In the last two decades of the twentieth century, the number of works devoted to the emergence of Christianity and its early development has increased. Along with traditional research on these topics, more and more books appeared that continued the traditions of the so-called "New Search" of the 50s and aimed to recreate the life and original teaching of Jesus Christ. Research was particularly intensive in Germany1 and the United States. In 1985, the Jesus Seminar was founded in the United States, co-chaired by R. Funk and J. D. Crossan. Members of the workshop discussed their hypotheses and published books. The workshop was based on several principles, the main one being the application of a cultural, historical, and psychological approach to the stories of Jesus, rather than a theological one ^.2 Most of the participants of the seminar are critical of the canonical tradition about Jesus: in particular, with regard to the description of the Passion of Jesus, his trial, his prophecies about his own death, etc. In this regard, there is a need for new approaches to the sources and the whole situation of the emergence of Christianity. As for the Christian scriptures, the seminar participants reviewed their chronology: in their opinion, the first version of the Gospel of Thomas of Nag Hammadi existed already in the 50s of the first century and, like Q (Gospel Q, in their terminology), preceded the Gospel of Mark ³ . But the most consistent, complete, and detailed analysis of all sources was made by John Dominic Crossan, who attempted to reconstruct the picture of the formation of early Christianity on the basis of the new approaches he proclaimed. Crossan is currently Chairman of the Historical Jesus Problems Section of the Society for Biblical Literature. His personal position is interesting: being neither an atheist nor a Protestant, he is of Irish descent and belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. But, in his own words, as a scholar he does not recognize the divinity of Jesus or Augustus (for him, the combination of these two names is due to the fact that the idea of the divinity of certain personalities was peculiar to people of that time), and as a Christian he believes that God was incarnated in " Jewish peasant poverty Jesus" (i.e., not into the body of a Palestinian preacher, but into the situation in which Jesus was acting) ⁴ .

This author has written a number of publications since 1973 devoted to his own reconstruction of the story of Jesus. From the study of individual problems, ⁵ Crossan moved on to generalizing works summarizing the results of his previous quarter-century of research, and to analyzing the criticism that a number of his provisions received.

¹ From the German works, one can single out the monograph: Herbst K. Der wirkliche lesus. Das total andere Gottesbild. Olten 1989. The author gives his reconstruction by analyzing the Gospel of Mark.

² The papers of the participants in this seminar, as well as some other studies on the historical Jesus, are described in Brown R. E. An Introduction to the New Testament. N.Y., 1997. pp. 820-829 (Appendix 1). For a more complete overview of the theological and historical concepts of the image of Jesus, see the following publications:: Borg М.J. Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship. Valley Force, 1994; Jesus at 2000/ Ed. M.J. Borg. Boulder, 1997. An extensive monograph is attached to this direction: Carmikle J. The Unriddling of Christian Origin. A Secular Account. N.Y., 1995.

³ These positions were reflected in the book of one of the founders of the seminar: Funck R. W. The Five Gospels. N.Y., 1993.

^{Crossan J.D.} 4 The Birth of Christianity. Discovering what Happened in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus. San Francisco, 1998. P. 28-29.

^{Crossan J.D.} 5 In Parables: Challenge of Historical Jesus. N.Y., 1973; idem. In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus. San Francisco, 1983; idem. The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of Passion Narrative. San Francisco, 1988, et al.

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has been exposed in the scientific literature. Most interesting from this point of view are two of his latest works: "Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography " (San Francisco, 1994; reprinted in 1995 with the annotation "national bestseller") and "The Birth of Christianity..." (see above, note 4). Both books are thematically related to each other. Both of them formulate the new approaches that the author considers possible to apply, and many of the conclusions are repeated. The first one is aimed at a fairly wide range of readers and focuses on Jesus himself. Its publication - first of all, a" revolutionary biography " - provoked a sharp reaction: sometimes enthusiastic, mainly in newspaper and magazine reviews, sometimes sharply critical, calling into question almost all of his theses (this is exactly what R. Brown did ⁶ ). As a kind of response, the second monograph was written, which is much larger in volume, where the author once again justifies the methodology of his research, cites the opinions of experts in various fields of science, analyzes in more detail everything related to early Christian sources and cites various points of view from the extensive literature on early Christianity, including criticism in his own address (the author accepts some aspects of it).

