Jesus Seminar

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jesus Seminar
Formation1985; 39 years ago (1985)
FounderRobert Funk
Dissolved2006; 18 years ago (2006)
PurposeTo decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth
MethodsVotes with colored beads
Membership
150
Parent organization
Westar Institute

The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 50

laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk that originated under the auspices of the Westar Institute.[1][2]
The seminar was very active through the 1980s and 1990s, and into the early 21st century.

Members of the Seminar used votes with colored beads to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.[3] They produced new translations of the New Testament and apocrypha to use as textual sources. They published their results in three reports: The Five Gospels (1993),[4] The Acts of Jesus (1998),[5] and The Gospel of Jesus (1999).[6] They also ran a series of lectures and workshops in various U.S. cities.

The work of The Jesus Seminar continued after the death of its founder (2005) and was succeeded by two seminars: The Seminar on God and the Human Future and The Christianity Seminar. The latter published its first report in 2022, After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements.[7] The seminars are the scholarly program units of Westar Institute. Westar publishes a bi-monthly magazine for the general public, The Fourth R: An Advocate for Religious Literacy.

Search for the "Historical Jesus"

The Seminar's reconstruction of the

visionary experiences of some of his disciples rather than physical encounters.[4][5][6] While these claims, not accepted by conservative Christian laity, have been repeatedly made in various forms since the 18th century,[8]
the Jesus Seminar addressed them in a unique manner with its consensual research methodology.

The Seminar treated the

burden of proof on those who advocate any passage's historicity. Unconcerned with canonical boundaries, they asserted that the Gospel of Thomas may have more authentic material than the Gospel of John.[9]

The Seminar held a number of premises or

sapiential eschatology, which encourages all of God's children to repair the world.[11][12]

The methods and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar have come under harsh criticism from numerous[quantify] biblical scholars, historians and clergy for a variety of reasons. Such critics assert, for example, that the Fellows of the Seminar were not all trained scholars, that their voting technique did not allow for nuance, that they were preoccupied with the Q source and with the Gospel of Thomas but omitted material in other sources such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, and that they relied excessively on the criterion of embarrassment.[9][13][14][15]

Use of historical methods

The scholars attending sought to

orality.[18]

"Seven pillars of scholarly wisdom"

The Five Gospels lists seven bases for the modern critical scholarship of Jesus, claiming these "pillars" have developed since the end of the 18th century:[19]

  1. Distinguishing between the
    David Friedrich Strauss
    established it as part of biblical criticism with his book Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835).
  2. Distinguishing between the Synoptics and John. Since the 1800s, Bible scholars have distinguished between the Jesus of the Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) and the Jesus in John, generally favoring the synoptics as more historical and seeing John as more spiritual.
  3. Identifying Mark as the
    first gospel
    . By 1900, critical scholars had largely concluded that Mark came before Matthew and Luke and served as a source for each.
  4. Identifying the hypothetical Q document. By 1900, scholars had hypothesized this lost collection of Jesus' sayings, thought to be the source of material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark.
  5. Questioning eschatological (apocalyptic) Jesus. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer portrayed Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet, and this analysis virtually put an end to historical inquiry into Jesus. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, critical historians returned to the topic of historical Jesus. Some of these scholars identified the apocalyptic imagery in the gospels as originating with John the Baptist, and not authentic to Jesus.
  6. Distinguishing between oral and print cultures. Since Jesus lived and preached in an oral culture, scholars expect that short, memorable stories or phrases are more likely to be historical.
  7. Reversing the burden of proof. In his day, Strauss had to offer evidence to question the historicity of any part of the gospels because his audience assumed that the gospels were historical. Today, the assumption is nearly the opposite, with the gospels understood to be so thoroughly embellished that one needs evidence to suppose that anything in them is historical.

