Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: crf@tomato.princeton.edu (Charles Ferenbaugh) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Literalist activists Message-ID: Date: 4 Apr 91 06:15:17 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Princeton University Mathematics Department Lines: 72 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu After reading the recent article about the Jesus Seminar, I'm confused. The newspaper account of the group's findings gave me a very different impression from the moderator's comments. In article henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl random_middle_name Henning) writes: > [quoting a newspaper article -- crf] > "The group has stirred controversy since its first meetings in 1985, >when scholars participating in the group voted down the apocalyptic >voice of Jesus when he is quoted as saying he will return one day to a >world filled with turmoil. > "Scholars felt that the doomsaying words were put on the lips of Jesus >to bolster hopes of gospel writers about 30 to 60 years after his >lifetime." &c. >---------------------------- and our moderator comments: > ... you have to realize exactly what the seminar is doing. They are >trying to determine which passages are Jesus' actual words. So to say >that they reject John 3:16 is no news, at least to me. I had always >assumed that this was John's words rather than Jesus'. ... > >More generally, I question whether it's possible even in principle for >us to determine what Jesus' words were. When you compare the Gospels >it's pretty clear that paraphrasing has been done, for purposes such >as conciseness, making them intelligible to Gentiles, clarifying their >application in a post-resurrection situation, etc. > >Now the scholars participating in the Jesus seminar understand all of >this very well. They realize that the fact that they don't print a >passage in red is not necessarily an attack on its authority for >Christians. ... If I'm understanding the moderator correctly, his point is: okay, so maybe the biblical words of Jesus aren't direct transcripts like we would find today in the _New_York_Times_, say. But even when you take into account all the paraphrasing and so forth, they're still a reasonably accurate representation of what Jesus taught. If that's all these people are saying, I have no difficulty agreeing with it. (I should point out that I find no contradiction between that and my belief that the Bible is inerrant. Of course by "inerrancy" I don't mean the naive version that Karl Henning described in his article.) But the newspaper quote seems to be saying something quite different. Note that, in effect, it implies that certain of Jesus' words in the Bible are nowhere near anything Jesus ever said, but they were added later for other purposes. In this view, when the Gospel writers wrote "Jesus said", IT WAS A FLAT-OUT LIE AND THEY KNEW IT. Contrast this with the moderator's view, in which "Jesus said" actually means "Jesus said," with the understanding that it might be a paraphrase but he really did say something to this effect. If I may use loaded terms, these two approaches could be called the "bad- faith" and "good-faith" views, respectively. > .... There is a gulf between ordinary Christians and >Christian scholarship. We need people to narrow this gulf (both by >explaining more accurately to ordinary Christians what is actually >being done, and by avoiding excesses of speculative methodologies), >not to emphasize it. I agree wholeheartedly!!!! But it won't be easy. For many people the only exposure they've had to "modern scholarship" is the kind that says, we really don't like these parts of what the Bible says, but that's okay because we've now discovered that Paul was a bigot and the gospel writers were liars who put words in Jesus' mouth and... so we can ignore it. Until attitudes like that stop going under the name "scholarship", it'll be difficult to get some Christians to give real scholarship a real hearing. Grace and peace, Charles Ferenbaugh