The basis of Crossan's research is an interdisciplinary approach, which he considers his innovation. As the author writes in the introduction to the book "Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography", it proceeds from three vectors-comparative cultural anthropology; features of Greco-Roman (I will add: and Jewish) history; literary or textual vector (p. XII). "The Birth of Cristianity" uses research on medical anthropology, psychology, oral creativity, data from archaeological excavations in Palestine and specifically in the Lower Galilee. In the first book, the author analyzes specific material directly or indirectly related to the work of Jesus. Describing his approach to sources, he says that it is based on the earliest strata of the tradition, both intra-canonical and extra-canonical (the author avoids the term "apocrypha"), and does not take into account individual evidence (p.XII). All reports of sources are considered by him in the context of the realities of the country, era, and social (group) psychology. The latter approach seems to me to be the strongest and most interesting aspect of Crossan's work. At the same time, the author, without resorting to direct modernization, also uses modern examples and expressions that help the reader understand both the similarity and the difference in the perception of certain events by people of the time described by him and our days. Thus, speaking about the absence of an early tradition about the childhood of Jesus, Crossan compares its silence with the general lack of interest in the ancient world in the childhood of even famous personalities: for example, in "Monumentum Ancyranum" the biography of Augustus begins only at the age of 19. He calls the stories in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke about the birth of Jesus an "overture" to further narration (which, I note, is typical of other similar stories, especially the Old Testament ones) and especially notes the unreliability of the message about the trip to Bethlehem during the qualification process, since registration had to be made at the place of residence; departure to the place of residence, where the ancestors lived, and then returning home - with the mobility of the population in the first centuries, would cause a "bureaucratic nightmare".

In the following pages, when considering the work of Jesus, the author constantly tries to put it in the context of time and place. As for the Christian tradition, when assessing the reliability (or unreliability) of information about it, Crossan proceeds from the internal logic of the authors (editors) of the Gospels, considering that the discrepancies between them are associated with both memory errors and differences in theological interpretation.

The author does not give a coherent biography of Jesus, but focuses on several significant, from his point of view, problems. One of the most important questions for him is the question of the social status of Jesus. Based on the account of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, Crossan believes that Jesus was a carpenter (the son of a carpenter,

^Brown. 6 Op. cit. P. 822. Not. 13.

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which is essentially the same thing, since in those days the profession was usually inherited) in the small village settlement of Nazareth. In the Roman Empire, carpentry was not a highly respected profession; according to McMullen's research, carpenters were in the lowest stratum of society ^.7 However, the author does not limit himself to referring to Mac Mullen, but uses comparative cultural-anthropological and sociological studies, in particular the works of G. Lenski, to which he repeatedly refers in both books.⁸ Lenski divides societies according to technological and environmental characteristics into several types. According to his classification, the Roman Empire belongs to an agrarian (pre-industrial) society with a pronounced complex stratification. The majority of the empire's population was made up of farmers, whose position was quite unstable. Among the dispossessed or impoverished peasants, there were local artisans who occupied a "dangerous", in Crossan's words, intermediate position between farmers and those whom the author calls" degraded", i.e. those who are outside the status groups. It was this social position that largely determined the activities of Jesus, who, as Crossan believes, is connected with the worldview of these two strata, i.e., ruined peasants and people deprived of their means of subsistence. Crossan often refers to Jesus simply as peasant, but although this definition has drawn sharp criticism, he is not referring to Jesus ' occupation, but to his connection with the lower rural stratum, not so much industrial as ideological. It was in this layer that the expectation of the coming of an ideal ruler and the belief in the apocalyptic coming of the Judgment of God were particularly strong (the author also connects the sermon of John the Baptist, who called for purification in the Jordan in anticipation of divine retribution). Like most researchers of the emergence of Christianity, Crossan considers the act of baptism to be a historical fact. Initially, Jesus seems to have followed John, and then began his own, very different preaching activity. The analysis of the figurative structure of the teachings of Jesus, which, according to the author, go back to his original words, since they are reflected in different sources, is perhaps one of the most important and new aspects in the research of J. D. Crossan. But before proceeding to a concrete analysis in the context of the sociological features of the epoch, he dwells on some of the concepts available in the sources. One of these concepts - the Son of Man - is found in the canonical gospels in the speeches of Jesus himself ^.9 As Crossan notes, in Hebrew and Aramaic, this expression meant a person in general, as can be seen, in particular, from Psalm 8: 5 ¹⁰ ; in the New English translation of the Bible, the phrase "Son of Man" in this psalm is translated as "mortals". But in the Greek-language writings, this expression was translated verbatim11 and began to be perceived as a title that is attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels. Crossan

