by Jeffrey W. Hamilton<\/p>\n\tI. At the beginning of April, 1996, three major news magazines [Times, Newsweek, and US\nNews and World Report] all carried the same lead story – “the search for the historical\nJesus”\n A. This wasn’t a coincidence. A group of self-proclaimed scholars, called “The Jesus\nSociety”, were behind the stories.\n
B. Questions regarding who Jesus really is is not new – Matt. 16:13-16<\/p>\n C. As with the question of evolution, Christians need to be aware and concerned about\nthis society. A lie repeated often enough is accepted as truth.\n
II. What is the Jesus Seminar<\/p>\n A. A group of about 50 Bible scholars and seminary professors. Started in 1985 with\nthe stated purpose of uncovering the “historical Jesus”\n
1. As with most works, the scholars start out with a set of presuppositions.<\/p>\n a. For example, Robert Funk, the founder the Jesus Society, believes\nJesus was a “Jewish Socrates” – not surprisingly, that is what he has\nfound.\n b. Marcus Borg, another member of the Jesus Society, studies mystical\nliterature and the philosophy of Buddha and comes to the conclusion\nthat Jesus was a Jewish mystic.\n
2. Membership in this society is self-selected<\/p>\n a. Members are selected based on agreement with the Seminar’s overall\ngoals and agenda, not on scholarship\n b. So we have a group of far-out critics and leftist theologians\nassembled with no one to check their incredible ideas or question\ntheir outrageous conclusions.\n c. Included in the members of this society is Paul Verhoeven, director\nof such vulgar films as Basic Instinct and Showgirls.\n
3. Worse though are the goals of the society<\/p>\n a. Robert Funk: it is time to “reinvent Christianity” [”In Search of\nJesus”, US News & World Report. April 8, 1996]\n b. The society begins by stating the Gospel records are useless (too\nflawed) and so they would “search for the Jesus behind the Christian\nfacade of the Christ.”\n 4. The society decides what portion of the Gospels were really spoken by Jesus\nby voting with color beads\n a. Red – Jesus actually said this; Pink – This resembles something Jesus\nsaid; Gray – The idea is close to Jesus, but did not originate with him;\nBlack – Has nothing to do with Jesus.\n b. Their result? They claim that 82% of the words attributed to Jesus\nwere not spoken by Him!\n c. In all of Mark, only Mark 12:17 was judged to be authentic! The\nGospel of John was completely thrown out.\n d. Of course these results were widely published. Dr. Luke Johnson, a\nscholar and critic of the Jesus Seminar: “It was fascinating to see\nhow the Jesus seminar . . . Was savvy enough to realize that the\nAmerican media covers only three things well: personalities,\nelections, and scandals, and crafted their yearly performances in the\nform of elections (the colored beads) concerning the personality\n(Jesus) promised to yield a scandal.\n 5. They vote down any statement of Jesus that sounds Jewish or cites the Old\nTestament\n a. The idea is that anything Jesus “truely said” must have been things\nthat no one of his day would have thought of and so “put those\nwords into his mouth.”\n b. It assumes that Jesus cannot say anything rooted in the culture and\ntimes He lived in!\n c. Jesus was a Jew, living in Jewish society, but he is not expected to\nsound like a Jew! Since Jewish boys are taught the Old Testament\nscriptures from youth, should we expect Jesus to quote them?\n d. What would happen to speeches of our current leaders if we\nartifically excised them of every reference dealing with anything\npopular in our culture?\n
B. The quest for the historical Jesus is rooted in the late 18th century.<\/p>\n 1. Rationalists of that time concluded that there was much myth-making\ninvolved in the writing of the life of Jesus.\n a. They could not conceive the supernatural acting in the lives of men,\nso they sought ways to explain these acts away.\n b. There influence is felt even today. A Methodist preacher once\nexplained the feeding of the 5000 as the other people being shamed\nby the sharing of the young boy with the five loaves and two fish so\nthat they brought out their own food to share with others. It was the\nsharing, he said, that was the true miracle!