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→History: add phases of work
==History==
==History==
In the mid-1970's Funk had expressed a desire for a work about the historical Jesus. To that end he assembled a team of theological scholars, with the intent that they would create a version of the Gospels which reflected a consensus, based upon votes as to what constituted what they perceived as the "real" words of Jesus.
In the mid-1970's Funk had expressed a desire for a work about the historical Jesus. To that end he assembled a team of theological scholars, with the intent that they would create a version of the Gospels which reflected a consensus, based upon votes as to what constituted what they perceived as the "real" words of Jesus.
Originally starting out with 30 members, at its peak the Seminar would have about 200 scholars, but only 74 would remain when ''The Five Gospels'' was published. Fourteen of these individuals were academic professors with published works on the subject; twenty were also academics, but with far fewer publications. Of the remainder, eighteen had no published papers on the subject at all.
Their work would be divided into three phases:
*Phase 1 (active from 1985-1991) had the Seminar determining what Jesus actually said. The Seminar collected over 1,500 versions of about 500 different sayings, categorized into four groups: Parables, Aphorisms, Dialogues, and Stories containing words attributed to Jesus, from both the four Gospels and other non-canonical sources such as the controversial [[Gospel of Thomas]].
*Phase 2 (active from 1991-1996) had the Seminar determining what Jesus actually did. The Seminar investigated 387 reports of 176 events, where Jesus was the principal actor in the majority (but in some cases involved events where the principal actor was John the Baptist, the Apostle Peter, or Judas Iscariot).
*Phase 3 (active from 1996-1998) had the Seminar (based on its work in the first two phases) compiling a profile of "what kind of figure [Jesus] was emerging from the evidence they had found to be most probably historically authentic".
Originally starting out with 30 members, at its peak the Seminar would have about 200 scholars, but only 74 would remain when ''The Five Gospels'' (the summary of Phase 1) was published. Of the 74, 14 were academic professors with published works on the subject of historical Jesus, 20 were also academics but with far fewer publications on the subject; 18 of the remaining members had no published papers on the subject at all.
===Anti-Christian agenda===
===Anti-Christian agenda===