^{MacMullen R.} 7 Roman Social Relations: 50 SUN to AD 384. New Haven - London, 1974. P. 107-108, 139-140.

^{Lenski G.Е.} 8 Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. N.Y., 1966; Lenski G.Е., Lenski J. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology. N.Y., 1974. It is interesting to note that in his constructions, Mr. Lenski uses a number of K. Kautsky's propositions, applying the concept of "class", although his division of society into classes for pre-capitalist societies differs significantly from classical Marxism (for example, for the ruling class, he considers the attitude to power to be the main one).

⁹ The expression "Son of man" has been commented on by various scholars. Thus, Edwards believed that this was an eschatological figure expected in the "last times" by the community that recorded the words of Jesus. Initially, this figure may not have been identified with Jesus; this happened later, after his death (Edwards R. A. A Theology of Q. Philadelphia, 1976, p. 36).

¹⁰ " What is man, that you remember him, and the son of man, that you visit him?

You have not made him much less before the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor;

You have made him ruler over the work of your hands; you have put all things under his feet;

Sheep and oxen of all kinds, and also the beasts of the field..."

In this context, the image of the "Son of Man" is really perceived as a generalization of the human race.

¹¹ In the Septuagint, the corresponding passage of the Psalm is given:"...human... or the son of a man "  It can be assumed that the translator felt the difference between the two expressions, but could not convey it.

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only in one place in the words of Jesus, quoted in the three gospels, does he see (from my point of view, not without reason) the original meaning of the phrase "Son of man": "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Matthew 8: 20; Luke 9: 60-Crossan considers this saying to be derived from Q; cf. The Gospel of Thomas 86). In this context - and this is important for the author's concept - Jesus had in mind the whole mass of destitute, homeless and property-less people to whom he was addressing. Such people, as the comparative cultural-anthropological and sociological studies presented in Crossan's books show, dreamed of a kingdom of justice and equality.

The main idea of Crossan is that the historical Jesus rejected the connections between people that existed in his time precisely from the point of view of people who are outside of society. From this point of view, he analyzes not the theological, but the figurative structure of Jesus ' parables and sayings. This analysis is one of the most interesting for the author, because the very selection of situations in parables (as, indeed, in any rhetorical common places) is directly or indirectly related to the reality in which they were uttered, and with the mentality of listeners. Describing the system of social connections in the ancient Mediterranean regions, Crossan emphasizes that the value perceptions of people of that time, unlike in modern America, were based on group connections; he even suggests using the term "groupism" as the opposite of individualism. According to Crossan, family and political groups played the greatest role in the first century, and it is the attitude to family and politics that should be taken into account ^.12 Thus, the author shows that Jesus strongly opposed traditional family ties and intra-family dependence. He analyzes the sayings found in Mark (3: 31-35), Luke (11: 27-28; they probably go back to Q), and Thomas (55). In these words, Jesus rejects blood kinship in various ways, replacing it with a union by faith that is open to all. Almost all researchers of early Christianity paid attention to these sayings. But Crossan goes further: he examines Jesus 'words that he brought division within the family (Luke 12: 51-53), when the five would be against each other:" The father would be against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law". The traditional interpretation of these words is division by faith, but the concrete example highlights the breakdown of the dominance - submission ties between generations (if it were only about accepting or rejecting Jesus, why couldn't a sister and brother oppose each other, or the women of the family oppose the men). According to Crossan, this example is not about faith, but about speaking out against authority ^.13 It seems to me that both aspects have taken place: separation by faith will destroy the system of dependence within the family, that is, its very basis, which still existed in the Mediterranean regions. In any case, Crossan's interpretation shows that the figurative structure of speech reinforces the radicalism of Jesus ' speeches.

