motorhead

I have questions for anyone who's read Crossan's book, The Historical Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk).

How does Crossan justify what sources he's including in his first stratum? He has sources like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Hebrews, along with something called the Apocalyptic Scenario. The first stratum represents material from 30 to 60 CE. I know in the Appendix for this material he gives a brief explanation but that hardly suffices to justify his including it in this first stratum. Is there some decent level of agreement among scholars that these sources are from 30 to 60CE? Shouldn't part of his argument include justifying these sources are from this period?

Gamera

Crossan's conclusion drives his assumptions. Basically, Crossan's position is that the messianic Jesus was the result of pious myths by the apostles and in particular the robust mythmaking of Paul, who influenced the later written gospels. (His position is that Jesus was crucified and his body thrown to the dogs, a traumatic experience that his followers could not deal with psychologically except through the mass delusion of pious mythmaking).

With that in mind, the nonmessianic gnostic gospels suit his view of Jesus, and for that reason he gives them an early origin. I think the general scholarly consensus is that Gospel of Thomas is a later 2nd century text.

Zeichman

Some of his sources are more controversial than others. Particularly, his stratification of Thomas serves almost only to confirm his beliefs and is not driven by any literary-critical, form critical, audience critical, etc. reading of the document. See his book "Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon" for extended defenses of his use of Thomas, Egerton 2, Secret Mark, and Gos. Peter. He's written extensively about his Cross source in "The Cross that Spoke" and written a book on Gos. Thomas, though I forgot what it is called.

Regarding dating, from my experience, I would classify his dating as follows:

Q strata 1 & 2 = nearly uncontested as pre-60, though Kloppenborg's stratification of Q has met considerable resistance.
Q stratum 3 = little resistance: Mack posits that this was written after the first revolt of the Jewish war, though most would date the whole of Q to sometime before 60.
Secret Mark = Considerable resistance: the authenticity of this document is coming under increasing scrutiny, cf. Carlson's book and others on the topic. Whether it pre-dates or post-dates Mark, if independent, is also an issue among scholars.
Egerton 2 = Moderate resistance: very little of this document survives, so dating it is quite speculative, and many are more cautious than Crossan about it.
Pauline epistles he uses: uncontested.
Early edition of Gospel of Thomas = great resistance: as I said, Crossan's stratification seems to be nothing other than confirming that congenial elements of THomas are early and "gnosticizing" tendencies are later. He might now appeal to Arnal's analysis of Thomas, but he does not do so here.
P. Vienna, Oxy. 1224: see Egerton
Gos. Hebrews = great resistance: I've yet to read four other gospels, but hopefully he argues a good case there, because he finds little support for its dating here.
Miracles collection = moderate resistance: the existence of such a document has not found great support among scholars
Apocalyptic scenario: no idea, I've never seen anything else written about it aside from Dale Allison's skeptical treatment of it.
Cross Gospel = near-universal resistance: few scholars affirm exactly what Crossan posits, though Koester argues for something similar. Few scholars have openly affirmed that this document exists.


It's also important to remember that although Q is generally accepted, it is not universally accepted. Likewise the independence of Thomas is sometimes contested, too.
Someone more qualified than me should probably respond (Carlson, Weimer, Kirby, and whomever else I'm forgetting at the moment) to this thread and declare I'm wrong.


I would strongly recommend reading the appropriate pages on Peter Kirby's earlychristianwritings.com webpage.

Amaleq13

Is it The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk)?

Crossan is a contributor rather than "the" author, though.

Zeichman

Yeah, thanks.

S.C.Carlson

Crossan's use of Secret Mark has considerably diminished over the past 25 years. Philip Sellew's argument in 1991 that Mark 14:51-52 introduces the naked fleeing youth as if for the first time pretty much ended scholarly interest in the idea that our Mark is a censored version of Secret Mark.

Over the past 25 years, I'd say that Q (esp. Q1) and Thomas have become more important and the other texts less so. It is to be expected since the other ones are just too fragmentary to do much with.

April DeConick has recently done some interesting work with figuring out which parts of Thomas are early and which are late. Of all the non-canonical gospels, the early of strata of Thomas looks to be the most promising (including Q!).

Stephen

Ben C Smith

This is probably just a typo on your part. I do not recall the gospel of the Hebrews being discussed in that book.

Ben.

motorhead

It's there. Crossan considers it as being composed in the 50's CE. Thus, it's in his first stratum.

Zeichman

Thanks for backing me up. Yeah, I don't think it plays almost at all into his reconstruction of the historical Jesus, other than as additional attestation for things such as baptism and stuff like that.

robto

This is incredibly unfair to Crossan. In Birth of Christianity, Crossan is very clear on Thomas: he accepts Stephen Patterson's work almost entirely. IMO Patterson does a very objective evaluation of Thomas that is by no means driven by his conclusions.

In general, Crossan talks much more about his sources and assumptions in that book than in HJ. He's more clear about assumptions than most NT scholars I've read.