Historian discusses Jesus Christ as historical figure Tuesday night

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Few historians and scholars know detailed accounts of the life of Jesus Christ despite the importance of his figure in human history.

Historian John Dominic Crossan visited Central Michigan University and spoke in front of about 200 people Tuesday night regarding some of the happenings around the time of Jesus Christ’s life. The event was sponsored by the department of philosophy and religion and was held at the Bovee
University Center Auditorium.

Crossan, a former Catholic priest, is a renowned religious scholar who has written multiple books detailing biblical archaeology and history during the time of Jesus. Crossan mentioned the importance of understanding key characters in the Bible including Jesus Christ, John the Baptist and Herod the Great in order to understand the history of events in that time period.

Crossan also spoke about the two different pursuits of peace at that time. Crossan said Caesar Augustus sought peace through victory while Jesus sought peace through justice.

“Whether peace through victory is a viable alternative for the human race is the question, not whether you’re Christian or not,” Crossan said. “This was not Christianity against Judaism, it was Christian-Judaism against Roman imperialism.”

Professor of Religion David Smith helped to organize the event and bring Crossan to campus.

“We’ve brought in a series of scholars who deal with either trying to reconstruct Jesus in his own time, or to understand how Jesus has been used in later cultures,” Smith said.

Smith said one of the most intriguing parts of the presentation was Crossan’s explanation of a “paradigm shift” in that time when individuals saw a new method of obtaining peace.

“The most clarifying part for me was the whole idea of the paradigm shift,” Smith said. “What you get with Christianity both is and isn’t something new. It grows out of the culture that creates it and it’s very much in response to what is going on in those times. The reason Jesus stands out as a historical figure is that he did something new in those terms.”

Westphalia sophomore Cory Noeker attended the event for a philosophy class and enjoyed the history aspect of Crossan’s presentation.

“I was kind of expecting the whole presentation to be Bible-related, but he based it entirely off the history which we know about and then tried to incorporate that with what Jesus was teaching,” Noeker said.