Interview with James Crossley – Chris Zeichmann

James G. Crossley is Senior Lecturer of New Testament studies at the University of Sheffield. He presently edits the BibleWorld series for Equinox Publishing, is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. In the past few years he has published a considerable number of books, articles, and chapters about the politics of historical Jesus scholarship. But his 2008 book Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century (Canadian Amazon, American Amazon) made quite a splash in particular and warranted its own review section at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

He took some time to chat about the political subtexts of Jesus’ Judaism in recent scholarship, the pervasive denigration of Judaism in New Testament studies, and how the “we all have presuppositions” argument is a cop-out.

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Chris Zeichmann: What is Jesus in an Age of Terror about?

James G. Crossley: The book is about the ways in which dominant cultural, political or ideological (or whatever term you prefer) positions influence contemporary scholarship. In particular, it involves the ways in which influential Anglo-American attitudes towards and policies involving the Middle East, including Israel, over the past 40 or so years have affected scholarship on the historical Jesus and New Testament/Christian origins. And so there were chapters on the ways in which the Mediterranean and “the Arab world” are viewed in New Testament scholarship in terms of Orientalism “hideously emboldened” (to use Derek Gregory’s phrase) or on how the repeated, often duplicitous and regularly patronising emphasis on the Jewishness of Jesus is part of a broader discourse on the role of Jews and Judaism in relation to post-1967 Israel. The approach is based on an understanding of the ways in which the mainstream media and intellectuals, consciously or unconsciously, frame debates in favour of elite political opinion, hence I also included a chapter on biblioblogging as a way of making greater connections between the mainstream media and biblical scholarship.

CZ: For whatever reason, much ideology critique in New Testament comes off as rather toothless in its analysis. This certainly cannot be said of Jesus in an Age of Terror. What led you to write such a thoroughgoing examination of these issues?

JGC: Several reasons. First, I was about to start work on a broad, “big picture” historical explanation of Christian origins (in the tradition of, among others, Fernand Braudel). However, as I read certain related New Testament scholarship more and more it confirmed what I had suspected for some time, namely that there were some problematic categories which were a little too reminiscent of those critiqued by Edward Said some 30 plus years ago. I thus shifted the chronological focus to the present. Second, I had also been working on, or at least thinking about, issues surrounding the scholarly rhetoric of Jesus’ Jewishness and its relationship with contemporary debates about Judaism and Israel. Alongside this I had been long unimpressed by too many scholars emphasising how Jewish their Jesus in one sentence, before telling us how he was different from (their construction of) Judaism in the next. Third, blogging was developing throughout the past decade and I was seeing all sorts of political trends I had long been reading about in the mainstream media. Fourth, a lot of work was being done on scholarship in context but this was typically past scholarship and I didn’t think enough attention was being paid to the present. The more high profile scholarship on the present would typically function by telling us that the proponents of the Cynic-like hypothesis were liberal Americans/Californians (/or variants), as if that disproves that and proves some other position, or the stunningly banal observation in New Testament studies, and one too often treated and repeated as a profound philosophical insight, that ‘we all have presuppositions’ (no shit!). What I long felt needed to be done was to really show how political trends were affecting the present in the similar ways to that the scholarship that was increasingly shedding light on the links between historical and cultural context and the scholarship of generations gone by (esp. Nazi scholarship). You’re right, much of this sort of critique of the present is toothless, too vague and/or obscure. I felt it had to be done explicitly.

I was thinking about these things seemingly independently but I suspect a few things happened around 2005 which made me see how they could all be connected. In January 2005 I arrived at Sheffield which had a long history of politically interesting scholarship. I was particularly interested in the work of Keith Whitelam and Philip Davies long before I arrived and talking with them almost certainly indirectly helped me focus my ideas into a more coherent project. Bill Arnal’s Symbolic Jesus also came out around this time. Bill’s book convinced me not only that this sort of work could now be done but also that I may even have parroted some things about the Jewishness of Jesus which Bill nicely critiqued. I was also starting to go to Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings more regularly, where I met with similar-minded people. But I also saw how interest-groups were functioning and how ideology was keeping groups apart who were studying the same topic and that got me thinking on the cultural influences on scholarship.