Crossan attributes the same tendencies to Jesus ' attitude toward children who will inherit the Kingdom of God. He gives examples of the situation of children in the ancient world: a child becomes a person only if the father recognizes him - without such recognition, he is nobody, he can be thrown anywhere (especially often this fate awaited girls; Crossan cites a letter of the first century BC from Egypt, in which the husband orders the pregnant wife, if she gives birth to a son,to leave it, and if the daughter - throw it away. The neglect of children is also evident in the words of the Gospel of Mark about

^Crossan. 12 Jesus... P. 58. While I agree with Crossan's main thesis about the role of groups in the public and private life of that time, I cannot limit myself to these two types of groups - various religious unions played an equally important role, which united people who were not related either by kinship or, often, by political goals. Even in Palestine, it is more true to talk about the intertwining of religious and political ties in the groups that existed there.

^Crossan. 13 Jesus... P. 60.

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that the disciples did not allow people to bring children to Jesus in the Greek text; gender does not seem to have mattered) ¹⁴ . But Jesus raised children above adults (10: 13-16), once again upending the prevailing value system. Crossan also notes that the evangelist's words that Jesus laid hands on children and blessed them have an analogy with the ritual of recognizing the father of his children.

In the context of traditional customs of the era, Crossan also analyzes the figurative structure of parables about the feast, which have come down in different versions, but with one common meaning: those invited to the feast refuse, and the host sends servants to call the poor, the maimed, and everyone they meet (Matthew 22.1: 13, Luke 26: 23, the Gospel of Thomas 64 -in the latter, the parable ends with a harsh statement: buyers and merchants will not enter My Father's House). Crossan draws attention to the violation in the images of these parables of all the principles of joint meals of people who existed in that society ^.15 He quotes the words of P. Farb and J. Amerlagos: "To know where, what, when, how and with whom people eat, means to know the nature of their society" ¹⁶ . Parables reveal not only the idea of the Kingdom of God, which will not include those who are busy with earthly concerns, but also reflect the idea of an open joint meal, where everyone can participate, unlike traditional group feasts. The same principle was reflected in the instructions to the apostles sent to preach: eat with the owners of the houses, if they offer. In this approach, Crossan sees the egalitarian radicalism of Jesus, which reflects the eternal dream of the peasantry about a world of justice and equality. You can also note in the parable of the Gospel of Luke (14:13-14) direct advice not to invite to dinner neither friends, nor brothers, nor relatives, nor neighbors of the rich, as they will respond in kind, i.e. hosts and guests find themselves in a vicious circle of earthly vanity. Only the poor, the blind, and the maimed should be invited, for they cannot repay their masters, but are rewarded on the " resurrection of the righteous." How authentic each word of this utterance is, it is difficult to say. But its meaning coincides with other utterances that Crossan parses. In addition to rejecting the real interpersonal connections in this speech, I think it is important to try to break out of what Crossan calls an unfair "system" with which everyone is somehow connected, and only those who are outside of it can be innocent - people who are thrown out of society. The kingdom that Jesus promised, according to Crossan's definition , is the Kingdom of those who were no one (Kingdom of Nobodies: the author emphasizes this term in the title of the third part of his book about Jesus).

Touching on the tradition of healing, Crossan elaborates on research in psychology and medical anthropology, recognizing the possibility of ecstatic healing. He draws a distinction between a real illness and a feeling of illness, which can certainly be relieved by a certain influence. At the same time, he notes that an important psychological role in the feeling of the patient could have been played by Jesus ' touch on those patients who were considered unclean, in particular, touching a leper, which should have had a strong psychological effect on the latter. In this act of Jesus, Crossan also sees a disregard for established customs, as in the testimonies about the opposition of spiritual purity to ritual purification. This contrast is most clearly expressed in a passage from an unknown gospel in the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, which Crossan, like Edgerton's papyrus, attributes to an earlier date than the canonical Gospels,

¹⁴ Whether this episode was real or, as Crossan thinks, reflects the controversy in the Christian community where the Gospel of Mark was written, it seems irrelevant to me, but the very strong tradition of Jesus ' relationship to children is important.

