The Power Of Parable: How Fiction By Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus: Crossan, John Dominic: 9780061875700: Amazon.com: Books

In the form of parables, the gospels are treated in a new and astonishingly profound way. “With this work, John Dominic Crossan has cemented his position as the finest New Testament scholar of our century,” writes the author. “John Dominic Crossan, who has given the world a succession of incisive volumes on Jesus, has done it again,” says John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. A remarkable new method of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth is offered by his unique presentation.” Professor Marvin Meyer, Ph.D., Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University, California In moving from the parables of the Old Testament to the parables recounted by Jesus of Nazareth to the parables of Jesus’ life as recorded in the ancient Gospels, Crossan blends acute historical study with challenging theological reflection.

In doing so, he restores the profundity as well as the challenge of the biblical tradition.” The author of THE MEANING OF THE BIBLE, Amy-Jill Levine “This book is analogous to a virus, which a cunning leprechaun stole and used to infect our favorite operating systems with a Jesus operating system, which is incompatible with prior versions of the operating system.” I swear unto you, if a little Crossan goes viral, the church will be quite fortunate.

It is possible that the entire lump will be removed.” – The Reverend David Felten “A remarkable and important book for Christians and for all who seek to understand the Bible better,” says Rev.

Borg, author of Speaking Christian (Speaking Christian).

In his creative portrayal of how Jesus told tales about God’s kingdom and how the gospel authors told stories about Jesus, he provides a dazzling new way of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth,” says the publisher.

It should be required reading for most university and seminary libraries, as well as for many church groups and pastors.

-Publishers Weekly, a weekly magazine dedicated to publishing

From the Back Cover

In 1969, I was working as a lecturer at two seminaries in the greater Chicago region. During one of my classes, I studied the parables of Jesus, while another course focused on the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. I had noticed that the parabolic parables spoken by Jesus appeared to be strikingly similar to the accounts told concerning Jesus’ resurrection. Were the later intended to be parables in the same way that the former were? Were we reading a parable, making assumptions about history, and misinterpreting both?

When Crossan examines Jesus’ parables, he discovers that the “challenge parable” was Jesus’ preferred teaching tool for gently encouraging his followers to probe, question, and debate the ideological absolutes of religious faith as well as the presuppositions of social, political, and economic traditions, which he dubs the “challenge parable.” Crossan portrays the four gospels as “megaparables” after moving from parables by Jesus to parables about Jesus in a series of transitions.

Through his exploration of how the gospels are not accurate depictions of Jesus’ actual biography but rather (mis)interpretations by the gospel writers themselves, Crossan affirms that parables have the ability to both challenge and empower us to co-create with God a world of justice, love, and peace in our lives.

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus – Kindle edition by Crossan, John Dominic. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

In 1969, I was working as a seminary professor in the Chicago region, at two different institutions. During one of my classes, I studied the parables of Jesus, while another course focused on the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. I had noticed that the parabolic parables spoken by Jesus appeared to be strikingly similar to the accounts told concerning Jesus’ resurrection. Were the later supposed to be asparables in the same way that the former were? Had Webeen had misreading a parable, supposing it was history, and misinterpreting both?

When Crossan examines Jesus’ parables, he discovers what he calls the “challenge parable,” which he believes was Jesus’s preferred teaching tool for gently urging his followers to probe, question, and debate the ideological absolutes of religious faith as well as the presuppositions of social, political, and economic traditions.

Crossan confirms the ability of parables to challenge and empower us to co-create with God a world of justice, love, and peace by demonstrating how the gospels are not representations of Jesus’ actual biography but rather (mis)interpretations by the gospel writers themselves.

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (Paperback)

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Description

The world’s foremost Jesus scholar, John Dominic Crossan, demonstrates how the parables found throughout the New Testament not only reveal what Jesus intended to teach, but they also serve as a key to understanding how the Gospel writers attempted to explain the Prophet of Nazareth to the rest of the world through their writings. Crossan combines the biblical expertise of his previous book, The Greatest Prayer, with historical and social analysis that is reminiscent of his previous book,Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, to produce an illuminating and nuanced exploration of the Scriptures that fans of Marcus Borg and Bart Ehrman will find fascinating and necessary.

