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Jesus Reconsidered: Scholarship in the Public Eye (Jesus Seminar Guides Vol 1)
Often referred to by the press and critics alike as a single voice, the Jesus Seminar is not, in fact, monolithic writes Bernard Brandon Scott. "Biblical scholars are notoriously independent and contrary." The scholars of the Jesus Seminar are no different. In Jesus Reconsidered, readers will hear the diverse voices of pioneering scholars, some of whom put their reputations and careers on the line when, in 1985, they chose to go public with scholarship that had been common knowledge in scholarly circles for more than a hundred years. Witty, timely and full of provocative issues, articles by Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, Roy Hoover and others invite readers to step inside scholarly debates and discussions previously obscured by jargon and obfuscation. Jesus Reconsidered is the first in a series titled Jesus Seminar Guides. Over the next few years, the series will gather the best writings of Westar Fellows from the pages of its membership magazine, The Fourth R, its academic journal Forum, and occasionally from previously unpublished material. Arranged topically, the Guides will focus on topics such as the the historical Jesus, parables, Easter, and canon and inspiration that have formed the core of the Seminar s work for more than twenty years. Jesus Reconsidered begins with the opening remarks of Jesus Seminar Founder Robert Funk at its first meeting in March 1985. There he laid the groundwork upon which the Seminar would be built. Robert Funk concludes his remarks by saying, "Our stories are eroding under the acids of historical criticism. We must retell our stories. And there is one epic story that has Jesus in it." For those curious about the quest and the questions that drive the Jesus Seminar, this book is a must read.
120 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
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July 11, 2026
A SERIES OF ESSAYS EXPLAINING THE HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF THE JESUS SEMINAR
Bernard Brandon Scott (b. 1941) is Professor Emeritus at the Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a charter member of the Jesus Seminar.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “The Jesus Seminar consists of scholars who come together to study issues related to Jesus, his 1st-century environment and the growth of early Christianity… The ‘voice’ of the Seminar is in its publications, especially ‘The Five Gospels’ and ‘The Acts of Jesus.’ They report a consensus based on votes taken following intense discussion and, at times, fierce debate. The votes reflect a minority as well as a majority opinion… The Seminar set out to accomplish a project that had never been attempted before: (1) to summarize what modern scholarship knew about the historical Jesus and (2) to make its findings available to the general public…” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “[Robert] Funk was the originator and impresario of the Jesus Seminar. His inaugural address… [is] available here … Roy Hoover and Marcus Borg provide early assessments of the Seminar as a work in progress… My essay, evaluating the Seminar after it had finished its work, was published following Robert Funk’s death. It assesses the gains of the Seminar and lays out a path for the future. Perry Kea demonstrates that the Jesus Seminar belongs to a long tradition of scholarship… The last three essays turn to the controversy generated by the Seminar’s findings… These essays gather together efforts of members of the Jesus Seminar to explain what they are about and to defend that effort. As such, they are not only an introduction to the work of the Seminar, but the beginnings of its history.” (Pg. 2-3)
Roy Hoover states in his essay, “the primary reason for the founding of the Jesus Seminar was the arrival of a new and promising moment in the history of New Testament scholarship, a convergence of new historical sources and new ways to build on the achievements of earlier scholarship. And the first aim of the Seminar was to use and extend the new scholarship to expand the horizon of what we can know about Jesus as a figure of history and about the origin of our religious heritage. But the Jesus Seminar has had a second aim… to make the fruits of scholarship available and accessible to the general public.” (Pg. 16)
He acknowledges, “Much has been made of the fact that the Seminar found sufficient evidence of historicity for only about 18% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the ancient sources to color them red or pink in ‘The Five Gospels.’ … I would suggest that this result shows that the Seminar took the question of the burden of proof seriously: the burden of proof belongs to the one who makes a claim for the historicity of a saying.” (Pg. 18)
