What else can I say?

To think that anything could be said or not said about the Jesus Seminar is ludicrous. Either way, whether one would agree or not agree with the findings of the Jesus Seminar you would have something to say. I found that after all was said and done no matter how you put the icing on the cake, if the cake tastes like poo, it is still icing covered poo. I know that is pretty harsh thing coming from me, but I realized this as Johnson was giving all the credentials for all the subjects in the book. Most of them were pretty accredited scholars who had put the time in to get the degrees, but who had never worried about all the ingredients in which the degree was based on.

To think that anyone could unbiasly or even deal with the scriptures without having them affect their lives is hard for me to believe. I know this to be true. I had a friend who was in the past a drug addict. When he would get high he would sit down and read books of the Bible. Not just incoherent passages but books in their entirety. This to me is how someone through the Jesus Seminar could evaluate scriptures and not get that these are the Words of God, and that is all I can say!

The Historical Jesus and the people who got it all wrong!!

The historical Jesus has been a very fascinating subject for me. To look at Jesus in the historical context has been something I never even had thought about or even existed. I had thought of the ideas but just vaguely never really has a study. To look at Jesus in this way has opened my eyes to many new ideas and thoughts within my own mind. But, in reading The Real Jesus and studying the Jesus seminar I can't help but to wonder about why people can't just read the bible and know its the truth. Instead they have to find ways around it, maybe because they can't take what itt says or maybe its just because they have a personal vendetta against it. Instead they have to come up with ridiculous storiess and try to get people to believe them when in reality there theories have no bases, they think they do when they really do not. What if the Jesus Seminar took the Bible for what it is really worth and really came to understand it, will probably never happen, what would happen then are they to hjard headed to see it or are would they change. The historical Jesus is a subject that may never truly be answered other than we knew he existed, I love thinking about though and find an amazing subject and hope to get more out of it in the future as well as I am right now.

Jesus Seminar

you know when i think of the word seminar i think of people gathering together to for a purpose to learn something. But what does it mean when a group of people get together to learn about nothing, the Jesus Seminar. just kidding. maybe there a small amount of something to learn from them, but mostly not. i am glad i have a better understanding of how all this 3rd quest literature fits together and can help people see and understand what the JS is really all about.

Incestuous Inbreeding of Ideas

The Jesus Seminar has forced us, hopefully, to develop a more complete understanding of who Jesus was, is, and will be. Some of Johnson's conculsions about the "real" Jesus left me with some disturbing questions. For example, according to Johnson, Christianity has never been based on the ministry of Jesus, but rather the continuing experience of the resurrection in the life of believers. My question is then, 'Is this an universial experience or individual one?' and 'Who decides what experiences are genuine?' If Christianity is based on only the resurrection experiences of believer then Paul and the other early church leaders are then the founders of what we know today as Christianity. Has the church then been influenced more by its leadership than the resurrected Christ? Johnson seems remaining to look at only half the picture. One the one hand we have the incarnation and on the other the resurrected Christ and the spread of the Gospel which has transformed life after life after life.

And the purpose of your research would be?

Johnson's book really brought up and interesting question amongst my own thoughts: When does academics become a burden to the religion it attempts to benefit? The Jesus seminar, although motives could be debated, attempted to discover the personality of the man worship by so many millions over the span of time. The results however, picked Jesus out of divine teacher/healer/savior into a zealous rioter/rabbi. The Jesus who saved humanity from sin became a misquoted/misperceived individual who was inflated to Godhead by some power hungry followers. The issue that we should be wary of when academically looking into Christianity is that our work benefits Christ, making it more accurate, giving God more glory.

Alex H

Never Mind The Bullocks

So the Jesus Seminar is pretty much made up of forty year old guys gathering a couple times a year at hotels around the country playing with some marbles debating whether or not to tie their shoes. What did that guy Jesus say? He never really rose from the grave and he was actually poisoned to death?....hmmmnnn...lets ponder on this. This book Real Jesus was an extremely difficult read for me because the whole direction of the book is evident in the prologue. The author wines through the whole book and gives examples of their false teachings which at times were amusing and other times very daunting. Someone out there is very midled by the teachings of Funk, Theiring and the rest of them. Also that some of the books described are on best seller lists is very disturbing. Thomas' point that we need to market ourselves with books of ours with the same marketing schemes is ludacris. We need to find our own new ways of marketing Christ and our faith to the people of the twenty-first century.

The Jesus Seminar's quest of the real Jesus is really misleading they don't want to find out the real Jesus. The real Jesus is discovered by faith and these guys just want to dismiss Jesus for people who are searching for him. Jesus said 'I am the way the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." I'm sure that this is one of the sayings that receives a grey or black marble.

"One big, heretical glob of unproven assumption."

