Answering the Jesus Seminar
Bart Ehrman
After initial media excitement, the Jesus Seminar became an embarrassment, a lot of aging hippies sitting around talking about 'What Jesus means to me.' A field long yearning for respectability had not yet found it. The 'subtractive' school of 'Jesus' studies, which removes most attributes of the full-orbed gospel portrait of Jesus and declares the one remaining primitive, led to a proliferation of 'niche' 'Jesus's': the cynic philosopher, the Hebrew holy man, etc. But this 'Jesus of the month' approach soon saturated the market. With relief, the 'Jesus' publishing industry turned to Bart Ehrman: at last, a respectable scholar, who shares the dismissive attitude of the Jesus Seminar to Christianity, but can't be laughed away. Does he deliver the groceries? Elaine PagelsThis author, with her muddled thinking and political agenda, has set the terms for the contemporary discussion of gnosticism versus Christianity, much to the public's loss.
Rational classification requires sorting like with like. What could be more unlike than the monotheism of apostolic Christianity and the polytheism of the gnostics? There is a gulf fixed here that cannot be bridged. Except for Ms. Pagels, who finds it easy to bind apostolic Christianity and gnosticism together into the category 'Christianity:'
Her later followers like Bart Ehrman go even further. Is gnosticism the original form of the Christian faith, or is it a hybrid between Christianity and Gentile paganism? The Jesus Seminar
The Jesus Seminar should have taken as watchword, not "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you", but, more candidly, 'Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to them,' as the "party animal" Jesus they 'found' may be congenial to some, but not to those who own Him as Lord. The habit of remaking Jesus into one's heart's desire, by stripping some of the qualities ascribed to Him by the sources and retaining others, is endemic to this field. Thus the Jesus Seminar discovers a non-judgmental 'hippy' Jesus, as other generations have discovered, or invented, their own 'historical' Jesus. It would seem that Jesus remains, as Haggai called Him, the "desire of nations." (Haggai 2:7). | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Prophecy Historicized vs. History ProphesiedSecular Biblical scholarship is premised on the notion that prophecy is simply not possible. Thus, if a Bible text contains a recognizable description of events subsequent to the author's time, why, then, the putative author could not have written it. Thus we hear of 'Deutero-Isaiah'; since Isaiah is a historic figure contemporary with Hezekiah, remarks about Cyrus cannot have been written by him. How, after all, can Isaiah possibly have known anything about Cyrus, a historical figure born centuries later? Bible believers do not share this assumption. Indeed, Isaiah marked out as the dividing line between the True God and the pagan nothings, that God knew, and could communicate to man, the future: "Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,'..." (Isaiah 46:9-10). God foreknows not only what will happen, but everything that could have happened but never did. It seems to be beyond human comprehension how He could know an infinity of possible worlds, but when you look at scripture, it has to be that way. First of all, He knows what will be: "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world." (Acts 15:18). But not only that, He knows what might have happened...but didn't. For instance, He answers David, "Then said David, O LORD God of Israel, thy servant hath certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O LORD God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the LORD said, He will come down. Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver thee up. Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth." (1 Samuel 23:10-13; Matthew 11:21). So God told David what people would do...except that they didn't do it, because forewarned by the prophecy, David skipped town. So His foreknowledge is so complete as to include those things which would have happened under other circumstances, but never actually happened. He foreknows all events of all possible worlds. We, finite creatures bound by time, are like a caterpillar crawling along a twig. Beneath our myopic gaze lies one little segment; we can only guess at what lies ahead, and reminisce about what lies behind. But God does not grovel along the twig; He sees the whole complete: the "end from the beginning". God's foreknowledge does not in and of itself constrain anyone, any more than my perceiving that 'You are sitting in your arm chair' constrains you to sit in the arm chair. To Him, the entire continuum of past, present and future lies open to gaze. This is precisely what He foreknows, our freely chosen actions: "If then our freedom is preserved, however vast the number of inclinations it has to virtue or to vice and, again, to what is becoming or to what is unbecoming, it, along with everything else from creation and from the foundation of the world will be known to God before it comes to be for what sort of freedom it will be...And so, God's foreknowledge is not the cause of everything that will come to be, even of our freedom