Wednesday, our guest is Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, whose latest book explores the bipolar nature of divine violence in both the Old and New Testaments. On the one hand, God and Jesus assert messages of love and equity for mankind. Then suddenly, plowshares are beaten into swords and horses are up to their bridles in blood. Crossan joins guest host Elaine Clark to discuss whether God is violent or nonviolent and what the answer tells us about ourselves and the civilizations we’ve built.

John Dominic Crossan is a renowned Biblical scholar who's written 27 books on the historical Jesus, the apostle Paul and on early Christianity. He is professor emeritus in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University. Among his books are Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography [Indiebound|Amazon], The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus [Indiebound|Amazon], and his most recent How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation [Indiebound|Amazon].

John Dominic Crossan is in Utah to give the opening lecture of the 2015 Sunstone Symposium, an annual event focused on Mormon scholarship. His lecture is entitled The Kingdom Mind: From Jesus to Paul and the implications for Mormonism. Crossan speaks Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. at the Olpin Student Union [map] on the campus of the University of Utah. The event is free and open to the public.