I found it interesting that Johnson indicated that the scholars of the Jesus seminar wrote to their peers. One scholar writes his view of Jesus. The next liberal scholar builds off of the last scholar’s writing. The process just continues until there is a large mass of liberal heresies. The scope of influence isn’t expanded at all; it merely compounds until it is just one big, heretical glob of unproven assumption. Conservatives who read liberal writing on the Historical Jesus do not generally come to similar conclusions nor do they agree with them, but they understand the other side of the argument in order to know where the argument is going. This same concept is likewise for conservative scholars. It seems a bit futile to me for the liberal scholars (whose view does not seem to be widely accepted outside of the Jesus seminar) to write book after book about Jesus having made no real, affirmative conclusions about him.

This historical quest (according to my readings in Johnson’s book) removes faith from the equation and therefore undermines the very core of Christianity. That being said, I find liberal scholarship to be a blatant attack on Christianity, and frankly, sir, I don’t like it!

Zach Pyron

Is He real?

As I read through "The Real Jesus" the reoccuring theme of "what the heck are these people thinking" kept coming up. One thing I don't understand is how all these educated smart people can think in the most idiotic ways. It seems as though the Jesus Seminar people have totally dismissed the authority of the Bible. Christian made a good point in class the other day when he said these that the Jesus seminar people seem like they are looking for an excuse not to need a savior or for repentence of sin. I totally agree with that statement. If these "scholars" were following the life of Jesus and his actions and his teachings they would have no need to cast marbles to determine what he actually said or what he might have said.

The word of God is the very anchor that keeps me going day to day and my relationship with it's main character and for somebody to challenge the quality of that character is crappy. Jesus did not die on a cross or rise from the dead to be questioned by a group of people who want to question his very words. I understand "suspicous herminutics," but I think what they are doing is trying to disprove the very God breathed words that God ordained for Jesus to tell the lame, lost, and saved.

my thoughts on the real jesus

so, all my life i have never thought of Jesus as anything but real. as real as Plato, Caesar, Shakespeare or Beethoven. although i never heard about them in my world, i know they existed in the past and i believe the same with Jesus. I experience Jesus in my life and know the difference he makes changes me and encourages me to do better. He is real to me. So this idea of a historical Jesus that contradicts that which is found in the traditional gospels seems a non-issue to me. i don't worry about it either way. I at least appreciate the fact that they acknowledge his existence and do not just blow him off.
What i wonder about most is why they (the scholars in the Jesus Seminar) put themselves through such struggle in trying to find the "real" Jesus. is faith not enough? the Pauline texts encourage us to have faith and trust in Christ and let that be enough! if one denies the Jesus that has been followed for nearly 2 thousand years in search of a different person, one misses the point. I love how johnson pointed out that those NT professors who were in the Jesus Seminar ended up unable to do their task as a professor due to their concern over finding the real Jesus. my solution is just to have faith in the Jesus that brings change. real, genuine change for the better. that is all.

It wasn't that bad

That which does not kill makes you stronger...right? I dunno the reading was just difficult for me. Not that I was not intelligent enough to read it, but rather I was insulted by the ridiculous theories I was forced to endure. For one of my discussion points I actually played with the idea that Johnson exaggerated some of the theories just to dramatize the situation. I was shocked that such aweful ideas about Jesus could be made up by men and women who claim to be some sort of Believer. I am not sure that is possible, but I will let them work it out with their own fear and trembling. I found the reading about the liberal school verses the conservative very applicable to today's society. It makes no sense for a secular university to try to offer programs about a book that they are really hindered from fully understanding. It would be like wanting to study a book in a language you knew you could never speak... worthless. But in a world where everything is worthless, what is the alternative?

I was relieved when Johnson got to the point. My favorite was the support he offered from Pauline material. He systematically gave line after line of viable quotes that prove that a theology was rising up. It was not just Paul; it was many NT writings bringing to light a historical Jesus that was by no means an insult to the intelligent. I learned alot. I would never in my life have choosen that book for myself, but I am very glad to have come out alive.

And they call themselves scholars...

All the reading of the last week (since I, of course, waited until the last minute) has made my head spin. I spent the major of the reading horrified at the morons who call themselves scholars. I was so appalled that anyone could truly believe these bizarre depictions of Jesus. I must admit, I am not a big fan of Biblical criticism, even in our very conservative way here a Williams. The question comes to mind: how much is too much? There comes a point when what we believe can no longer be solidly proven. At what cost do we press the matter? While some criticism is good and healthy, I wonder if the degree given at our seminaries--based on Johnson's comments--takes it a bit too far. What Johnson described is more than knowing what and why you believe something...it is hurtful to the faith. I am the type that has been raised in a very conservative home, so I have often taken God's word for granted. I'd never really questioned it's authenticity, and I believe that Jesus was who the Gospels said he was (and is). That is why this book was a difficult read. It is hard for me to entertain the notion that the Jesus of the Gospels isn't the "real Jesus". The book, while informative, really (in its main point) told me about the Jesus I already know, and I don't think the scholars he addresses will put any more stock in his statements than he did in their's.