when we are made active by our own impulse...But if God takes the order for the governance of the universe from His foreknowledge, then all the more is our individual freedom useful for the ordering of the world." (Origen, On Prayer, Part One, B. VI.3). It's a free country, and scholars are certainly entitled to reject the very possibility of God communicating future events to man. Great caution should be exercised, however, to avoid circular 'arguments' in which conclusions about dating drawn from the presupposition that prophecy is impossible are then used to rebut the possibility of prophecy; e.g., 'Second Isaiah lived contemporaneously with the events he 'prophesied', therefore there is no such thing as prophecy'. This begs the question, since the theory that there is such a party as 'Deutero-Isaiah' is premised upon the denial that prophecy is possible. The assumption that prophecy is simply not possible is indeed quite widespread in the world of unbelieving Bible scholarship; thus, so far at least the authors are correct in saying, "The scholarship represented by the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar is the kind that has come to prevail in all the great universities of the world." (The Five Gospels, p. 35). But wait -- the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar are fully prepared to take it to the next level! Not only can prophets have no special insight into the future, but actual historic events cannot correspond with prophesy even by coincidence, nor by intent. So, the manner of Christ's entry into Jerusalem having been prophesied, Jesus cannot have so entered Jerusalem, even though there's nothing supernatural about it at all: "Entry into Jerusalem. The account of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is based on Zech 9:9 and Ps 118:26. The story was conceived to fit the prophecies." (The Five Gospels, p. 228). This seems to be a generalization of the principle, 'A watched pot never boils.' It's the same type of magical thinking people employ when they say, 'It didn't rain because I brought my umbrella'. It's as if my saying, 'The Yanks will win the World Series', will 'jinx' them so that they cannot win the World Series, though this otherwise is not an impossible nor a supernatural outcome. The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar actually believe that, Christ's humble entry into Jerusalem having been prophesied, He cannot have so entered Jerusalem...even though that's actually a more economical alternative to entering the city on a richly caparisoned war-horse! |
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Certainly if God became man, there would be nothing unexpected in His saying so. People report facts known to them all the time. This is what is open to the historian's inspection: that the claim has been made. The background in the heavenlies is veiled to his gaze. And this claim is by no means uncommon. Just as Simon Magus' Samaritan followers let on that he was the "great power of God:" "'But there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, 'This man is the great power of God.'" (Acts 8:9-10), so in the latter day Father Divine's devotees spoke.
Amongst claimants to deity are ranked Wallace D. Fard, who made this claim in an interview with the Detroit Police, and Yahweh ben Yahweh, currently incarcerated. Most of the persons who make this claim are deranged. Those close to Jesus, going with the odds, initially thought so as well: "But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, 'He is out of His mind.'" (Mark 3:21).
A noteworthy contribution to contemporary Jesus scholarship is 'Jesus the Jew,' by Geza Vermes, which proceeds on the principle that Jesus cannot have claimed to be God, or indeed anything or anyone unusual, because then He would have been atypical. Nor could His followers have made this claim on His behalf, because then they would have been out of the ordinary:
"A final word must be said about the bridging of the gulf between son of God and God. None of the Synoptic Gospels try to do this. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to contend that the identification of a contemporary historical figure with God would have been inconceivable to a first-century AD Palestinian Jew. It could certainly not have been expressed in public, in the presence of men conditioned by centuries of biblical monotheistic religion...Whether Jesus himself would have reacted with stupefaction, anger or grief, can never be known." (Jesus the Jew, Geza Vermes, pp. 212-213.)
The gospels records indicate that Jesus and His followers did not receive the kind of unanimous acceptance that can reasonably be anticipated for the ordinary and unremarkable. Jesus was crucified, Stephen was stoned, Paul imprisoned. So perhaps Mr. Vermes does have a point in suggesting that the claims they made were not such as would receive immediate or automatic acceptance. To assert that no such claim can ever have been made is, of course, unhistorical, given that such claims are made in the present day by inheritors of "centuries of biblical monotheistic religion" such as Father Divine and Wallace D. Fard. Jesus differs from the many other claimants to this title known to documented history only in the truth of His claim.
