Crossan and Reed's Top Ten

Jim Davila also links to his blog entry August 2 2003, which links to a Washington Post article updating Crossan & Reed's Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries. It sent me back to the book, John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts (London: SPCK, 2001); their top ten archaeological discoveries for excavating Jesus are on pp. 1-6; I was curious to see which one drops out of the top ten to be replaced in the article above by the James ossuary. The one that drops out is the Apostle Peter's House (p. 3). As it happens, this is present in Witherington's list.

But in contrast with Witherington, Crossan and Reed distinguish sharply between "Archaeological Discoveries" and "Exegetical Discoveries". BeliefNet have the full excerpt from the book available here:

The Top Ten Exegetical Discoveries for Excavating Jesus

I'm not entirely comfortable, in spite of the caveats ("Not everyone will accept or believe the discoveries to be true", p. 6, etc.), with putting the Dead Sea Scrolls (no. 1) and the Nag Hammadi codices (no. 2) along with source-critical theories, even where the source theories are rightly the consensus (no. 3, Marcan Priority). I can go and look at the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem or the Nag Hammadi codices in Cairo -- these are more than "exegetical" discoveries. But I'm not confident about several others on the list -- especially dependence of Matthew and Luke on Q (no. 4), the independence of Thomas (no. 6) and the common sayings tradition in Q & Thomas (no. 7), but also probably the existence of an independent source in the Gospel of Peter (no. 9). No. 4, the existence of Q, I have given my reasons for finding unpersuasive (see the Case Against Q); no. 6 (independence of Thomas) will have to await my book and no. 7 falls with those two.