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THE JESUS SEMINAR AND HIGHER CRITICISM

THE JESUS SEMINAR AND HIGHER CRITICISM. RADICAL. By Glenn Giles December, 2009. BIBLICAL CRITICISM: What is it?. LOWER CRITICISM = TEXTUAL CRIT. HIGHER CRITICISM = LITERARY ANALYSIS DEALING WITH AUTHORSHIP, DATE, AND LITERARY COMPOSITION TYPES OF HIGHER CRITICISM: 1. SOURCE 2. FORM

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THE JESUS SEMINAR AND HIGHER CRITICISM

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  1. THE JESUS SEMINAR ANDHIGHER CRITICISM RADICAL By Glenn Giles December, 2009

  2. BIBLICAL CRITICISM: What is it? • LOWER CRITICISM = TEXTUAL CRIT. • HIGHER CRITICISM = LITERARY ANALYSIS DEALING WITH AUTHORSHIP, DATE, AND LITERARY COMPOSITION • TYPES OF HIGHER CRITICISM: 1. SOURCE 2. FORM 3. REDACTION 4. NARRATIVE 5. RHETORICAL 6. SOCIO-HISTORICAL

  3. JESUS SEMINAR • Is an example of RADICAL higher criticism, criticism that is highly skeptical of the historical accuracy and authenticity of the Bible. Not all higher criticism is “radical” • Most scholars who engage in higher criticism today do not go to the extremes of the Jesus Seminar in its findings and presuppositions

  4. THE JESUS SEMINAR • SET UP UNDER THE “AUSPICES” OF ROBERT FUNK’S WESTAR INSTITUTE IN SONOMA, CA IN 1985 • SCHOLARS (FELLOWS) NUMBER AROUND 200 WITH ONLY ABOUT 40 ACTUALLY WRITING, MEETING REGULARLY, AND VOTING • THE SEMINAR WAS CO-CHAIRED BY ROBERT FUNK (FORMER PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA, NOW DECEASED) AND JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN OF DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

  5. PROJECTS OF THE WESTAR INSTITUTE • The Jesus Seminar (finding the authentic words and deeds of Jesus) • The Paul Seminar (study of the authenticity and integrity of the Pauline letters) • The Canon Seminar (debating which early Christian works canonical and non-canonical should be in the New Testament) • Acts Seminar (finding the historical authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles)

  6. THE JESUS SEMINAR REPRESENTATION • Represents the radical left fringe of biblical criticism. • Mostly doctoral graduates of schools who tend to practice a more radical form of higher criticism. • These schools include: Harvard, Claremont, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Union Theological Seminary • Luke Johnson states that it does not, “represent anything like a consensus view of scholars working in the New Testament, but only the views of a group that has been—for all its protestations of diversity—self-selected on the basis of prior agreement concerning the appropriate goals and methods for studying the Gospels and the figure of Jesus” (The Real Jesus, 2)

  7. THE JESUS SEMINAR STATED AGGENDA: • “TO DISCOVER AND REPORT A SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS ON THE HISTORICALAUTHENTICITY OF THE SAYINGS AND EVENTS ATTRIBUTED TO JESUS IN THE GOSPEL” (www.westarinstitute.org) • TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC THROUGH THE MEDIA TO HELP THE “MODERN INQUIRER LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE IMAGINED WORLD AND THE ‘REAL WORLD’ OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE” WITH RESPECT TO JESUS (The Five Gospels (5G), 2)

  8. JESUS SEMINAR AND THE “REAL JESUS” ASSUMPTION • “To know the truth about Jesus, the real Jesus, one had to find the Jesus of history. The refuge offered by the cloistered precincts of faith gradually became a battered and beleaguered position. In the wake of the Enlightenment, biblical scholars rose to the challenge and launched a tumultuous search for the Jesus behind the Christian façade of the Christ” 5G, 40 • The real Jesus has been covered up by the church. Now these scholars are going to free him from the faith captivity.

  9. JESUS SEMINAR “FINDINGS” • “Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him” 5G, 5. • Results published in The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus • For an analysis of his authentic acts, see The Jesus Seminar’s The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus.

