The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of JesusPaperback, 3 March 1999

John Dominic Crossan, expert on the historical Jesus, explores the lost years of earliest Christianity, those immediately following the execution of Jesus. He establishes the contextual setting by an interdisciplinary combination of anthropological, historical, and archaeological approaches. He identifies the textual sources by a literary analysis of the earliest discernible layers within our present gospels, both inside and outside the New Testament. Context and text come together to challenge long-standing assumptions about the role of Paul and the meaning of resurrection, and to forge new understanding of the birth of the Christian church.