new from the Jesus Seminarnew from the Jesus Seminar
Robert B. Tapp
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he latest book from the Seminar came out in time for Easter-Passover:
Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for
the Authentic Deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, $35.00. A must
for liberal religionists and humanists of varied persuasions.
As most of you know, 200+ leading New Testament scholars have been
gathering annually for several years to vote on the relative
authenticity of Jesus’ reported words and deeds. This report argues that
only 16% of the alleged elements in his life can pass historical muster.
Matters like a special birth, miracles, founding a religion, a physical
resurrection are relegated to ancient invention and interpretation.
Anyone who has been to a decent seminary in the past 50 years would know
this, but the public has seldom been let in on such dreadful secrets.
Why should this concern us? For one thing, it exemplifies the use of
reason in historical inquiry. While most of these screenings can be
found in individual scholars of the last century and a half, there has
never before been this kind of collective (and highly public) honesty.
So much for postmodern sneers that history is simply individual opinion,
where each opinion carries equal value.
More importantly, many in our circles may have de-divinized Jesus but
are still cherishing romantic illusions about what he may have said or
done. Such illusions can prevent an honest assessment of the actual
record of Christian centuries and the revolutionary impact of the
Enlightenment. A closer look at the role of human imagination,
creativity, and wishful-thinking in the period of Gospel legend-
formation should serve as a cautionary lesson to those among us still
tempted to think that god/goddess creation is salutary. In fact, it was
seldom even harmless in early Christian history—and that was a time of
primitive science when such projections were more understandable. In our
time, the consequences are usually baleful.
In short, the historical Jesus is not the model that most Christians
have believed, and even the “humanized” Jesus that many liberals and
humanists would like to claim turns out to be so sketchily known that
one is reminded of Schweitzer’s dictum that whenever we try to bring him
into our time, he recedes back into his own.
So, buy the book as one of the most available examples of reasoned
historical inference, and as a caution against taking Jesus’ name in
vain.
Robert B. Tapp
Dean, The Humanist Institute
David R. Burwasser
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On Sun 19Apr98, Robert B. Tapp, Dean of The Humanist Institute, wrote:
> A closer look at the role of human imagination, creativity, and
> wishful-thinking in the period of Gospel legend-formation should serve
> as a cautionary lesson to those among us still tempted to think that
> god/goddess creation is salutary.
A sad injection of the classical logical fallacy of Poisoning the Well,
aka Guilt by Association, into an otherwise informative posting.
There is no evidence of the baleful effects of god/goddess creation as a
general phenomenon, in the ill effects in one stream of tradition. Trying
to read one in speciously, is an affront to the integrity of the Jesus
Seminar. There were plenty of baleful forces in play, and to try to isol-
ate this one is like saying history is all economics or all psychology
(or, for that matter, all theology).
Robert, it has come to my attention that some scholars are getting revis-
ionist about the Inquisition, saying it wasn't real so bad, that torture
was used "sparingly" (I'm sure the people who say this have never tried
any), etc. I think your movement and mine have common ground in addressing
that kind of holocaust denial, and could better invest energy there than
in petty Humanist Pagan-sniping.
Blessed be,
Dave Burwasser
Tom Tadfor Little
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Robert Tapp wrote:
>he latest book from the Seminar came out in time for Easter-Passover:
>Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for
>the Authentic Deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, $35.00. A must
>for liberal religionists and humanists of varied persuasions.
Thanks for the news! I've been anticipating this book for some time.
>
>Why should this concern us? For one thing, it exemplifies the use of
>reason in historical inquiry. While most of these screenings can be
>found in individual scholars of the last century and a half, there has
>never before been this kind of collective (and highly public) honesty.
>So much for postmodern sneers that history is simply individual opinion,
>where each opinion carries equal value.