Noneschatological Jesus

While some of these pillars are noncontroversial, the majority of scholars of the historical Jesus follow Albert Schweitzer in regarding Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet.[20][21] The Five Gospels says that the non-apocalyptic view gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s when research into Jesus shifted out of religious environments and into secular academia. Marcus Borg says "the old consensus that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the imminent end of the world has disappeared", and identifies two reasons for this change:[22]

  1. Since the 1960s, some scholars have started to view the gospel references to the coming
    Son of Man
    as insertions by the early Christian community.
  2. Some scholars have begun to see Jesus'
    kingdom of God as a present reality, a "realized eschatology
    ", rather than an imminent end of the world (cf. Luke 17:20–21).

The apocalyptic elements attributed to Jesus, according to The Five Gospels, come from

early Christian community (p. 4). While the noneschatological Jesus is a significant trend in contemporary research into historical Jesus, most scholars affirm the traditional view that Jesus prophesied the imminent end of the world.[20]

The scholars' translation

The Seminar began by translating the gospels into modern American English, producing what they call the "Scholars Version", first published in The Complete Gospels.[23] This translation uses current colloquialisms and contemporary phrasing in an effort to provide a contemporary sense of the gospel authors' styles, if not their literal words. The goal was to let the reader hear the message as a first-century listener might have. The translators avoided other translations' archaic, literal translation of the text, or a superficial update of it. For example, they translate "woe to you" as "damn you".[24] The authors of The Complete Gospels argue that some other gospel translations have attempted to unify the language of the gospels, while they themselves have tried to preserve each author's distinct voice.[25]

Methodology

The first findings of the Jesus Seminar were published in 1993 as The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.[4]

The Fellows used a voting system to evaluate the authenticity of about 500 statements and events. For certain high-profile passages the votes were embodied in beads, the color of which represented the degree of confidence that a saying or act was or was not authentic:

  • Red beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus did say the passage quoted, or something very much like the passage. (3 Points)
  • Pink beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus probably said something like the passage. (2 Points)
  • Grey beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus did not say the passage, but it contains Jesus' ideas. (1 Point)
  • Black beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus did not say the passage—it comes from later admirers or a different tradition. (0 Points)

A confidence value was determined from the voting using a weighted average of the points given for each bead; the text was color-coded from red to black (with the same significance as the bead colors) according to the outcome of the voting.[26]

Criteria for authenticity

The Jesus Seminar treats the gospels as fallible historical artifacts, containing both authentic and inauthentic material. The Seminar fellows used several criteria for determining whether a particular saying or story is authentic, including the criteria of

multiple attestation and embarrassment. Among additional criteria used by the fellows are the following:[4]

Criteria for inauthenticity

The Seminar looked for several characteristics that, in their judgment, identified a saying as inauthentic, including self-reference, leadership issues, and apocalyptic themes.[4]

Example: the beatitudes

The Jesus Seminar rated various beatitudes as red, pink, gray, and black.[4] Three beatitudes are judged to be "paradoxical" and are doubly attested. They are rated red (authentic) as they appear in Luke 6:20–21.[4]

  • "Congratulations, you poor! God's domain belongs to you."[4]
  • "Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast."[4]
  • "Congratulations, you who weep now! You will laugh."[4]

The Seminar fellows decided the beatitude for those persecuted in Jesus' name might trace back to Jesus as a beatitude for those who suffer, but concluded that in its final form the saying represents concerns of the Christian community rather than Jesus' message. Thus it received a gray rating.[4]

Matthew's version of the three authentic beatitudes were rated pink. The author has spiritualized two of them, so that they now refer to the poor "in spirit" and to those who hunger "and thirst for justice." Matthew also includes beatitudes for the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, and peace-makers. These beatitudes have no second attestation, lack irony, and received a black rating.[4]

Principal publications

The Jesus Seminar produced a significant number of publications both in the form of journal articles and books published for the general public. Individual members of the seminar also produced, and continue to produce books which draw heavily upon the Seminar's work. The following is a selected sampling of those publications; a complete list of Jesus Seminar publications may be found at the Polebridge Press website, the in-house publisher for the Westar Institute:[30]