¹⁵ To the comparative cultural analogies, we can add direct information about numerous private unions of the Hellenistic-Roman period, in which a joint meal was a certain ritual only for their participants. It is true that the polis could host public dinners (usually funded by donors), which were attended not only by citizens, but also by immigrants, and sometimes by slaves of private individuals (as was the case in Prien at the turn of the era), but it is unlikely that representatives of different strata were close to each other.

^{Farb P., Amerlagos J.} 16 Consuming Passions: The Antropology of Eating. Boston, 1988. P. 211.

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traditions ¹⁷ . Communication with the crippled, the poor, the sick, the practice of healing, as well as an open meal, contradicted the system of group values. The foundation of the movement associated with the name of Jesus, according to Crossan, was the ideal of equal sharing of material and spiritual resources. The author considers these aspects of Jesus ' activity to be fundamental changes in social psychology and connects them on the basis of comparative cultural anthropology with the model of behavior of the peasantry, which is characterized by hidden and open resistance to the existing social system.

The most radical position of Crossan in the interpretation of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, however, along with interesting observations in his reconstruction of a lot of subjective. The main reason for the arrest, he believes, was the expulsion of the temple merchants; although there was nothing illegal in the fact of trading in the outer courtyard of the temple, it was an act of symbolic destruction of the temple on earth on the part of Jesus.

Like the vast majority of Christian scholars, Crossan considers Pilate's behavior in the Gospels to be completely unhistorical. He also notes that even according to the Christian tradition of the Synoptic gospels, the disciples were not present at the crucifixion, and therefore he considers it possible to completely deny the New Testament description of the crucifixion. He sees this description as a " historicized prophecy." This does not seem to me very reasonable, ¹⁸ since in the next book he acknowledges the presence of women at the crucifixion. However, his arguments related to the practice of crucifixion deserve attention. He cites the well-known discovery of bones of a young man in one of the ossuaries, dating back to the first century AD (dating is not quite accurate, and the first century BC is possible) with a nail remaining in the ankle. Archaeologists reconstruct the crucifixion in the following way:the hands were tied and the ankles were nailed (I want to note that this custom is probably related to Peter's words in the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus was "killed by hanging on a tree"-10: 39). Crossan, citing data on mass crucifixes in Palestine at the turn of the Millennium, asks why thousands of crucifixes are not found in ossuaries. He suggests that the Romans did not give the bodies to relatives of the executed. They were eaten by dogs and birds of prey. On this basis, he considers the transfer of the body of Jesus to Sanhedrin member Joseph of Arimathea improbable. It is true that he also cites Philo's testimony about the transfer of the bodies of executed persons to relatives for burial by some governors on the eve of the feasts, but he does not consider it possible to attribute these words to Jesus. I am not convinced by Crossan's latest conclusion: the body of Jesus may also have been given up for burial, just like the body of the young man whose bones were found in the ossuary. Crossan associates another possible version with the extra-canonical Gospel of Peter, which he considers to be quite early and which he writes about in detail in his book "The Birth of Christianity". According to this gospel, the Jews (not Pilate) gave the body of Jesus to Joseph. This gospel mentions the provision of Deuteronomy, according to which a person who is killed and hanged after execution must be buried on the same day (21:22-23). Although this is not the Roman execution of the crucifixion of a living person, but of the hanging of a dead one, the Jews could also observe this custom in relation to Jesus, even if they were his enemies. Jesus was buried, according to Crossan-if buried at all-by Jews. The rest of the tradition about his death and resurrection was formed after His death in various Christian communities. His main book, which he called "The Birth of Christianity", was written about this period - the 30s-40s of the first century, because in his opinion, it was during these years that the first oral and written information about Christ was formed. Crossan calls the mid-40s "lost" for the history of Christianity, as before

¹⁷ For a translation of these passages, see Sventsitskaya I. S. Apocryphal Gospels, Moscow, 1996, pp. 58-59. In a dispute with a Pharisee (in an excerpt from the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus) Jesus tells him that he washed in stagnant water, but He and his disciples washed in the living water that comes down (from heaven)...

