Duluth, MN (OpEdNews) December 26, 2010: In his new book THE GREATEST PRAYER: REDISCOVERING THE REVOLUTIONARY MESSAGE OF THE LORD'S PRAYER (HarperOne, 2010), John Dominic Crossan, the leading authority on the historical Jesus, analyzes and discusses the Christian prayer known as the Lord's Prayer (aka the Our Father and the Abba Prayer).
The term "greatest" in the title of this book is a superlative term: great, greater, greatest. As a result, the main title of this book might lead us to expect that the author will undertake to compare and contrast a number of prayers from different traditions that he has somehow selected for consideration, and through comparing and contrasting them with one another determine one to be the greatest. But the author of this book undertakes no such comparison of different prayers. So the main title is probably best understood as a marketing gimmick to get our attention.
Nevertheless, as the author says on page one, "The Lord's Prayer is Christianity's greatest prayer." That much is true. But Christianity's greatest prayer could have been composed by any well-versed Jew in the first century. However, in both the Gospel According to Matthew (6:9-13) and the Gospel According to Luke (11:2-4), Jesus is portrayed as teaching this prayer to his followers; hence, the name, the Lord's Prayer. Because of the distinctively Christian name (the Lord's Prayer), this prayer is Christianity's greatest prayer. However, apart from the name (the Lord's Prayer), I cannot identify anything distinctively Christian in this prayer. Leaving aside the obviously Christian name (the Lord's Prayer), this prayer is arguably thoroughly Jewish because it emerged out of the ancient Jewish thought-world. This is why Crossan repeatedly draws on the ancient Jewish thought-word to analyze and discuss it.
When we turn our attention to the subtitle of the book, we should note that the word "revolutionary" has also appeared in the subtitle of another book by Crossan: JESUS: A REVOLUTIONARY BIOGRAPHY (1994). So the subtitle of each of these two books is probably best understood as marketing gimmick to get our attention.
But of course Jesus was executed with the charge "King of the Jews." Because the Roman empire had a zero-tolerance policy regarding would-be kings, he was executed for purportedly being a revolutionary. However, because of the charge involved in his execution ("King of the Jews"), we should ask the question, Was the historical Jesus a revolutionary who aspired to lead a violent revolt against the Roman empire in the Jewish homeland? No, says Crossan. He says that the historical Jesus was not aspiring to foment a violent uprising. In short, the historical Jesus was not a messiah-figure (i.e., not a warrior/king like King David, the anointed one, which is what the term "messiah" literally means). According to Crossan, the historical Jesus was a practitioner of non-violence.
Well, was the historical Jesus a non-violent bottom-up activist like Martin Luther King, Jr.? No, says Crossan. According to him, the historical Jesus did not repeatedly lead direct non-violent confrontations with the local authorities of the Roman empire in the Jewish homeland. Non-violent confrontations with the local authorities of the Roman empire would probably have been met with violent efforts by armed soldiers to kill the locals in the confrontation.
Well, was the historical Jesus a non-violent community organizer like Barack Obama was at one time in Chicago? No, says Crossan. According to him, the historical Jesus was not a community organizer like Obama because the historical Jesus did not organize Jews in rural areas to act within the political system of the time. At the time, the Jewish homeland was under the rule of the Roman empire. Jews in rural areas had no choice but to live under Roman rule. But Jews in rural areas probably had no interest in trying to collaborate with the local authorities of the Roman empire.
Well, how can we characterize the historical Jesus? In THE GREATEST PRAYER, Crossan himself characterizes the historical Jesus as follows: Jesus and his companions set about "to heal the sick, eat with those they healed, and announce the presence of God's kingdom in that reciprocity of spiritual and physical power, building peasant community from the bottom upward" (page 179).
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