\n c. One Jesus Seminar member describes the healing of a leper, “I\npresume that Jesus, who did not and could not heal that disease or\nany other one, healed the man’s illness by refusing to accept the\ndisease’s ritual uncleaness and social ostracization . . . By healing the\nillness without curing the disease, Jesus acted as an alternative\nboundary keeper in a way subversive to the established procedures of\nhis society. Such a position may seem to destroy the miracle. But\nmiracles are not changes in the physical world so much as changes in\nthe social world.” [Cynic, Sage, or Son of God<\/i>, Boyd, p. 85]\n (1) Note: do you think that people of Jesus’ day would have been\nimpressed with Jesus declaring an illness heal, while the\ndisease remained evident to all?\n 2. In 1838, C. H. Weisse argued that the gospels of Matthew and Luke,\nbecause of their similarities, were written by authors who copied from the\nsame source. He then placed Mark’s gospel as the earliest of the four, thus\nproviding Luke and Matthew’s writers with sufficent data to write their\nnarratives. However, Mark doesn’t have as many sayings of Jesus, such as\nthe sermon on the mount, as Matthew and Luke. Therefore, he surmised\nthere must have been a collection of these sayings from which the authors of\nMatthew and Luke copied. In 1890, this “saying source” was given the\nname “Q”, from the German word “Quelle”, meaning “source”.\n
3. Note that the Q document has never been proven to exist<\/p>\n C. In the 1980’s, John S. Kloppenborg took the idea of Q even further. He broke the\ndocument (which doesn’t exist!) into three layers:\n
1. Q1 contains only wisdom sayings<\/p>\n
2. Q2 contains some of the prophetic and apocalyptic words of Jesus<\/p>\n 3. Q3 adds some narrative and biographical information, such as the\ntemptation).\n D. This hypothetical, layered document is the core of the teachings of the Jesus\nSeminar. They reject anything that they don’t believe comes from Q1.\n
1. Notice the circular reasoning. <\/p>\n a. What is found in the first layer, they say, is only teachings about\nsocial issues and political statements. This eliminates the use of any\nclaim of Jesus to be divine, any recognition of His deity by others, or\nany of the miracles which proved His deity.\n b. If Q1 can be constructed to say only what these “scholars” want it to\nsay, then a historical Jesus can be “discovered” to fit the\npreconceived ideas of the scholars.\n 2. Imagine a “scholar” presenting a radically new view of Julius Caesar, based\non a hypothesis framed around a document which doesn’t exist! The scholar\nwould be laughed out of every history department in the nation.\n 3. But when the Jesus Seminar does the very same thing with Jesus, it is\naccepted, and lauded!\n
III. What the Jesus Seminar practice is called “form criticism”<\/p>\n A. This is not to be confused with the legitimate science known as textual criticism,\nwhich is used to analyzed the thousands of manuscripts, scrapes, and translations\nthat exists to determine how the original scriptures read.\n B. Form criticism assumes that the stories and sayings of Jeus were in oral form long\nbefore they were written down. While they were strictly oral tales, the people\ntelling the tales shaped and reshaped the stories to fit their situations. Therefore,\nwhat was finally written down is not what Jesus actually said, but what He was\nreport, years later, to have said.\n 1. Marcus Borg, member of the Jesus Society: “We can’t imagine the followers\nof Jesus remembering for decades a long, complicated sermon through oral\nmemory.”\n
C. The flaws of form criticism<\/p>\n 1. It assumes that the stories of Jesus circulated for a long time in oral form\nbefore being commited to paper.\n a. However, as little as 20 years passed between the events described\nand the written accounts.\n b. If there were errors in the written accounts, the enemies of\nChristianity could have easily refuted and discredited any false claims\nof what Jesus said and did.\n c. Even if you did not believe in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it is\nknown that disciples of various rabbis of that time kept well written\nnotes to remember their teacher’s words. It isn’t unthinkable to\nimagine Jesus’ disciples doing the same thing.\n d. Several cultures are famous for meticulously keeping huge epics in\nincrediable detail — all memorized and passed on orally. Why is it\ndifficult to imagine Jesus’ followers doing something similar?\n
2. It assumes the Gospels are false unless they can be proven otherwise.<\/p>\n a. Yet, there is a wealth of evidence that the Gospels are historically\naccurate.\n
b. Yet all of this is dismissed with the wave of a hand.<\/p>\n c. The burden of proof should be on the critic to prove the Bible is\nfalse.\n
3. It absolutely rules out anything miraculous.<\/p>\n