Claimants to deity were of course common amongst the pagans; Herodotus records cases of outrageous imposture. They are also found in the monotheistic fold. The Druze even call themselves 'mowahhidun,' 'monotheists:' "The main actors were Tariq al-Hakeem, also known as al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the Caliph who claimed to be God, and Hamza bin Ali ibn Ahmad, the main architect of the movement. It was Hamza who first publicly proclaimed that al-Hakim was God. al-Hakeem was opposed by orthodox Muslims for what was considered apostasy...Because the Druze considered Tariq al-Hakeem to be the incarnation of God, they were persecuted by orthodox Muslims, especially after al-Hakeem's death in 1021." (Wikipedia, Article 'Druze.') Though 'official' Islam is hostile to deifying human beings, the trend persists: "To this day there is a sect known as the Aliallahi in Iraq and Iran that divinizes Ali." (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam, p. 77.)
If we are expected to believe that a Jew cannot claim to be God, then what about all the other Jews who have claimed to be God, like Jacob Frank, the eighteenth century Polish Messianic aspirant who claimed to be the second person of the Trinity? Sabbatai Sevi, a seventeenth century Messianic claimant, signed letters as "the Lord your God:"
"Shabbetai Zevi signed these pronouncements as the 'firstborn son of God,' 'your father Israel,' 'the bridegroom of the Torah,' and other high-flown titles; even when he started signing some of his letters 'I am the Lord your God Shabbetai Zevi' only a few of the believers seem to have been shocked." (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 262)
Several of these latter-day claimants, whether in imitation of Christianity or by way of re-inventing the wheel based on Old Testament Messianic texts, rediscovered God's triunity: "Some time before his death Shabbetai Zevi dictated a longer version of this doctrine. . .institut[ing] a kind of kabbalistic trinity, called in zoharic terms the 'three bonds of the faith.' It consisted of The Ancient Holy One (Attika kaddisha), The Holy King (Malka kaddisha), also called the God of Israel, and his Shekhinah." (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 269). These individuals too were "conditioned by centuries of biblical monotheistic religion." Flatly to rule out the possibility that persons in the past declared themselves divine cannot be reconciled with a uniformitarian approach to history.
It isn't to discredit Jesus that I bring up the numerous also-rans. The existence of counterfeit money does not prove there is no real money, but the contrary. Rather, when author Geza Vermes rules out the possibility that Jesus claimed what contemporary observers report He did claim, he is not writing as a historian, but as a devotee. History does not record that men "conditioned by centuries of biblical monotheistic religion" cannot claim to be God. This author, however, finds the claim inappropriate.
One well-known contemporary figure who has been dipping his toe in the divinization pool is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who has made eye-catching claims both on behalf of a son who died in an auto accident and on his own behalf: "The Reverent Moon's hubris culminated later that year in a secret ceremony in which he actually crowned himself and Hak Ja Han Moon as Emperor and Empress of the Universe. Preparations for the lavish, clandestine event at Belvedere took months and hundreds of thousands of dollars." (In the Shadow of the Moons, Nansook Hong, p. 148). It is unclear in what tradition Rev. Moon should be classed; perhaps those who found their own assemblies, like Rev. Moon,--or, for that matter, like Jesus,--are most efficiently classed under their own new religion.
My late cat Velma was a huntress. Her interest in this activity surfaced very early in life; in fact I named her 'Velma' after Velma Barfield, the notorious serial killer. Bowing to necessity, I made no effort to impede her safaris; my only request was that she not drag her triumphs into the home. 'Nature red in tooth and claw' belongs outdoors, I explained, not in the living room. By dint of much yelling and screaming I succeeded in communicating to Velma my feelings on the matter; but these feelings Velma was not willing to honor. In spite of having every reason to respect the opinions of the humans about her, who controlled her food supply, her living conditions, and were much bigger than she, Velma stuck to her guns. Her only concession to my sentiments was to adopt the rubric, 'don't do it while she's looking.'
Perhaps Velma looked to the day when Mom would finally 'get' how cool it was to drag a still-warm, bloody rodent on triumphal march across the living room rug. In any case it never occurred to her to subordinate her opinions in the matter to mine. This independence of judgment, claimed by the pea-brained cat, is denied by Bible scholars to those human beings who lived and struggled in Bible times. For example, Moses cannot have been a monotheist, they explain, because most of the people who lived in that day were polytheists. If Moses were a monotheist, he would have differed from the norm. Therefore, those monotheist sayings the Bible ascribes to Moses' authorship cannot have been spoken by him, but by latter-day scribes whose identity is unknown. (It is a curious corollary of this concept that, while originality is denied root and branch to those persons you may have heard of, such as Jesus, Paul, Moses, etc., no amount of originality is denied to persons no one has heard of: the anonymous scribes who are proposed by this theory as the source of all novelty.)
