Rethinking Jesus -- Houston Chronicle 9/16/2000
Jon Volkoff
moved to their archives. But since accessing them requires a subscription
I don't have, this second-hand source will do instead.
Linkname: Rethinking Jesus [Free Republic]
URL: http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39c3689c06fd.htm
Original URL: http://www.chron.com/content/story.html/religion/668852
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Rethinking Jesus
Culture/Society News Keywords: RETHINKING JESUS
Source: The Houston Chronicle
Published: September 16, 2000 Author: Richard Vara
Posted on 09/16/2000 05:33:32 PDT by Illbay
JESUS Christ never said he was the son of God. He was not born of a
virgin. His "miracles" are fiction, and he never rose from the dead.
This iconoclastic version of Christ comes from the consensus of the
Jesus Seminar, a California-based organization of scholars that has
captured worldwide media attention and rocked the normally genteel
world of biblical scholarship. Their views have sparked angry
counterattacks from other Bible scholars who charge that the seminar
is a self-promoting group of mostly unknown scholars using dubious
research techniques to reach even more dubious conclusions about
Christ.
Houstonians will be able to judge for themselves starting Friday when
seminar scholars hold a two-day program at Rice University. Featured
speakers will be Robert W. Funk, who founded the Jesus Seminar in
1985, and Stephen J. Patterson, professor of New Testament at the
United Church of Christ's Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Mo.
With their colorful bead system of voting on what is authentic and
what is not in the life and sayings of Christ, the Jesus Seminar has
attracted worldwide attention during twice-a-year meetings at its base
in Santa Rosa, Calif.
"We had no idea we would be this successful," Funk said from his
California home. The national group, which has 75 scholars, annually
sponsors about 30 "Jesus Seminar on the Road" programs at college
campuses and churches. Funk says the seminars usually attract 50 to
200 people.
But he recently returned from speaking engagements in Australia where
one audience was about 2,000. His addresses attracted hundreds in a
spring tour in England. Funk and other well-known Jesus Seminar
scholars such as Marcus Borg, a professor of religion and culture at
Oregon State University, and John Dominic Crossan, a former religious
studies professor at DePaul University, have written several books
revealing the "real Jesus" uncovered by "modern scholarship."
The scholars use cross-disciplinary studies such as biblical
archaeology, cultural anthropology and other fields in their research.
Scholars can apply to join the seminar if they have a doctorate in
religion or an equivalent field and are able to work in biblical
languages such as Greek.
Funk, a former president of the respected Society of Biblical
Literature, and his fellow seminar scholars rely on "historical
criticism," a research method that seeks to determine actual events
and objective data for study. By determining actual facts,
historical-critical Bible scholars believe they can discern the real
events of the life of Christ and what may have been added by later
generations of believers.
As a result of the seminar's research, Funk confidently describes
Jesus as a "folk teacher, somebody who was predominantly oral. He may
not have been able to read or write; we don't know for sure.
"The kind of wisdom he represents in the stories he told and the
aphorisms he created really do not have any specific content to relate
them to the Temple in Jerusalem or to the Mosaic tradition but are
really in line with the secular wisdom in the modern world," said
Funk, an inactive member of the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ). "The wisdom applies to people at all times and places."
"He was not an abstract thinker," Funk said. "Jesus would not have
thought of generalizing by saying, `God is love.' He may have thought
it, but if he talked about God as love, he would have told a story --
he would not have made a generalization."
The seminar's Jesus was a "radical thinker."
"He thought people could have a direct relationship with God without
going through the priests at the Temple in Jerusalem, a radical
thought at the time," Funk said. Jesus was anti-patriarchal and
"sensitive to the poor and beggars."
Jesus was executed because "he was a liberator," Funk said. "He
liberated people from the religious, economic and political tyranny
that they were living under."
Study, debate
In determining what is true, the scholars study aspects of the life
and sayings of Christ, then debate the issues. They vote using colored
beads.
A red bead means Jesus undoubtedly said the statement in question or
something similar; pink, that Jesus probably said something like it;
gray, Jesus didn't say it, but the ideas contained are close to his
own; and black, Jesus did not say it and the statement was a later
addition.