a. The resurrection, they claim, could not have happened.<\/p>\n b. They ignore the proofs and evidences for the resurrection and offer\nno supporting evidence for their belief.\n D. Is it any wonder that form critics find a radically different Jesus than the one\npresented in the Scriptures?\n E. If the Gospels are ledgendary accounts, then why do they contain so much material\nthat is embarrassing to the apostles?\n 1. Why would men tell of their ignorance, spiritual insensitivity, and their many\nfailures?\n
2. Why would Peter tell of his three denials of the Christ?<\/p>\n 3. Why would the apostles admit they slept when Jesus needed them for\nsupport in Gethsemane?\n F. If the early church rewrote the account of Jesus to fit their doctrine, then why are so\nmany concepts in the epistles not found in the Gospels.\n 1. Ideas like “the body of Christ” or “righteousness by faith” are not attributed\nto Jesus.\n 2. Paul goes out of his way to distinguish his teachings from the Lord’s – I Cor. \n7:10,12,25\n G. Why would early Christians fabricate a universal Messiah who commands the\napostles to preach to every creature (Matt. 28:18-19).\n 1. Many Jewish Christians hated Gentiles. Peter had to be nearly dragged to\npreach to a Gentile. (Acts 10) He then was rebuked by other Christians for\nwhat he had done (Acts 11)\n 2. Enmity between Jewish and Gentile Christians boiled during the early church\n(Acts 15; Galations)\n
3. Which is easier to believe?<\/p>\n a. The Jews completely contrived Jsus as the world’s Messiah because\nthey loved the Gentiles so much\n b. They were compelled by the clear teaching of Jesus to follow the\nGreat Commission\n 4. If Jesus were a made up Messiah by the early Jewish Christians, he would\nhave been a Jews-only Messiah who spoke heated of Rome’s destruction\n(not Jerusalem) and promise that God’s wrath would soon crush the\nidolatrous nations surrounding Judah.\n
IV. Sitations from books, not found in our Bibles<\/p>\n
A. The Jesus Seminar favor sources not found in the Bible.<\/p>\n B. Some are found in the Apocrypha, but the most favored sources are from the Nag\nNammadi Library. \n
1. This is a set of Gnostic literature found in 1940 in Egypt.<\/p>\n 2. Many of the members of the Seminar date these books before the gospels of\nthe New Testament. However, their dating methods are highly questionable\nand subjective.\n C. Among the favored books are “The Gospel of Thomas”, “The Gospel of Peter”, and\n“The Cross Gospel”.\n 1. The Gospel of Thomas is a particular favorite because each of the 135 verses\nstarts with “And Jesus said …”\n
a. This makes is a “Saying source”<\/p>\n
b. Providing proof that their beloved Q document could possibly exist.<\/p>\n
c. Note they do not accept the Gospel of Thomas as the Q document<\/p>\n
2. Problems<\/p>\n a. They date the Gospel of Thomas between 50-70 A.D., but there is no\nindependent attestation to its existant until the early third century,\nwhich suggests it was written in the second century.\n
b. The Gnostic nature of the writing suggests a second century date.<\/p>\n c. Every Biblical scholar who pioneered the study of this document date\nit around 140 A.D.\n D. Boyd, from Cynic, Sage, or Son of God<\/i>: “There are for Crossan, a total of thirteen\nsources that qualify for his earliest strata. Of these, five are hypothetical\nreconstructions: an ‘early’ layer of GosThom, a triple-layered Q, a Miracles\nCollection, and Apocalyptic Scenario, and the ‘Cross Gospel.’ Three are obsurce\nfragments of papyrus text . . . And one is known only from several patristic\ncitations: the Gospel of the Hebrews. Only the remaining four are fully extant\ndocuments — and these all happen to be canonical: I Thessalonians, Galations, I\nCorinthians, and Romans.\n“This already may seem like a meager data pool from which to reconstruct a\nhistorical Jesus, but in practice the situation is worse. For the papyri fragments are\nof such little value, and the secondary references to the Gospel of Hebrews so few,\nthat little use is made of either by Crossan. Moreover, and most significantly,\nbecause of Crossan’s understanding of Paul, virtually no use is made of his epistles\n[the only extant documents he has!] Hence, functionally speaking, Crossan’s\nhistorical Jesus is completely reconstructed from a data pool that has been largely\nreduced to a hypothetical ‘early’ layer of GosThom, a hypothetical ‘Cross Gospel’,\nand a hypothetical triple-layered ‘Q Gospel.’”\n