Marcus Borg explains in his essay, “Though fundamentalist scholars are welcome, none have become members, presumably because their understanding of Scripture as a ‘divine product’ makes the activity of the Seminar unnecessary and irrelevant (and perhaps even blasphemous). A few Southern Baptist scholars took part until pressure from within their denomination forced them to withdraw.” (Pg. 26)
He also explains, “The Seminar consistently voted as ‘black’ all sayings in which Jesus is reported to have spoken of ‘the end of the world,’ a last judgment, the coming of ‘the Son of man,’ or his own second coming. For scholars, this result is news because it constitutes a thorough rejection of the eschatological consensus that had dominated Jesus scholarship for much of this century… The Seminar does not think Jesus spoke of his own second coming. Rather, it sees language about a second coming originating in the early community after Jesus’ death. Also in black are all passages that speak of an eternal judgment: the threats of being cast into a furnace of fire, or into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth… As a group, we do not think Jesus’ message was about how to gain heaven and avoid hell.” (Pg. 30-31)
Perry Kea summarizes, “The 19th century … produced numerous ‘lives’ of Jesus… While there were dissenters, by the time the First World War had ended, the view that Jesus was some kind of apocalyptic preacher was becoming the majority view of scholars. It was also becoming apparent that if this view was correct, the Jesus of history was not going to provide a very adequate basis for traditional Christian claims about him… The period just after World War I saw a change in focus in historical Jesus studies. German scholars Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius began applying the method of form criticism to the gospels… Sayings of Jesus or stories about him tended to conform to specific types or forms… the various forms were assembled by the first writer(s) of the gospel… the order and sequence of the episodes … is artificial. This meant that the chronological sequence of the events of Jesus’ life … could not be taken at face value… Early Christian theology flows from this preaching, not from what Jesus himself taught… This period in scholarship is sometimes called the period of the ‘No Quest.’” (Pg. 37-38)
He continues, “Bultmann’s own students … renewed the quest for the historical Jesus… Ernest Käsemann… [suggested] that while we could not expect the historical Jesus to mouth the precise claims made by his later followers, Christian theology had a right to expect that the mission and teaching of Jesus be consistent with the claims made about him after his resurrection… this ‘New Quest’ … was motivated by the theological aspirations of (mostly) Protestant scholars… Günther Bornkamm’s ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is an excellent example of a … New Quest study… Yet, the 1970s and early 1980s were relatively quiet on the historical Jesus front… The seeds of renewed interest in the historical Jesus were planted with new manuscript discoveries [e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library].” (Pg. 38-39)
He notes, “One of the criticisms of the Seminar that people … share with me is its conclusion that there is a historical core to exorcism stories. These people complain that the Seminar is not being skeptical enough: demons don’t really exist… While we 21st century westerners may not believe in demon possession, 1st century people did… in that culture, a person like Jesus with a proven track record as an exorcist would have been very popular.” (Pg. 44)
Bernard Brandon Scott reports, “We never actually agreed on that the color scheme meant… the greatest difference on the colors’ meaning has to do with grey. For some it indicated a saying was even less likely to be from Jesus than a pink saying… grey was less than pink...For others, grey was a lack of certainty that it was not black. For these grey was less then black. This differing point of view would eventually have profound implications on the Seminar’s direction.” (Pg. 49-50)
He continues, “In the history of the Seminar, the 1986 Notre Dame meeting was a watershed. Those who supported the apocalyptic view of Jesus found themselves in the minority and so began to drift away from the Seminar. That was unfortunate, but it would not have changed the Seminar’s direction. What was moving the Seminar … was new configurations of both the evidence and methods that were reshaping and continue to reshape New Testament scholarship. Critics of the Seminar routinely accuse its members of having prior theological preferences for a non-apocalyptic Jesus and of voting based on this prejudice…” (Pg. 60)
