Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium

by Robert W. Funk

Robert Funk, eminent biblical scholar and founder of the Jesus Seminar, documents his brilliant and provocative search for the original voice and vision of Jesus.This bold investigation takes the reader through the ancient gospels and history to find Jesus the subversive, the social critic, the dissident, the sage. Funk envisions and proposes a revitalized Christianity--shaped by history, not orthodoxy, and based on the unparalleled power of the authentic teachings of Jesus.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology, Philosophy, Spirituality, Christian

Paperback

First published January 28, 1996

About the author

Robert Walter Funk (July 18, 1926 – September 3, 2005), was an American biblical scholar, founder of the controversial Jesus Seminar and the non-profit Westar Institute in Santa Rosa, California. Funk, an academic, sought to promote research and education on what he called biblical literacy. His approach to hermeneutics was historical-critical, with a strongly sceptical view of orthodox Christian belief, particularly concerning historical Jesus. He and his peers described Jesus' parables as containing shocking messages that contradicted established religious attitudes.

Reviews

[Walter Rabon · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a former secretary of the Society of Biblical Literature and leader of the Jesus Seminar, Funk really delivers a digestable meal for the common reader of how the Gospels and Biblical accounts of Jesus were formed. He goes on to share how the Christ of Faith was developed and does a great job of marking the lines of demarcation between the Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. Finally, he offers theses for what this should mean for today's church and how we should talk about Jesus in the modern world.

For a 300 pager, this was extremely educational, challenging, enlightening, and provoking. I will be thinking about this work and it's challenges for years to come. Definitely worth a study and discussion with others and useful to liberate the church from being moralistic and creedally exclusive to open and celebrative of God's domain as already present.

[Jef Blocker · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a nutshell, Funk, a biblical scholar and founder of the Jesus Seminar, makes a credible case that the Jesus of the Christian religion and Jesus of Nazareth are not the same.

The Jesus Seminar reviews original scrolls and codexes to determine what Jesus actually did and said, and contrast him from the Jesus who was created by his followers to create and, basically, market Christianity.

Funk gives the reader context for attitudes of the people living in the time of Jesus and how religion, politics, morality, and social differences had an influence on how his followers interpreted Jesus' teachings. Also, the book gives an enlightening overview of how the bible was created from various gospels and texts, and how which of these were considered appropriate to be included in the bible we know today.

Some people may find this book disturbing. It challenges the ideas that Jesus is the Son of God, that he actually rose from death and ascended to heaven, performed all the miracles credited to him, the actuality of the last supper, and the idea of a second coming. These evolved from his followers interpretation of his teachings and to make sense of what had happened when they had expected Jesus to return on clouds a short time after his crucifixion. Funk does offer a new approach to understanding Jesus of Nazareth, which offers a deeper and more meaningful interpretation than the religion we know.

The book may seem a tad academic and repetitive in places, however, if you stay with it, Funk makes some good points.

[Chanita]

Funk declares "the New Testament is a highly uneven and biased record of various early attempts to invent Christianity." "Honest to Jesus is far and away the best book about the goals and work of the contemporary Historical Jesus movement. Robert W. Funk is director of the Westar Institute, which sponsors an annual Jesus seminar in which scholars attempt to establish which events recorded in the gospels actually happened and which did not. In Honest to Jesus, Funk describes these scholars' professional methodologies and personal goals, and summarizes their surprising findings. His prose is clear, his passion is bracing, and his conclusions are challenging. Funk's Jesus, in the end, emerges as a revolutionary figure for a new age, without being the least bit New Age-y." (from Amazon)

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I owned this book for a long time. The logical steps taken to uncover the Real Jesus of the first millennium was an eye opener. It was like peeling away all the layers of "churchiness" and human interpretation over the decades to try to find what is the core of the person called Jesus of Nazareth. Even if you don't agree with their conclusions, I had a hard time disputing their methods.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent body of work especially if ou have not reasd any of the other Jesus Seminar scholars. Funk if a scholar, which does not mean onyone with a PHD. Most critics of his work or the Jesus Seminar are not and are reviewing his work using handed down ideas from "authorities." Funk describes the nautre of scholarship in this book and it is well worth the read. This is an excellent summary of his thought about Jesus and the othr scolars that make up the JS. I gave it 4 stars because you can also find a lot this in the Five Gospels by Funk and others and thus need to only purchase one or the other.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the truth of Jesus, what would a carpenters son say and not say, let us dig in.

