Started by Robert Funk in 1985, the Jesus Seminar is a small group of scholars who meet twice a year to discuss and debate the historical Jesus. Sounds harmless, right? Not so. The Jesus Seminar, a small group of fringe scholars who doubt the historicity of the biblical Gospels and accept the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas as reliable, has polluted the media. Even though the mainstream of scholarship rejects them and their findings, they claim to stand for modern biblical scholarship, and the media buys it. Many people who know almost nothing about biblical scholarship accept the Seminar's findings as real scholarship, and many people have been led astray.
So, who is this group of scholars that calls itself the Jesus Seminar? Their major work, The Five Gospels, lists seventy-four "fellows" of the Seminar. When compared to the Society of Biblical Literature (composed of 6,900 members, at least half of which are scholars), the Jesus Seminar is almost insignificant. The Seminar is not affiliated with either of the two major international associations for New Testament Scholars, the Society of Biblical Literature and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.
To quote from Craig Blomberg's essay "Where do we start studying Jesus?" in Jesus Under Fire, a collection of scholarly essays on the historical Jesus edited by J. P. Moreland and Michael J. Wilkins:
Of the seventy-four "Fellows" of the Seminar, as they are called, about fourteen of them are among the leading names in the field of historical Jesus scholarship today (e.g., John Dominic Crossan of DePaul University and Marcus Borg of Oregon State University). Roughly another twenty names are recognizable to New Testament scholars who keep abreast of their field, even if they are not as widely published�
The remaining forty, or more than half the entire Seminar, are relative unknowns. Most have published at best two or three journal articles, while several are recent Ph.D.'s whose dissertations were on some theme of the Gospels. For a full eighteen of the Fellows, a computer search of two comprehensive databases of published books and articles turned up no entries relevant to the New Testament at all! Thirty-six of the group, almost half, have a degree from or currently teach at one of three schools - Harvard, Claremont, and Vanderbilt, universities with some of the most liberal departments of New Testament studies anywhere. Almost all are American; European scholarship is barely represented.
In short, the Jesus Seminar does not come anywhere close to reflecting an adequate cross-section of contemporary New Testament scholars.
While this does not disprove the Jesus Seminar's findings, it does dispel the belief that they represent a consensus of modern biblical scholarship. Rather, they represent the far left-wing fringe of modern biblical scholarship.
According to the Jesus Seminar's major work The Five Gospels, Jesus only said about 20% of the words attributed to Him in the biblical Gospels. Are they right about this? Are the biblical Gospels really that unreliable?
I. They place unwarranted restrictions on how Jesus could have spoken
According to the Jesus Seminar, if a saying is neither a parable nor an aphorism or cannot be separated from its context as an independent oral tradition (basically they say He only spoke one-liners), then Jesus didn't say it. They say that Jesus never composed long sermons or engaged in controversy or dialogue with others. On what basis do they make these assumptions? Is this reasonable? What other sage in history has been restricted like this? Buddha hasn't. Confucius hasn't. So why do they restrict Jesus?
II. They place unwarranted restrictions on what topics Jesus could've spoken about
The Jesus Seminar says that Jesus never quoted Scripture or compared His teachings with those of Moses. He never called Himself the Son of Man or spoke about God's judgment. Now, what's wrong with this? First of all, Jesus was crucified as a criminal; the Roman historian Tacitus testifies to Jesus' crucifixion:
Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procuratorsa, Pontius Pilate. (Annals)
The Jewish historian Josephus also corroborates Jesus' crucifixion:
When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified� (Antiquities)
So, if Jesus was crucified and accused BY THE JEWS, we must ask why. If Jesus never engaged in controversy or even talked about God's judgment, why would He be crucified? The Jesus of the Jesus Seminar would not have done anything to make the Jewish authorities mad. To quote from John Meier:
A tweedy poetaster who spent his time spinning out parables and Japanese koans, a literary aesthete who toyed with 1st-century deconstructionism, or a bland Jesus who simply told people to look at the lilies of the field - such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him threaten no one. (John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1)
Secondly, this Jesus is simply unbelievable. To quote again from Craig Blomberg's essay in Jesus Under Fire:
The Fellows envision a Jesus who resembles an itinerant Greco-Roman philosopher, a Cynic sage, or an Oriental guru - and an unusual kind: one who spoke only in short, cryptic utterances�All of this, while the rest of the scholarly world is increasingly stressing the necessity of recovering Jesus the Jew, who engaged in debates about ritual cleanliness, Sabbath observances, and the application of the Torah to the Messianic age! Whatever else modern scholarship may disagree on, there is widespread consensus that Jesus must be read against the historical-cultural milieu of his word, a milieu that was above all Jewish. This the Jesus Seminar simply does not do.