Ruth Schweitzer-Mordecai observes, “What is new about the Jesus Seminar is not the scholarship but the arena for scholastic discussion. The Jesus Seminar is not just telling family secrets, it is yelling them, going out of the way to attract media attention… By telling the family secrets in a loud voice, the Jesus Seminar is behaving in a way that typically triggers a family crisis.” (Pg. 68)
Robert J. Miller clarifies in an interview, “I have never understood our claim to speak for scholars to mean that most scholars agree with our specific findings or even with all of our methods. Not even members of the Seminar agree on these. What I do understand it to mean is that the Seminar’s fundamental views about the gospels---that they are not historically true in all their details; that some of the words attributed to Jesus were not actually spoken by him… that they are, to put it bluntly, a complex blend of fact and fiction, and that to discover the historical Jesus we need a critical sifting of evidence rather than theological assurances.” (Pg. 80)
Of Ben Witherington III’s criticism of the Seminar for not including fundamentalists, he responds, “obviously, if we start with the belief in the literal historicity of every verse in the Bible, we rule out, by definition, critical judgments about the historical reliability of anything in the gospels… For Witherington… the quest for the historical Jesus … consists only of fitting it all into a coherent and harmonized whole.” (Pg. 81-82)
He adds later, “Wouldn’t anyone who disrupted the temple on the scale that Jesus is reported to have done be perceived as a dangerous troublemaker, regardless of his message, or even if he had no particular message at all?… there is an assumption… that exists virtually unchallenged in all historical Jesus research… that there must have been a connection between Jesus’ death and his teaching, that he was killed because of what he stood for. While this is obviously a reasonable assumption, it is not a necessary one.” (Pg. 90)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the Jesus Seminar.
Bernard Brandon Scott (b. 1941) is Professor Emeritus at the Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a charter member of the Jesus Seminar.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “The Jesus Seminar consists of scholars who come together to study issues related to Jesus, his 1st-century environment and the growth of early Christianity… The ‘voice’ of the Seminar is in its publications, especially ‘The Five Gospels’ and ‘The Acts of Jesus.’ They report a consensus based on votes taken following intense discussion and, at times, fierce debate. The votes reflect a minority as well as a majority opinion… The Seminar set out to accomplish a project that had never been attempted before: (1) to summarize what modern scholarship knew about the historical Jesus and (2) to make its findings available to the general public…” (Pg. 1-2)
He continues, “[Robert] Funk was the originator and impresario of the Jesus Seminar. His inaugural address… [is] available here … Roy Hoover and Marcus Borg provide early assessments of the Seminar as a work in progress… My essay, evaluating the Seminar after it had finished its work, was published following Robert Funk’s death. It assesses the gains of the Seminar and lays out a path for the future. Perry Kea demonstrates that the Jesus Seminar belongs to a long tradition of scholarship… The last three essays turn to the controversy generated by the Seminar’s findings… These essays gather together efforts of members of the Jesus Seminar to explain what they are about and to defend that effort. As such, they are not only an introduction to the work of the Seminar, but the beginnings of its history.” (Pg. 2-3)
Roy Hoover states in his essay, “the primary reason for the founding of the Jesus Seminar was the arrival of a new and promising moment in the history of New Testament scholarship, a convergence of new historical sources and new ways to build on the achievements of earlier scholarship. And the first aim of the Seminar was to use and extend the new scholarship to expand the horizon of what we can know about Jesus as a figure of history and about the origin of our religious heritage. But the Jesus Seminar has had a second aim… to make the fruits of scholarship available and accessible to the general public.” (Pg. 16)
He acknowledges, “Much has been made of the fact that the Seminar found sufficient evidence of historicity for only about 18% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the ancient sources to color them red or pink in ‘The Five Gospels.’ … I would suggest that this result shows that the Seminar took the question of the burden of proof seriously: the burden of proof belongs to the one who makes a claim for the historicity of a saying.” (Pg. 18)
