parallels are evocative, and they contradict nothing in the Christological work of, say, Benedict XVI or Gerhard Lohfink for those who expect their high and low Christologies to interpenetrate. In other words, if there is nothing here to explain why THIS revolutionary should be considered a God, there is much to explain why God, upon becoming incarnate in history, should have been a revolutionary.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Careful biblical and historical work around Jesus's vision, execution, and resurrection, followed by examples from social justice movements in the USA and abroad, and suggestions for continuing to move toward God's reign on earth (in ways counter to Christian nationalism). The chapter on vision lays out the political system at the time and place where Jesus walked the earth, the similarities and differences between Jesus and John the Baptist, and meanings represented by the "Ancient Galilee Boat," a fishing boat from the first-century discovered in the 1980s. Jesus's execution is discussed in terms of Passover, Pilate, and the practice of crucifixion, with fresh perspectives on the crowds of Palm Sunday and around Barabbas, with Jesus's emphasis on non-violent resistance. The third chapter considers how the church in its first several centuries depicted the moment of resurrection and divergent meanings, clues to deeper understanding. The brief conclusion points to this moment in time and our participation. Thought-provoking.