Jesus Seminar

The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 50 critical biblical scholars and 100 laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk that originated under the auspices of the Westar Institute.''Making Sense of the New Testament'' by Craig Blomberg (Mar 1, 2004) page 19 The seminar was very active through the 1980s and 1990s, and into the early 21st century.

Members of the Seminar used votes with colored beads to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. They produced new translations of the New Testament and apocrypha to use as textual sources. They published their results in three reports: ''The Five Gospels'' (1993),''The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus'' (1993) Polebridge Press (Macmillan), ''The Acts of Jesus'' (1998),
''The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus'' (1998), Harper SanFrancisco,
and ''The Gospel of Jesus'' (1999).
''The Gospel of Jesus: According to the Jesus Seminar'' (1999), Polebridge Press (Macmillan),
They also ran a series of lectures and workshops in various U.S. cities.

The work of The Jesus Seminar continued after the death of its founder (2005) and was succeeded by two seminars: The Seminar on God and the Human Future and The Christianity Seminar. The latter published its first report in 2022, ''After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movement''s. The seminars are the scholarly program units of Westar Institute. Westar publishes a bi-monthly magazine for the general public, ''The Fourth R: An Advocate for Religious Literacy.''

Search for the "Historical Jesus"

The Seminar's reconstruction of the historical Jesus portrayed him as an itinerant Hellenistic Jewish sage and faith-healer who preached a gospel of liberation from injustice in startling parables and aphorisms. An iconoclast, Jesus broke with established Jewish theological dogmas and social conventions both in his teachings and in his behavior, often by turning common-sense ideas upside down, confounding the expectations of his audience: he preached of "Heaven's imperial rule" (traditionally translated as "Kingdom of God") as being already present but unseen; he depicted God as a loving father; he fraternized with outsiders and criticized insiders. According to the Seminar, Jesus was a mortal man born of two human parents, who did not perform nature miracles nor die as a substitute for sinners nor rise bodily from the dead. Sightings of a risen Jesus represented the visionary experiences of some of his disciples rather than physical encounters. While these claims, not accepted by conservative Christian laity, have been repeatedly made in various forms since the 18th century, the Jesus Seminar addressed them in a unique manner with its consensual research methodology.

The Seminar treated the canonical gospels as historical sources that represent Jesus' actual words and deeds as well as elaborations of the early Christian community and of the gospel authors. The Fellows placed the burden of proof on those who advocate any passage's historicity. Unconcerned with canonical boundaries, they asserted that the Gospel of Thomas may have more authentic material than the Gospel of John. N.T. Wright, ive Gospels but no Gospel, 1999, p.5 PDF

The Seminar held a number of premises or "scholarly wisdom" about Jesus when critically approaching the gospels. Members acted on the premise that Jesus did not hold an apocalyptic worldview, an opinion that is controversial in mainstream scholarly studies of Jesus. The Fellows argued that the authentic words of Jesus, rather than revealing an apocalyptic eschatology which instructs his disciples to prepare for the end of the world, indicate that he preached a sapiential eschatology, which encourages all of God's children to repair the world.

The methods and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar have come under harsh criticism from numerous biblical scholars, historians and clergy for a variety of reasons. Such critics assert, for example, that the Fellows of the Seminar were not all trained scholars, that their voting technique did not allow for nuance, that they were preoccupied with the Q source and with the Gospel of Thomas but omitted material in other sources such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, and that they relied excessively on the criterion of embarrassment.

Use of historical methods

The scholars attending sought to reconstruct the life of the historical Jesus. Using a number of tools, they asked who he was, what he did, what he said, and what his sayings meant. Their reconstructions depended on social anthropology, history and textual analysis. The key feature was the rejection of apocalyptic eschatology. They used cross-cultural anthropological studies to set the general background, narrow in on the history and society of first-century Palestine, and used textual analysis (along with more anthropology and history) to focus on Jesus himself. They used a combination of primary sources, secondary sources, and archaeological evidence. Their methodology, as developed by a team of scholars (who expounded papers for the review of other Fellows and published many in ''Forum'') and as explained in the book ''The Five Gospels'' (the four canonical gospels plus the Gospel of Thomas), involved canvassing the records of the first four centuries for traditions about Jesus and sifting them by criteria such as multiple attestation, distinctiveness, and orality.

