Review: 'The Last Week'

The Last Week by Jesus scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan is not your granny's version of Holy Week.

In place of the sacrificial lamb making good on the debts of every rotten sinner who ever walked, we have a daring, courageous rebel passionately committed to growing God's kingdom in the here and now of his world. This rebel maintains that commitment to, through, and beyond his public execution on the cross.

Borg and Crossan strip away two millennia of literary criticism, mythology, political interpretation, and clichés--not to mention the combining, conflating, and confusing of all four Gospels--to leave us with a wartime narrative about a brilliant young rabbi challenging both the Roman Empire and the collaborationist temple leaders on the nature of power and the primacy of the one God over all other rulers.

Jesus the Rebel is aware of his time and place and the challenges he presents to these power brokers. He consciously accepts the risks involved in making the challenge. Jesus the Teacher encourages his disciples—and all people—to follow his lead, which presents the way to salvation, which is to say God’s kingdom, in this world.

Seen this way, the crucifixion is a gift and a challenge rather than a sacrifice. Borg and Crossan point out:

“There is only one passage in all of Mark that might have a substitutionary sacrificial meaning....[A]s the Jesus of Mark speaks to his followers a third time about what it means to follow him, he says: 'The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many' (10:45).

“To many Christians, the word ‘ransom’ sounds like sacrificial language, for we sometimes speak of Jesus as the ransom for our sins. But it almost certainly does not have this meaning in Mark. The Greek word translated as ‘ransom’ (lutron) is used in the Bible not in the context of payment for sin, but to refer to payment made to liberate captives (often from captivity in war) or slaves (often from debt slavery). A lutron is a means of liberation from bondage.”

In The Last Week, Borg and Crossan look at the Gospel of Mark one day at a time from Palm to Easter Sunday to describe a series of planned events. They show that Mark’s text, the earliest Gospel, reveals that Jesus plans his entry into Jerusalem for the Passover to coincide--and deliberately lampoon--Herod's entry. He thus makes himself the new moral hero, a hero more dangerous than anybody we've ever read about in Sunday school. Jesus does so with the support of the peasantry. The peasants love his challenging the leadership of Rome.

Thence follows a week of more planned challenges of the Roman Empire and their cohorts in the temple. These include the overturning of the tables in the Temple, the challenge-and-riposte dialogues with temple authorities, and the Last Supper.

This week ultimately leads to Jesus' death. Here is where Borg and Crossan part company with a lot of Christians. (more)

Artwork: lucfreymanc.com