The Jesus Seminar

Introduction
• “Jesus did not ask us to believe that his death was a blood
sacrifice, that he was going to die for our sins.”

• “Jesus did not ask us to believe that he was the messiah.

He certainly never suggested that he was the second person of
the trinity. In fact, he rarely referred to himself at all.”

• “Jesus did not call upon people to repent, or fast, or

observe the sabbath. He did not threaten with hell or promise
heaven.”

• “Jesus did not ask us to believe that he would be raised

from the dead.”

• “Jesus did not ask us to believe that he was born of a

virgin.”

• “Jesus did not regard scripture as infallible or even

inspired.”

So says Robert W. Funk, Architect and Founder of the Jesus

Seminar, in a Keynote Address to the Jesus Seminar Fellows in
the spring of 1994.(1) The Jesus Seminar has been receiving
extensive coverage lately in such periodicals as Time,
Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, as well as on network
television.

Biographical
The Jesus Seminar Fellows
The Jesus Seminar is a group of New Testament scholars who
have been meeting periodically since 1985. The initial two
hundred has now dwindled to about seventy-four active members.
They initially focused on the sayings of Jesus within the four
Gospels to determine the probability of His actually having
said the things attributed to Him in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John. Each scholar offered his/her opinion on each “Jesus”
statement by voting with different colored beads:

• Red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it.

• Pink: Jesus probably or might have said something like

this.

• Gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas are close to
His own.

• Black: Jesus did not say this; it represents a later

tradition.

Their voting conclusions: Over 80% of the statements

attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are, by voting consensus,
either gray or black. This means that only 20% of Jesus’
statements are likely to have been spoken by Him. The other
80% are most assuredly, they say, unlikely to have ever been
uttered by Jesus.

Their conclusions were published in 1993 in a book entitled

The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.
The primary author of the book, Robert W. Funk, also the
Founder and Chair of the Jesus Seminar, crafted the results of
their deliberations in a slick, color-coded format with
charts, graphics, appendices, and copious footnotes. (The
Gospel of Thomas is to be included with the traditional four
gospels, they say.)

Who are these scholars, and what are their credentials? Robert
W. Funk, former professor of the New Testament at the
University of Montana is the most prominent leader. He is
joined by two other major contributors, John Dominic Crossan,
of DePaul University, Chicago, who has authored several books
including The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean
Jewish Peasant, The Essential Jesus, Jesus: A Revolutionary
Biography, and Marcus Borg of Oregon State University, also
the author of several books including: Jesus: A New Vision and
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus
and the Heart of Contemporary Faith.

Of the remaining active participants, only fourteen are well-

known scholars in New Testament studies. Another twenty are
recognizable within the narrow confines of the discipline, but
they are not widely published beyond a few journal articles or
dissertations. The remaining forty are virtually unknowns, and
most of them are either at Harvard, Vanderbilt, or Claremont
College, three universities widely considered among the most
liberal in the field.

The public, exposed by the mass of publicity and attention

given to the Jesus Seminar by the media has been inclined to
assume that the theories of these scholars represent the
“cutting edge,” the mainstream of current New Testament
thought. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nearly all of these scholars are American. European

scholarship is nearly non-existent and, that being the case,
it would be inaccurate, if not deceiving for the Jesus Seminar
participants to present themselves, their work, and their
conclusions as a broad, representative consensus of worldwide
New Testament scholarship.

While the media and the general public may tend to be gullible
and naive about the authority and findings of the Jesus
Seminar, Christians need not be intimidated.

Philosophical
Why is this movement important? Should Christians be concerned
with this? Haven’t the gospel traditions had their skeptics
and critics for centuries? What is different about the Jesus
Seminar?

Scholars since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century

have questioned such things as the miracles, the prophecies,
and the extraordinary claims of Christ in the Gospels.

Beginning in Germany, a separation began to occur between the

“Jesus of History” and the “Christ of Faith”; that is, it came
to be popularly believed that a man named Jesus really lived,
but that fantastic myths grew up around Him and about His
powers and claims, and thus He became for many the “Christ of
Faith” in story, symbol, and worship. Scholars promoting this
separation conclude that biblical history is not what is
important; but rather, one’s personal experience, one’s search
for meaning and timeless truths. Those are of primary
importance to an individual.

The Jesus Seminar stands in this tradition. But what is most

significant about their work is that it has widened the circle
of awareness (i.e., the general public) to New Testament
studies and criticism, and a focus upon issues which up until
now have been primarily restricted to academic discussions
among New Testament scholars.