Jesus was a Jew. He lived in a Jewish world that was highly conservative; they were extremely careful not to let their religion be corrupted by the outside world. There is absolutely no reason why Jesus should be viewed as the Greco-Roman wandering sage the Jesus Seminar views Him as. The day of judgment was a major topic of discussion in Jesus' day, and the title "Son of Man" was hardly applied to Jesus by later Christian writers, which makes it unlikely that it would be a Christian invention.
III. They hold the apocryphal Gospels (especially Thomas) as more reliable than the biblical Gospels
The Jesus Seminar insists that the biblical Gospels are mythical additions added to the Jesus tradition by some early Christians and that the apocryphal Gospels, especially the Gospel of Thomas, are more accurate sources of information regarding the historical Jesus. Is this true? Is the Jesus of modern Christianity really a myth? Are the Gospels no more than wishful thinking? In this section, I will examine the evidence for the historicity of the biblical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas.
The Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic Gospel found just after World War 2 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt among other Gnostic texts. The Jesus Seminar included this Gospel in their major work, The Five Gospels, and advocates its primacy over the biblical Gospels. The main issue of the Thomas-Bible debate is dating because if Thomas is older than the biblical Gospels, then it is probably more historically reliable. If it is younger, then it is probably not as reliable.
In his essay in Jesus Under Fire, Craig Blomberg gives four reasons why the Gospel of Thomas postdates the biblical Gospels:
� Sayings in Thomas parallel every "layer" and source of tradition in the biblical Gospels. It is unlikely that every layer of the biblical tradition would use Thomas as a source, so Thomas probably used the biblical Gospels as a source.
� Certain passages in Thomas show the development of a "Gnosticizing" of Jesus' words. Take this quote, for example:
"Jesus said, 'The harvest is great but the laborers are few. Beseech the lord, therefore, to send out laborers to the harvest.' He said, 'O lord, there are many around the drinking trough, but there is nothing in the cistern.' Jesus said, 'Many are standing at the door, but it is the solitary who will enter the bridal chamber.'" (73-75)
These saying clearly resemble Matthew 9:37-38 and Luke 10:2 (especially the first one). The third saying uses two recurring technical terms used in Gnostic literature for the true Gnostic (the solitary one) and entering a "deeper life" (entering the bridal chamber). It is easy to see how the saying from the biblical Gospels was progressively "Gnosticized."
� To quote directly from Dr. Blomberg's essay:
"Some sayings in Thomas seem to follow each other for no reason other than that is their sequence in the Synoptic Gospels. For example, Saying 65 gives a version of the parable of the wicked tenants (cf. Mark 12:1-8 pars.), which Saying 66 follows up with a version of Jesus' teaching about the "cornerstone" (cf. Mark 12:10-11). But without anything corresponding to Mark 12:9 to connect the two sayings, no one would guess they were related. It is more probable, therefore, that Thomas knew the Synoptics but omitted the connection (as this work does throughout in listing sayings in isolation from each other) than that Mark or someone else created a connective narrative out of two originally independent thoughts."
� Many minor distinctives of the Coptic version of Thomas parallel alterations of the Gospels found in second through fourth-century documents and the Diatessaron, a second-century harmonization of the Gospels.
