How To Read The Bible And Still Be A Christian – John Dominic Crossan

“The People of the Holy Ones of the Most High” ONE PRELIMINARY POINT OF matrix is needed for what follows. Around the early seventh century BCE, Hesiod’s Works and Days divided human history into five successive, and declining, eras: the Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, and Iron Ages. But was it not possible to imagine a better world, even a perfect cosmos, in which that vision of inevitable decline was changed, reversed, transformed?

In the 170s BCE—that is, in the decade before Daniel was composed— the Roman historian Aemilius Sura, as recorded by Velleius Paterculus’s Compendium of Roman History, said that “the Assyrians were the first of all races to hold world power, then the Medes, and after them the Persians, and then the Macedonians. Then . . . the world power passed to the Roman people” (1.6).

But, of course, Rome as the fifth Kingdom was not just one more of the same. The Roman Empire was the climax and consummation of the past. It was the final Kingdom. It was the last Kingdom. It was the eschatological Kingdom. I turn now to Daniel 7 as my paradigmatic example of those visions in Daniel 7–12. But there the fifth or climactic, the last or eschatological Kingdom is not that of Rome but of God.

I am moving, in other words, into another great biblical tradition—that of God’s final transformation and ultimate transfiguration of an old earth ruled by imperial injustice to a renewed earth ruled by eschatological justice. Daniel saw in his vision “by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another” (7:2–3).

Here are those four beastlike empires with their representative rulers: 1. The first kingdom is Babylonia or Chaldea (7:4), represented by “Nebuchadnezzar” (2:1 through 5:18) and Belshazzar (6:1). 2. The second kingdom is Media (7:5), represented by the very fictional “Darius the Mede” (5:31; 11:1) or “Darius . . . a Mede” (9:1). 3. The third kingdom is Persia (7:6), represented by “Cyrus the Persian” (6:28) or “Cyrus of Persia” (10:1). 4. The fourth kingdom is Greece (7:7), represented by the never- named Alexander, “King of Greece” (8:5–21) or “Prince of Greece” (10:20) or “a warrior king” (11:3).

Those first three empires are all “like” feral beasts (lion, bear, leopard), but no such animal is deemed adequate to describe Alexander’s Greece. It is simply “different” in its “devouring . . .

5 Creation and Covenant 6 Blessing and Curse 7 Prophecy and Prayer 8 Wisdom and Kingdom Part IV: Community 9 Israel and the Challenge of Rome 10 Jesus and the Radicality of God 11 Christ and the Normalcy of Civilization 12 Rome and the Challenge of Caesar 13 Paul and the Radicality of Christ 14 Paul and the Normalcy of Empire Epilogue: To Outsoar the Shadow of Our Night Notes Scripture Index Subject Index About the Author Praise Also by John Dominic Crossan Credits Copyright About the Publisher OceanofPDF.com PART I Challenge OceanofPDF.com CHAPTER 1 Ending A HYMN TO A SAVAGE GOD?

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, “The Stare’s Nest by My Window” (1922) THIS BOOK’S TITLE—How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian— imagines some serious tension within the Christian Bible, between being a faithful reader and being a faithful Christian. But how, when, and where I first saw this problem influences how, when, and where I first saw the solution. Here, then, to begin with, are some autobiographical details as full disclosure for what is at stake for me in the problem I propose for you and the solution I offer to you in this book.

A disclosure is already implicit in my triple name on this book’s cover. “John Crossan” is the name on my driver’s license, passport, and TSA pre- check protocols. But in 1950, at the age of sixteen, I entered a thirteenth- century Roman Catholic monastery and became “Brother Dominic.” My new vocation was supposed to wipe out, as it were, my past identity and give me only a future destiny—as in the biblical, so in the monastic tradition.

Nineteen years later, having finally realized that celibacy was vastly overrated, I left both monastery and priesthood to get married. But even if the rules had changed to allow a married priesthood, I still would have resigned in 1969. What was my problem? My monastic superiors had recognized that five years of Greek and Latin in an Irish boarding school could not be wasted so they decided I should become a professor of biblical studies after ordination in 1957.

I was not, and did not expect to be, consulted on any of their plans. Under my vow of obedience I did what I was told, but to be honest, I loved their decision. In the Roman Catholic tradition it was required, and wisely so, that a degree in theology should precede any degree in biblical studies.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 8edfe824603f4861
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,555,782 bytes (1.484 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 262
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 387.31 minutes
• Total Words: 77,462
• Total Characters: 460,772
• Average Words per Page: 295.66
• Average Characters per Page: 1758.67

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