  • Borg, Marcus J.; Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith; HarperOne Imprints, HarperCollins; New York, New York: 1995. 978-0060609177
  • Crossan, John Dominic; Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography; HarperOne Imprints, HarperCollins; New York, New York: 2009. 978-0061800351
  • Funk, Robert Walter; Butts, James R.; Scott, Bernard Brandon; The Parables of Jesus (Jesus Seminar Series); Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1988. 978-0944344071
  • Funk, Robert Walter; et al.; The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus; HarperOne Imprints, HarperCollins; New York, New York: 1996. 978-0060630409
  • Funk, Robert Walter; et al.; The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do? ; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1998. 978-0060629786
  • Funk, Robert Walter; et al.; The Gospel of Jesus: According to the Jesus Seminar; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1999. 978-0944344743
  • Miller, Robert J.; et al.; The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1999. 978-0944344781
  • Miller, Robert J.; The Complete Gospels; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 2010. 978-1598150186
  • Tatum, W. Barnes; John the Baptist and Jesus: A Report of the Jesus Seminar; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1994. 978-0944344422

Acts of Jesus

In 1998 the Jesus Seminar published The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus. To create the material for this book, they voted on the individual acts of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, much as they had previously voted on the individual sayings attributed to him.[5]

According to the Jesus Seminar:

  • Jesus of Nazareth was born during the reign of Herod the Great.
  • His mother's name was
    Mary, and he had a human father whose name may not have been Joseph
    .
  • Jesus was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem.
  • Jesus was an itinerant sage who shared meals with social outcasts.
  • Jesus practiced
    psychosomatic
    .
  • He did not
    raise Lazarus from the dead
    .
  • Jesus was
    crucified by the Romans
    .
  • He was executed as a public nuisance, not for claiming to be the Son of God.
  • The
    raised bodily from the dead
    .
  • Belief in
    Peter and Mary Magdalene
    .

Criticism from scholars

The Jesus Seminar has come under intense criticism regarding its method, assumptions and conclusions from a wide array of scholars and laymen.

Jesuit theologian Gerald O'Collins has been critical of the methods and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar with particular attention to Christological ramifications.[51][52]

Lutheran theologian

Harnack's view that an unbridgeable gulf exists between Jesus and the church."[53]

Composition of the Seminar and qualifications of the members

Luke Timothy Johnson, a historian of the origins of Christianity,[54] argued that while some members of the seminar are reputable scholars (Borg, Crossan, Funk, others), others are relatively unknown or undistinguished in the field of biblical studies.[55] One member, Paul Verhoeven, holds no Ph.D. but a M.Sc. in mathematics and physics,[56] not biblical studies, and is best known as a film director. Johnson also critiqued the seminar for its attempts to gain the attention of the media for the 2000 ABC News program "The Search for Jesus" hosted by news anchor Peter Jennings.

Seminar critic William Lane Craig has argued that the self-selected members of the group do not represent the consensus of New Testament scholars. He writes:

Of the 74 [scholars] listed in their publication The Five Gospels, only 14 would be leading figures in the field of New Testament studies. More than half are basically unknowns, who have published only two or three articles. Eighteen of the fellows have published nothing at all in New Testament studies. Most have relatively undistinguished academic positions, for example, teaching at a community college.[57]

Others have made the same point and have further indicated that thirty-six of those scholars, almost half, have a degree from or currently teach at one of three schools: Harvard, Claremont, or Vanderbilt University, all of which are considered to favor "liberal" interpretations of the New Testament.[58] To open theist Greg Boyd, a prominent evangelical pastor and theologian, "The Jesus Seminar represents an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking. It does not represent mainstream scholarship."[59] New Testament scholar Mark Allan Powell has stated: "The Jesus Seminar is not representative of the guild of New Testament historical scholarship today. Rather, it is representative of one voice within that guild, a voice that actually espouses a minority position on some key issues."[60]