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin?

Actually, that's the entire point of this intensive and well documented search for the actual Jesus, the historical Jesus, before generations of followers got their hands on him. Funk peels back the layers and layers of accretions to reveal, not a divinity, but a real human being. As founder of the prestigious Jesus Seminar, that brought together the leading biblical researchers from a variety of denominations and none, Robert Funk is one of the leading biblical scholars in the world.

Over the course of this study, he traces what Jesus likely said and did (largely through the parables and quotations) and what Peter and Paul and the Council of Nicaea added to make Jesus more aligned with prophecy and power. So no virgin birth, no resurrection, no miracles except possibly healing the sick ... assuming that what sickened them was psychosomatic.

So who was the original Jesus that Funk wrests from the myth that grew up around him? He was a radical. People today would call him woke, often derisively. He championed "the least of these" in his own society, those on the margins, often despised by the mainstream. He challenged the contemporary power structures and had a vision of what God wanted for humankind, a glimpse of what was possible. He did not see himself as the literal Son of God. Funk often refers to him as a sage. And that is the Jesus he believes is worth following, and if followed, would transform religion and society as we know it. Based on Funk's scholarship, I see him as a kind of hippy who got by on the "kindness of strangers" for his daily bread. And clearly that was a threat, he was a threat, to both the Jewish and Roman power structures.

Unlike many of today's Christians, "Jesus preferred self-effacement to exhibitions of moral superiority, and plainly said so." Tell that to some of the Facebook commenters! Funk does a thorough analysis of the Good Samaritan parable to illustrate who the real Jesus likely was and what he believed. He talks about "insider" vs. "outsider" thinking. I was reminded of my favorite bible verse, Matthew 25:40. "As ye do unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do also unto me."

Shades of Martin Luther, Funk contends that Jesus believed "that every person had immediate unbrokered access to God's presence, God's love, God's forgiveness." There were no special sacred spaces ... all spaces were sacred. No need for temples, churches, or priestly intermediaries.

The final chapter is ingenious. After discrediting the Nativity and Resurrection stories and the notion of a Divine Child, Funk postulates a "Jesus for a New Age." And he offers twenty-one theses, that if he had a church he would"scotch tape to the door." The first is to set Jesus free from the structures that have been built up around him, structures that were designed to solidify power among a small group of those who followed him, the "in-group."

He has no kind words for contemporary American Christianity. "What Americans know far better is popular creedalism, a simplistic version of orthodoxy that has been packaged and marketed electronically like other mass-produced products." "Creedalism is a religion that supersedes Jesus, replaces him, or perhaps displaces him, with a mythology that depends on nothing Jesus said, or did, with the possible exception of his death."

"To put the matter candidly, the canonical gospels endeavor to authenticate the leadership of the church then in power. The authentic words of Jesus reject the notion of privileged position among his followers: the first will be last, the last first; those who aspire to be leaders should become slaves of all." In other words, no Christian "privilege."

Funk portrays a Jesus, that I suspect, is truer to history than what we currently celebrate in our churches. He's not a traditionalist, supporting the status quo. He's neither a racist nor a misogynist. And that is a Jesus whose vision I can adhere to and cherish and live by. As Funk says, "we will need to start all over again with a clean theological slate, with only the parables, aphorisms, parabolic acts, and deeds of Jesus as the basis on which to formulate a new version of the faith."

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE CO-FOUNDER OF THE "JESUS SEMINAR" PRESENTS A "NEW" JESUS

Robert W. Funk (1926-2005), was co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, and author/editor of other books such as 'A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision,' 'The Five Gospels - What Did Jesus Really Say?,' 'The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do?,' etc.