¹⁸ Crossan considers the differences in these descriptions to be due to the different composition of the communities where they were created. Meanwhile, the words of Jesus in the Aramaic language seem to me to be absolutely authentic: "My God, My God! Why did You leave Me?" (Mark 15: 34; Matthew 27: 46).

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After Paul's appearance, little is known about this movement. The Acts of the Apostles, from his point of view, provide only a general picture (although he also uses them later), in which it is difficult to separate history from theology.

Crossan does not give a coherent history of Christianity in these years; he considers the formation of traditions and features of communities, relying on interdisciplinary research. Therefore, a significant part of the book is a description of the general results of these studies. Since one of the main problems is the problem of sources, Crossan analyzes in detail the general theory of memory, the features of the oral tradition and its transition to the written one. A person's memory does not simply reproduce events, but creatively recreates them; with prolonged transmission, a fact becomes not a fact, and a fiction becomes a fact ^.19 Oral tradition is not unchangeable, the memory of it is only a matrix, and when it is transmitted, especially in writing, the sequence of presentation changes. Based on these considerations, Crossan proceeds to consider the gospels. He believes that there was a common oral tradition of utterances and a common literary source for New Testament narratives, as well as an independent tradition related to the composition and needs of different Christian communities. Based on a thorough textual analysis, Crossan recognizes the priority of Mark, the existence of Q, the dependence of John on the synoptics in the presentation of events and independence in the quoted sayings and miracles, which become a sign of spiritual reality; independence from the canonical texts of the Gospel of Thomas, the Didache; the existence of an independent source for the Gospel of Peter. In addition, Crossan considers independent of the canonical tradition a passage in the Edgerton papyrus, the secret Gospel of Mark ²⁰ . Based on the theory of the origin of written monuments in general, he believes that the first form of records were lists (lists) - in this case, the utterances of Jesus, which were collected in Q and in the original Greek text of the Gospel of Thomas ²¹ .

The main divergence of sources for Crossan is in the description of the crucifixion, burial, and apparitions of the risen Jesus (which he attributes to the ecstatic state of visionaries: the belief in a bodily resurrection, in his view, is not an original tradition) ^.22 In this connection, one of the most interesting and original interpretations of the sources seems to me to be his interpretation of the surviving passage of the Gospel of Peter, which , as Crossan himself notes, ²³ most researchers consider to be later than the canonical ones and dependent on them. The surviving passage contains a story about the trial of Jesus, in which Herod Antipas takes part, his crucifixion, the reaction of the Jewish elders and people, and the resurrection in front of the soldiers guarding the grave. ²⁴ The description of the resurrection has nothing to do with the canonical gospels: the heavens open, two radiant young men enter the tomb, then three people come out of it, two of whom support the third, whose head is higher than the sky, and a cross follows them. A voice from the sky asks: "Have You told the dead?" and from the cross comes the answer: "Yes." This fantastic picture is clearly

¹⁹ See, for example: Schacter D. L. Searching for Memory: The Brain, The Mind and the Past. N.Y., 1996: Experiments have shown that simply repeating a false statement over and over again leads people to believe it (p.111).

²⁰ We are talking about the possible existence of the Alexandrian Gospel of Mark, a fragment of which was discovered by M. Smith in a letter found by Clement of Alexandria to a certain Theodore (Smith M. Clement of Alexandria and Secret Gospel of Mark. Harvard, 1973). For a translation of this passage, see Sventsitskaya, Uk. op. P. 62. However, not all researchers recognize its authenticity.

²¹ The identification of this tradition is based on studies of the Gospel of Thomas and Q in the works of S. J. Smith. Patterson, in particular: Patterson S. G. Wisdom of Q and Thomas / / In Search of Wisdom. In Memory of John G. Gammie. Louisville, 1993.

²² A special perception of the resurrection existed among the Gnostics, some of whom called the literal view of the bodily resurrection "the faith of fools": see Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels. N.Y., 1989. Ch. 1.The Controversy of Christ Resurrection.

^Crossan. 23 The Birth of Christianity... P. 484 ff.

