Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312160056
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
You may remember reading that Paul Vorhoeven - director of such films as "Robocop" and "Total Recall" - is planning a movie about Jesus based on the work of the seminar.
So, mused the copy editor, does this mean Arnold Swarzenegger gets to say, "I'll be back" with a little different twist this time?
Actually, that is only slightly less seriously than I'm likely to take the Jesus Seminar's new book.
I'll admit being a little cynical about the timing of its release. Just before Christmas? What better guarantee of a flood of publicity, plenty of controversy?
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate biblical scholarship and the people who are willing to spend their lives in pursuit of a better understanding of the faith I share.
I don't think I'm afraid of what that scholarship might unearth about Christianity. As one of the seminar members properly pointed out in last week's article, who wants a faith that can't stand up to critical scrutiny?
Still, this particular study has a slippery feel to it. And, despite protestations to the contrary, it seems designed to challenge what has been bedrock Christian theology for the better part of 2,000 years.
The idea is that these 77 scholars discuss and debate the "probable authenticity" of each of about 1,500 sayings attributed to Jesus in the four Gospels of the New Testament and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. The inclusion of the last is particularly interesting, in that most conventional Christian bodies don't recognize its authenticity anyway.
In a way, the seminar folks seem caught up in the same type of error that some fundamentalists get bogged down in - literalism.
Christian fundamentalism finally figured out that insisting that the King James Version of the Bible presents the "infallible Word of God" would always be open to attack. Instead, faced with the hard evidence of the words themselves and the gradual discovery of older manuscripts, conservative Christian scholars adopted a more tenable theological position. That is, the Bible is entirely accurate in matters of history, science and theology "in the original autographs" - the original versions - which, of course, are no longer available for verification.
It doesn't seem intellectually honest to some, but that position is genuinely held by many smart people, and it does acknowledge that there is mystery at the core of faith.
In their own version of literalism, the Jesus Seminar scholars seem intent on making judgments about the "probable authenticity" of quotes that nobody has the original tapes of anymore. They are playing Sherlock Holmes trying to solve a 2,000-year-old mystery that by its very nature is insoluble - in this life, anyway.
Nevertheless - in the shabby characteristic of much modern scholarship - the Jesus Seminar presents its findings with an air of established fact that betrays the inherent uncertainly of any such undertaking.
It is undoubtedly true that this type of study has been foundational in many modern seminaries for decades, and it serves many good purposes. But questioning whether Jesus actually said "I am the way, the truth and the life" seemed pointless to most men and women who came out of those seminaries once they took up a pulpit. From most pulpits, it would be dangerous, frankly, simply to assert flatly that Jesus couldn't have said such a thing.
It's true, many Christian scholars believe Jesus never said that. They believe that quotation was attributed to him by a later writer interested in converting others into believers.
So what? Does that fact - if it is a fact - change the fundamentals of Christianity? Some might argue that indeed it does. I don't think so.
Most Christians - probably most practitioners of any faith - are followers of a grand design, a big picture. Debating whether Jesus said "I am the way" or encouraged others to follow him in less-memorable words ultimately is irrelevant to faith.
If the theologian's job is to help us understand faith better, the Jesus Seminar doesn't seem to be very good at it. What those seminary graduates learned was that they didn't have to lead their congregations to question the authenticity of every quotation attributed to Jesus.
Anybody who has spent any time studying about Jesus of Nazareth understands that he probably spoke Aramaic. He wrote no books, penned no letters that we know of. So even the first quote attributed to him was secondhand, and the only surviving ones are third- or fourth- or fifth-hand. Further, the surviving documents are written in another language - Greek.
All that Christians should expect is that the Bibles we use are reasonably accurate reflections of the teachings of the founders of our faith.
This week, Christians will be reading some wonderful stories about the birth of a baby named Jesus. It won't matter to them that many scholars - perhaps all the members of the Jesus Seminar - consider those accounts to be fiction, tall tales to satisfy a more primitive mind.
What will matter to them is that the spirit of this Jesus continues to be reborn in them every year, changing their lives and investing them anew with hope.
by CNB