"Seven pillars of scholarly wisdom"

''The Five Gospels'' lists seven bases for the modern critical scholarship of Jesus, claiming these "pillars" have developed since the end of the 18th century: Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar. ''The five gospels.'' HarperSanFrancisco. 1993. "Introduction," p 1-30.
# Distinguishing between the historical Jesus and the stories that the gospels tell about him. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) started the quest for the historical Jesus and David Friedrich Strauss established it as part of biblical criticism with his book ''Life of Jesus Critically Examined'' (1835).
# Distinguishing between the Synoptics and John. Since the 1800s, Bible scholars have distinguished between the Jesus of the Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) and the Jesus in John, generally favoring the synoptics as more historical and seeing John as more spiritual.
# Identifying Mark as the first gospel. By 1900, critical scholars had largely concluded that Mark came before Matthew and Luke and served as a source for each.
# Identifying the hypothetical Q document. By 1900, scholars had hypothesized this lost collection of Jesus' sayings, thought to be the source of material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark.
# Questioning eschatological (apocalyptic) Jesus. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer portrayed Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet, and this analysis virtually put an end to historical inquiry into Jesus. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, critical historians returned to the topic of historical Jesus. Some of these scholars identified the apocalyptic imagery in the gospels as originating with John the Baptist, and not authentic to Jesus.
# Distinguishing between oral and print cultures. Since Jesus lived and preached in an oral culture, scholars expect that short, memorable stories or phrases are more likely to be historical.
# Reversing the burden of proof. In his day, Strauss had to offer evidence to question the historicity of any part of the gospels because his audience assumed that the gospels were historical. Today, the assumption is nearly the opposite, with the gospels understood to be so thoroughly embellished that one needs evidence to suppose that anything in them is historical.

Noneschatological Jesus

While some of these pillars are noncontroversial, the majority of scholars of the historical Jesus follow Albert Schweitzer in regarding Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet. ''The Five Gospels'' says that the non-apocalyptic view gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s when research into Jesus shifted out of religious environments and into secular academia. Marcus Borg says "the old consensus that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the imminent end of the world has disappeared", and identifies two reasons for this change:
# Since the 1960s, some scholars have started to view the gospel references to the coming Son of Man as insertions by the early Christian community.
# Some scholars have begun to see Jesus' kingdom of God as a present reality, a "realized eschatology", rather than an imminent end of the world (cf. Luke 17:20–21).

The apocalyptic elements attributed to Jesus, according to ''The Five Gospels'', come from John the Baptist and the early Christian community (p. 4). While the noneschatological Jesus is a significant trend in contemporary research into historical Jesus, most scholars affirm the traditional view that Jesus prophesied the imminent end of the world.

(translated from the German)

The scholars' translation

The Seminar began by translating the gospels into modern American English, producing what they call the "Scholars Version", first published in ''The Complete Gospels''. This translation uses current colloquialisms and contemporary phrasing in an effort to provide a contemporary sense of the gospel authors' styles, if not their literal words. The goal was to let the reader hear the message as a first-century listener might have. The translators avoided other translations' archaic, literal translation of the text, or a superficial update of it. For example, they translate "woe to you" as "damn you". The authors of ''The Complete Gospels'' argue that some other gospel translations have attempted to unify the language of the gospels, while they themselves have tried to preserve each author's distinct voice.

Methodology

The first findings of the Jesus Seminar were published in 1993 as ''The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus''.

The Fellows used a voting system to evaluate the authenticity of about 500 statements and events. For certain high-profile passages the votes were embodied in beads, the color of which represented the degree of confidence that a saying or act was or was not authentic:
* Red beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus did say the passage quoted, or something very much like the passage. (3 Points)
* Pink beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus probably said something like the passage. (2 Points)
* Grey beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus did not say the passage, but it contains Jesus' ideas. (1 Point)
* Black beads – indicated the voter believed Jesus did not say the passage—it comes from later admirers or a different tradition. (0 Points)

A confidence value was determined from the voting using a weighted average of the points given for each bead; the text was color-coded from red to black (with the same significance as the bead colors) according to the outcome of the voting.

Criteria for authenticity

The Jesus Seminar treats the gospels as fallible historical artifacts, containing both authentic and inauthentic material. The Seminar fellows used several criteria for determining whether a particular saying or story is authentic, including the criteria of multiple attestation and embarrassment. Among additional criteria used by the fellows are the following:

*Orality: According to current estimates, the gospels were not written until decades after Jesus' death. Parables, aphorisms, and stories were passed down orally (30–50 CE). The fellows judged whether a saying was a short, catchy pericope that could possibly survive intact from the speaker's death until decades later when it was first written down. If so, it is more likely to be authentic. For example, "turn the other cheek".
*Irony: Based on several important narrative parables (such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan), the fellows decided that irony, reversal, and frustration of expectations were characteristic of Jesus' style. If pericope present opposites or impossibilities, it is more likely to be authentic. For example, "love your enemies".
*Trust in God: A long discourse attested in three gospels has Jesus telling his listeners not to fret but to trust in the Father. Fellows looked for this theme in other sayings they deemed authentic. For example, " Ask – it'll be given to you".