About the Author

Distinguished professor emeritus at DePaul University, John Dominic Crossan is widely considered as the preeminent historical Jesus scholar of our generation. A number of his books have been published as best sellers, including The Historical Jesus, How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian, God and Empire, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, The Greatest Prayer, The Last Week, and The Power of Parable. He has also written a number of articles for Christian publications. He currently resides in Minneola, Florida.

Praise For…

In the form of parables, the gospels are treated in a new and astonishingly profound way. “With this work, John Dominic Crossan has cemented his position as the finest New Testament scholar of our century,” writes the author. — John Shelby Spong, author of Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World”John Dominic Crossan, the author of a series of incisive volumes on Jesus, has done it again. A remarkable new method of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth is offered by his unique presentation.” Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University, Dr.

“This book is analogous to a virus, which a cunning leprechaun stole and used to infect our favorite operating systems with a Jesus operating system, which is incompatible with prior versions of the operating system.” I swear unto you, if a little Crossan goes viral, the church will be quite fortunate.

Jeff Procter-Murphy, co-creator of the Living the Questions series.
Borg, author of Speaking Christian (Speaking Christian).
In his creative portrayal of how Jesus told tales about God’s kingdom and how the gospel authors told stories about Jesus, he provides a dazzling new way of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth,” says the publisher.
Marvin Meyer, Ph.D.
It should be required reading for most university and seminary libraries, as well as for many church groups and pastors.

In this course, the extraordinary clarity and systematic presentation of Crossan combine to make it one of the greatest and most captivating Bible-study courses that many readers will ever experience.” —From the Booklist (starred review) “Provides valuable and easily accessible insights into the goals of the evangelists as well as the revolutionary substance of the gospels,” says the reviewer.

Review: The Power of Parable: How Fiction By Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus

The 29th of May, 2012 The Power of the Parable: How Jesus’ Fiction Became Jesus’ Fiction About Jesus is the title of the book. John Dominic Crossan is the author of this work. HarperOne is the publisher. New Testament is the genre. Pages: 259 in the year 2012 Hardcover with a ribbon marker on the spine 978-0-06-187569-4 is the ISBN for this book. $25.99 is the price. Written by Blair Hodges Jesus was a master of metaphysics. In his well-known parable of the Sower, “the word” is compared to a seed being thrown upon the ground, where it may thrive or perish depending on the conditions.

According to John Dominic Crossan, a well-known biblical scholar, in his most recent book, “Jesus was not attempting to increase the agricultural productivity of lower Galilee.” The work of sowing is “placed alongside and compared with” the propagation of the message; this is essentially a parable that uses parable as parable as its main plot device (10).

Crossan describes a three-fold typology of parables to help us better understand Jesus’s parabolic teaching style: “riddle parables,” such as the puzzles Samson tried to use to trick his new in-laws (Judges 14), “example parables,” such as the story the prophet Nathan tells to David about the rich man and the poor man’s lambs (2 Sam.

In addition to being read as an example parable (helping others is a good thing), Crossan feels that the unique inclusion of the Samaritan as the saviour indicates Jesus’s deeper goal in telling this story.
In this setting, a listening audience would be familiar with Jesus’ traditional tale structure but would be surprised by the content of Jesus’ real message.
Audiences would be compelled to wrestle with the message, to question it, and to express their skepticism.
Because a challenge-parable format is ideal for delivering a paradigm-shifting message.
The first section of Crossan’s book is devoted to the parables of Jesus, in which he discovers a non-violent manner of transforming his audience’s image of what his future Kingdom will be like.
As with Jesus’ stories, he contends that the gospels, like those of Jesus, are deliberately crafted narratives intended to disrupt social expectations and inspire self-reflection on the rising Christ.
As a result, he makes it a point to emphasize his opinion that “Jesus existed as a historical figure” in italics (247).
A second piece of rhetorical leverage he uses to support his conclusion that the gospels are parables is that he examines Hebrew Bible instances of book-length parables in Ruth, Jonah, and Job in order to show that such megaparables weren’t unheard of at the time the gospels were written.

He investigates historical sources on Caesar’s famous crossing, using a mixture of fact and possible fiction, and comes to the conclusion that it is entirely possible “to tell factual-historical stories about exactly the same historical incident” and “to tell fictional-parabolic stories about exactly the same historical event” (151).