You seem to be the one sneering at the moment! ;)
Seriously, though, my understanding of the postmodernist position is not
that history is a matter of individual opinion, but rather that it is a
matter of cultural convention and political agenda. Groups of people set up
criteria for what consitutes historical truth, and the application of those
criteria typically results in a view of history that endorses the supremacy
of the group who make up the criteria. Rather than refuting that idea, I
think the work of the Jesus Seminar stands as a classic example of it.
Beginning with the assumption that historical truth is to be found in the
few bits and pieces of his story that do not bear any taint of redaction by
the early Christians--or any taint of the miraculous, which modern humanism
rejects as impossible, the Jesus Seminar find (naturally) a Jesus who
inspired by his witty words, rather than by exuding divinity. The findings,
then, validate the nonreligious worldview that was presupposed in the
research, relegating those who see divinity in Jesus to delusion or, as you
imply, dishonesty.
>
>A closer look at the role of human imagination,
>creativity, and wishful-thinking in the period of Gospel legend-
>formation should serve as a cautionary lesson to those among us still
>tempted to think that god/goddess creation is salutary. In fact, it was
>seldom even harmless in early Christian history and that was a time of
>primitive science when such projections were more understandable. In our
>time, the consequences are usually baleful.
With statements like this in the air, who can doubt the postmodernist view
that, with meaning being defined by use, "objective truth" is simply a
political weapon?
By what criteria do you judge that seeing Jesus as divine was harmful, and
seeing him as human was beneficial? Is there evidence, for example, that
the Ebionites were happier, more successful, or more humane than the
Paulists? I expect that all such judgments are colored by preconceptions
about which approach constitutes "good" religion, and which "bad".
If Jesus had not been seen as divine, we would not be here discussing this
today. Christianity would not exist, and his name would be completely
forgotten. Would the world have been a better or worse place if that had
happened? Who can say? Even if we could run the last 2000 years over and
make the comparison, we would probably disagree on how to decide which was
better.
I appreciate the Jesus Seminar's work. I think they do a respectable job of
looking at Jesus from within the context of the modernist worldview, which
is certainly an informative and interesting exercise. But I think it quite
misses the point if we're interested in the religious meaning of Jesus (and
what other meaning of him has anything more than academic relevance?). The
religious meaning of Jesus is to be found in Jesus as he was known to those
who chose to make him central to their religious life, such as the writers
of the early Christian scriptures. That Jesus was a cultural construction
of Christianity, just as the Jesus Seminar's Jesus is a cultural
construction of modernism. Whether you are Christian or not, it seems that
the former is a lot more significant than the latter.
Regards, Tom.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Tadfor Little te...@Rt66.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA)
Telperion Productions http://www.rt66.com/~telp/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Om Asato Maa Sadgamaya Tamaso Maa Jyotir Gamaya
David R. Burwasser
--- Forwarded from mailing list. Reply to uu...@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ---
Tom:
While I agree with most of your response to Robert -- and acknowledge its
higher quality in breadth vs my response, which was quite particular -- I
must take issue with some of your points.
On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Tom Tadfor Little wrote:
> Beginning with the assumption that historical truth is to be found in
> the few bits and pieces of his story that do not bear any taint of
> redaction by the early Christians--or any taint of the miraculous, which
> modern humanism rejects as impossible, the Jesus Seminar find
> (naturally) a Jesus who inspired by his witty words, rather than by
> exuding divinity. The findings, then, validate the nonreligious
> worldview that was presupposed in the research, relegating those who see
> divinity in Jesus to delusion or, as you imply, dishonesty.
My understanding of the Jesus Seminar is that it is looking for words
reliably attributed to Jesus, and simply not concerning itself with the
miraculous. An article in the UU WORLD suggests that the outlook of the
Seminar is Unitarian in theology -- looking at Jesus as a man, not as
divine (or any more so than you or I) -- but that is certainly a religious
view of Jesus, not merely a modernist or rationalist one. Within the
tradition of the Prophets it is not necessary to attribute divinity to
Jesus to attribute the miraculous to him.
Perforce, the Seminar assumes implicitly that there was such a man histor-
ically -- one must have a speaker to attribute reliability to his quotes.