In the first chapter of his 2010 book Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching, Maurice Casey, an irreligious British scholar of the New Testament, criticizes the Seminar for having not included "some of the best scholars in the USA, such as E. P. Sanders, J. A. Fitzmyer, and Dale Allison."[61] He states that these glaring omissions were compounded by the fact that many of the supposed "experts" at the Seminar were young, obscure scholars who had only just completed their doctorates.[61]

Flawed voting system

The voting system has been criticized by, among others, N. T. Wright, who says: "I cannot understand how, if a majority ... thought a saying authentic or probably authentic, the 'weighted average' turned out to be 'probably inauthentic'. A voting system that produces a result like this ought to be scrapped."[62] Casey sums up the voting process stating, "In practice, this meant an averaged majority vote by people who were not in any reasonable sense authorities at all."[61]

Influence of presuppositions

Howard Clark Kee, Professor of Biblical Studies Emeritus at Boston University School of Theology, writing in the journal Theology Today stated, "the conclusions reached by these scholars are inherent in the presuppositions and methods they have chosen to adopt from the outset."[63]

Luke Timothy Johnson[54] of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, in his 1996 book The Real Jesus, voiced concerns with the seminar's work. He criticized the techniques of the Seminar, believing them to be far more limited for historical reconstruction than seminar members believe. Their conclusions were "already determined ahead of time," Johnson says, which "is not responsible, or even critical scholarship. It is a self-indulgent charade." William Lane Craig argues that the principal presuppositions of scientific naturalism, the primacy of the apocryphal gospels, and the necessity of a politically correct Jesus are unjustified and issue in a distorted portrait of the historical Jesus.[64]

Raymond Brown likewise avers that the Seminar "operated to a remarkable degree on a priori principles, some of them reflecting antisupernatural bias. For instance, the bodily resurrection had no real chance of being accepted as having taken place. ... Again, almost as a principle, the eschatological character of Jesus' ministry has been dismissed..."[65]

Dale Allison of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, in his 1998 book Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet, cited what he felt were problems with the work of (particularly) John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, arguing that their conclusions were at least in part predetermined by their theological positions. He also pointed out the limitations of their presumptions and methodology. Allison argued that despite the conclusions of the seminar, Jesus was a prophetic figure focused to a large extent on apocalyptic thinking.[32] Several Bible scholars (for example Bart D. Ehrman, an agnostic, and Paula Fredriksen, a Jew) have reasserted Albert Schweitzer's eschatological view of Jesus.[66] Casey argues that the Jesus Seminar's fundamental social goal was not to construct an accurate portrait of the historical Jesus, but rather to create "a figure whom [the Fellows of the Seminar] are happy with".[61] In particular, the fellows of the Seminar have removed "the apocalyptic and eschatological concerns which characterize American fundamentalism"[61] and remade Jesus as "a cynic philosopher, which suits their intellectual ambiance".[61]

Inappropriate emphasis on flawed criteria

Numerous scholars have criticized the Seminar for placing too much value on the criterion of dissimilarity. For the Seminar, a saying will only be held as authentic if it does not match the beliefs of Judaism or those held by the early Christians. Critics such as Gregory Boyd have noted that the effect of this is that the Jesus of the Seminar shows no continuity with his Jewish context nor his disciples.[67] Raymond Brown has stated that "a rigorous application of such criteria would leave us with a monstrosity: a Jesus who never said, thought, or did anything that other Jews said, thought, or did, and a Jesus who had no connection or relationship to what his followers said, thought, or did in reference to him after he died."[68] J. Ed Komoszewski and co-authors state that the Jesus Seminar's "Criteria for In/Authenticity" creates "an eccentric Jesus who learned nothing from his own culture and made no impact on his followers".[69] The same criticism has been made by Craig Evans.[39]

Bias against canonical sources and for non-canonical sources

Casey criticizes the Seminar for the "exaggerated importance which they have attributed to the Gospel of Thomas",[61] stating, "Their voting was so bizarre that they ended up with more red in the Gospel than in our oldest genuine source, the Gospel of Mark."[61] Craig Blomberg notes that if the Jesus Seminar's findings are to be believed, then:

