Jesus Seminar

Last night and today the minister at my church, Davidson Loehr, presented a seminar on Jesus. He is one of the fellows (members) of the Jesus Seminar. That's a group of Biblical scholars and theologians that are working on investigating the historical Jesus. They have produced some books about the authentic sayings of Jesus, and the authentic acts of Jesus. Their picture of Jesus is very different from the Jesus of mainstream Christianity. What they believe has been known in scholarship circles for about 100-150 years, but the laity hasn't been let in on it. I think that's because of two reasons: 1) The laity don't want to have their image of Jesus challenged, and 2) The clergy aren't courageous or strong enough to challenge the laity. So, you have ministers who know what they're preaching from the pulpit to be untrue or at the least misleading.

The Seminar believes that it is well established that Jesus was illegitimate. There are very good reasons for believing that, and I believe they are right. They believe that the Christianity of St. Paul is nothing like what Jesus actually taught. They believe that Jesus was kind of an itinerant Cynic sage that taught something called the Kingdom of God. His teaching was that the Kingdom could only be brought about by people trying to treat each other as children of God. He didn't believe that God was about to end the world, and separate the sinners from the saved. Jesus thought that instead of us waiting for God to act, that God was waiting for us to act. It's the kind of belief that I'm partial to. It's quite impressive and Davidson is a good presenter. I had attended the same Seminar that he put on about 3 years ago, but there were some differences. I must say that a lot of it was stuff I had already learned about on my own, but there was enough new stuff to make it worth the investment.

From time to time the Jesus Seminar goes on the road, and if I get the chance to see one, I'll definitely go. Other members of the Seminar that are more well know are John Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Walter Wink. I strongly recommend that anyone with the opportunity to check out this work should.
- posted by Marcos @ 8:04 PM