Block, Siteadmin, SkipCaptcha, Upload, Automoderated users, delete, edit, Moderators, move, protect, rollback, Administrators
27,336
edits
Changes
added more detail
The '''Jesus Seminar''' is a small organization of scholars assembled by former University of Montana professor Robert Funk for the purpose of finding what they considered the real, historical [[Jesus Christ]] through an investigation of the four ''Gospels'' and the ''Acts of the Apostles'' of the New Testament. Their conclusions of what Jesus said and did - arrived at through "scholarly consensus"[http://www.westarinstitute.org/Seminars/seminars.html]- were published in 1993 as ''The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say?'', a work which expresses their opinion as to what Jesus said, or didn't say, in the Bible.
The '''Jesus Seminar''' is a small organization of scholars assembled by former University of Montana professor Robert Funk for the purpose of finding what they considered the real, historical [[Jesus Christ]] through an investigation of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the [[New Testament]], plus the non-canonical ''Gospel of Thomas''. Their conclusions of what Jesus said and did - arrived at through "scholarly consensus"[http://www.westarinstitute.org/Seminars/seminars.html] from a liberal perspective[http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jsem.htm] - were published in 1993 as ''The Five Gospels: The search for the authentic words of Jesus.'', a work which expresses their opinion as to what Jesus said - or didn't say - in the [[Bible]].
==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 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. Rejecting the common "red-letter" edition pattern found in most Bibles, they used four different colors under the concept that historical assessment usually involves a varying degree of probability:
*Red: to illustrate what they believed were the words of Jesus;
*Pink: to illustrate those words which the Seminar believed were close to what He said, but not quite 100%;
*Gray: Jesus didn't say it, but there is evidence of His teachings within them;
*Black: Jesus never said it.
Starting out with about 200 scholars in 1986, the number fell to 74 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. Thirty-six of the scholars came from Vanderbilt, Harvard, and Claremont Universities, which were criticised for having the most-liberal New Testament study programs in any university. In any case, most of the people who left the Seminar before the book went to print complained of the "radical fringes of New Testament scholarship" who were over-represented there, or of Funk's undermining of traditional Biblical values. [http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t017.html]
==Assumptions==
The members of the Seminar have taken the opposite appraoch to the Gospels from that of the average Christian evangelical. As the Christian believes the Bible to be the inspired Word of God which is historically accurate, the Seminar has assumed:
*the Bible is composed by men, with the Gospels passed by an oral tradition between 30 and 50 A.D.
*None of the Gospel authors were eyewitnesses to Jesus;
*Beliefs about Jesus and Christian traditions changed and developed extensively between the Crucifixion and the writing of Mark's gospel about 70 A.D.
*The Gospels were written by authors unknown.
The result of their research - despite having a collection of more than 1500 versions of approximately 500 Christian writings which were authored prior to 313 A.D. - declared, among other things, that the Virgin Birth, the feeding of the 5000, the raising of Lazarus or any other miracle, had never happened; that Jesus had only said those words which the Seminar had concluded - by consensus - were said during the oral period of 30 - 50 A.D. (Funk, pg. 25). The total use of "red" throughout ''The Five Gospels'' was limited to fifteen lines, of which only one shared line - "give to Caesar the things which are Caesar's..." - was red in all the canonical Gospels; it was the only red entry in ''Mark'', and there were no red entries in ''John''. The remainder of Jesus' words were attributed to being partially or fully the creation of the Gospel writers; the pink and grey entries were easily-considered "liberal" entries, i.e. those favored by liberalism. The black entries, predominantly prophetical, were dismissed as fiction.[http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t017.html#whatdidtheyconclude] Funk wrote in his book ''"The Gospels are now assumed to be narratives in which the memory of Jesus is embellished by mythic elements that express the church's faith in him, and by plausible fictions that enhance the telling of the gospel story for first-century listeners who knew about divine men and miracle workers firsthand."'' (Funk, pg 5))
==References==
*Funk, Robert W. et al, ''The Five Gospels: The search for the authentic words of Jesus.'', New York: Macmillan (1993).