It requires the assumption that someone, about a generation removed from the events in question, radically transformed the authentic information about Jesus that was circulating at that time, superimposed a body of material four times as large, fabricated almost entirely out of whole cloth, while the church suffered sufficient collective amnesia to accept the transformation as legitimate.[citation needed]

Craig Evans argues that the Jesus Seminar applies a form of hypercriticism to the canonical gospels that unreasonably assumes that "Jesus' contemporaries (that is, the first generation of his movement) were either incapable of remembering or uninterested in recalling accurately what Jesus said and did, and in passing it on" while, in contrast, privileging extra-canonical texts with an uncritical acceptance that sometimes rises to the level of special pleading.[39] Howard Clark Kee, writing in The Cambridge Companion to the Bible (1997) and citing Helmut Koester and John Dominic Crossan as examples, states:

Some scholars have advanced the theory that these so-called apocryphal gospels actually include texts and traditions that are older and more reliable than those in the canonical New Testament writings. ... These opinions are purely circular arguments, since the investigators have found material which they prefer to what is the canonical Gospels and, in support of their preferences, attribute this material to more ancient sources. No ancient evidence confirms these theories, but the theories have been welcomed and widely publicized in the popular press.[70]

Other

Garry Wills, a vocal proponent of liberal Catholicism, nonetheless strongly critiques the Seminar:

This is the new fundamentalism. It believes in the literal sense of the Bible—it just reduces to what it can take as literal quotation from Jesus. Though some have called the Jesus Seminarists radical, they are actually very conservative. They tame the real, radical, Jesus, cutting him down to their own size...the sayings that meet with the Seminar's approval were preserved by the Christian communities whose contribution is discounted. Jesus as a person does not exist outside of the gospels, and the only reason he exists there is because of their authors' faith in the Resurrection. Trying to find a construct, "the historical Jesus," is not like finding diamonds in a dunghill, but like finding New York City at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.[71]

Conservative backlash

In addition to scholarly critiques, a number of conservative Christian organizations were critical of the Jesus Seminar.

D. James Kennedy, senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, was critical of the Jesus Seminar and John Dominic Crossan, writing in his 1996 book The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail:

Doesn't it seem like its open season on Christians—and even Christ—these days? The character of the only perfect human being to ever live is being dragged through the mud by those with the respectability of a degree behind their names ... While there are liberal Bible scholars who deny some or many tenets of the faith, there are just as many—if not more—scholars who hold to a much more conservative position.[72]

In response to the airing of a two-hour ABC News documentary titled "The Search for Jesus" in June 2000, which featured Jesus Seminar scholars including Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, Coral Ridge Ministries produced the one-hour documentary "Who Is This Jesus". Hosted by actor

Bruce Metzger. Also featured is evangelical apologist Josh McDowell. As Kennedy recalled later, "We featured a wide variety of scholarly viewpoints... We set out to show the ample historical evidence that the Gospels are reliable, that the New Testament is the best-attested book in antiquity in quantity and quality of manuscripts, that Jesus is who He said He is, and that He rose from the dead."[73] The film aired on Christmas Day 2000 on the PAX-TV network and a number of CBS affiliates.[74] An expanded version of the film, titled "Who Is This Jesus: Is He Risen?", aired at Easter 2001. The film aired again on "The Coral Ridge Hour" on Palm Sunday, 2005.[75]

Similarly, in 2001

N.T. Wright as well as philosopher-theologian William Lane Craig and Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay
.