This is a leap of faith that quite a few moderns are unwilling to make.
I believe Robert's reference to dishonesty was not relative to those who
see divinity in Jesus but those who, having learnt this kind of material
and method in seminary, leave it behind and preach the Literal Word of God
once they get into their pulpits. From a postmodern perspective I have no
problem with clergy who shift theological gears between the minster's
study and the pulpit, but I have a *big* problem with those who do not let
the "flock" in on the possibility of more than the latter gear. If only
for very practical, partisan purposes, if mainstream congregations for the
last 50 years had been hearing of these different frames of reference, the
Radical Religious Right would stand out very starkly as the panicked
millenniarists they actually are, and those mainstreamers would not be
nearly so slow to smack down the RRR for presumptuously claiming to speak
for all Christendom.
> I appreciate the Jesus Seminar's work. I think they do a respectable job
> of looking at Jesus from within the context of the modernist worldview,
> which is certainly an informative and interesting exercise. But I think
> it quite misses the point if we're interested in the religious meaning
> of Jesus (and what other meaning of him has anything more than academic
> relevance?).
I fail to see how application of the best scholarly tools to sort out the
reliability of sayings attributed to Jesus, can fail to touch the religi-
ous meaning of Jesus. If the core texts and the redacted texts do not
conflict, this might be properly called an academic exercise. But where
they do conflict, a difference is created between those who find they have
been following a Christianity rooted in Christ and those following a
Christianity rooted in early Christians. The latter may properly be seen
as having entered a religious crisis. Far be it from us to deny it to
them; some of these chickens have been waiting almost 2,000 years to come
home to roost.
> The religious meaning of Jesus is to be found in Jesus as he was known
> to those who chose to make him central to their religious life, such as
> the writers of the early Christian scriptures.
"Such as" here stretches over a bit of a gulf. Out of a community number-
ing in the hundreds at least, the writers of the early Christian scrip-
tures might have fit comfortably into one transcontinental bus. It can be
seriously questioned if any of them were eyewitnesses, and at least one of
them was a know bureaucrat and spinmeister. Surely they were inspired by
the total community, but did they represent it?
> That Jesus was a cultural construction of Christianity, just as the
> Jesus Seminar's Jesus is a cultural construction of modernism. Whether
> you are Christian or not, it seems that the former is a lot more
> significant than the latter.
Certainly the former has been the more significant in the years that are
now history between Jesus' ministry and the present. Which construction is
more significant henceforth will depend on the level of honesty, as Robert
uses the word, of mainline Christian clergy.
Dave B.
Tom Tadfor Little
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>While I agree with most of your response to Robert -- and acknowledge its
>higher quality in breadth vs my response, which was quite particular -- I
>must take issue with some of your points.
Okey doke. I expect worse flames to follow, so I'll take this opportunity
to get in practice. ;)
>My understanding of the Jesus Seminar is that it is looking for words
>reliably attributed to Jesus, and simply not concerning itself with the
>miraculous.
The problem is that the impossibility of miracles is rather frequently used
as a criterion in separating the historical Jesus from the Christ of Faith.
The gospels depict a Jesus who anticipates the crucifixion, resurrection,
and destruction of Jerusalem, for example. JS discounts the authenticity of
these passages, not for text-critical reasons, but because "Jesus could not
have known that..."
I don't in the least fault them for doing this; but their reason for doing
so is an implicit acceptance of the modernist worldview and an implicit
rejection of the miraculous worldview. For someone who believes in an
omniscient God who entered the world as Jesus, the JS reasoning will
certainly appear circular.
>
>I believe Robert's reference to dishonesty was not relative to those who
>see divinity in Jesus but those who, having learnt this kind of material
>and method in seminary, leave it behind and preach the Literal Word of God
>once they get into their pulpits. From a postmodern perspective I have no
>problem with clergy who shift theological gears between the minster's
>study and the pulpit, but I have a *big* problem with those who do not let
>the "flock" in on the possibility of more than the latter gear.