  10. JESUS SEMINAR PROCEDURE • Scholars apply their methodology and then vote with colored beads on the authenticity of each word attributed to Jesus by the gospel writers • The gospels evaluated include The 4 Canonical Gospels and The Gospel of Thomas Hence the title of the book: The Five Gospels

  11. COLORED BEAD VOTING PROCEDURE AND OPTION 1 • Red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it • Pink: Jesus probably said something like this. • Gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own • Black: Jesus did not day this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition

  12. VOTING OPTION 2 • Red: I would include this item unequivocally in the database for determining who Jesus was • Pink: I would include this item with reservations (or modifications) in the database • Gray: I would not include this item in the database, but I might make use of some of the content in determining who Jesus was • Black: I would not include this item in the primary database.

  13. VOTING OPTION 3 • Red: That’s Jesus! • Pink: Sure sounds like Jesus • Gray: Well, maybe • Black: There’s been some mistake.

  14. CALCULATING THE VOTES:“WEIGHTED AVERAGE” Red gets 3 points Pink gets 2 points Gray gets 1 point Black gets 0 points Points were added up and then divided by the number of votes and converted to a percentage vote based on a one point scale

  15. THE BREAKDOWN OF THE ONE POINT SCALE • Red: .7501 and up • Pink: .5001-.7500 • Gray: .2501-.5000 • Black: .0000-.2500

  16. AN EXAMPLE: THE LORD’S PRAYER: Luke 11:2-4 “When you pray, you should say: Father, your name be revered. Impose your imperial rule. Provide us with the bread we need day by day Forgive our sins, since we too forgive everyone in debt to us And please don’t subject us to test after test. (5G, 325, cf. Mt. version, 148)

  17. THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTS FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS • The First Quest: 1778-1906 • Began with Hermann Samuel Reimarus: Fragments by an Anonymous Writer (1778). Pub. by Lessing. • D. F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835). Introduced the concept of “myth” is “anything legendary or supernatural” (5G, 3). • Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (first published, 1904). He took scissors and paste to the Gospels, cutting out the supernatural elements. • Separation of the Christ of Faith from the Historical Jesus was thus was under way. Who is the real historical Jesus? What should be cut out of the gospels to find him?

  18. THE FIRST QUEST CONTINUED • Many Jesuses are proposed as the true historical Jesus from Reimarus to Wrede and Schweitzer. • William Wrede, The Messianic Secret in Mark (1901). Thorough-going skeptic who claimed we could know very little about the Historical Jesus. Jesus was only a “Galilean teacher or prophet who did some striking things and was eventually executed” (N. T Wright, Jesus and the victory of God, 20)

  19. FIRST QUEST CONCLUDED • Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede German ed. 1906 marked the end of the first quest. He discusses the various Jesuses found during the first quest. • He saw a thoroughly eschatological Jesus in the gospels depicting a Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom of God but died disappointedly when that eschatological kingdom did not come. Hence Jesus, for him, was merely a Jewish apocalyptic prophet.

  20. THE “NO QUEST” PERIOD • 1906-1953 • Historical Jesus not considered important • Focus is on the Christ of Faith • Barth and Bultmann and Neo-orthodoxy are key figures. Faith is not based in history. • Bultmann felt very little could be known about the historical Jesus and that finding him was not important • History has nothing to do with faith.

  21. THE NEW OR SECOND QUEST1953-1980 • 1953 Second Quest began when Bultmann’s student Ernst Kasemann proposed a “New Quest” for the historical Jesus. • Felt that history did have something to do with faith so sought again to find the historical Jesus • Added very little to what the first quest found as it used similar principles and presuppositions. • It remained in the shackles of Form Criticism which was designed “to discover the early church, not Jesus himself” (N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 24)

  22. THE THIRD QUEST1980-PRESENT • Many Scholars advance plausible arguments for accepting the historical reliability of Mt., Mk, and Lk • Attempt to “do history seriously”, no home-made criteria, Form Criticism is being bypassed. Using method of “hypothesis and verification”. Narratives not small units of material are investigated. Not as concerned about “reconstruction of traditions” which dissects the gospels • Places Jesus within first century Judaism, allows him to be Jewish • Has a positive approach to the historicity of the gospels • But still falls short of the position of orthodox theologians and Evangelicals as it does not affirm Jesus as “wholly man and wholly God” on the basis of historical research. (Craig Blomberg, Jesus Under Fire, 27-28)