E. There is no reason to accept such fradulant “scholarship” over the Bible. <\/p>\n 1. Note: a set of papyrus fragments containing parts of Matthew have been\nrecently dated to 70 A.D. If this proves true, the book of Matthew must\nhave existed far earlier than the Jesus Seminar would admit.\nV. Much of the ideas for this lesson came from the research of two brethren in Westlake,\nTexas: Mark Roberts and Rusty Miller. I did not want you to be ignorant of their findings,\nfor they answer many of the nagging doubts that arise when one reads what the “scholars”\nhave to say about our Lord and Savior.\n
A. Read “Who Do You Say That I Am?” by Mark Roberts<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Jeffrey W. Hamilton I. At the beginning of April, 1996, three major news magazines [Times, Newsweek, and US News and World Report] all carried the same lead story – “the search for the historical Jesus” A. This wasn’t a coincidence. A group of self-proclaimed scholars, called “The Jesus Society”, were behind the stories. B. Questions regarding who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32],"tags":[34,1275],"class_list":["post-62898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","tag-false-teaching","tag-higher-criticism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":83387,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-jesus-mention-fornication\/","url_meta":{"origin":62898,"position":0},"title":"Did Jesus mention fornication?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 19, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hello, I know the Bible talks about how fornicators won't inherit the kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:9). But my question is: what does Jesus specifically say about fornication? I believe in the Bible, but I wonder if he mentioned it. I see a lot of people nowadays trying\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36023,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/have-you-heard-about-the-world-mission-society-church-of-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":62898,"position":1},"title":"Have you heard about the World Mission Society Church of God?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi Brother Jeff, On my way out of my apartment today, two ladies talked to me about \"God our Mother\" and pointed to Galatians 4:26 as evidence. I did some research on the belief and found out that they're most likely from the World Mission Society Church of God.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90778,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/gods-power-to-save\/","url_meta":{"origin":62898,"position":2},"title":"God’s Power to Save","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0by J. F. Dancer When Paul wrote the letter to the saints at Rome, he explained to them why he had not yet visited them. He had promised to come and still intended to do so (Romans 15:24), but had been prevented (Romans 1:13). Then he set forth the basic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17163,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-gospel-of-judas\/","url_meta":{"origin":62898,"position":3},"title":"The Gospel Of Judas","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Boyd Jennings Were you alarmed to hear that another gospel has been discovered?\u00a0\u00a0Before we continue, let\u2019s remember what Jesus told the twelve minus Judas. \u00a0\u201cHowever, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into\u00a0all\u00a0truth\u201d\u00a0(John 16:13).\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s why Paul wrote by inspiration of God\u2014twice,\u00a0\u201cBut even if we,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/Gospel-of-Judas-389px-Codex-Tchacos-p33.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":69542,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/uncompromising\/","url_meta":{"origin":62898,"position":4},"title":"Uncompromising","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 31, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Sewell Hall Generally speaking, our generation has an aversion to authority, yet those who heard the Lord's great sermon observed that \"He taught them as one having authority.\" We prefer sermons that deal in generalities; Jesus dealt with specifics. We prefer preachers who praise rather than condemn; Jesus condemned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4338,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/cafeteria-style-religion\/","url_meta":{"origin":62898,"position":5},"title":"Cafeteria-Style Religion","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"May 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"by Ethan R. 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