²⁴ The translation and analysis of this passage is given in the book: Sventsitskaya, Uk. op. p. 96-123.

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It is independent of the canonical tradition, although in other parts of this gospel this dependence is felt. Crossan believes that the description of the resurrection goes back to an independent early source, because even if the author read the New Testament gospels, and then after some time reproduced their story from memory (as some researchers believe), such a discrepancy cannot be explained by her mistakes ^.25 Crossan refers to the source of Peter's gospel as the "Gospel of the Cross", which was then edited.

According to this early source, Jesus was buried by his enemies and it was to them that he appeared. The description of the procession is symbolic; its creators (narrators) tried to present the Resurrection most clearly and solemnly, as witnessed by the guards: Jesus is supported by two angels, introducing him as the heavenly king into Kingdom ²⁶ . This story was later supplemented by the appearance of the third young man, which was taken from the synoptic tradition. No matter how one interprets the theological ideas underlying the description of the marching Cross and the fantastic appearance of Jesus, ²⁷ one cannot fail to recognize Crossan's correctness when he defines the attitude of the author of the Gospel of the Cross towards Jews. Contrary to the popular opinion of researchers who recognize the general anti-Jewish orientation of the apocrypha, he emphasizes that the position of the author of this text is sharply negative in relation to the Jewish elite, but not to the Jewish people who are ready to believe in Jesus. The main motive of the elders ' actions is fear of the people. They first ask Pilate to put guards at the tomb so that the disciples will not steal the bodies, and the people, believing in the resurrection of Jesus, will not harm them. After the resurrection, which they believed in, the elders nevertheless ask the Romans to keep quiet about it, so that the people will not stone them. Crossan's interpretation essentially coincides with my perception of the Gospel of Peter: it clearly shows the sentiments of Judeo-Christians who were rejected by orthodox Jews, but did not break with their people, who, in their opinion, could have believed in Jesus if not for the top Jews who deliberately deceived the people. Crossan also connects Judeo-Christianity with the question of Jesus ' preaching to the dead - this is the first mention of the supposed descent of Christ into hell. Christians who remained connected with Judaism could not allow their revered forefathers and prophets to remain outside of salvation without knowing Christ. This version seems quite convincing: in the much later Gospel of Nicodemus, where the descent into hell is described, it is the prophets and forefathers that Christ brings out of hell and places them in paradise.

So, in the years between the death of Jesus and the writing of the canonical gospels, the tradition developed in different versions, both mutually influencing and contradicting each other. In addition to the general tradition of utterances and Old Testament prophecies, Crossan believes that traditional women's lamentations and lamentations, examples of which are given in different cultures in his book, played a role in the description of Passions; this tradition was to some extent determined by the story of women going to the grave.

Describing the peculiarities of the Christian communities of the time of his interest, Crossan speaks about the formation of communities headed by leaders-in contrast to the time of Jesus himself, whose environment the author calls "the community of the kingdom", refusing even the term "disciples" (p. 337). The continuity between Jesus and his followers in the first years after the crucifixion consisted of traveling, preaching, healing, and eating together, which was the main activity

²⁵ R. Brown (The Death of the Messiah, N.Y., 1994, p. 1287) also acknowledges the independence of the source of the Gospel of Peter.

²⁶ Crossan sees an analogy for such a ritual in the Old Testament text (4 Samuel 5: 18), where Naaman says that his lord (the king) will enter the temple of Rimmon to worship, leaning on his hand.

²⁷ The living cross accompanies Jesus to heaven and in the Apocalypse of Peter (see Danielou J. Theologie du judeo- christianisme. Tournai, 1958. P. 291-292). I believe that the description of the transfigured Jesus may be based on an idea that existed during the second century (but probably arose earlier) about the separation of the eternally existing Christ and the physical shell of Jesus, with which He was united (see "Shepherd" of Hermas. Similarity five, VI).

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the first Christian groups. The author specifically explores the current idea of the "end of the World". Eschatology, according to social psychologists, is one of the fundamental properties of the human spirit. Crossan believes that Christians had an idea not of the total destruction of the world, but of its radical transformation: this, in his definition, is an "ethical eschatology" based on the hope of divine and social justice, which is also characteristic of Judaism.

