26 Facts About Jesus Seminar

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.

Work of The Jesus Seminar continued after the death of its founder and was succeeded by two seminars: The Seminar on God and the Human Future and The Christianity Seminar.

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 Seminar 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" as being already present but unseen; he depicts God as a loving father; he fraternizes with outsiders and criticizes insiders.

Sightings of a risen Jesus Seminar represented the visionary experiences of some of his disciples rather than physical encounters.

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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 that the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar are not all trained scholars, that their voting technique doesn't allow for nuance, that they are preoccupied with Q and with the Gospel of Thomas but omit material in other sources such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, and that they rely excessively on the criterion of embarrassment.

Five Gospels lists seven bases for the modern critical scholarship of Jesus Seminar, claiming these "pillars" have developed since the end of the 18th century:.

The Five Gospels says that the non-apocalyptic view gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s when research into Jesus Seminar shifted out of religious environments and into secular academia.

Marcus Borg says "the old consensus that Jesus Seminar was an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the imminent end of the world has disappeared", and identifies two reasons for this change:.

Jesus Seminar began by translating the gospels into modern American English, producing what they call the "Scholars Version", first published in The Complete Gospels.

The Jesus Seminar fellows used several criteria for determining whether a particular saying or story is authentic, including the criteria of multiple attestation and embarrassment.

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

Jesus Seminar rated various beatitudes as red, pink, gray, and black.

Jesus Seminar produced a significant number of publications both in the form of journal articles and books published for the general public.

In 1998 the Jesus Seminar published The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus.

Jesus Seminar has come under criticism regarding its method, assumptions and conclusions from a wide array of scholars and laymen.

Jesus Seminar criticized the techniques of the Seminar, believing them to be far more limited for historical reconstruction than seminar members believe.

Jesus Seminar pointed out the limitations of their presumptions and methodology.

Allison argued that despite the conclusions of the seminar, Jesus was a prophetic figure focused to a large extent on apocalyptic thinking.

Craig Evans argues that the Jesus Seminar applies a form of hypercriticism to the canonical gospels that unreasonably assumes that "Jesus' contemporaries were either incapable of remembering or uninterested in recalling accurately what Jesus said and did, and in passing it on" while, in contrast, privileging extra-canonical texts with an uncritical acceptance that sometimes rises to the level of special pleading.

We set out to show the ample historical evidence that the Gospels are reliable, that the New Testament is the best-attested book in antiquity in quantity and quality of manuscripts, that Jesus Seminar is who He said He is, and that He rose from the dead.

Some of them write books which appear to assume that, if they can demonstrate that the Jesus Seminar is wrong, they thereby demonstrate the absolute truth of Protestant fundamentalism or Catholic orthodoxy, whichever the perspective from which the author is writing.

Early in the 21st century, another group called the "Acts Jesus Seminar" was formed by some previous members to follow similar approaches to biblical research.

In March 2006, the Jesus Seminar began work on a new description of the emergence of the Jesus traditions through the first two centuries of the common era.

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Some view Crossan as an important voice in contemporary historical Jesus Seminar research, promoting the idea of a non-apocalyptic Jesus Seminar who preaches a sapiential eschatology.