John Dominic Crossan
The Power of the Parable - A Hymn for the Nameless (Part 2)
The Power of the Parable - A Hymn for the Nameless (Part 2)
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
A Hymn for the Nameless (part 2) What, then, my fourth question asks, is the location and situation of Mark’s somewhat startling vision of Christian community. I imagine his gospel written among “the villages of Caesarea Philippi” (8:27) for refugees from the terrible destruction…
The Power of the Parable - A Hymn for the Nameless (Part 1)
The Power of the Parable - A Hymn for the Nameless (Part 1)
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
7 A Hymn for the Nameless By the late afternoon of September 2, 31 BCE, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt had escaped the surrounding squadrons of Octavian and Agrippa, picked up Mark Antony from his abandoned flagship, and fled with him to Alexandria and double suicide…
the greatest prayer - Your Kingdom Come
the greatest prayer - Your Kingdom Come
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
4 Your Kingdom Come Thy kingdom come. Matthew 6:10, KJV Your kingdom come. Matthew 6:10, NRSV Hesiod was a Greek pessimist for whom the wineglass of history was half empty—and getting emptier. Around the start of the seventh century BCE his Works and Days proposed that humanity h…
the greatest prayer - Our Father in Heaven
the greatest prayer - Our Father in Heaven
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
2 Our Father in Heaven Our Father which art in heaven . . . Our Father in heaven . . . Matthew 6:9, NRSV Her name was Babatha and she lived in Maoza, on the southern tip of Israel’s Dead Sea coast. She was illiterate, wealthy, and financially very competent, moving easily within …
the greatest prayer - Pray Then in This Way
the greatest prayer - Pray Then in This Way
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
1 Pray Then in This Way We do not know how to pray as we ought. Romans 8:26 There is a design team for airports whose special job is the location of public electricity outlets in passenger terminals. Their job is to make them…
the greatest prayer - Prologue The Strangest Prayer
the greatest prayer - Prologue The Strangest Prayer
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
PROLOGUE The Strangest Prayer The Lord’s Prayer is Christianity’s greatest prayer. It is also Christianity’s strangest prayer. It is prayed by all Christians, but it never mentions Christ. It is prayed in all churches, but it never mentions church. It is prayed on all Sundays, bu…
The Power of the Parable - Epilogue
The Power of the Parable - Epilogue
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
EPILOGUE History and Parable The Power of the Parables HOW FICTION BY JESUS BECAME FICTION ABOUT JESUS This epilogue has two sections. The first section is a summation of what I have proposed in this book about the parabling of Jesus. The second section raises two new and conclud…
The Power of the Parable - Rome as the New Jerusalem
The Power of the Parable - Rome as the New Jerusalem
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 9 Rome as the New Jerusalem The Parable Gospel According To Luke-Acts “Aphrodisias,” said Octavian, when not yet Caesar Augustus, “is the one city from all of Asia I have selected to be my own,” and its citizens carved that accolade on the archive wall of their theater. S…
The Power of the Parable - The Visionary Dream of God
The Power of the Parable - The Visionary Dream of God
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 10 The Visionary Dream of God The Parable Gospel According To John The Power of the Parables HOW FICTION BY JESUS BECAME FICTION ABOUT JESUS When you think of World Heritage Sites, you usually imagine ancient places and ruined cities. But one site is emphatically neither.…
The Power of the Parable - Rhetorical Violence
The Power of the Parable - Rhetorical Violence
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 8 Rhetorical Violence The Parable Gospel According To Matthew In 1959, I was sent, as you will recall from the Prologue, to the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome for two years of postdoctoral specialization. The Biblicum— as it is known for short— is located just off …
The Power of the Parable - The Lure of Parabolic History
The Power of the Parable - The Lure of Parabolic History
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
The Lure of Parabolic History Caesar At The Rubicon We no longer know the exact course of the ancient Rubicon, let alone the exact spot where Julius Caesar crossed it. Yet, from then to now, “crossing the Rubicon” has been a cliché for passing the point of no return in an endeavo…
The Power of the Parable - The Challenge of Collaboration
The Power of the Parable - The Challenge of Collaboration
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 6 The Kingdom of God The Challenge of Collaboration Although he himself did not coin the term “paradigm shift,” it was The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,* by Thomas S. Kuhn, then professor of the history of science at the University of California, Berkeley, that mad…
The Power of the Parable - Challenge Parables: Part 3
The Power of the Parable - Challenge Parables: Part 3
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 5 Challenge Parables: Part 3 Let Anyone With Ears To Hear Listen! In 1973 I was an associate professor at DePaul University in Chicago and had just published In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, the first in a series of books that would culminate with The H…
The Power of the Parable - Challenge Parables: Part 2
The Power of the Parable - Challenge Parables: Part 2
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 4 Challenge Parables: Part 2 The Word Against The Word When I was in high school, from 1945 to 1950, the standard English curriculum established by Ireland’s Board of Education involved a different Shakespearean play for each year. My memory recalls The Merchant of Venice…
The Power of the Parable - Challenge Parables; Part 1
The Power of the Parable - Challenge Parables; Part 1
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 3 Challenge Parables: Part 1 Down from Jerusalem to Jericho The French intellectual André Gide lived from 1869 to 1951. His search for honesty and integrity— a search at once sexual and social, political and religious— led him first to revere and then speedily to revile R…
The Power of the Parable - Example Parables
The Power of the Parable - Example Parables
by SPCK - John Dominic Crossan
chapter 2 Example Parables Go and Do – or Don’t Do- Likewise Once upon a time, long, long ago, theologians used to debate whether God was all- present, all- knowing, and all- powerful. That, of course, is not God, but Google. If you look up “parable” in that ethereal omniscience,…
The Power of the Parable - Riddle Parables