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Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus
Who is Jesus? What did he do? What did he say? -Are the traditional answer to these questions still to be trusted? - Did the early church and tradition "Christianize" Jesus? - Was Christianity built on clever conceptions of the church, or on the character and actions of an actual person? These and similar questions have come under scrutiny by a forum of biblical scholars called the Jesus Seminar. Their conclusions have been widely publicized in magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Jesus Under Fire challenges the methodology and findings of the Jesus Seminar, which generally clash with the biblical records. It examines the authenticity of the words, actions, miracles, and resurrection of Jesus, and presents compelling evidence for the traditional biblical teachings. Combining accessibility with scholarly depth, Jesus Under Fire helps readers judge for themselves whether the Jesus of the Bible is the Jesus of history, and whether the gospels' claim is valid that he is the only way to God.
254 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 6, 2020
If all we had were the remarks by Josephus, Tacitus et al about Jesus and the prima facie reports of the empty tomb, we would be fully warranted in believing Jesus of Nazareth lived, died, and rose again. The Jesus Seminar rejects that and rejects that we can know most anything about Jesus. This book is an early response to the juvenile methods of the Jesus Seminar. It also serves as a great text for an intro to a Synoptic Gospels class.
I. The Seminar’s Method
Aside from their ludicrous coloring system, the Seminar says:
a. If an utterance isn’t a parable or an aphorism, then Jesus didn’t say it. That’s rather strange; why would they say that? They want Jesus to be a wandering Cynic or guru. In other words, he’s from Woodstock. Of course, no other body of scholarship would dream of applying such restrictive criteria to any other religious figure.
B. Jesus’s Jewish heritage is exorcised(!) from his ministry. This makes sense, since a Hebrew prophet wouldn’t have been a Greek Cynic. Of course, even critical New Testament studies would reject that today, since if anything all the emphasis is on Jesus’s Jewishness.
C. The Gospel writers either borrowed from the Gospel of Thomas and/or the Secret Gospel of Mark. Oddly enough, the stringent criteria above is not applied to these texts.
Craig Blomberg gives a good rebuttal to the above points. We especially note the oft-made claim that Jesus expected the end of the world (and was likely disappointed). The problem is that he gave a bunch of instruction which presupposed a long interval of time (Blomberg 31). He mentioned mundane issues such as paying taxes, divorce, and marriage.
And to say the early church made up the texts simply won’t work. If the church “invented” Jesus’s deity, then why are there passages where Jesus seems to downplay it?
The most important essay is Darrell Bock’s essay on the historiography of the Gospels. Is the reporting of the gospel events designed to be a memorex, live, or jive? In other words, given the standards of ancient writing, did the authors write dwon the exact wording of Jesus (memorex), nothing of Jesus (jive), or the “gist” of Jesus (live)? Bock makes a convincing case for live.
If you hold to the memorex view, then you have a hard time affirming inerrancy in light of different sequences (or even worse, did Jesus heal the blind man as he was going into Jericho or leaving Jericho?).
The live view seeks to reproduce the “voice” or Jesus, not the exact words. Compare this with Thucydides account in 1.22.1. Thucydides admits he is summarizing, and perhaps reordering, a speaker’s thoughts and words, yet scholars recognize him as a model of accuracy and good reporting.
Other comments:
Gary Habermas remarks on the Seminar’s disavowal of miracles: the Seminar says we can’t trust the miracle narratives because the authors wanted to believe in them. Whether they did or not is irrelevant. It’s called the genetic fallacy.
Strangely enough, skeptics like Marcus Borg believe in the exorcism stories, but he gives us no reason for accepting the attestation of all Gospel writers on these stories while excluding the nature miracles.
William Lane Craig offers his standard defense of the Resurrection. I’ll forgo it here because I think it is better presented in Craig’s later works (cf. On Guard). He does note that the Resurrection can’t be a hallucination on the disciples’ part. Hallucinations can only show what is already in the mind, and Jesus’s resurrection isn’t identical with the Jewish afterlife (Craig 161).
Edwin Yamauchi’s concluding essay is fine survey of “Jesus studies” after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also touches on Josephus’s writings, including the controversial passage in Antiquities 18. It’s mostly authentic. Eusebius’s edition is somewhat doctored, but it is clear that Josephus knew of Jesus and his miracles.
This is an outstanding short response to the Jesus Seminar. It is somewhat dated as N.T. Wright’s refutation of the Jesus Seminar came out soon afterwards.
I. The Seminar’s Method
Aside from their ludicrous coloring system, the Seminar says:
a. If an utterance isn’t a parable or an aphorism, then Jesus didn’t say it. That’s rather strange; why would they say that? They want Jesus to be a wandering Cynic or guru. In other words, he’s from Woodstock. Of course, no other body of scholarship would dream of applying such restrictive criteria to any other religious figure.
B. Jesus’s Jewish heritage is exorcised(!) from his ministry. This makes sense, since a Hebrew prophet wouldn’t have been a Greek Cynic. Of course, even critical New Testament studies would reject that today, since if anything all the emphasis is on Jesus’s Jewishness.