Both The Watchman Expositor and The Christian Arsenal identify the Jesus Seminar as an attempt by Satan to twist the meaning of Scripture, founded in the liberalism, modernism, and neo-orthodoxy that are current in academia and mainline seminaries.[76][77] Maurice Casey states:

The effect of the American Jesus Seminar on conservative American Christians has been just as disastrous as the work of the Seminar itself. Some of them write books which appear to assume that, if they can demonstrate that the Jesus Seminar is wrong, they thereby demonstrate the absolute truth of Protestant fundamentalism or Catholic orthodoxy, whichever the perspective from which the author is writing.[61]

Current activities and fellows of the Jesus Seminar

Members of the Jesus Seminar have responded to their critics in various books and dialogues, which typically defend both their methodology and their conclusions. Among these responses are The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics by Robert J. Miller,

Werner H. Kelber. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions,[81] by Borg and noted New Testament historian and Pauline scholar N. T. Wright
demonstrated how two scholars with divergent theological positions can work together to creatively share and discuss their thoughts.

The Jesus seminar was active in the 1980s and 1990s. Early in the 21st century, another group called the "Acts Seminar" was formed by some previous members to follow similar approaches to biblical research.[2]

In March 2006, the Jesus Seminar began work on a new description of the emergence of the Jesus traditions through the first two centuries of the

common era (CE). In this new phase, fellows of the Jesus Seminar on Christian Origins employ the methods and techniques pioneered by the original Jesus Seminar.[82]

Robert Funk died in 2005,

sapiential eschatology.[20] Funk was a well-known scholar of recent American research into Jesus' parables.[84] Harris was the author of several books on religion, including university-level textbooks.[85] Mack described Jesus as a Galilean Cynic, based on the elements of the Q document that he considers to be earliest.[86]

See also

References

  1. ^ Westar Institute accessed November 6, 2006
  2. ^ page 19
  3. ^ "The Jesus Seminar".
  4. ^
  5. ^ a b c d e f The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (1998), Harper San Francisco,
  6. ^ a b c d e The Gospel of Jesus: According to the Jesus Seminar (1999), Polebridge Press (Macmillan),
  7. .
  8. ^ Ehrman, B, (Feb 2, 2010), "Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)"
  9. ^
    N.T. Wright, [Five Gospels but no Gospel] "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-12-22. Retrieved 2006-08-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link), 1999, p.5 PDF
  10. ^ "E.P. Sanders: Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet".
  11. .
  12. ^ Fredriksen, Paula. Excerpt from "From Jesus to Christ". In particular, note the second footnote for a brief overview of scholars supporting an apocalyptic view, including Bart D. Ehrman and John P. Meier.
  13. ^ Catherine M. Murphy, The Historical Jesus For Dummies, For Dummies Pub., 2007. p. 60 – "The Jesus Seminar has come under a lot of fire from other scholars and clergy for a variety of reasons [...] The Jesus Seminar has generated a lot of debate because it finds little historical evidence for certain Christian beliefs, such as the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, and the resurrection.".
  14. ^ Bruce Chilton & Craig A. Evans, Authenticating the activities of Jesus, Volume 2, BRILL, 1999. pp 83–99,110–120.
  15. ^ Robert Joseph Miller, The Jesus seminar and its critics, Polebridge Press, 1999. pp 65–79
  16. ^ Yeshua in Aramaic
  17. .
  18. .
  19. ^ Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar. The five gospels. Harper San Francisco. 1993. "Introduction," p 1-30.
  20. ^ a b c . Retrieved 2018-06-27. (translated from the German)
  21. ^ A renaissance in Jesus studies Archived 2012-02-04 at the Wayback Machine Princeton Theological Seminary, October 1988.
  22. ^ The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholars Version, Robert J. Miller, editor, Polebridge Press, Sonoma, CA, 1991, page xi: "The Scholars Version is a new translation of the Bible. The first phase is a translation of all the gospels. The Scholars Version—SV for short— ... The Complete Gospels represents the first published appearance of the SV gospels. ..."; Introduction: page 1: "The Complete Gospels offers its readers several unique features. This volume is the premier publication of the Scholars Version translation of the gospels."
  23. ^ The Complete Gospels, page 420: "Congratulations/Damn"
  24. ^ The Complete Gospels, The Translation, page xi, also page 11: "Most translations of the gospels flatten all their individual "voices" into one. ..."
  25. ^ "Voting for the Jesus Seminar Phase 1: Sayings of Jesus". Westar Institute. Retrieved 2013-10-25.
  26. ^ John 14:1–14
  27. ^ Matthew 16:17–19
  28. ^ Matthew 25:31–46
  29. ^ "Welcome to the Westar Store". Westar Institute.
  30. ^
  31. ^
  32. ^ Hays, Richard B., "The Corrected Jesus", First Things 43, May 1994
  33. ^ The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth
  34. Wright also discusses the work of Burton L. Mack, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus J. Borg in some detail.
  35. ^
  36. ^ "Jesus Seminar" Paper delivered at St. Francis' Theological College, Brisbane Dec. 9, 1998
  37. ^ Blomberg, Craig L. (2004). Making Sense of the New Testament. Baker Academic. pp. 18-19.
  38. ^ Bockmuehl, Markus. (2006). Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study. Baker Academic. pp. 195-207.
  39. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-01-12. Retrieved 2016-02-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  40. ^ Kee, Howard Clark, "A Century of Quests for the Culturally Compatible Jesus", Theology Today, April 1, 1995.
  41. ^ "Controversial Jesus Seminar", Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1991, p. B6.
  42. ^ Franciscan Media. "American Catholic is Down for Maintenance".
  43. ^ Stanton, Graham (2002). The Gospels and Jesus. Second ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 230-231.
  44. ^ a b Luke Timothy Johnson Archived 2006-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
  45. ^ The Real Jesus, 1996.
  46. ^ Paul Verhoeven's Ph.D. claims refuted in Dutch national newspaper Trouw
  47. ^ Rediscovering the Historical Jesus by William Lane Craig
  48. ^ Powell, Mark Allan. (1998) Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man From Galilee. Westminster John Knox. p. 78.
  49. ^ .
  50. ^ Wright, N. T. "Five Gospels But No Gospel", in Bruce D. Chilton and Craig A. Evans eds., Authenticating the Activities of Jesus. Leiden: Brill, 1999. p. 95.
  51. ^ Kee, Howard Clark, "A Century of Quests for the Culturally Compatible Jesus", Theology Today, April 1, 1995.
  52. ^ Craig, William Lane. "Presuppositions and Pretensions of the Jesus Seminar". Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  53. ^ Schweitzer wrote that Jesus and his followers expected the imminent end of the world. Review of "The Mystery of the Kingdom of God"
  54. ^ Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Seminar and the Reliability of the Gospels
  55. ^ Komoszewski, J. Ed; et al. (2006). Reinventing Jesus. Kregel Publication. p. 49.
  56. pp. 582-83.
  57. , p. xxv–xxvi
  58. . p.151.
  59. p.161.
  60. ^ Washington Times, Dec. 25, 2000, "TV Film aims for true story of Jesus".
  61. ^ "TV Special 'Who Is This Jesus' weighs evidence of Resurrection".
    The Vindicator
    . March 19, 2005. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
  62. ^ Branch, Craig (1995), "The Jesus Seminar: The Slippery Slope to Heresy", The Watchman Expositor, vol. 12, no. 1, Watchman Fellowship ministry
  63. ^ "Jesus Seminar - The Christian Arsenal".
  64. ^ Marcus J. Borg Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, HarperOne; 2nd edition, September 4, 2007,
  65. ^ "Seminars". Westar Institute. Archived from the original on 29 January 2013. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  66. ^ Borg, Marcus J. in Borg, Marcus J. and N. T. Wright. The Meaning of Jesus: Two visions. New York: HarperCollins. 2007.
  67. ^ Theissen, Gerd and Annette Merz. The historical Jesus: a comprehensive guide. Fortress Press. 1998. translated from German (1996 edition). p. 321
  68. ^ "Stephen L. Harris - Author of Understanding the Bible & Fire Mountains of the West - About the Author". Archived from the original on 2010-02-06.
  69. ^ Theissen, Gerd and Annette Merz. The historical Jesus: a comprehensive guide. Fortress Press. 1998. translated from German (1996 edition). Chapter 2. Christian sources about Jesus.

External links