"When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him."
Euripides

"It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer."
AESCHYLUS

"On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged."

This book argues against approaches to the Synoptic gospels that treat them principally as religious texts. Such approaches impede our ability to evaluate these works as we would any other kind of Greco-Roman literature...Greek and Roman authors routinely describe themselves
writing within (and for) literary networks of fellow writers – a competi-tive field of educated peers and associated literate specialists who engagedin discussion, interpretation, and the circulation of their works. These networks could include learned individuals from a variety of social back-
grounds, but each member possessed the necessary training and the technical means for producing or publishing various forms of writing.
Robyn Faith Walsh The Origins of Early Christian Literature


In this groundbreaking book, Dennis R. MacDonald offers an entirely new view of the New Testament gospel of Mark. The author of the earliest gospel was not writing history, nor was he merely recording tradition, MacDonald argues. Close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad andthat he wanted his readers to recognize the Homeric antecedents in Mark’s story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes.

The Gospel of Mark:
In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.”
Herman Melville

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
Einstein

In The Challenge of Jesus, renowned historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan, presents his life’s work exploring the matrix of Jesus’ unique time and place. Drawing on scholarly text, excavation and history, Dr. Crossan introduces us to the flesh and blood people who shaped the world into which Jesus was born.
“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 dumb enough to take the literally.”
“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.”

~John Dominic Crossan

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