This is where Crossan’s ruling assumptions perform a lot of the heavy lifting, with little regard for New Testament source criticism or exegetical critique.
A significant portion of his endeavor is aimed to explain for the sections of the gospels that he considers to be the least Jesus-like: the rebukes of Pharisees, the curses of trees, and other such incidents.
With an overview of precisely what he will argue in each chapter and a conclusion of exactly what he has said in each chapter, it is straightforward to follow his reasoning and to a lesser extent his controlling assumptions throughout the book.
What was the reason for highlighting the points that they did?
What do you think their contemporaries would have heard in the accounts?
He makes a habit of drawing erroneous conclusions from the facts he’s gathered, which is frustrating.
It is possible that either of them was correct, and it would need more study with the texts to make such an argument with confidence (143).

Shortly put: whether the gospels are parables appears to be a separate matter from whether they may be understood metaphorically—an crucial difference that Crossan himself does not make—and However, this book is written for a general readership (thus the lack of an index and footnotes, except from a few asterisks), therefore it is not intended for academics.

As a moral teacher, Jesus was also a challenger of an old way of seeing the world, and the presenter of a new one: “Challenge parablesmean — that is, intend — to cause us to probe and question, wonder and ponder, discuss and debate, but most of all to practice that gift of the human spirit known as thinking,” says one scholar.

.about the absolutes of our religious faith, the certainties of our theological vision, the assumptions, presumptions, and biases of our social, political, and economic traditions, and many other topics.

In the words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, they seek to assist us in learning to “love the questions” and to “live the questions.” ‘Jolt / Shake and unset your morticed metaphors,’ as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, is the goal of these metaphors.

Their goal, according to the prophet Micah, is to teach us to “live humbly with our God.” (111, italics in the original.) Visit the HarperOne website to read a sample of Crossan’s novel. This article has been cross-posted at As a result of General Consent

Power of Parable How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus: John Dominic Crossan: Trade Paperback: 9780061875700: Powell’s Books

“In 1969, I was working as a lecturer at two seminaries in the greater Chicago region. During one of my classes, I studied the parables of Jesus, while another course focused on the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. I had noticed that the parabolic parables spoken by Jesus appeared to be strikingly similar to the accounts told concerning Jesus’ resurrection. Were the later intended to be parables in the same way that the former were? Were we reading a parable, making assumptions about history, and misinterpreting both?” — taken from the book The Power of Parable The quest for the true meanings and purposes of parables in the Bible begins with John Dominic Crossan, a renowned Jesus scholar, as he seeks to reveal the true meanings and purposes of parables in the Bible in order for modern Christians to respond authentically to Jesus’ call to fully participate in the kingdom of God.

Review

In the form of parables, the gospels are treated in a new and astonishingly profound way. “With this work, John Dominic Crossan has cemented his position as the finest New Testament scholar of our century,” writes the author. John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, is a non-religious person who believes in God.

Review

“John Dominic Crossan has outdone himself once more. In his creative portrayal of how Jesus told tales about God’s kingdom and how the gospel authors told stories about Jesus, he provides a dazzling new way of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth,” says the author. Chapman University’s Marvin Meyer, Ph.D., Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies, is an expert in biblical and Christian studies.

Review

In moving from the parables of the Old Testament to the parables recounted by Jesus of Nazareth to the parables of Jesus’ life as recorded in the ancient Gospels, Crossan blends acute historical study with challenging theological reflection. In doing so, he restores the profundity as well as the challenge of the biblical tradition.” Amy-Jill Levine, author of The Meaning of the Bible, discusses the importance of understanding the meaning of the Bible.

Review

It is possible that the entire lump will be removed.” Rev. David Felten and Rev. Jeff Procter-Murphy, co-creators of the Living the Questions series, discuss the importance of asking the right questions.

Review

A fascinating and vital work for Christians and for everyone who wants to better understand the Bible. Crossan blends his normal literary and historical brilliance with new insights that reveal not just the parables of Jesus but also a significant portion of the Bible as a whole. Speaking Christian, by Marcus J. Borg, is a book about Christian communication.

Review

This is a fascinating book, written with Crossan’s customary clarity, but it is likely to shock orthodox Christians. It should be required reading for most university and seminary libraries, as well as for many church groups and pastors. Library Journal is a publication dedicated to the advancement of library science.

