How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation expresses his maintained existential concern when approaching the Bible with an open and critical mind. There has been an ongoing effort for projecting violence outside the Bible, as if an unfortunate side-effect of wrong interpretations, rather than confronting the texts and their violent content. However, while most studies focused on the violence of the Old Testament, recent ones

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... e looking more intently into the New Testament as well (Carter 2017; eds. Matthews & Gibson 2005). Crossan is aware of the Bible's own proclivity to violence, so his aim is to explain how this virtuous anthology which starts with the luminous chapters on creation (Gn 1-2), follows with the radical non-violent praxis of Jesus based on Jesus' concept of a non-violent God, could end then portraying such a gruesome view in Revelation, with a war to end of wars. 'Does the end of a book determine the meaning of the story?' (Crossan 2015:21). These different emphases lead him to conclude that we are dealing with a 'vision of a bipolar God' which needs further exploration (Crossan 2015:16-18). Crossan's nuance is to engage with the 'inner matrix' (his preferred word for 'context') of the biblical texts. Jan Assmann, a well-renowned Egyptologist, spoke in this very sense of a 'cultural semantic' of violence by which Israel's monotheistic faith is both presented and remembered. It is not that monotheistic faith is violent per se as that Israel's historical memory and social construction are embedded in violent narratives (Assmann 1996 (Assmann , 2014:41-42):41-42). Crossan does not dodge the problem either and confronts it head on. Scripture is not for him (not his words) the norma normans ('the norm/rule that governs') of the Christian faith, we need to look somewhere else. So he proceeds: If, for Christians, the biblical Christ is the criterion of the biblical God, then, for Christians, the historical Jesus is the criterion of the biblical Christ (Crossan 2015:35, original emphasis). This critical reading/dialogue follows a straightforward structure. Firstly, it presents some of the major insights in J.D. Crossan's book, attending to its inner logic on his critique on the violence which little by little creeps into the biblical texts. Secondly, it engages in a critique of his reading of Revelation, which is Crossan's starting point for his discussion on violence. He observes here a direct contradiction with the Jesus of history, centre of interpretation for Scripture. This article points to certain lacunae in his reading of Revelation and, finally, moves to a conclusion offering new ways to interpret and question Revelation's violent imagery within its own literary context. Contribution: This article is a critical dialogue with one of J.D. Crossan's latest books: How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence From Genesis Through Revelation. This is a vibrant and insightful book about how violence ultimately crept into the canonical texts, tainting even its 'good news'. Crossan's concern with this crude violence surfaces as he teaches different groups and he is asked why the Bible ends in Revelation on such a violent note, essentially with 'a war to end all wars', somehow buttressing the 'myth of redemptive violence'. The special focus of this article resides thus on a nuanced reading of Revelation which tries to understand, in context, the function of such violent images.