Well said. But would Trapp (or you) attribute dishonesty to humanist
academics who teach college courses on the Bible or comparative religion
and do not let the class in on the possibility of Christianity being God's
revealed religion?
>If only
>for very practical, partisan purposes, if mainstream congregations for the
>last 50 years had been hearing of these different frames of reference, the
>Radical Religious Right would stand out very starkly as the panicked
>millenniarists they actually are, and those mainstreamers would not be
>nearly so slow to smack down the RRR for presumptuously claiming to speak
>for all Christendom.
Amen!
>
>> I appreciate the Jesus Seminar's work. I think they do a respectable job
>> of looking at Jesus from within the context of the modernist worldview,
>> which is certainly an informative and interesting exercise. But I think
>> it quite misses the point if we're interested in the religious meaning
>> of Jesus (and what other meaning of him has anything more than academic
>> relevance?).
>
>I fail to see how application of the best scholarly tools to sort out the
>reliability of sayings attributed to Jesus, can fail to touch the religi-
>ous meaning of Jesus. If the core texts and the redacted texts do not
>conflict, this might be properly called an academic exercise. But where
>they do conflict, a difference is created between those who find they have
>been following a Christianity rooted in Christ and those following a
>Christianity rooted in early Christians. The latter may properly be seen
>as having entered a religious crisis. Far be it from us to deny it to
>them; some of these chickens have been waiting almost 2,000 years to come
>home to roost.
I guess I see Jesus as *primarily* a cultural construction of the early
Christian community, based in part on what we now call "the historical
Jesus". Some time back, Doug Muder made an analogy with King Arthur. King
Arthur *is* the legend, regardless of whether or not parts of the legend
have historical precursors. If we discover that the "historical Arthur" was
a completely unremarkable Saxon warlord or Roman general, do we then
rewrite Malory and say "here is the real story, use this instead"? No, the
historical reconstruction will be of interest to scholars, and will make
only a minor perturbation in the cultural understanding of the legend.
Of course, as you note, there is a problem here for those many who believe
that the Jesus of the gospels *is* the historical Jesus, and take that
belief as important or even crucial. But this is just the familiar problem
of being a religious person in a modernist culture. A few people who have a
deep intellectual commitment to pulling the rival worldviews together in
some coherent way may make good use of the Jesus Seminar work. But the
Jesus who loomed over western culture for nearly twenty centuries is the
Jesus of the gospels, and he's the one we have to come to terms with in our
various relationships with Christianity.
>
>> The religious meaning of Jesus is to be found in Jesus as he was known
>> to those who chose to make him central to their religious life, such as
>> the writers of the early Christian scriptures.
>
>"Such as" here stretches over a bit of a gulf. Out of a community number-
>ing in the hundreds at least, the writers of the early Christian scrip-
>tures might have fit comfortably into one transcontinental bus. It can be
>seriously questioned if any of them were eyewitnesses, and at least one of
>them was a know bureaucrat and spinmeister. Surely they were inspired by
>the total community, but did they represent it?
It doesn't matter. Did Malory represent his English readers? His French
sources? The Arthur of history? The writers of the gospels defined Jesus
for the subsequent centuries. Some other people might have delivered us a
different Jesus, but they didn't. Historical Jesus research might succeed
in shifting the center of gravity of our images of Jesus back toward an
Arian or Unitarian view. If so, then perhaps future generations will be
reconstructing us. What will there reaction be? "Wow! We've been reading
the gospel according to Funk in our churches for generations; but now we
discover that we have original documents from two generations after Jesus,
so let's go back to them, instead of using this weird 20th-century
redaction that reflects the modernist anxiety over "historicity" and
"objectivity" instead of the real message of Jesus!"
I do think the historical reconstruction will be quite useful to a number
of people as a kind of counterpoint in contemplating the image of Jesus.
But I don't think the Jesus of historical reconstruction inspired a world
religion; the Jesus who did that was the Jesus of Paul and the evangelists.
>
>> That Jesus was a cultural construction of Christianity, just as the
>> Jesus Seminar's Jesus is a cultural construction of modernism. Whether
>> you are Christian or not, it seems that the former is a lot more
>> significant than the latter.
>
>Certainly the former has been the more significant in the years that are
>now history between Jesus' ministry and the present. Which construction is
>more significant henceforth will depend on the level of honesty, as Robert
>uses the word, of mainline Christian clergy.
One can be honest to history, or honest to the myth. Joseph Campbell would
remind us that the latter option may represent a deeper truth. I tend to
think that the historical reconstruction simply could not ever have the
signficance of the myth, because it touches nothing particularly deep in
human religious life. So what if some guy 2000 years ago spouted
deliciously clever social wisdom and pissed of the political authorities?
Why should anyone but an obsessive historian care? The culture has already
consigned thousands of such individuals to oblivion. To the extent that the
historical image of Jesus supplants the mythic one, the significance of
Jesus himself will evaporate.
I think there is some virtue is using the history to inform and enrich the
myth. But using history to usurp the myth (which seems to be Funk's agenda)
seems quite ironic. If it succeeds, it becomes an irrelevant project!
People are fascinated by the Jesus Seminar's results. Why? Because of the
aura of importance surrounding Jesus. Why is that aura there? Because of
the myth!
David R. Burwasser
--- Forwarded from mailing list. Reply to uu...@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ---
On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Tom Tadfor Little wrote:
> The problem is that the impossibility of miracles is rather frequently
> used as a criterion in separating the historical Jesus from the Christ
> of Faith. The gospels depict a Jesus who anticipates the crucifixion,
> resurrection, and destruction of Jerusalem, for example. JS discounts
> the authenticity of these passages, not for text-critical reasons, but
> because "Jesus could not have known that..."
OK, touche. If they used it as a text-sieve criterion, they built their
world-view into their Jesus in detail. Perhaps the re-reconstructionists
you project for the future will re-introduce miraculism (is that a word?
oh, well, now it is) and have another go at it.
> I don't in the least fault them for doing this; but their reason for
> doing so is an implicit acceptance of the modernist worldview and an
> implicit rejection of the miraculous worldview. For someone who believes
> in an omniscient God who entered the world as Jesus, the JS reasoning
> will certainly appear circular.
But not irreligious. After all the "Bible is the Word of God because it
says so in the Bible" circularity is fundamental to Western culture.
> But would Trapp (or you) attribute dishonesty to humanist academics who
> teach college courses on the Bible or comparative religion and do not
> let the class in on the possibility of Christianity being God's revealed
> religion?
Hardly a critical omission; it is an assumption of the cultural back-
ground, and even student from, eg, Hindu culture will have heard of it.
Humanist academics who disparage Paganism or Goddess spirituality without
knowing what they are talking about -- or, worse, *with* knowing what they
are talking about -- I would (and, in the instance, do) classify as highly
dishonest. They are collaborating in a slur with a background culture to
which on other issues they take deep exception.
> >I fail to see how application of the best scholarly tools to sort out the
> >reliability of sayings attributed to Jesus, can fail to touch the religi-
> >ous meaning of Jesus. If the core texts and the redacted texts do not
> >conflict, this might be properly called an academic exercise. But where
> >they do conflict, a difference is created between those who find they have
> >been following a Christianity rooted in Christ and those following a
> >Christianity rooted in early Christians. The latter may properly be seen
> >as having entered a religious crisis. Far be it from us to deny it to
> >them; some of these chickens have been waiting almost 2,000 years to come
> >home to roost.
>
> I guess I see Jesus as *primarily* a cultural construction of the early
> Christian community, based in part on what we now call "the historical
> Jesus". Some time back, Doug Muder made an analogy with King Arthur. King
> Arthur *is* the legend, regardless of whether or not parts of the legend
> have historical precursors. If we discover that the "historical Arthur" was
> a completely unremarkable Saxon warlord or Roman general, do we then
> rewrite Malory and say "here is the real story, use this instead"? No, the
> historical reconstruction will be of interest to scholars, and will make
> only a minor perturbation in the cultural understanding of the legend.
But, apart from a few SCAers, nobody makes King Arthur the center of their
spiritual life. Everyone acknowledges Arthur to be a myth of the Britons
in the basic sense -- embodying the virtues and flaws of British character
and culture in a story whose truth is much larger than its factual
content.
To draw another analogy, there are plenty of atheistic Jews who would not
give you a rap for the literal factuality of the Hebrew Bible, but still
observe the holidays and even the major dietary laws out of solidarity
with their people and in a conscious effort to extend the remarkable
durability of that people one more generation.
At the core of Christianity is something different -- an insistence that
the myth *is also fact.* This produces a terrible vulnerability, and lipid
smoke has risen from hundreds of thousands of stakes as the last trace of
human beings caught in the middle of that vulnerability.
> Of course, as you note, there is a problem here for those many who
> believe that the Jesus of the gospels *is* the historical Jesus, and
> take that belief as important or even crucial. But this is just the
> familiar problem of being a religious person in a modernist culture.
No. It is a unique fetish of Christianity that the myth must also be the
historical truth.
> A few people who have a deep intellectual commitment to pulling the
> rival worldviews together in some coherent way may make good use of the
> Jesus Seminar work. But the Jesus who loomed over western culture for
> nearly twenty centuries is the Jesus of the gospels, and he's the one we
> have to come to terms with in our various relationships with
> Christianity.
You are supposing that this was the same Jesus for twenty centuries.
You're giving far too much away! The Jesus of the martyrs who got fed to
the lions was *not* the Jesus whose cross decorated the shields of the
Crusaders!
> >Out of a community number-
> >ing in the hundreds at least, the writers of the early Christian scrip-
> >tures might have fit comfortably into one transcontinental bus. It can be
> >seriously questioned if any of them were eyewitnesses, and at least one of
> >them was a know bureaucrat and spinmeister. Surely they were inspired by
> >the total community, but did they represent it?
>
> It doesn't matter. Did Malory represent his English readers? His French
> sources?
IIRC the French stuff came afterward -- court of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
> The Arthur of history?
Of course not. He was only found in this century.
> The writers of the gospels defined Jesus for the subsequent centuries.
Again, you give far too much away. Everyone from Augustine to Swedenborg
to Joseph Smith to Mary Baker Eddy tweaked Jesus for their own sectarian
purposes. The writers of the gospels did not give us a complete picture as
much as a broad sketch whose details others have filled in over the
centuries.
> Some other people might have delivered us a different Jesus, but they
> didn't.
As I'm interrupting you every other line to demonstrate, they *did.*
OK, Tom, how serious is this? Are you as completely captive to Gospel
historicity as you seem to be? Or have you just not run your mind down
this path before?
> Historical Jesus research might succeed in shifting the center of
> gravity of our images of Jesus back toward an Arian or Unitarian view.
Which you cite for the purpose of dismissing it? JESUS! (to coin a
phrase). I've had clergy of mainstream faiths quietly assure me that their
churches are becoming Unitarian in all but name, a process they hope not
to live to seen completed but anticipate firmly.
> If so, then perhaps future generations will be reconstructing us. What
> will there reaction be? "Wow! We've been reading the gospel according to
> Funk in our churches for generations; but now we discover that we have
> original documents from two generations after Jesus, so let's go back to
> them, instead of using this weird 20th-century redaction that reflects
> the modernist anxiety over "historicity" and "objectivity" instead of
> the real message of Jesus!"