We all have known enthusiasts who insisted up to their last breath that the income tax is unconstitutional, that Anastasia lives, that the great tragedy of history is that Trotsky was assassinated, etc. My own late father alleged that people from outer space had built the pyramids, information which, he claimed, he had seen on TV. According to Bible scholars, no such persons existed in Bible times. We also know those resembling the New Yorker cartoon character who, amidst passers-by wearing t-shirts proclaiming causes like 'Save the Whales,' sported a t-shirt reading 'I Couldn't Agree More.' According to Bible scholars, this Mr. Milquetoast-type was the only form of humanity found in Bible times; the wayward juvenile, the child throwing a temper tantrum, the crank, did not exist; the only existent humans sought to conform their views to prevailing currents.
To add to the peculiarity of this view, if we adopt the consensus modern view of chronology (somewhat later than the Bible's own dating), then Moses flourished after Akhenaton's monotheistic reform had crashed and burned. Moses, brought up in Pharaoh's daughter's household, must have been aware of this signal event in Egyptian history. Some theologians in Akhenaton's employ offered ambiguous and inadequate expressions of monotheism, others offer perfectly acceptable expressions. This means that, to preserve the theory of Moses as polytheist or henotheist, these Bible scholars must assume that Moses was aware of, but made a conscious decision to reject, monotheism in favor of polytheism!
This imputation of a characteristic to the humanity of Bible times: blind and universal conformity,-- which no living observer has reported seeing in the humanity we see about us, is, again, an offense against the premise of uniformitarianism.
Modern Bible scholars reveal a 'Chaos Monster' described in the Bible. One can, as Bible-believing Christians do, read the Bible over and over again without encountering her. But she must be there, after all, because a 'Chaos Monster' is found in Babylonian mythology, and if no 'Chaos Monster' were found in the Bible, the Bible would be different from Babylonian mythology, rather than the same.
"On occasion (Isa. 51:9-11) there is linked to a reference to the Exodus (vs. 10) an allusion to the ancient creation myth (vs. 9), in which the god (in the Babylonian version, Marduk) cleft asunder the Chaos Monster (in the Babylonian version, Tiamat; but here in the west Semitic form, Rahab) in order to create the world. It is as if the prophet wished to say, in poetic language, that the struggle with primeval chaos begun at creation, and again taken up in the Exodus when God created for himself a people, is once more to be resumed." (John Bright, The Kingdom of God, p. 140)
Strangely enough for a primeval 'Chaos Monster,' 'Rahab' is listed as a place amongst places: "I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there." (Psalm 87:4). It is unclear how a man can be born in a primeval 'Chaos Monster,' though a man can easily be born in a place. Coinage shows that the crocodile, a real, not a mythological beast, was the emblem of Egypt, much as the bear is the emblem of Russia today. Exodus records the struggle, not between God and a primeval 'Chaos Monster,' but between God and Egypt, whose emblem is the crocodile. Isaiah 30:7 applies the title to Egypt: "For Egypt’s help is worthless and empty, therefore I have called her, 'Rahab who sits still.'" (Isaiah 30:7 NRSV). Although it certainly sounds like Rahab the crocodile is Egypt, if we so understand her, then where is our primeval 'Chaos Monster,' without whom the Bible would differ from Babylonian mythology?
Raised in an irreligious environment, I grew up believing the Bible to be a collection of childish myths. The first Bible I owned was a Jerusalem Bible with elaborate notes. When reading a section of the Pentateuch, I would carefully peruse the information provided explaining which of the four authors cited had produced this material. Call me naive, I naturally assumed there must be in existence manuscripts which include some of this material but not the rest; why else would the editors impose upon their readers in this fashion? Imagine my surprise when I discovered there exists no manuscript incorporating any of this material which lacks the remainder. Rather, the text was divvied up on the basis of the different names of God employed.
