[caption id=“attachment_601” align=“alignleft” width=“80”
caption=“Dominic Crossan”] 
[/caption] Crossan’s book, In Parables, immediately
demonstrates his keen intellect and wide range of reading. The great
variety of literature he cites certainly indicates his substantial,
literary aptitude. One of the more beneficial parts of the book,
however, relates more directly to his detailed reading of Jesus’
parables themselves rather than so much to his wide reading in other
literature. Specifically, Crossan performs a very valuable service in
his detailed analyses of multiply attested parables in relation to the
synoptic problem. Crossan’s close reading of these parables and his
subsequent notes on points of divergence between the parable froms in
the synoptics helpfully summarizes the major critical issues involved
with these parables. The solutions he proposes to these difficulties are
frequently innovative and seem to be motivated by a desire to recapture
the exact wording Jesus used when He originally gave the
parables ( ipsissima verba) ( 3–4). Nevertheless, many scholars
might, in most cases, propose quite different solutions from those
Crossan puts forth (cf. vii, 3–4).
The book does have some questionable aspects, such as an excessive
skepticism about the historical Jesus (e.g., 4; for a critical realist approach to
this question, see Wright, Jesus
and the Victory of God). Yet, In Parables definitely
provides itself to be valuable by providing the reader with much helpful
information concerning the divergences present in Jesus’ multiply
attested parables.
In this post:[caption id=“attachment_601”
align=“alignleft” width=“80” caption=“Dominic Crossan”] [/caption] [caption id=“attachment_2124”
align=“alignleft” width=“80” caption=“N. T. Wright”] 
[/caption]