He said in the Prologue to this 1996 book, "The truths of religion are more like the truths of poetry than the truths of the empirical sciences. That is one reason I prefer to think of Jesus as a poet rather than as the second person of the Trinity. Yet the truths of religion and the truths of science are divorced only at grave risk." (Pg. 2) He adds, "I am inclined to the view that Jesus caught a glimpse of what the world is really like when you look at it with God's eyes. He endeavored to pass that glimpse along in disturbing short stories we call parables and in subversive proverbs we call aphorisms. But he did not spell out what he meant." (Pg. 11)

He states, "The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar are usually referred to as 'self-appointed,' thereby suggesting that they are intruders, usurpers, without proper endorsement by those who know the 'real' answers. To be an authority, one has to be 'appointed' by other authorities of higher rank." (Pg. 54) He argues that "The third questers, like Raymond E. Brown [The Birth of the Messiah] and John P. Meier [A Marginal Jew Vol. 2] take critical scholarship about as far as it can go without impinging on the fundamentals of the creed or challenging the hegemony of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. In their hands, orthodoxy is safe, but critical scholarship is at risk... Third questers are really conducting a search primarily for historical evidence to support claims made on behalf of creedal Christianity and the canonical gospels. In other words, the third quest is an apologetic ploy." (Pg. 65)

He states, "Several scholars have expressed outrage at one of the early conclusions reached by the Jesus Seminar---namely, that Jesus was not an eschatological prophet who expected history to come to an end in his own time. Frankly, the Fellows of the seminar were a bit surprised at their own discovery. The reason the seminar came to that conclusion is simple: The characteristic parables and aphorisms of Jesus proved, on close scrutiny, to be non-eschatological." (Pg. 145)

He observes, "There is nothing in the Christian story, so far as I can see, that is immune from doubt. The crucifixion of Jesus is not entirely beyond question. One ancient source stipulates that he was hanged, which may be no more than another way of referring to crucifixion. We do not know for a fact that he was buried. His body may have been left to rot on the cross, to become carrion for dogs and crows. What we have come to call the resurrection ... is nowhere narrated directly, except in the highly imaginative account in the Gospel of Peter... And very few scholars believe that the birth stories are anything other than an attempt to claim that Jesus was a remarkable person." (Pg. 219)

He concludes, "The renewed guest also has serious ramifications for how we understand the Christian life." (Pg. 302) He adds, "I now believe that neo-orthodoxy (and its Catholic counterparts) was the dying gasp of creedal Christianity---a last effort to salvage it for the modern world.... it has become clear that neo-orthodoxy has failed, that we have moved beyond the reach of that noble effort. In plain language, neo-orthodoxy is dead." (Pg. 304) He asserts, "We will have to abandon the doctrine of the blood atonement. The atonement in popular piety is based on a mythology that is no longer credible---that God is appeased by blood sacrifices. Jesus never expressed the view that God was holding humanity hostage until someone paid the bill." (Pg. 312)

This book will be of considerable interest to persons studying the historical Jesus---particularly those sympathetic with the Jesus Seminar.

[Paul Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ignoring Bob Dylan’s council: “Fearing not that I'd become my enemy In the instant that I preach …”
Beware, a grumpy old man writes the first 67 pages so if this puts you off, begin at page 68. Luckily, the information presented was worth the wait and is well worth the read. This book is a scholarly exploration of the parables and aphorisms attributed to Jesus. Some are deemed likely authentic while others seem to be placed in his mouth by those who wrote them down. The careful reader will notice how some aphorisms by Jesus contradict others. Further, we find contradictions across the gospels and across our own sensibilities. The separation is largely accomplished by majoritarian agreement among a team of scholars who read the texts in a historical manner rather than by an ecclesiastical one. Thereby you are supposed to get a better indication of what Jesus said and meant. You don’t need to “believe” their work anymore than the Bible itself but information can be interesting and enlightening in and of itself.

[Bruce Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a hard book to rate for me. I am familiar with the search for the historical Jesus and therefore some of the material was redundant for me. But I didn’t want to lower my rating due to this fact because if someone is new to the subject the material is very relevant. There were also several nuggets within this book that definitely made it valuable to read and I’m glad that I did.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read if you want to explore the historical picture of Jesus. It challenges the Church, separating Jesus, from Son of God. It, I think, gives answers to what probably a lot of people feel deep down but have not discovered why.