  23. THE JESUS SEMINAR 1985 TO PRESENT • Jesus Seminar seems to best fit into the Second Quest, I.e., it is a “Revived” New or Second Quest. • It is different from the Third Quest in that it has a very negative view of historicity of the gospel’s presentation of Jesus • It drinks heavily from the post-Bultmannian tradition taking on that tradition’s critical and Form Critical assumptions

  24. THREE DOMINANT VIEWS OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS FOUND IN THE SECOND QUEST • Jesus the Social Revolutionary, a countercultural social prophet who resocialized people, a social critic, a culture-denying Jewish Cynic peasant. He sought ways to better society. • Jesus the Religious Genius, one who prayed, fasted, had visions, a holy man, sacred person, a spirit person with an imminent eschatological enthusiast with a belief in the coming of the Kingdom of God. One who warned of judgment, ethics, belief in God. But one who is not relevant for us today. • Jesus the Sage • This last one is the stance of the Jesus Seminar (These three views come from Scot McKnight in Jesus Under Fire, 56-57)

  25. JESUS SEMINAR WORLDVIEW ROOTS • Enlightenment, Age of Reason, Everything can be explained through natural scientific means. All so-called miracles have a natural cause or were made up by people as they cannot happen naturally • Deism: Dominant religion of the day. A religion of the clockwork universe • God initially created the world as a First Cause • Then left it to run on its own under natural law • No supernatural transcendent intervention is possible: I.e., no supernatural working in history. No incarnation possible. • Jesus Seminar operates from an naturalistic WV

  26. JESUS SEMINAR STATEMENT • “The Christ of creed and dogma, who had been firmly in place in the Middle Ages, can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope. The old deities and demons were swept from the skies by that remarkable glass. Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo have dismantled the mythological abodes of the gods and Satan and bequeathed us secular heavens” 5G, 2.

  27. JESUS SEMINAR WV CONTINUED • To be historical, to be authentic, everything must pass through this presuppositional scientific naturalistic sieve • No walking on water • No miraculous catch of fish • No transfiguration • No resurrection • No resurrection appearances

  28. JESUS SEMINAR WV CONT. • No postmortem statements or predictions of events are real • Funk and Hoover and the Jesus Seminar state: “Whenever scholars detect detailed knowledge of postmortem events in sayings and parables attribute to Jesus, they are inclined to the view that the formulation of such sayings took place after the fact”. 5G, 25. E.g., Mk. 13:5-13 and Jesus’ detailed prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem is colored black.(5G, 109-110)

  29. JESUS SEMINAR ASSUMPTIONS: #1: A NATURALISTIC WORLD VIEW • God’s working in history supernaturally is locked out • The terms “real” and “historical” have been loaded with meaning that excludes the supernatural as part of “reality” or true “history” • Hence, if the “real” “historical” Jesus is supernatural and incarnational, the Jesus Seminar would be a priori unable to find him. • Problem: There are well documented contemporary works on the validity of being open to the supernatural. Hence this narrow worldview should be questioned from the start (see p. 8 note 56 of my paper).

  30. ASSUMPTION #2:THE CHRIST OF FAITH IS NOT THE JESUS OF HISTORY • Seminar Statements: • “The authors of traditional Christian faith are Peter and Paul” The Acts of Jesus, 534. • “The church appears to smother the historical Jesus by superimposing this heavenly figure on him in the creed: Jesus is displaced by the Christ, as the so-called Apostle’s Creed makes evident” 5G, 7

  31. Sage

  32. Jesus as God Jesus as the Son of God Jesus’ Resurrection Jesus’ Predictions of the Future Virgin Birth Supernatural Healing of Blind and Lame Calming of the Storm Miraculous Catching of Fish Transfiguration Walks On Water Sage

  33. Jesus as God Jesus as the Son of God Jesus’ Resurrection Jesus’ Predictions of the Future Virgin Birth Supernatural Healing of Blind and Lame Calming of the Storm Miraculous Catching of Fish Transfiguration Walks On Water Sage

  34. J S Rules for Finding Jesus’ Words:Find the creations of the Gospel writers and early Christians and delete them • Evangelists (the gospel writers) group sayings and parables in clusters and complexes that did not originate with Jesus. • E.g., the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 are said not to have been originally grouped by Jesus as they are now. Rather Matthew grouped them and created a setting for them (e.g., the Sermon on the Mount).