By this method, the scholars have voted that Christ never said he was
divine.
"Just about everyone in the historical-critical scholarship world
thinks Jesus did not say those things in the Gospel of John where
Jesus makes direct claims about himself," Patterson said. The real
Jesus was a humble, self-effacing leader, Patterson said.
"But Jesus doesn't have to claim to be divine for people to see God in
him or to claim to know God decisively in him," Patterson said.
The seminar members also voted against any statements attributed to
Jesus that the kingdom of God was coming soon and that he would
return. Those statements came from later Christians as well, they
argue.
Funk, as well as Jesus Seminar scholars, dismisses the virgin birth as
a myth. "It was created to put Jesus with the other heroes of the
ancient world, all of whom had miraculous births; it is all that
simple," he said.
Likewise, they believe some of the miracles attributed to Jesus were
invented to make him the equivalent of ancient heroic figures.
"Being able to feed the multitudes in the wilderness makes him the
equivalent of Moses, who did the same thing," Funk said. "Being able
to walk on water made him the equivalent of Poseidon, the Greek god
who did that."
Angry reactions
The image of Jesus offered by Funk, Patterson and company has sparked
some angry reactions from other scholars.
"I think the (Jesus Seminar) is a self-promoting scam by a small
number of people headed by Robert Funk," said Lawrence S. Cunningham,
professor of theology at Notre Dame University.
"I don't take them seriously, and I don't think a lot of scholars take
them seriously," said Timothy George, dean of the Beeson Divinity
School of Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. "What they are really
good at is publicity, and this `road show' is an example of that."
The seminar has been critically attacked by other scholars including
Luke Timothy Johnson, who issued his criticisms in a book, The Real
Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of
the Traditional Gospels (Harper San Francisco, $13).
Johnson is professor of New Testament at the Candler School of
Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. Johnson stated that the
seminar represents only a small fraction of New Testament scholars
nationally and that only a few such as Funk, Borg and Crossan are
readily known.
Many world-class Bible scholars such as the late Raymond Brown,
professor of biblical studies at Union Theological Seminary in New
York, John Meier of Notre Dame, Richard B. Hays of Duke Divinity
School and N.T. Wright of England have concluded from their studies
that the traditional views of Christ as the man-god who spoke of God
and the pending kingdom are trustworthy.
Critics of the seminar say its scholars dismiss much of the New
Testament, including the Acts of the Apostles, many of the Apostle
Paul's letters and even the Gospel of John.
Johnson, in his book, argues that while historical criticism is valid,
the Gospels offer too little empirical historical data to support the
conclusions made by the Jesus Seminar.
Moreover, critics accuse the seminar of reconfiguring Jesus to become
a 21st-century politically correct leader opposed to religious
authority and institutions like the church.
George said the Jesus Seminar scholars do not provide a historical
Jesus but only sundry impressions of him. "There is the advice-giver,
Dear Abby kind of Jesus; then there is the wandering cynic-sage who
goes around making odd, queer statements.
"What they are doing is re-creating Jesus in their own image," George
said.
Cunningham said the Jesus reconstructed by seminar scholars is not a
person worth listening to or following.
"Why are we wasting our time?" Cunningham said. "Who would devote
their lives to the poor, sick and the afflicted based on the
reconstruction of a bunch of bourgeois scholars on the West Coast?"
George, Cunningham and others said the Jesus of the seminar offers
nothing new. Debates over the centuries have produced similar views of
Christ, especially after the 19th-century Enlightenment.
"This is warmed over 19th-century Protestant liberalism these guys are
peddling," Cunningham said. Denominations where the liberal model of
Christ has taken root are in decline, Cunningham said. The Episcopal
Church, the United Methodist Church and other mainline churches have
experienced drops in membership or turmoil as conservative ministers
and congregations battle for traditional interpretations of
Scriptures.
Funk contends that the decline in the mainline churches is because
many Christians can no longer accept fantasy stories. "That sort of
traditional Christian affirmations that include the bodily
resurrection belong to another cultural age," Funk said. "They are not
credible any longer."
Spinto
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