The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 50 biblical criticism scholars and 100 laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk that originated under the auspices of the Westar Institute.
Members of the Seminar used votes with colored beads to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.
[8][9] The Seminar's reconstruction of the historical Jesus portrayed him as an itinerant Hellenistic Jewish sage and faith-healer who preached a gospel of liberation from injustice in startling parables and aphorisms.
[4][5][6] An iconoclast, Jesus broke with established Jewish theological dogmas and social conventions both in his teachings and in his behavior, often by turning common-sense ideas upside down, confounding the expectations of his audience: he preached of "Heaven's imperial rule" (traditionally translated as "Kingdom of God") as being already present but unseen; he depicted God as a loving father; he fraternized with outsiders and criticized insiders.
[4][5][6] According to the Seminar, Jesus was a mortal man born of two human parents, who did not perform nature miracles nor die as a substitute for sinners nor rise bodily from the dead.
[4][5][6] While these claims, not accepted by conservative Christian laity, have been repeatedly made in various forms since the 18th century,[10] the Jesus Seminar addressed them in a unique manner with its consensual research methodology.
[13][14] The methods and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar have come under harsh criticism from numerous[quantify] biblical scholars, historians and clergy for a variety of reasons.
Among additional criteria used by the fellows are the following:[4] The Seminar looked for several characteristics that, in their judgment, identified a saying as inauthentic, including self-reference, leadership issues, and apocalyptic themes.
[44][45] Scholars who have expressed concerns with the work of the Jesus Seminar include Richard Hays,[46] Ben Witherington,[47] Greg Boyd,[48] N.T.
Dunn,[59] Howard Clark Kee,[60][61] John P. Meier,[62] Graham Stanton,[63] Darrell Bock,[44] and Edwin Yamauchi.
[44] Jesuit theologian Gerald O'Collins has been critical of the methods and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar with particular attention to Christological ramifications.
"[66] Luke Timothy Johnson, a historian of the origins of Christianity,[67] argued that while some members of the seminar are reputable scholars (Borg, Crossan, Funk, others), others are relatively unknown or undistinguished in the field of biblical studies.
Seminar critic William Lane Craig has argued that the self-selected members of the group do not represent the consensus of New Testament scholars.
[70]Others have made the same point and have further indicated that thirty-six of those scholars, almost half, have a degree from or currently teach at one of three schools: Harvard, Claremont, or Vanderbilt University, all of which are considered to favor "liberal" interpretations of the New Testament.
[71] To open theist Greg Boyd, a prominent evangelical pastor and theologian, "The Jesus Seminar represents an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking.
"[74] He states that these glaring omissions were compounded by the fact that many of the supposed "experts" at the Seminar were young, obscure scholars who had only just completed their doctorates.
"[76] Luke Timothy Johnson[67] of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, in his 1996 book The Real Jesus, voiced concerns with the seminar's work.
[77] Raymond Brown likewise avers that the Seminar "operated to a remarkable degree on a priori principles, some of them reflecting antisupernatural bias.
... Again, almost as a principle, the eschatological character of Jesus' ministry has been dismissed..."[78] Dale Allison of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, in his 1998 book Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet, cited what he felt were problems with the work of (particularly) John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, arguing that their conclusions were at least in part predetermined by their theological positions.
Allison argued that despite the conclusions of the seminar, Jesus was a prophetic figure focused to a large extent on apocalyptic thinking.
[45] Several Bible scholars (for example Bart D. Ehrman, an agnostic, and Paula Fredriksen, a Jew) have reasserted Albert Schweitzer's eschatological view of Jesus.
[74] In particular, the fellows of the Seminar have removed "the apocalyptic and eschatological concerns which characterize American fundamentalism"[74] and remade Jesus as "a cynic philosopher, which suits their intellectual ambiance".
Critics such as Gregory Boyd have noted that the effect of this is that the Jesus of the Seminar shows no continuity with his Jewish context nor his disciples.
"[74] Craig Blomberg notes that if the Jesus Seminar's findings are to be believed, then: It requires the assumption that someone, about a generation removed from the events in question, radically transformed the authentic information about Jesus that was circulating at that time, superimposed a body of material four times as large, fabricated almost entirely out of whole cloth, while the church suffered sufficient collective amnesia to accept the transformation as legitimate.
[52] Howard Clark Kee, writing in The Cambridge Companion to the Bible (1997) and citing Helmut Koester and John Dominic Crossan as examples, states: Some scholars have advanced the theory that these so-called apocryphal gospels actually include texts and traditions that are older and more reliable than those in the canonical New Testament writings.
They tame the real, radical, Jesus, cutting him down to their own size...the sayings that meet with the Seminar's approval were preserved by the Christian communities whose contribution is discounted.
D. James Kennedy, senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, was critical of the Jesus Seminar and John Dominic Crossan, writing in his 1996 book The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail: Doesn't it seem like its open season on Christians—and even Christ—these days?
As Kennedy recalled later, "We featured a wide variety of scholarly viewpoints... We set out to show the ample historical evidence that the Gospels are reliable, that the New Testament is the best-attested book in antiquity in quantity and quality of manuscripts, that Jesus is who He said He is, and that He rose from the dead.
Both The Watchman Expositor and The Christian Arsenal identify the Jesus Seminar as an attempt by Satan to twist the meaning of Scripture, founded in the liberalism, modernism, and neo-orthodoxy that are current in academia and mainline seminaries.
Early in the 21st century, another group called the "Acts Seminar" was formed by some previous members to follow similar approaches to biblical research.