The "gospel according to Funk" has no meaning without the parallel preser-
vation of the other five gospels, so that particular rediscovery cannot
happen. Of course, some reconstruction will take place. Once the last
Humanists disciple of James Randi is dead, and science has been allowed to
investigate paranormal phenomena with the same respect for context that
quantum mechanics was granted, and the possibility of foreseeing events
is acknowledged, someone will recapitulate the JS with the possibility of
"miraculous" foreknowledged left intact, and we will see a new paradigm
emerge. (Well, *we* won't see it, but you know what I mean.) It will even
be hailed as a "final" synthesis of religion, dogmatic 20th century near-
science, and the true science of the [Name] age where [Name] is whoever
integrates dousing, hands-on healing and Tarot reading with quantum
mechanics and general relativity at least as well as the latter two are
already integrated <smirk>.
> I do think the historical reconstruction will be quite useful to a
> number of people as a kind of counterpoint in contemplating the image of
> Jesus. But I don't think the Jesus of historical reconstruction
> inspired a world religion; the Jesus who did that was the Jesus of Paul
> and the evangelists.
No less than the Jesus of Pope Urban and the Crusaders.
> One can be honest to history, or honest to the myth. Joseph Campbell
> would remind us that the latter option may represent a deeper truth. I
> tend to think that the historical reconstruction simply could not ever
> have the signficance of the myth, because it touches nothing
> particularly deep in human religious life. So what if some guy 2000
> years ago spouted deliciously clever social wisdom and pissed of the
> political authorities? Why should anyone but an obsessive historian
> care? The culture has already consigned thousands of such individuals to
> oblivion. To the extent that the historical image of Jesus supplants the
> mythic one, the significance of Jesus himself will evaporate.
So? Run into any Mithra-ists lately?
It is not an historical inevitability that Christianity will be a dominant
thread in human religion forever. (Maybe this is where you and I part
company.) The fat little female figurine found at Willendorf was probably
venerated five times as long as Jesus has been, and where is she now? In a
museum, plus in the personal iconography of a few wierdo's like me.
> I think there is some virtue is using the history to inform and enrich
> the myth. But using history to usurp the myth (which seems to be Funk's
> agenda) seems quite ironic. If it succeeds, it becomes an irrelevant
> project! People are fascinated by the Jesus Seminar's results. Why?
> Because of the aura of importance surrounding Jesus. Why is that aura
> there? Because of the myth!
Again: So? The myth does not have an eternal copyright. It will last as
long as it is a "true myth" -- ie, as long as the truth it embodies is
larger than its factual content. This particular myth is terribly fragile
inasmuch as its primary conveyors insist that the truth it embodies *is*
its factual content. That, I will grant, has been the overarching asser-
tion of twenty centuries.
To paraphrase myself supra: Run into any Ptolemaic astronomers lately?
Actually, I suspect the myth of Jesus will outlast the historicity of
Jesus, but in nowhere near the command role it has held heretofore. This
is the most religious country of the Western world, and more than half the
people don't go to church; they believe in God, but they don't go to
church. Over in Western Europe the belief level is abysmal and the
churches are hollow, state-run museums. There's plenty of room for some
sorting-out before this show is over.
(If they offer you a chance to write a message to the Christians of 2100
in a time capsule, I suggest you compose it in New World Spanish.)
Blessed be,
Dave Burwasser
Sherna Comerford
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Dave Burwasser said:
...
>But, apart from a few SCAers, nobody makes King Arthur the center of their
>spiritual life.
Just for the record, and in no way relevant to this discussion; unless
they changed things considerably since I was active, the SCA specifically
refrains from replaying myths, and tries for as much historical authenticity
as is convenient. Which is to say, no SCAers (in the course of doing
SCA stuff) makes King Arthur the center of their spiritual life.
...
>No. It is a unique fetish of Christianity that the myth must also be the
>historical truth.
Not unique, I think. Don't the Moslems do it too?
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Tom Tadfor Little
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>
>But, apart from a few SCAers, nobody makes King Arthur the center of their
>spiritual life. Everyone acknowledges Arthur to be a myth of the Britons
>in the basic sense -- embodying the virtues and flaws of British character
>and culture in a story whose truth is much larger than its factual
>content.