Another key reason was the ways in which Middle Eastern political issues were increasingly higher profile by this time, most obviously the Iraq war and its aftermath. Some of the arguments used in favour of that war (as with Afghanistan) were really quite deceitful and, to my surprise, these were being repeated, alongside the dubious stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs (often indistinguishable in certain arguments), in contexts around the universities (as well as plenty of opposition too, I hasten to add).

And so on.

CZ: Jesus in an Age of Terror’s subtitle references the controversial think tank “Project for a New American Century,” yet you’re from Scotland (if I remember correctly) and teach in England. Why the interest in world politics?

JGC: North-west of England, not Scotland. Tut tut!

The kinds of politics discussed in Jesus in an Age of Terror are the sort of politics that have long interested me in some form or other, certainly since I was a teenager. And if you have any interest in national or global politics in the UK (and presumably many other places) then you can’t avoid the cultural and political influence of America. Moreover, every British government as I was growing up (effectively Thatcher onward) have gone out of their way to please the US and stress the so-called “special relationship” between the UK and the US. I can’t imagine high level American politicians really think like this, other than at the superficial level, and I always enjoy hearing stories of other countries professing a “special relationship” with the US. Blair really pushed for the close link with American foreign policy and, again, this was impossible to miss, especially after September 11.

CZ: A recurring theme throughout your work is the role political contexts play in the formulation of ostensibly “religious” discourse. Jesus in an Age of Terror focuses extensively on the role of the Six-Day War of 1967 in reframing Christian conceptions of Judaism and in Why Christianity Happened you argue that the historical Jesus’ interpretation of Torah should be understood as a reaction to Herodian exploitation of the peasantry. How does this relate to your interest in “secular” New Testament scholarship?

JGC: I’m getting ambivalent the term “secular,” largely for reasons that I think it can be used to put the blame on “religion” for political or economic problems and let people like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens make arguments barely more advanced than “religion causes all wars,” etc. But part of me wants to keep “secular” because I like the idea of explaining humanity in the ways in which many historians, social scientists, etc. do. Theological explanation remains a, perhaps the, dominant explanatory discourse in our field, whether it is explanations of Christian origins or histories of scholarship. There is far much more to history than this and the theological dominance needs to be challenged in our field. Also, I think I implicitly want to challenge the not uncommon assumption that theology is somehow a more profound explanation of humanity in contrast to supposedly cold and barren materialistic explanations. I would prefer to think of theology in a different but still fairly traditional way, e.g. theological responses as human responses to circumstances (think of works from E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class to Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained). By viewing theology as the most profound explanation would be news to plenty of people working in the humanities (though it would be nice if some people working in the humanities would recognise that “religion” continues to play an important part in understanding humanity).

CZ: You say little about the role scholarship plays in “the real world,” except that academics tend to have inflated self-conceptions of their importance. I feel the need to give this hilarious quotation: “To the best of my knowledge, [N. T.] Wright’s book on the historical Jesus has not yet had any impact on the Middle-East peace process or indeed any other conflict.” (179) Does the academic study of the New Testament have any implications beyond those who are already interested (professionally or otherwise) in it?

JGC: The Wright reference is bizarre and always worth repeating to show I wasn’t simply being catty: “If what I write could help in any way towards the establishment of justice and peace there, or indeed anywhere else, I would be deeply grateful.”

Your question is difficult to answer. I think intellectually the critical study of the New Testament is, in general terms, as important or unimportant as any other area of the humanities and social sciences. If big questions are your thing, then it does with the origins of Christianity, the historical Jesus, Paul and so on. We can add to this the reception of the New Testament (and the Bible as a whole) and its widespread use in a range of cultural contexts throughout history. We might even go further think of the ways in which the texts have shaped the way we think and act, for good or ill. Taking the rhetoric of the humanities on its own terms (and I stress this), then it is difficult to see how a comprehensive humanities faculty or university can do without the critical study of the Bible, even if not all students will undertake such study. So, when phrased in those terms, the academic study of the New Testament does have implications beyond those interested.

