Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
In this lecture, Dom Crossan begins by asking us to compare the hands of Caesar and the hands of Jesus. It sets up everything that follows. On one side, you’ve got Caesar—holding a spear in his left hand (we call it a scepter now, but it descended from the spear), and in his right hand, the orb of the world. Originally, there was a little bronze Nike on top, the goddess of victory crowning him. The message is clear: I own the world because I took it by force.
On the other side, Jesus. Left hand holds a book—not to take you over by force, but by persuasion. And the book is always closed, or if it’s open, it’s facing us, because he’s the norm of the book. He doesn’t need to read it. Right hand? Raised in blessing. Not to own the world, but to bless it.
Two radically different ways of seeing the world. And Dom spent an hour unpacking why that difference got Jesus killed.
This Lent, Go Deeper with Crossan! If this lecture lights something up in you—if you want to spend these weeks before Easter really digging into the historical Jesus, the Galilean context, and what it meant for Jesus to announce God’s kingdom in the shadow of Rome—we’ve got something for you. Join Dom Crossan this Lent for “Jesus in Galilee.”
This is your opportunity to learn directly from one of the leading scholars on the historical Jesus. Visual lectures, live Q&As, and the kind of depth that will transform how you understand Jesus.
All the info and registration at CrossanClass.com
In this lecture, Dom Crossan begins by asking us to compare the hands of Caesar and the hands of Jesus. It sets up everything that follows. On one side, you’ve got Caesar—holding a spear in his left hand (we call it a scepter now, but it descended from the spear), and in his right hand, the orb of the world. Originally, there was a little bronze Nike on top, the goddess of victory crowning him. The message is clear: I own the world because I took it by force.
On the other side, Jesus. Left hand holds a book—not to take you over by force, but by persuasion. And the book is always closed, or if it’s open, it’s facing us, because he’s the norm of the book. He doesn’t need to read it. Right hand? Raised in blessing. Not to own the world, but to bless it.
Two radically different ways of seeing the world. And Dom spent an hour unpacking why that difference got Jesus killed.
This Lent, Go Deeper with Crossan! If this lecture lights something up in you—if you want to spend these weeks before Easter really digging into the historical Jesus, the Galilean context, and what it meant for Jesus to announce God’s kingdom in the shadow of Rome—we’ve got something for you. Join Dom Crossan this Lent for “Jesus in Galilee.”
This is your opportunity to learn directly from one of the leading scholars on the historical Jesus. Visual lectures, live Q&As, and the kind of depth that will transform how you understand Jesus.
All the info and registration at CrossanClass.com
