Crossan’s “Peasant Cynic”
Crossan’s “Peasant Cynic”
Later in this chapter (and in ch. 4), we will treat a particularly extreme exponent of the “Cynic Jesus” thesis, namely Burton Mack. Here I will survey instead a position of John Dominic Crossan, namely that Jesus was a “peasant Jewish Cynic.” This description of Jesus does not actually summarize all of Crossan’s approach to Jesus,37 and in critiquing it I do not imply disagreement with every contribution of Crossan to the historical Jesus discussion. Nevertheless, it constitutes one of Crossan’s own summaries of his view in his most widely used “historical Jesus” book.38 It thus provides a particularly useful illustration of a pole in the wide range of disparate views on the “Jesus” market today.
An assorted survey of basic but well-written information about the ancient Mediterranean world dominates the first part of Crossan’s book.39 Here Crossan simply lays the background for his approach to Jesus. Most of this background is unobjectionable, although some elements are closer to Jesus’ specifically Judean context than others.40 Crossan then turns to a survey of various types of ancient leaders: visionaries, teachers, revolutionaries, leaders of peasant protest, healers, magicians, prophets, bandits and would-be kings.41 After this survey he finally turns to Jesus’ teachings and activities,42 his death,43 and the resurrection experiences.44 Thus perhaps 190 pages (less than 40% of the book) focus primarily on ancient sources about Jesus in particular, as opposed to the ancient world in general.45 My point here is that Crossan, like many scholars today (including myself), places a heavy weight on Jesus’ context. But on what aspects of Jesus’ context does he focus?
We return now to Crossan’s description of Jesus as a “peasant Jewish Cynic.” By now it will be obvious that at least one element of Crossan’s reconstruction is unobjectionable, namely, that Jesus was Jewish. It is thus the two other elements of the description that we must investigate. While scholars may debate whether or not Jesus was a “peasant” (depending largely on the meaning they assign to that designation), the title “Jewish Cynic” runs strongly against what we know of the first-century world. If Jesus was a “Jewish Cynic” (in contrast to a Jewish sage, signs-worker and/or eschatological prophet), he is the only one we know about. Since the main point of placing Jesus in categories is to help us understand him in context, this proposal therefore proves particularly unhelpful.