But I don’t think that is the gist of your question. The implications are difficult to measure, other than (say) some high-profile book suddenly changing the way we all think. Certainly, plenty of New Testament scholarship has bought into trends (unconsciously or otherwise) which I think are dangerous (those involving patronizing constructions of Jewish identity and the war on terror being obvious examples). The problem is that a lot of this is about perpetuating, maintaining, buying into etc ideology that has a greater underlying power. This is why it is important to challenge these ideological positions on our own turf where we have been trained and so on, just as scholars with specific expertise can challenge where it is most effective for them to do so. And of course, we can all be influencing other disciplines, as well as being influenced, as we do this.

CZ: You imply throughout your writings that the study of the New Testament often lacks ethical grounding. What would “proper” New Testament scholarship look like to you?

JGC: I think there does need to be more ethical awareness of the things we do beyond repeating “we all have presuppositions” (or the like) before just going ahead and behaving as we would have done anyway. I don’t have too many suggestions how to do this beyond challenging the morally dubious (no bad thing perhaps) but I think mainstream scholarship, e.g. historical Jesus scholarship, debates on Pauline theology, as well anything else, from reception history to literary criticism, need to take seriously ideological criticisms. It is unfortunate that the patronising rhetoric of Jewishness and relationship to the Other remains strong in (say) historical Jesus scholarship, despite the critiques made over the past ten years which are too often bypassed. But if what I write could help in any way towards the establishment of justice and peace in historical Jesus studies, or indeed anywhere else in New Testament scholarship, I would be deeply grateful.

CZ: You recently co-edited Jesus Beyond Nationalism (2009), which is a collection of essays about the complicity of New Testament scholarship in various nation-building projects. Can you tell us about what led to this book’s publication?

JGC: It is part of a larger research project (or, technically, a couple of research projects) on Jesus and cultural complexity headed by Halvor Moxnes at the University of Oslo. In this particular instance Halvor got a group of people with interests in how questions relating to nationalism have affected the ways in which Jesus has been understood. Ward Blanton and I have been involved closely with the ongoing Oslo projects ever since 2007 (when the papers were first given) and for me (and I suspect Ward too) it has been a particularly encouraging place to develop ideas not so typical in mainstream British New Testament studies. More publications are to follow as part of this project (including a recent edition of Biblical Interpretation [2010; vol. 18, pages 309–416], including a forthcoming edited volume most obviously related to Jesus beyond Nationalism, on the construction of “holy land,” “home land” and (largely) Jesus.

CZ: Your friend Michael Bird describes you as an agnostic with no particular religious convictions and a former electrician. This seems like an unlikely background for a rather prolific New Testament scholar.

JGC: Probably. It is no bad thing having people from more unconventional backgrounds. I can see, in part, how my background is reflected in my writing and research, and probably rhetoric too. But – bloody hell! – we all have presuppositions…

CZ: Finally, what projects are up next for you?

JGC: A number of things. The main thing is that I’ve finished working on a follow up to Jesus in an Age of Terror, focusing on the ways in which neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and liberal rhetoric have had an impact on scholarly and popular understandings of the historical Jesus. I’m also doing similar but smaller scale things with Pauline scholarship, particularly the rise of the New Perspective on Paul from the late 1970s onwards.

I’m working on broader projects too, such as a joint project with Journalism Studies on the understanding and construction of “religion,” as well as use of the Bible, in the British media. This project has been great, particularly working with people with new ideas (new to me, anyway). This project has masses of potential and could well turn into a longer term project

I’m doing various bits and pieces on reception history of the Bible and biblical texts in party politics and popular culture and I have vague plans about a bigger project in that direction but I’m working them out in my head at the moment.

I continue to do things on the Law and the Gospels and linguistic stuff.