This group has brought into question the very authenticity and
validity of the gospels which lie at the center of
Christianity’s credibility. If what the Jesus Seminar espouses
is historically accurate, the sooner the naive Christian
community can be educated to these facts the better, according
to these scholars.

A major presupposition of the Jesus Seminar, therefore, is

philosophical naturalistic worldview which categorically
denies the supernatural. Therefore they say one must be wary
of the following in the Gospels:

• Prophetic statements. Predictions by Jesus of such things

 as the destruction of the Temple, or of Jerusalem, or His own
resurrection are later literary additions or interpolations.
How do we know this? Because no one can predict the future.
So they MUST have been added later by zealous followers.

• Miracles. Since miracles are not possible, every recorded

miracle in the Gospels must be a later elaboration by an
admiring disciple or follower, or must be explained on the
basis of some physical or natural cause (i.e., the Feeding of
the 5,000: Jesus gave the signal, and all those present
reached beneath their cloaks, pulled out their own “sack
lunches,” and ate together!).

• Claims of Jesus. Christ claimed to be God, Savior, Messiah,

Judge, Forgiver of sin, sacrificial Lamb of God, etc. All of
these, say the Jesus Fellows, are the later work of His
devoted followers. The historical Jesus never claimed these
things for Himself, as Funk infers in his above-mentioned
statements. Reality isn’t like this. It couldn’t be true.

Therefore the Jesus Fellows assert that the Gospels could not
have been written by eyewitnesses in the mid-first century. On
the basis of this philosophical presupposition, the Jesus
Seminar considers itself personally and collectively free to
select or discard any statement of the Gospels which is
philosophically repugnant.

There is nothing new about this approach in New Testament

scholarship. Thomas Jefferson, a great American patriot and
president did the same thing in the late 1700s with almost
identical results. He admired Jesus as a moral man, but like
the Jesus Fellows, he assumed all supernatural and
extraordinary elements in the Gospels were unreliable and
could not be true. With scissors and paste, Jefferson cut out
of the Gospels any and everything which contravened the laws
of nature and his own reason.

When he had finished his project, only 82 columns of the four

Gospels out of his King James Bible remained from an original
700. The other nine-tenths lay on the cutting room floor.
Jefferson entitled his creation The Life and Morals of Jesus,
and his book ended with the words, “There laid they Jesus . .
. and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and
departed.”(2)

Jefferson and the Jesus Fellows, like all skeptics, prefer

their own reason and biases over the possibility that the
Gospels are accurate in what they say about miracles,
prophecy, and the claims of Christ. They are like the man who
visited the psychiatrist and informed him of a grave problem:
“I think I’m dead!” The psychiatrist said, “That is a serious
problem. May I ask you a question? Do you believe that dead
men bleed?” The man quickly answered, “Of course not. Dead men
don’t bleed.” The psychiatrist reached forward, and taking a
hat pin, he pricked the man’s finger. The man looked down at
his bleeding finger and exclaimed, “Well, what do you know!
Dead men bleed after all!”

Canonical
The Jesus Fellows, on the basis of their naturalistic bias,
conclude that at least the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark,
Luke) could not have been written at the time tradition and
many New Testament scholars assume they were. The “Priority of
Mark” as the earliest gospel written has strong (but not
universal) support. And yet Mark 13 records Jesus’ prediction
of the destruction of the temple, something that did not
actually occur until A.D. 70.

Since the Jesus Fellows do not believe prophecy is possible,

they judge Mark, the “earliest” of the Gospels, to have been
written after the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in
A.D. 70 by the Romans. If Mark was written in the early 70s,
still later dates are then required for Matthew and Luke, to
say nothing of the Book of Acts which must follow them with an
even later date.
Now, this gives the Jesus Scholars a “window” of about 40
years from the time of Jesus’ death (a A.D. 32.) to the fall
of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) to look for earlier sources devoid of
miracles and extraordinary claims. They think they have found
two such primary sources which fit their assumptions. The
first of these is the “Q” source, or “Quelle.”

Synoptics/Quelle
It has long been observed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke must
have had some kind of symbiotic relationship, as if they were
aware of one another, or used the same sources, or some of the
same sources. The prevailing theory is that Mark (the shortest
of the three) was written first, and was later substantially
incorporated into both Matthew and Luke. There is a high, but
not total agreement, in the parallel accounts of Matthew and
Luke where the two reflect the book of Mark.

But Matthew and Luke have additional material, some 250 verses
(i.e., the Christmas stories, greater elaboration on the
resurrection events, etc.). And there are some verses which
are common to both Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark.
Thus many scholars conclude there was some other document or
source available to Matthew and Luke which explains why they
contain these additional 250 verses along with the corpus of
Mark. The scholars have designated this material as “Q,” or
“Quelle,” which is the German word for “Source.” Outside of
the Synoptic gospels, there is no written documentary evidence
to substantiate Quelle.