C. The Gospel writers either borrowed from the Gospel of Thomas and/or the Secret Gospel of Mark. Oddly enough, the stringent criteria above is not applied to these texts.
Craig Blomberg gives a good rebuttal to the above points. We especially note the oft-made claim that Jesus expected the end of the world (and was likely disappointed). The problem is that he gave a bunch of instruction which presupposed a long interval of time (Blomberg 31). He mentioned mundane issues such as paying taxes, divorce, and marriage.
And to say the early church made up the texts simply won’t work. If the church “invented” Jesus’s deity, then why are there passages where Jesus seems to downplay it?
The most important essay is Darrell Bock’s essay on the historiography of the Gospels. Is the reporting of the gospel events designed to be a memorex, live, or jive? In other words, given the standards of ancient writing, did the authors write dwon the exact wording of Jesus (memorex), nothing of Jesus (jive), or the “gist” of Jesus (live)? Bock makes a convincing case for live.
If you hold to the memorex view, then you have a hard time affirming inerrancy in light of different sequences (or even worse, did Jesus heal the blind man as he was going into Jericho or leaving Jericho?).
The live view seeks to reproduce the “voice” or Jesus, not the exact words. Compare this with Thucydides account in 1.22.1. Thucydides admits he is summarizing, and perhaps reordering, a speaker’s thoughts and words, yet scholars recognize him as a model of accuracy and good reporting.
Other comments:
Gary Habermas remarks on the Seminar’s disavowal of miracles: the Seminar says we can’t trust the miracle narratives because the authors wanted to believe in them. Whether they did or not is irrelevant. It’s called the genetic fallacy.
Strangely enough, skeptics like Marcus Borg believe in the exorcism stories, but he gives us no reason for accepting the attestation of all Gospel writers on these stories while excluding the nature miracles.
William Lane Craig offers his standard defense of the Resurrection. I’ll forgo it here because I think it is better presented in Craig’s later works (cf. On Guard). He does note that the Resurrection can’t be a hallucination on the disciples’ part. Hallucinations can only show what is already in the mind, and Jesus’s resurrection isn’t identical with the Jewish afterlife (Craig 161).
Edwin Yamauchi’s concluding essay is fine survey of “Jesus studies” after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also touches on Josephus’s writings, including the controversial passage in Antiquities 18. It’s mostly authentic. Eusebius’s edition is somewhat doctored, but it is clear that Josephus knew of Jesus and his miracles.
This is an outstanding short response to the Jesus Seminar. It is somewhat dated as N.T. Wright’s refutation of the Jesus Seminar came out soon afterwards.
July 6, 2011
A great, great, great book on the questions raised by the Jesus Seminar and others on whether the traditional view of Jesus coincides with the historical evidence. The chapters cover the common questions and are answered by known scholars in the field. The style is easy to read for the layman, yet comprehensive enough (by its pages of footnotes) for someone who wishes to search further.
December 28, 2007
Faith shall not be proven in argument. Well...this book puts that idea to rest!
August 23, 2024
A SERIES OF APOLOGETICAL ESSAYS CRITICAL OF THE "JESUS SEMINAR," ETC.
This 1995 book contains essays from a variety of Christian scholars/apologists (e.g., William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas) dealing with various issues about Jesus' life and deeds. The editors wrote in the Introduction, "The book has two overarching objectives. (1) We will address current teachings that undermine the biblical record of Jesus and his life and ministry (e.g., the Jesus Seminar). (2) We will present a rationally justified affirmation of the biblical teaching of the particular topics." (Pg. 11)
Craig Blomberg says about the Jesus Seminar participants, "more than half of the entire Seminar, are relative unknowns. Most have published at best two or three journal articles, while several are recent Ph.D.'s whose dissertations were on some theme of the Gospels. For a full eighteen of the Fellows, a computer search of two comprehensive databases of published books and articles turned no entries relevant to the New Testament at all!... Almost all are American; European scholarship is barely represented. In short, the Jesus Seminar does not come anywhere close to reflecting an adequate cross-section of contemporary New Testament scholars." (Pg. 20)
He adds, "[The] final way the Jesus Seminar is idiosyncratic within contemporary scholarship ... is because they are convinced that the Gospel of Thomas contains numerous independent traditions about the historical Jesus that are at least as reliable, if not more so, than those found in the canonical Gospels." (Pg. 22)
He adds, "The strongest argument against the idea that Christians felt free to invent sayings of Jesus... comes from what we NEVER find in the Gospels. Numerous Christian controversies that ... threatened to tear the New Testament church apart could have been conveniently solved if the first Christians had simply read back into the Gospels solutions to those debates. But this is precisely what never happens... [e.g.,] whether believers needed to be circumcised, how to regulate speaking in tongues, how to keep Jew and Gentile united in one body... and so on. In other words, the first Christians WERE interested in preserving the distinction between what happened during Jesus' life and what was debated later in the churches." (Pg. 31-32)
Scot McKnight argues, "My fundamental disagreement with [non-evangelical scholars] is that such a Jesus would never have been crucified, would never had drawn the fire that he did, would never have commanded the following that he did, and would never have created a movement that still shakes the world." (Pg. 61)
William Lane Craig suggests that the evidence for Jesus' burial and the empty tomb are "historically credible... for the following reasons: ... Paul's testimony [1 Cor 15:3-5] provides early evidence for the historicity of Jesus' burial... the tradition he received and passed on refers to Jesus' burial: '... and that he was buried...' The grammatically unnecessary fourfold 'and that,' the chronological succession of the events, and particularly the remarkable concordance between this tradition and both the preaching of Acts 13 and the Gospel narratives ... shows that the tradition's mention of the burial is not meant merely to underscore Jesus' death." (Pg. 147)
The quality of the essays included varies somewhat, but overall this is a really excellent book for evangelical/traditional Christians supporting the traditional interpretations of Jesus' life.
