I vaguely remember the controversy surrounding the Jesus Seminar in the ’90s. This past week I decided to read the Gospel of Thomas and remember that the Jesus Seminar had produced a copy of what they called the five gospels (the four canonical gospels and Thomas). I chose to mix gnosticism with liberalism and requested The Five Gospels from my public library (which didn’t have it so they requested it from a Phoenix library).
In this post I’ll limit my scope to the methodology of the Jesus Seminar in their Quest for the Historic Jesus. In order, we’ll consider the audience, the translation, and the criteria.
Although the quests for a historic Jesus have been around for a while, it seems that liberalism has largely moved past this quest, skeptical that the Jesus of history separated from the Christ of faith with such little evidence as we have. The neo-orthodox find the quest for the historic Jesus ‘as an illegitimate attempt to secure a factual basis for faith.’ (p. 4) And of course, conservatives identify the Jesus of history with the Christ of faith. So the Jesus Seminar has a popular audience in mind.
The Jesus Seminar prepared a new translation of the gospels. While some of their goals are laudable (preserving present verb tense in Mark) overall the translation seems a work of hubris. Consider these statements, ‘The Scholars Version is free of ecclesiastical and religious control, unlike other major translations into English....The Scholars Version is authorized by scholars.’ (p. xviii) Surely Paul’s statement to Timothy has some relevance in translating Scripture: ‘...the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.’ (If we free ourselves from ecclesiastical or religious control we find ourselves enslaved to the capriciousness of our minds and we develop all sorts of fantastic ideas.) Also, all translations are done by scholars; it is horrible elitism to consider other translators as non-scholars because they have a different view.
What criteria did the Jesus Seminar use in determining Jesus’ voice? What did he speak like? Primarily, they believe his speech was different both from his Jewish predecessors and Christian followers. Someone has quipped this creates ‘an eccentric Jesus who learned nothing from his own culture and made no impact on his followers.’ The rabbi has been replaced with the image of a stereotypical sage, who speaks only in short aphorism or parables. He especially avoided parables that moralised or made judgements.
Apparently—according to the Jesus Seminar—Jesus did not initiate dialogue but only responded to query or criticism. This they gather from Jesus’ teaching of humility. But much like a basketball player, the Jesus of the seminar spoke of himself in the third person. He often used the term ‘Son of Adam’ (traditional rendering, ‘Son of man’) to refer to himself. Although the Jesus Seminar acknowledge the apocalyptic implications of the term, they believed he used it just to mean ‘human’. His disciples did not get it however and understood it in the apocalyptic fashion.
As one last consideration the seminar holds, ‘Canonical boundries are irrelevant in critical assessments of the various sources of information about Jesus.’ (p. 35) However, they seem to give special consideration to extra-biblical sources. They constantly mention other gospels and gospel fragments. The Gospel of Thomas is not infrequently credited with a more authentic version of particular sayings of Jesus.
I would be remiss not to mention the method in which the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar voted. Much ado has been made of their method of using coloured beads to indicate a scholar’s position on a saying of Jesus. As The Five Gospels explains:
Option 1
red: I would include this item unequivocally in the database for determining who Jesus was.
pink: I would include this item with reservations (or modifications) in the database.
gray: I would not include this item in the database, but I might make use of some of the content in determining who Jesus was.
black: I would not include this item in the primary database.
Option 2
red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it.
pink: Jesus probably said something like this.
gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.
black: Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition.
The seminar voted anonymously; the anonymity contrasting with their view of themselves as illustrated by this quote: ‘[I]n the case of Thomas 97 [and 98], attributing a parable to Jesus not attested in the canonical gospels and known only a for a few years was an act of courage that demanded careful deliberation.
My next post will discuss the authentic sayings of the Jesus Seminar and what conclusions we can draw from this interpretation of his voice. And in the post after that, I’ll write on the Gospel of Thomas proper.
