Quotes from John Dominic Crossan

Jesus called for nonviolent resistance to Rome and just distribution of land and food. He was crucified because he threatened Roman stability -- not as a sacrifice to God for humanity's sins.

In Paul's lifetime Roman emperors were deemed divine, and, first and foremost, Augustus was called Son of God, God, and God of God. He was Lord, Redeemer

Paul opposed Rome with Christ against Caesar, not because that empire was particularly unjust or oppressive, but because he questioned the normalcy of civilization itself, since civilization has always been imperial, that is, unjust and oppressive.

An earlier image in which Theoklia and Paul were equally authoritative apostolic figures has been replaced by one in which the male is apostolic and authoritative and the female is blinded and silenced.

The Greek is importantly different: "Jesus said to her, 'Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God

All were absolutely equal with each other. But in 1 Timothy, a letter attributed to Paul by later Christians though not actually written by him, women are told to be silent in church and pregnant at home (2:8–15). And a later follower of Paul inserted in 1 Corinthians that it is shameful for women to speak in church, but correct to ask their husbands for explanations at home

we are not "the People of the Book." We are "the People with the Book," but even more importantly, we are "the People of the Person.

He only said what Christianity has never been able to follow, that within it all are equal and this is to be its witness and challenge to the world outside.

does a search for Paul bring Theoklia, women, and equality back steadily and inevitably into the light

Those are first warnings about distinguishing the Pauline Paul from the Lukan Paul by separation and discrimination

he converted not from Judaism to Christianity, of course, but from violent opponent and persecutor of pagan inclusion to nonviolent proponent and persuader of pagan inclusion. That which he persecuted for God was exactly that to which he was called by God.

with Paul, with dusty, tired, much-traveled Paul, came Rome's most dangerous opponent—not legions but ideas, not an alternative force but an alternative faith.

Christians must have understood, then, that to proclaim Jesus as Son of God was deliberately denying Caesar his highest title and that to announce Jesus as Lord and Savior was calculated treason.

But Genesis adds one very significant extra element in its summary of civilization's Mesopotamian dawn. The mark of Cain becomes the mark of civilization.

The problem is that, slowly but surely across the past two hundred years of scholarly research, we have learned that the gospels are exactly what they openly and honestly claim they are. They are not history, though they contain history. They are not biography, though they contain biography. They are gospel—that is, good news. Good indicates that the news is seen from somebody's point of view—from, for example, the Christian rather than the imperial interpretation.

The good news, for Luke-Acts, is that the Holy Spirit moved headquarters from Jerusalem to Rome. The Holy Spirit, apparently, did not cross the Euphrates to the north or the Nile to the south but only the Mediterranean to the west. Each of those twin volumes, and one no more or less than the other, is theology rather than history. It is our problem if we wanted journalism. We received gospel instead.

Desmond Tutu: "God, without us, will not; as we, without God cannot.")

But a participatory eschatology demanded a participatory pedagogy, a collaborative message demanded a collaborative medium. In other words, parables were the perfect—even necessary and inevitable—medium for that precise message.

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

sadly, the book of Job was but a speed bump on the Deuteronomic superhighway. The delusion of divine punishments still prevails inside and outside religion over the clear evidence of human consequences, random accidents, and natural disasters. This does not simply distort theology; it defames the very character of God.

If an audience kept complete silence during a challenge parable from Jesus and if an audience filed past him afterward saying, 'Lovely parable, this morning, Rabbi,' Jesus would have failed utterly.

The past is recorded almost exclusively in the voices of elites and males, in the viewpoints of the wealthy and the powerful, in the visions of the literate and the educated.

We humans are not getting more evil or sinful but are simply getting more competent and efficient at whatever we want to do--including sin as willed violence. And so, we have become, as Genesis 4 warned us inaugurally, steadily or even exponentially better and better at violence. And now, at last, that capacity threatens not just the family or the tribe, but the world and the Earth.

The heart of God's justice is to make sure that the "weak and the orphan" have received their share of God's resources for them to live and thrive. Retributive justice comes in only when that ideal is violated.