  35. J S RULES: FINDING GOSPEL WRITER’S CREATIONS • Evangelists relocate sayings and parables or invent new narrative contexts for them • E.g., Mark 2:23-28: Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Here the disciples are criticized about harvesting grain in the Sabbath. The Seminar believes that the criticism was originally directed toward Jesus and that only after Jesus’ death would his disciples be criticized. Hence the Mark puts this in a new context. • In addition, Mark has Jesus quote Scripture as a “proof text” to “legitimate” the belief that Jesus had authority over the Sabbath. J S says, “Jesus’ followers were inclined to adopt and adapt his words to their own needs.” (5G, 21)

  36. J S RULES: FINDING GOSPEL WRITER’S CREATIONS • Evang. expand sayings or parables or provide them with an interpretative overlay • Evang. revise or edit sayings to make them conform to their own individual language, style, or viewpoint • E.g., Mark 2:19-20 and the issue of fasting. • The groom’s friends can’t fast while the groom is present, can they? . . . But the days will come when the groom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” • This black addition “justifies the Christian renewal of the Jewish practice of fasting even though Jesus and his disciples did not fast” (5G, 22)

  37. J S Rules: Finding Gospel Writer’s Creations • Evangelists attribute their own statements to Jesus • E.g., Mark 1:15. Mark summarizes here “what he takes to be Jesus’ proclaimation” (5G, 23) The following is in Mark’s words, not Jesus’: “The time is up: God’s imperial rule is closing in. Change your ways, and put your trust in the good news.” For J S, Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet • Hard sayings are softened and adapted to daily living situations • E.g., Matt. 20:16, “The last will be first and the first last” is softened in Mark 10:31 to “Many of the first will be last, and of the last many will be first.”

  38. J S Rules: Finding Gospel Writer’s Creations • Words borrowed from common lore or Greek Scriptures are put on the lips of Jesus. He did not quote from the OT as that was put on his lips later by the Christians. So all quotes by Jesus of the OT are suspect. • E.g., Matt. 9:13 and Jesus’ quote of Hosea, “Go and learn what this means, ‘It’s mercy I desire instead of sacrifice’”. • Sayings and parables expressed in “Christian” language are the creation of the evang. or Christian predecessors • E.g., Mark 9:31 “The son of Adam is being turned over to his enemies, and they will end up killing him. And three days afterhe is killed he will rise!” reflects Paul’s oral Christian tradition stated in I Cor. 15:3-5, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and was buried, and rose up on the third day according to the scriptures”. The Mark saying thus originated with early Christians or Paul and not Jesus.

  39. J S Rules: Finding Gospel Writer’s Creations • The Christian community develops apologetic statements to defend its claims and sometimes attributes such statements to Jesus. The Christians made Jesus “affirm what they themselves had come to believe” (5G, 24) • E.g., Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ and Jesus says, You are to be congratulated, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven” • Sayings and narratives that reflect knowledge of events that took place after Jesus’ death are the creation of the evang. or oral tradition. • E.g., the little apocalypse of Mark 13:5-37 which reflects knowledge of the later Roman siege of Jerusalem in 66-70 AD.

  40. Results of the Assumption that the Christ of Faith is not the Historical Jesus: • Jesus could not have foretold things that happened after his death, so those words are axed • Anything that looks like the Christ of Faith and creed of the early church is removed • Anything on the lips of Jesus that would defend the early Christian belief is cut out • Anything that looks like an apologetic or view of the particular evang. is not authentic. • Anything supernatural about Jesus is removed • Jesus did not resurrect from the dead.

  41. The Implausibility of this Assumption • Without a resurrection showing Jesus’ power over death there is not a necessary and sufficient cause for the birth of Christianity • Paul’s early oral tradition testimony about Jesus resurrection contradicts this (I Cor. 15:3-5). Jesus is said to have resurrected and thus the Jesus of History is the Christ of Faith. • There is insufficient time for the embellishment of a Christ of Faith in only 25-30 years from his death to the writing of the gospels. Note the following statement by Craig:

  42. Implausibility Continued: • “. . . the temporal and geographical distance between the events and the accounts is insufficient to allow for such extensive development . . . even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of oral tradition” (Craig, Jesus Under Fire, 154, based on a study in classical historiography on the writings of Herodotus by A. N. Sherwin-White which tested the “tempo of myth-making”) • My personal experience with this view point in Julian Hills’ class, Marquette Univ. I could not divorce history from faith and be real. My faith would then indeed be an imaginative construct.

