Exchange between E. P. Sanders, Crossan & Reed

Thanks to David Mackinder for drawing this to my attention. There's a fascinating exchange between E. P. Sanders and John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed on the New York Review of Books:

Who Was Jesus? An Exchange

Sanders had written a lengthy review of Crossan and Reed's Excavating Jesus in April's New York Review of Books, entitled Who Was Jesus?. The latter is unfortunately only available to subscribers ($64 a year; or purchase the article alone for $4) but the current exchange, in which first Crossan and Reed answer Sanders and then Sanders replies is available on-line from the above link. It's pretty acrimonious stuff, e.g.

"E.P. Sanders's confused presentation of Excavating Jesus ["Who Was Jesus?" NYR, April 10] is suffused with the acrid stench of burning straw. It also contains basic misunderstandings of our position on Jesus, Judaism, and the Roman Empire, that is, on most everything in our book.

One thing is quite baffling in Crossan and Reed's letter, the claim that "Scholars of early Christianity have always criticized his refusal to use source-analysis in studying the gospels". I don't know of any scholar who makes this criticism, let alone it "always" having taken place; nor would it be a reasonable claim to make given Sanders's publications on source-criticism of the gospels. Sanders wonders whether this might have been an "insider's joke", though I'm not quite sure how it would work.