One could argue that the legend had a large affect on many generations of
Britons: their view of royalty, virtue, heroism, and so on. I'm suggesting
that the myth of Jesus, although more intensely institutionalized,
literalized, and magnified, basically operated in this same manner; and
continues to so operate--by virtue of our cultural inheritance if nothing
else.
>At the core of Christianity is something different -- an insistence that
>the myth *is also fact.* This produces a terrible vulnerability, and lipid
>smoke has risen from hundreds of thousands of stakes as the last trace of
>human beings caught in the middle of that vulnerability.
I do agree. Of course some Christians are now moving away from this
insistence (and some early Christians apparently never had it), but it
remains one of the most problematic aspects of the religion.
>
>You are supposing that this was the same Jesus for twenty centuries.
>You're giving far too much away! The Jesus of the martyrs who got fed to
>the lions was *not* the Jesus whose cross decorated the shields of the
>Crusaders!
<snip> Everyone from Augustine to Swedenborg
>to Joseph Smith to Mary Baker Eddy tweaked Jesus for their own sectarian
>purposes. The writers of the gospels did not give us a complete picture as
>much as a broad sketch whose details others have filled in over the
>centuries.
Conceded, of course. But the New Testament scriptures define the parameters
within which orthodox images of Jesus must live. Those images are not
identical, but they have a lot in common...more with each other than any of
them do with 20th century historical Jesus.
>
>> Some other people might have delivered us a different Jesus, but they
>> didn't.
>
>As I'm interrupting you every other line to demonstrate, they *did.*
>
>OK, Tom, how serious is this? Are you as completely captive to Gospel
>historicity as you seem to be? Or have you just not run your mind down
>this path before?
I'm just saying that orthodox Christian images of Jesus have always been
framed with reference to the gospel accounts. They constitute the basic
telling of the myth. Of course the story shifts in emphasis and
interpretation with the shifting agendas of the times, but it is still
recognizably the same story.
>
>> I do think the historical reconstruction will be quite useful to a
>> number of people as a kind of counterpoint in contemplating the image of
>> Jesus. But I don't think the Jesus of historical reconstruction
>> inspired a world religion; the Jesus who did that was the Jesus of Paul
>> and the evangelists.
>
>No less than the Jesus of Pope Urban and the Crusaders.
I think you have to accord some primacy to the scriptures in defining Jesus
for Christians. William Ellery Channing couldn't have cared less about how
the Crusaders understood Jesus, but he took his Bible quite seriously. This
is certainly typical of protestantism, and pre-reformation theologians
certainly did the same.
>It is not an historical inevitability that Christianity will be a dominant
>thread in human religion forever.
I had no intention at all of implying that. I'm only saying that its
interest to us lies predominantly in the fact that it has been and is a
powerful world religion. If it ceases to be so, then study of it retreats
into academic obscurity.
>
>Actually, I suspect the myth of Jesus will outlast the historicity of
>Jesus, but in nowhere near the command role it has held heretofore. This
>is the most religious country of the Western world, and more than half the
>people don't go to church; they believe in God, but they don't go to
>church. Over in Western Europe the belief level is abysmal and the
>churches are hollow, state-run museums. There's plenty of room for some
>sorting-out before this show is over.
I agree.
Perhaps I should sum up a bit; I may have given a few wrong impressions. I
think our Jesus image will continue to shift and adapt, and that
popularizing historical Jesus research will have some effect on that
process. However, I see many non-Christians with (IMO) shallow and
unrealistic expectations about the capacity of historical reconstruction to
"explain" Jesus and find the "truth" about him--as if one is not obliged to
consider the myth once one has the facts. But the myth, IMO, is "where the
action is". To understand the religious importance of Jesus, one must
understand the importance of the *image of Jesus* in the minds and lives of
Christians. The gospels are a good place to start, as the church has
realized for centuries. Understanding the historical facts of Jesus's
ministry is a further source of information, perhaps enriching, but not
fully explanatory in itself. Some people want to think that the "authentic
words of Jesus" are "the real Christianity", but I think that is an
anachronism and a failure to understand what really drives religion generally.