Criteria for inauthenticity

The Seminar looked for several characteristics that, in their judgment, identified a saying as inauthentic, including self-reference, leadership issues, and apocalyptic themes.

*Self-reference: Does the text have Jesus referring to himself? For example, "I am the way, and I am the truth, and I am life" (John 14:1–14)
* Framing material: Are the verses used to introduce, explain, or frame other material, which might itself be authentic? For example, in Luke, the "red" parable of the good samaritan is framed by scenes about Jesus telling the parable, and the seminar deemed Jesus' framing words in these scenes to be "black".
* Community issues: Do the verses refer to the concerns of the early Christian community, such as instructions for missionaries or issues of leadership? For example, Peter as "the rock" on which Jesus builds his church (Matthew 16:17–19).
* Theological agenda: Do the verses support an opinion or outlook that is unique to the gospel, possibly indicating redactor bias? For example, the prophecy of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31–46) received the color black because the fellows saw it as representing Matthew's agenda of speaking out against unworthy members of the Christian community.

Example: the beatitudes

The Jesus Seminar rated various beatitudes as red, pink, gray, and black. Three beatitudes are judged to be "paradoxical" and are doubly attested. They are rated red (authentic) as they appear in Luke 6:20–21.

*"Congratulations, you poor! God's domain belongs to you."
*"Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast."
*"Congratulations, you who weep now! You will laugh."

The Seminar fellows decided the beatitude for those persecuted in Jesus' name might trace back to Jesus as a beatitude for those who suffer, but concluded that in its final form the saying represents concerns of the Christian community rather than Jesus' message. Thus it received a gray rating.

Matthew's version of the three authentic beatitudes were rated pink. The author has spiritualized two of them, so that they now refer to the poor "in spirit" and to those who hunger "and thirst for justice." Matthew also includes beatitudes for the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, and peace-makers. These beatitudes have no second attestation, lack irony, and received a black rating.

Principal publications

The Jesus Seminar produced a significant number of publications both in the form of journal articles and books published for the general public. Individual members of the seminar also produced, and continue to produce books which draw heavily upon the Seminar's work. The following is a selected sampling of those publications; a complete list of Jesus Seminar publications may be found at the Polebridge Press website, the in-house publisher for the Westar Institute:

* Borg, Marcus J.; Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: ''The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith''; HarperOne Imprints, HarperCollins; New York, New York: 1995. 978-0060609177
* Crossan, John Dominic; Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography; HarperOne Imprints, HarperCollins; New York, New York: 2009. 978-0061800351
* Funk, Robert Walter; Butts, James R.; Scott, Bernard Brandon; The Parables of Jesus ''(Jesus Seminar Series)''; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1988. 978-0944344071
* Funk, Robert Walter; ''et al''; The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? ''The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus''; HarperOne Imprints, HarperCollins; New York, New York: 1996. 978-0060630409
* Funk, Robert Walter; ''et al''; The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do? ; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1998. 978-0060629786
* Funk, Robert Walter; ''et al''; The Gospel of Jesus: ''According to the Jesus Seminar''; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1999. 978-0944344743
* Miller, Robert J.; ''et al''; The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1999. 978-0944344781
* Miller, Robert J.; The Complete Gospels; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 2010. 978-1598150186
* Tatum, W. Barnes; John the Baptist and Jesus: ''A Report of the Jesus Seminar''; Polebridge Press; Salem, Oregon: 1994. 978-0944344422

Acts of Jesus

In 1998 the Jesus Seminar published ''The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus''. To create the material for this book, they voted on the individual acts of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, much as they had previously voted on the individual sayings attributed to him.

According to the Jesus Seminar:
* Jesus of Nazareth was born during the reign of Herod the Great.
* His mother's name was Mary, and he had a human father whose name may not have been Joseph.
* Jesus was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem.
* Jesus was an itinerant sage who shared meals with social outcasts.
* Jesus practiced faith healing without the use of ancient medicine or magic, relieving afflictions now modernly considered psychosomatic

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