A number of New Testament scholars thus claim that Quelle must

have been an early, written document which preceded the
writing of the Synoptic gospels and was incorporated into
them. And they claim that in these 250 verses we only find a
very “normal, human” Jesus who is more likely to have been the
historical man.
The Gospel of Thomas
The second source given high priority and preference by the
Jesus Seminar Fellows is the Gospel of Thomas. In fact, they
value it so highly they have placed it alongside the four
traditional ones, giving it equal, if not superior, value and
historical authenticity.

A complete copy of The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in the

1940s at an Egyptian site called Nag Hammadi, where
archaeologists found an entire library of ancient texts
including the Gospel of Thomas. It was dated around A.D. 400
and written in Coptic, the language of the ancient Egyptian
church. This astonishing cache consisted of early Christian
and Gnostic texts.

This Gospel of Thomas has now been studied for forty years,
and the overwhelming conclusion of scholars worldwide has been
that the document carries many of the identifying marks of a
Gnostic literary genre, from a sect prominent in Egypt and the
Nile Valley during the second, third, and fourth centuries.

It has been almost universally assumed that the parallels in

Thomas to the New Testament Gospels and epistles were copied
or paraphrased (not the reverse, as the Jesus Fellows claim)
to suit Gnostic purposes, teachings which were opposed to all
ideas about a supernatural God in the flesh Who could perform
miracles, forgive sin, and rise from the dead. The Jesus
Seminar Scholars have fit Thomas nicely together with “Q” to
frame an historical portrait of Jesus based primarily upon
these two sources.

The Jesus Scholars have declared that the Gospel of Thomas and
the Q Source were written within the forty years between
Jesus’ death and the fall of Jerusalem, pushing forward the
writing of the four canonical gospels (a necessity on their
part to uphold their theory) to very late in the first
century.
Chronological
Apart from completely ignoring Paul’s epistles which were
written between A.D. 45 and his martyrdom at the hands of Nero
in A.D. 68, the Jesus Fellows have a critical problem in
fitting their theory into first century chronology.

In the last chapter of the Book of Acts (28), Luke leaves us

with the impression that Paul is in Rome, and still alive.
Tradition tells us he died in A.D. 68. In Acts, Luke shows
keen awareness of people, places and contemporary events, both
within and without the church. And he records the martyrdoms
of both Stephen and James. It is highly unlikely, if the
deaths of Paul and Peter and the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70)
had already occurred when Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles,
that he would have failed to record these most important
events.

New Testament scholars are in strong agreement that whoever

wrote Acts also wrote the Gospel of Luke two volumes by one
author, both addressed to a man named “Theophilus.” And since
Luke is supposed to have incorporated Mark and the Q Source
material into the writing of his own Gospel, and Acts was
written after Luke, but before Paul’s death (A.D. 68) and the
fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), then Mark and Quelle must have
been written by the mid 60s. The same difficulty in Luke
exists with Mark, who is said to have written his gospel with
Peter as his source, Peter having been martyred in Rome about
the same time as Paul.

It is highly unlikely that these two obscure sources, Quelle

and the Gospel of Thomas, could have been circulating
throughout the Christian community and having such impact that
they overshadowed what Paul was at the very same time saying
about Jesus in all of his epistles.

Real church history is not kind to the Jesus Fellows at this

point. The church did not first flourish in the Nile Valley
and spread elsewhere. The clear pattern of expansion from both
biblical and the earliest patristic writings is from Jerusalem
to Antioch, Asia Minor, Greece, and finally Rome. Ironically,
the earliest of the Church Fathers, Clement of Rome (ca. A.D.
30 to ca. A.D. 100) writes from Rome at the end of the first
century an epistle to the Corinthians (1 Clement) which is
considered to be the oldest extant letter after the writings
of the Apostles. It had such stature in the early church that
it was initially considered by some to be a part of the Canon.
All the other early church fathers (2nd century) are scattered
around in cities within the areas mentioned above, with the
exception of Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150 to c. A.D.
215) who reflects some Gnostic ideas in his teachings.

The more traditional and accepted chronology for the documents

under consideration is as follows:

Dating/chronology of First Century Authorship

(All dates are A.D.)