Review

“Provides valuable and easily accessible insights into the goals of the evangelists as well as the revolutionary substance of the gospels,” says the reviewer. Publishers Weekly is a weekly publication that publishes a variety of different types of books.

Synopsis

The world’s foremost Jesus scholar, John Dominic Crossan, demonstrates how the parables found throughout the New Testament not only reveal what Jesus intended to teach, but they also serve as a key to understanding how the Gospel writers attempted to explain the Prophet of Nazareth to the rest of the world through the Gospels. Crossan combines the biblical expertise of his previous book, The Greatest Prayer, with historical and social analysis that is reminiscent of his previous book,Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, to produce an illuminating and nuanced exploration of the Scriptures that fans of Marcus Borg and Bart Ehrman will find fascinating and necessary.

About the Author

Distinguished professor emeritus at DePaul University, John Dominic Crossan is widely considered as the preeminent historical Jesus scholar of our generation. He is presently the president of the Society of Biblical Literature, which he founded in 1970. In addition to The Historical Jesus, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, and The Greatest Prayer, he has written numerous more best-selling works, the latest of which is The Greatest Prayer. Crossan is a resident of Minneola, Florida.

Power of Parable : How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesu 9780061875694

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The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (Paperback)

$14.99 Backordered for at least 2 weeks, with the possibility of becoming unavailable.

Description

About the Author

Praise For…

In the form of parables, the gospels are treated in a new and astonishingly profound way. “With this work, John Dominic Crossan has cemented his position as the finest New Testament scholar of our century,” writes the author. — John Shelby Spong, author of Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World”John Dominic Crossan, the author of a series of incisive volumes on Jesus, has done it again. A remarkable new method of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth is offered by his unique presentation.” Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University, Dr.

Jeff Procter-Murphy, co-creator of the Living the Questions series.
Borg, author of Speaking Christian (Speaking Christian).
In his creative portrayal of how Jesus told tales about God’s kingdom and how the gospel authors told stories about Jesus, he provides a dazzling new way of looking at parable and metaphor in the gospels as well as in the life of Jesus of Nazareth,” says the publisher.
Marvin Meyer, Ph.D.
It should be required reading for most university and seminary libraries, as well as for many church groups and pastors.

—Publishers Weekly, et al. Specifications of the product ISBN:9780061875700ISBN-10:0061875708 Publisher:HarperOnePublishing Date:February 5th, 2013Pages:272 Publisher:HarperOne Language:English

The Power of Parable by John Dominic Crossan

Distinguished professor emeritus at DePaul University, John Dominic Crossan is widely considered as the preeminent historical Jesus scholar of our generation. He is presently the president of the Society of Biblical Literature, which he founded in 1970. You may find him on the internet at. Crossan’s most recent work was a treatment of the Lord’s Prayer and its peculiarities. The parables, both those given by Jesus and the “megaparables” told about Jesus in the four gospels, are the primary emphasis of this chapter.

In addition to the tried-and-true riddle and example parables, the man from Nazareth introduced a third sort of story, which Crossan refers to as “challenge parables,” to the typology of parables.

Small pins are dangerously near to large balloons, and they pose a threat to the public.

The instruments of Jesus’ teaching are also participatory and nonviolent, according to Crossan, offering up a road to justice, mercy, and peace for all peoples.

The Power of Parable

When Crossan examines Jesus’ parables, he discovers what he calls the “challenge parable,” which he believes was Jesus’ preferred teaching tool for gently encouraging his followers to probe, question, and debate the ideological absolutes of religious faith and the presuppositions of social, political, and economic traditions.

Crossan confirms the ability of parables to challenge and empower us to co-create with God a world of justice, love, and peace by demonstrating how the gospels are not representations of Jesus’ actual biography but rather (mis)interpretations by the gospel writers themselves.

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus: Crossan, John Dominic: 9780061875700: Amazon.com: Books

From the Back Cover

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus – Kindle edition by Crossan, John Dominic. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (Paperback)

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Review: The Power of Parable: How Fiction By Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus

Power of Parable How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus: John Dominic Crossan: Trade Paperback: 9780061875700: Powell’s Books

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Power of Parable : How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesu 9780061875694

The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (Paperback)

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The Power of Parable by John Dominic Crossan

The Power of Parable

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