Can the Gospels be trusted for historically reliable evidence? Would Jesus' followers even have been able to write accurate Gospels, let alone whether or not they actually did? Are the biblical Gospels earlier than the Gospel of Thomas? Let's examine the evidence.
How do we date the Gospels? There isn't much evidence to go by, but there is some. The second-century Christian writer Irenaeus writes:
Matthew produced his Gospel written among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul proclaimed the gospel and founded the church at Rome.
This would have to be before the martyrdom of Peter and Paul under Nero sometime between 64 and 68 AD. He goes on to say:
After the departure of these, Mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter also transmitted to us what he had written about what Peter had preached. (Adv. Haer. 3.1.38-41)
The word "departure" can refer to Peter's death or his leaving Rome to travel elsewhere, but either way, this suggest an early date for the Gospel of Mark.
The Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke (the evangelist), ends abruptly with Paul under house arrest in Rome. Why? The most plausible explanation is that Luke wrote Acts while Paul was still under house arrest. Since Luke's Gospel was written before Acts, we can probably date it no later than 62 AD. With this in mind, Mark's Gospel, generally acknowledged as the oldest, can be dated to sometime in the 50's AD (maybe the 40's if you want to stretch it a bit, but probably no earlier than the early 50's).
The Gospel of John, on the other hand, is harder to date. The earliest Christian traditions (Irenaeus and Eusebius) suggest a date some time in the 90's.
What does this all add up to? The Synoptic Gospels were probably written within 30 years (give or take a few) of Jesus' death, well within the period in which readers could check the accuracy of the reports. Even the Gospel of John, written 60 years after Jesus' death, is closer to the events it recounts than many other ancient biographies. The biography of Alexander the Great, for Example, was written over 400 years after his death, but historians still consider it historically reliable. An early date, however, does not necessarily mean reliable history; just because they're early doesn't mean they're reliable. Could the evangelists have recorded reliable history? Let's find out.
Could the stories have circulated for 30 years and stayed accurate?
We've all played telephone. One person tells something to the next person, who tells it to the next person, who tells it to the next person, etc. By the time it gets to the last person it's been practically butchered. If the story can get messed up within a few minutes, then imagine how much different it would be in 30 years! Non-Christians often charge that the story of Jesus was mythified by the time it was written down in the Gospels.
First of all, we must remember that the evangelists lived in an oral culture where books and scrolls were relatively rare; some rabbis had the entire Old Testament memorized. It would not have been impossible for Jesus' followers to memorize His teachings. Plus, there was flexibility in how the stories were retold. In ancient oral cultures, it was considered acceptable to change the wording or phrasing of certain teachings and events as long as the major parts and/or ideas weren't changed. The analogy of "telephone" is misleading because in the game, you only get one chance to hear what you will pass on. In real life, you can go back and recheck your sources and check them against other sources for accuracy.
Were the evangelists interested in recording reliable history?
Did the evangelists WANT to record reliable history? Didn't the early Christians often attribute prophetic utterances by other Christians to Jesus Himself, therefore making it possible that some of Jesus' words in the Gospels weren't really spoken by Him?
First of all, yes, the evangelists DID want to record reliable history. Luke, in the beginning of his Gospel, says:
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. - Luke 1:1-4
Also, if the evangelists only wanted to record myths about Jesus, why would they include sayings that seem to contradict Jesus' divinity, such as not knowing when He would return (Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:31) and saying that the Father is greater than He is (John 14:28)? What kind of person tries to make up legends that seem to limit God's divinity? Also, many of Jesus' moral teachings are very difficult to obey. For example, He forbade divorce (Mark 10:10-12) in an age when a man could easily divorce his wife. He called for His followers to renounce wealth (Matthew 19:21). What kind of person making up a new religion would include commands so difficult to obey?
Secondly, the early Christians did not mix up Jesus' words with prophetic utterances from later Christians. The early Church was threatened by various heresies and controversies, yet they never solved them with prophetic utterances. For example, the Council of Jerusalem did not refer to a prophetic utterance to solve the problem of whether or not the Gentiles should follow the Law of Moses.