Uncontested:
End of First Century: 100
Fall of Jerusalem: 70
Martyrdom of Paul and Peter: 68
Epistles of Paul: 45-68
Some Oral Tradition: 32-70
Crucifixion of Jesus: 32

Traditional:(3)
Clement of Rome: 96
Revelation (John): 96
Epistles of John: 90-94
Gospel of John: 85-90
Acts of Apostles: 66-68
Matthew & Luke: 64-66
Gospel of Mark: 64-65

Jesus Seminar:(4)
Gospel of John: 85-90
Acts of Apostles: 80-100
Gospel of Luke: 80-100
Gospel of Matthew: 80-90
Gospel of Mark: 70-80
Gospel of Thomas: 70-100

In comparing the two chronologies, it appears there simply is

not enough time for the simple Jesus of history to evolve into
the Christ of faith. Myths and legends need time to develop.
There is none available in the first century to accommodate
the Jesus Seminar’s theory.

Christological
On the basis of the Gospel of Thomas and Quelle, the Jesus
Fellows believe the historical Jesus was simply a sage, a
spinner of one- liners, a teller of parables, an effective
preacher. This is what He was historically according to these
scholars. The “high Christology” (supernatural phenomena, the
messianic claims, the miracles, the substitutionary atonement,
the resurrection) all came as a result of a persecuted church
community which needed a more powerful God for encouragement
and worship. His suffering, ardent followers are responsible
for these embellishments which created the “Christ of Faith.”
The real Jesus was a winsome, bright, articulate peasant, sort
of like Will Rogers.

Various other portraits of Jesus have proliferated among the

Jesus Fellows, suggesting that he was a religious genius, a
social revolutionary, an eschatological prophet. He was all of
these things, we would say, but offer that He was something
more.

The Jesus Seminar assumes a “low christology” (Jesus as a

peasant sage) preceded the “high christology” created later by
the church. Is there anything that would suggest otherwise?
The Epistles of Paul
The Apostle Paul conducted his church-planting ministry
between approximately 40 to the time of his death, A.D. 68. It
was also during this time that he wrote all of his epistles.
While some New Testament scholars question the authenticity of
Paul’s authorship of a number of these epistles, virtually
all, even the most liberal, will accept Romans, 1 and 2
Corinthians, and Galatians as genuinely Pauline.

What kind of “Christology” do we find in these epistles? A

high christology. The Jesus Seminar is asking us to believe
that at the very same time the Gospel of Thomas and the Q
source were alleged to have been written portraying Jesus as a
wise, peasant sage, Paul was planting churches across the
Mediterranean world and ascribing to Jesus the same high
christology found later in the four gospels!

The Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts 15 clearly indicates

that Paul was aware of and connected to Jerusalem and its
church leadership (Peter and James). After the Council Paul
and Barnabas were given the express task of taking and
distributing to the churches a written document of the
Council’s instructions about how Gentiles were to be
incorporated into the church.

The Jesus Seminar simply chooses to ignore this mass of clear,

Pauline evidence almost universally accepted by New Testament
scholars. The notion that a high christology (the Gospels and
the epistles) evolved from a low christology (the Gospel of
Thomas, Quelle) is unsupportable.

Jesus the Sage

If we accept the Jesus Seminar notion that the historical
Jesus was a simple peasant later revered and deified, with
what are we left? Jesus is so stripped down that He becomes
the “Christian dummy” of the first century church! The
community is more brilliant than the leader! Even Renan, the
French skeptic said, “It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus.”
Further, if Jesus was such a “regular guy,” why was He
crucified? Crucifixion by the Romans was used only for
deviants, malcontents, and political revolutionaries (like
Barabbas). What did this simple peasant do to create such a
stir that He would suffer such a death?

The Jesus Seminar portrayal of Jesus simply cannot explain the

explosion of Christianity in the first and second centuries.
With their view of Christ, they cannot create a cause
monumental enough to explain the documented, historical
effects that even they must accept.

Notes

1. Robert W. Funk, “The Gospel of Jesus and the Jesus of the

Gospels,” The Fourth R (November/December, 1993), p. 8.
2. Smithsonian.
3. Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Handbook (Chicago: Moody,
1967), Matthew, 470ff (Mt), 493 (Mk), 511 (Lk), 543 (Jn), 567
(Acts).
4. Robert J. Miller, Editor. The Complete Gospels (Harper
SanFrancisco, a division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1994).
pp. 10 (Mk), 56 (Mt), 198 (Jn). Note: a date for Luke-Acts is
not provided, but on the basis of the book’s date for Mark, we
would assume 80 to 100 A.D.
5. James R. Edwards, “Who Do Scholars Say That I Am?”
Christianity Today: March 4, 1996, p. 17.

©1996 Probe Ministries.