This 1995 book contains essays from a variety of Christian scholars/apologists (e.g., William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas) dealing with various issues about Jesus' life and deeds. The editors wrote in the Introduction, "The book has two overarching objectives. (1) We will address current teachings that undermine the biblical record of Jesus and his life and ministry (e.g., the Jesus Seminar). (2) We will present a rationally justified affirmation of the biblical teaching of the particular topics." (Pg. 11)
Craig Blomberg says about the Jesus Seminar participants, "more than half of the entire Seminar, are relative unknowns. Most have published at best two or three journal articles, while several are recent Ph.D.'s whose dissertations were on some theme of the Gospels. For a full eighteen of the Fellows, a computer search of two comprehensive databases of published books and articles turned no entries relevant to the New Testament at all!... Almost all are American; European scholarship is barely represented. In short, the Jesus Seminar does not come anywhere close to reflecting an adequate cross-section of contemporary New Testament scholars." (Pg. 20)
He adds, "[The] final way the Jesus Seminar is idiosyncratic within contemporary scholarship ... is because they are convinced that the Gospel of Thomas contains numerous independent traditions about the historical Jesus that are at least as reliable, if not more so, than those found in the canonical Gospels." (Pg. 22)
He adds, "The strongest argument against the idea that Christians felt free to invent sayings of Jesus... comes from what we NEVER find in the Gospels. Numerous Christian controversies that ... threatened to tear the New Testament church apart could have been conveniently solved if the first Christians had simply read back into the Gospels solutions to those debates. But this is precisely what never happens... [e.g.,] whether believers needed to be circumcised, how to regulate speaking in tongues, how to keep Jew and Gentile united in one body... and so on. In other words, the first Christians WERE interested in preserving the distinction between what happened during Jesus' life and what was debated later in the churches." (Pg. 31-32)
Scot McKnight argues, "My fundamental disagreement with [non-evangelical scholars] is that such a Jesus would never have been crucified, would never had drawn the fire that he did, would never have commanded the following that he did, and would never have created a movement that still shakes the world." (Pg. 61)
William Lane Craig suggests that the evidence for Jesus' burial and the empty tomb are "historically credible... for the following reasons: ... Paul's testimony [1 Cor 15:3-5] provides early evidence for the historicity of Jesus' burial... the tradition he received and passed on refers to Jesus' burial: '... and that he was buried...' The grammatically unnecessary fourfold 'and that,' the chronological succession of the events, and particularly the remarkable concordance between this tradition and both the preaching of Acts 13 and the Gospel narratives ... shows that the tradition's mention of the burial is not meant merely to underscore Jesus' death." (Pg. 147)
The quality of the essays included varies somewhat, but overall this is a really excellent book for evangelical/traditional Christians supporting the traditional interpretations of Jesus' life.
July 22, 2019
WoW read this book if you want to constantly have to flip back and forth to the footnotes! it’s crazy how well-researched each of the essays is, and how well and logically they make their argument. it’s pretty intellectual (meaning anyone who doesn’t enjoy Christian history or textual criticism would have a hard time), but well worth the read if you want some Biblical reliability in your back pocket.
April 5, 2023
This work is a profoundly convincing scholarly refutation of the pseudo-scholarly Jesus Seminar's distortion of the four Gospel accounts and the historical Jesus. The two editors and eight contributing authors are well-known and published scholars whose work stands up to careful scrutiny. I have observed at close hand the devastating impact of the Jesus Seminar propaganda on my own famlly's members and can attest the strong spiritual medicine presented in this book.
April 27, 2021
Simplemente magnifico
December 16, 2023
Excelente libro! Lo leí y me empezó a llamar la atención la Apologética ❤ este libro fué de gran bendición a mi vida
June 18, 2024
Really high quality scholarship on the true historical Jesus.
June 25, 2024
This book was fine. Basic interaction with mainline scholarship on Jesus. Hate the 2CV on the cover.
January 23, 2013
Very good book. Well thought out and systematic. Each chapter is written by a different expert, and it covers many topics, including the flaws in the Jesus Seminar's claims and methods, and their attempt to mesh Gnosticism and true Christianity into a pseudo Christianity that there is no evidence for having existed. 5 out of 5 stars!
August 6, 2008
After reading a few books by Jesus Seminar authors, it was refreshing to find a challenge to their material.
September 11, 2016
A brief overview of historical questions about Jesus studies. Helpful but brief.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews