ETS 2003, Atlanta, Georgia
Excavating Jesus or Inventing a Jesus?
5
Library well over a generation ago, scholars working on Jesus and Galilee with literary
evidence simple introduce new methods or innovative theories to analyze these texts.
The collage of citations is re-shuffled or re-mixed, emphasizing some passages over oth-
ers, while re-interpreting a few, perhaps in dialogue with other disciplines.
16
This construct is built on and a continuation of the work of the Jesus Seminar and par-
ticularly reflects the presuppositions of the seven pillars of scholarly wisdom as
represented in their culminating work, The Five Gospels.
17
In summary, those pillars are
as follows:
1.
An essential distinction exists between the historical (real?) Jesus and the Christ
of Christianity.
2.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are to be preferred over the
Gospel of John as sources for the study of the historical Jesus.
3.
Markan Priority.
4.
Both Matthew and Luke used the Q-Source, Sayings Source or Q-Gospel in the
development of their gospel accounts.
5.
The retreat away from Schweitzer`s eschatological Jesus to a non-
eschatological model of Jesus.
6.
The difference between the oral culture of the historical Jesus and the print
culture of later Christianity.
7.
That the burden of proof for authenticity for the accounts in the canonical gospels
rests on those who claim authenticity, not those who deny authenticity.
18
Birger Pearson (himself no conservative) delivered a stinging assessment of the work of the
Jesus Seminar and its production of The Five Gospels.
A group of secularized theologians and secular academics went seeking a secular Jesus,
and they found him! They think that they found him, but, in fact, they created him. Je-
sus, the party animal, whose zany wit and caustic humor would enliven an otherwise
dull cocktail partythis is the product of the Jesus Seminary`s six years` research. In a
sense the Jesus Seminar, with is ideology of secularization, represents a shadow image
16
Jonathan L. Reed. Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence. (Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania: Trinity Press, 2002): 214. (italics ours). For further on this work, see our review in The Master's
Seminary Journal, 13:2 (Fall 2002): 291-94.
17
Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover and The Jesus Seminar. The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic
Words of Jesus. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1993): 2-5.
18
Ibid. Also see Birger A. Pearson, The Gospel According to the Jesus Seminar. The Institute for Antiquity
and Christianity, The Claremont Graduate School. Occasional Papers #35 (1996): 16.