I wondered if this theory had been properly tested with modern material whose authorship could be reliably ascertained. Consider, for instance, George Washington's First Inaugural Address, which cites, in order, "...it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe...", then "In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good...", next "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men...", then "...distinguished by some token of providential agency...", on to "...since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained...", then "...but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication...", wrapping up with, "so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous..." (George Washington, First Inaugural Address, delivered April 30, 1789.) This very brief address, which is not concerned with topics in theology, contains no fewer than five distinct divine titles.
It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that theories of this sort find a receptive audience, not because their verity is established by credible and sufficient evidence, but because they seem very 'daring' to persons who, unlike myself, are of a religious background. These people care passionately about the Bible and about Jesus in a way that no scholar really cares about Homer. The efforts of this class of scholars, of whom the Jesus Seminar is the most egregious example, serve to manufacture a Jesus with whom they can come to terms, who is no threat to their sense of themselves. Because there is no reason to think that the Jesus of history was someone with whom these people can come to terms, their efforts are properly categorized under the head of Bad Religion rather than scholarship.
Jeane Dixon was a self-styled 'psychic' who spoke with Parade Magazine in 1956: "As for the 1960 election Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term." (Quoted at Suburban Myths web-site). According to the methodology used in modern Bible study, this information cannot have been published in Parade Magazine in 1956, because it actually happened. Therefore it was published subsequent to the assassination. This 'discovery' in its turn 'proves' that it is impossible to predict the future.
Ms. Dixon, who fearlessly predicted this and many other events, was wrong so often as to richly satisfy the Biblical criteria for a false prophet. Yet even a false prophet cannot be wrong all the time. A false prophet calling coin tosses cannot call them all wrong; after all the odds are 50-50. If our false prophet draws also upon native shrewdness, then he or she might make a career of calling President elections.
Yet, believe it or not, this is just how they do it. Suppose a text contains a prediction that the temple at Jerusalem will be destroyed. This text is therefore dated subsequent to 70 A.D., because this is when the temple was in fact destroyed. Not only do these scholars not believe in prophecy, they do not believe in statistics. They are assuming all Christian prophecy must be 100% wrong all the time; otherwise how could a successful prediction be used as a dating device? Yet it is simply not possible for any attempt at prophecy: not guessing at random, not newspaper horoscopes, not Chinese fortune-cookies,-- to be 100% wrong all the time.
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No one is surprised to see hot dogs fly off the assembly line at the meat-packing plant, because the machinery is geared to produce hot dogs. This criterion is a machine geared to produce a 'Jesus' unrecognizable to the church.
I've added Ernest Renan's 'Life of Jesus' to the Thriceholy library, so that readers may discover in this unitarian devotional work the motives and thought-patterns underlying modern Bible scholarship. When Renan intones of John's gospel, "The spirit of Jesus is not there," does his bias follow from historical evidence, or betray a theological preference?: "Jesus never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God." (Chapter 5, The Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan). A fine 'scientific' endeavor, which proceeds to deduce historical 'fact' from what is imagined to be "sacrilegious"!
| Ernest Renan The Life of Jesus |
The effort to shoe-horn unitarianism into first century non-Christian Jewish thought finds no support in the surviving literary remains of that era. However first century Jewish theology is to be categorized, 'unitarian' is not it:
This page-turner lavishes on the reader, not only murders and car chases, but also bad theology. This best-selling novel alleges that Jesus Christ was promoted to the status of God at the fourth century Council of Nicaea:
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In fact, it is the Bible which establishes Jesus Christ as Son of God, and as God:
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Not only does the Bible describe Jesus Christ as God, but Christian writers of the early centuries also so testify. Pagan observers of Christianity likewise report this as the belief of the early church: Readers curious to see what the Nicene Creed says, may judge for themselves whether the language is Biblical or newly invented: Biblical Proof:As noted previously, Jesus is the Desire of Nations. Those who do not like what He has to say nevertheless just can't leave Him alone. Our newly minted Jesus poses no threat to the sexual mores of academia. The real One does. |
Bishop John Shelby Spong
What is a "theistic deity"? Since theos means 'god,' a 'theistic god' must be a godly god...as opposed, say, to an ungodly god. To judge by his vocabulary this author fancies himself a new Martin Luther, though unlike the original he does not stand to proclaim the gospel, but to discredit it. He does not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, thus in the Trinity, nor in the virgin birth (which even Muslims believe), nor in the resurrection. The church which made this author bishop of Newark, N.J., continues on its downward spiral: |
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