Founder of the Jesus Seminar, ex-priest John Dominic Crossan, talks about some portrayals of the Gospels in books and movies.
Crossan described “The DaVinci Code” as “a fast read, … magnificently written to be filmed” but with a “nonchalant indifference to basic details.” He was not impressed with the theology or the history in the book, saying, “The religion in there is junk religion.”
…As for “Glorious Appearing,” he saw a portrayal of “God doing ethic cleansing — you take away all the good people and to hell, literally — with everybody else. That’s a ghastly vision.”
Ethic cleansing – that is a rather funny line. It is strange to hear Crossan call something junk religion when he himself says that Jesus was eaten by dogs. Maybe it is because Dan Brown just doesn’t go for the same whacked out theories as he does.
Also in this article:
I take seriously the fact that there are four Gospels,” said John Dominic Crossan, a best-selling author of books on the historical Jesus.
This might seem to be a basic fact, but for those like Crossan this is surprising considering that his Jesus Seminar heavily promoted the Gospel of Thomas as part of the “five” Gospels.
1 comment
According to Crossan, there’s really about a third of a gospel, which is what’s left after you throw out all the stuff that Jesus didn’t really say. There are lots of people who say the Bible doesn’t mean what it says; Crossan believes that Bible doesn’t even say what it says.