  43. Implausibility Continued: • Living eye-witnesses would have functioned as a strong control against the development of a Christ of Faith in contrast to a mere human Jesus of Nazareth. • A proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection would have fallen on deaf ears had it not happened because (1) the Jews believed in a resurrection at the end of history not the middle and (2) their belief in the resurrection was a “general” one involving all people not an “isolated individual”. • No evidence that the Apostles or the other followers of Jesus would have made the resurrection up. They were amazed and dumbfounded at it! • No evidence in early Christian lit. that the early church created the Christ of Faith. Rather they depended on eyewitnesses. (Richard Bauckman, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 293-297).

  44. Assumption #3:Jesus is a Laconic Sage, a Wise Ancient Near-East Teacher • “The Jesus of the gospels is an imaginative theological construct, into which has been woven traces of that enigmatic sage from Nazareth—traces that cry out for recognition and liberation from the firm grip of those whose faith overpowered their memories. The search for the authentic words of Jesus is a search for the forgotten Jesus” (5G, 4) • Thus, the search for the authentic words of Jesus is a search for the elements of Jesus the sage, which is presupposed to be the real Jesus.

  45. So to find Jesus, one searches for the Sage. He is: • Slow to speech • A person who does not provoke encounters • Self-effacing, modest, unostentatious, not vain glorious • Rules of the Jesus Seminar: 1. Jesus does not as a rule initiate dialogue or debate, nor does he offer to cure people (e.g., Mk. 12:35-36: “How can the scholars claim that the Anointed is the son of David?”) 2. Jesus rarely makes pronouncements or speaks about himself in the first person (i.e., the “I am” statements in John are black, e.g.,“I am the way, the truth, and . . .) 3. Jesus makes no claim to be the Anointed Messiah (Mk. 14:62 is black, “Are you the Anointed . . .”, Jesus replied, “I am! And you shall see the Son of Adam sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of the sky!”) (Scholars version, 5G, 122)

  46. Problems limiting Jesus to a Sage • Many scholars dispute this claim. Even Jesus’ Seminar members disagree among themselves (Crossan says he is a Cynic) • Jesus as a sage would not have been threatening to the Jews or the Romans. Thus no reason for him to be flogged or crucified (two events that the Jesus Seminar says are historical). • “. . . such a Jesus would never have been crucified, would never have drawn the fire that he did, would never have commanded the following that he did, and would never have created a movement that still shakes the world” (Scot McKnight, Jesus under Fire, 61) • One must ignore all the other claims in the Gospels (and outside the gospels) about Jesus and who he was.

  47. #4 FORM CRITICAL RULES OF ORAL TRANSMISSION • Rule 1: Oral memory best retains sayings and anecdotes that are short, provocative, memorable—and oft-repeated • Rule 2: The most frequently recorded words of Jesus in the surviving gospels take the form of aphorisms (terse, concise, and elegantly formulations of truths or sentiments) and parables • Rule 3: The earliest layer of the gospel tradition is made up of single aphorisms

  48. RESULTS OF THESE RULES The Seminar rejected the following words as authentic because “there is nothing aphoristic, or memorable, about the words” (5G, 121) “Have you come out to take me with swords and clubs as though you were apprehending a rebel? I was with you in the temple area day after day teaching and you didn’t lift a hand against me. But the scriptures must come true!” Mk. 14:48-49 (Scholars Version, 5G, 121)

  49. FURTHER ORAL TRANSMISSION ASSUMPTION • The Seminar sees early oral transmission of Jesus’ words as informal, uncontrolled, anonymous, non-individual but community derived, and without historical consciousness that would require them to “care about the distinction between the pre- and post-Easter Jesus” (i.e., there seems to be NO importance attached to the possibility of eyewitness control of the words of Jesus). (Bauckham, 245).This is in line with most radical form critics and their view of the fluidity and community of tradition (Bauckham, 241-252)

  50. STORY TELLER LISCENSE ASSUMPTION OF ORAL TRANS. • “We know that the evangelists not infrequently ascribed Christian words to Jesus—they made him talk like a Christian, when, in fact he was only the precursor of the movement that was to take him as its cultic hero . . . Story tellers in every age freely invent words for characters in their stories. This is the storyteller’s license . . . The evangelists functioned no differently than other storytellers . . .” (Emphasis mine, 5G, 29-30) • Really? Can you be so sure?

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