The author characterizes two types of organization of Christian communities - according to the Didache and according to the Acts of the Apostles about the Jerusalem community. The community established a moral code within the group, for the ethical radicalism of Jesus was not possible in practice. A similar code is recorded in the Didache. In general, his analysis did not raise objections among the researchers. The common meal, the role of wandering prophets and apostles connects the community that created the Didache with the earliest forms of Christian associations. However, a system of control over itinerant preachers has already been defined, and the formation of leadership in the face of new officials - bishops-is noted. The theology of the Didache, according to Crossan, does not depend directly on the canonical Gospels, but is based on the Old Testament; the community as a whole, although it already included Gentile converts, remained Judeo-Christian. In general, the idea of a strong connection with the Judaism of first-century Christians runs through all of Crossan's writings. It seems to me that the problem of Judeo-Christians deserves additional attention of researchers, since there are data on the preservation of these groups in the East for a long time28 .

More original is his approach to the Jerusalem community, which he considers unique among early Christian communities. The main leader of this community was Jesus ' brother James the Just. The organization of the Jerusalem community, according to the author, was connected with the Qumran community, which he gives a detailed description of in connection with the analysis of the Jerusalem community ^.29 Referring to the research of S. S. Barchi [³⁰], Crossan considers the issue of distribution of material goods within the community, and the responsibility of Christians with properties to those with nots. There must have been more of the latter; perhaps, as Barchi also believes, the followers of Jesus who came to Jerusalem earned their living by day labor. Most likely, as at Qumran, an attempt was made in Jerusalem to create a community based on equal distribution. The story of Ananias and Sapphira, even if fictional, is historically significant. Crossan believes that the Jerusalem community called itself, like the Qumranites, "the beggars" and that the words in Galatians - "do not forget the beggars" (2:10) - do not refer to the beggars in general, but specifically to this community, which received fees from other Christian communities.

Crossan's books also deal with other, more specific problems , ³¹ but the main thing for him was to create a general picture of early Christianity based on interdisciplinary approaches. There is a lot of hypothetical and controversial things in this general picture (for example, the denial of Jesus ' choice of the twelve apostles-this figure seems to him a later creation; comparison of Jesus with cynics, etc. ³²). However, it seems to me that consistent and comprehensive use of comparative cultural and medical anthropology, psychology, archeology, etc. is important

²⁸ See Pines Sh. The Jewish Christians of Early Centuries of Christianity according to New Source. Jerusalem, 1966, where the author examines a Muslim manuscript containing polemics with Christians.

²⁹ It is not only concerned with the Qumranite connection to Christianity. In light of new research on the Qumran library, Crossan suggests that it may have been assembled from texts brought from various locations during the First Jewish War.

^{Barchy S.S.} 30 Community of Goods in Acts: Idealization or Social Reality? // The Future of Early Christianity. Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester. Minneapolis, 1991.

³¹ For example, he discusses the reasons why Christians rejected the scrolls and replaced them with codices, which scholars have never agreed on (Crossan believes that this replacement began in Jerusalem).

³² R. Brown gives examples of sharp criticism of a number of Crossan's propositions, which are called the result of his imagination (Op. cit. p. 823).

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the innovation of J. D. Crossan. His books should encourage other historians to pay attention to the methods he used, so that, without going to extremes, they can give a more complete picture of the circumstances, social environment, time and place of the birth of Christianity.

A NEW APPROACH TO THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY: WORKS BY J. D. CROSSAN

I.S. Sventsitskaya

The author analyses the new method used by Crossan in his books Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography and The Birth of Christianity. This method is an interdisciplinary combination of (cross)cultural anthropology, psychology, historical, archaeological and literary disciplines. The author of the review thinks this method to be perspective and awaiting future development. Crossan thinks Jesus and his companions lived in a period of radical but not violent resistance to social injustice; the birth of Christianity was a continuation of the Kingdom-of-God movement as Christians struggled not only to intimate Jesus' life but also to understand Jesus' death. The most interesting in the author's opinion is Crossan's analysis of Jesus' sayings and parables, and also of the extracanonical Gospels, especially the Gospel of Peter.

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