Marcus Borg explains in his essay, “Though fundamentalist scholars are welcome, none have become members, presumably because their understanding of Scripture as a ‘divine product’ makes the activity of the Seminar unnecessary and irrelevant (and perhaps even blasphemous). A few Southern Baptist scholars took part until pressure from within their denomination forced them to withdraw.” (Pg. 26)
He also explains, “The Seminar consistently voted as ‘black’ all sayings in which Jesus is reported to have spoken of ‘the end of the world,’ a last judgment, the coming of ‘the Son of man,’ or his own second coming. For scholars, this result is news because it constitutes a thorough rejection of the eschatological consensus that had dominated Jesus scholarship for much of this century… The Seminar does not think Jesus spoke of his own second coming. Rather, it sees language about a second coming originating in the early community after Jesus’ death. Also in black are all passages that speak of an eternal judgment: the threats of being cast into a furnace of fire, or into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth… As a group, we do not think Jesus’ message was about how to gain heaven and avoid hell.” (Pg. 30-31)
Perry Kea summarizes, “The 19th century … produced numerous ‘lives’ of Jesus… While there were dissenters, by the time the First World War had ended, the view that Jesus was some kind of apocalyptic preacher was becoming the majority view of scholars. It was also becoming apparent that if this view was correct, the Jesus of history was not going to provide a very adequate basis for traditional Christian claims about him… The period just after World War I saw a change in focus in historical Jesus studies. German scholars Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius began applying the method of form criticism to the gospels… Sayings of Jesus or stories about him tended to conform to specific types or forms… the various forms were assembled by the first writer(s) of the gospel… the order and sequence of the episodes … is artificial. This meant that the chronological sequence of the events of Jesus’ life … could not be taken at face value… Early Christian theology flows from this preaching, not from what Jesus himself taught… This period in scholarship is sometimes called the period of the ‘No Quest.’” (Pg. 37-38)
He continues, “Bultmann’s own students … renewed the quest for the historical Jesus… Ernest Käsemann… [suggested] that while we could not expect the historical Jesus to mouth the precise claims made by his later followers, Christian theology had a right to expect that the mission and teaching of Jesus be consistent with the claims made about him after his resurrection… this ‘New Quest’ … was motivated by the theological aspirations of (mostly) Protestant scholars… Günther Bornkamm’s ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is an excellent example of a … New Quest study… Yet, the 1970s and early 1980s were relatively quiet on the historical Jesus front… The seeds of renewed interest in the historical Jesus were planted with new manuscript discoveries [e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library].” (Pg. 38-39)
He notes, “One of the criticisms of the Seminar that people … share with me is its conclusion that there is a historical core to exorcism stories. These people complain that the Seminar is not being skeptical enough: demons don’t really exist… While we 21st century westerners may not believe in demon possession, 1st century people did… in that culture, a person like Jesus with a proven track record as an exorcist would have been very popular.” (Pg. 44)
Bernard Brandon Scott reports, “We never actually agreed on that the color scheme meant… the greatest difference on the colors’ meaning has to do with grey. For some it indicated a saying was even less likely to be from Jesus than a pink saying… grey was less than pink...For others, grey was a lack of certainty that it was not black. For these grey was less then black. This differing point of view would eventually have profound implications on the Seminar’s direction.” (Pg. 49-50)
He continues, “In the history of the Seminar, the 1986 Notre Dame meeting was a watershed. Those who supported the apocalyptic view of Jesus found themselves in the minority and so began to drift away from the Seminar. That was unfortunate, but it would not have changed the Seminar’s direction. What was moving the Seminar … was new configurations of both the evidence and methods that were reshaping and continue to reshape New Testament scholarship. Critics of the Seminar routinely accuse its members of having prior theological preferences for a non-apocalyptic Jesus and of voting based on this prejudice…” (Pg. 60)
Ruth Schweitzer-Mordecai observes, “What is new about the Jesus Seminar is not the scholarship but the arena for scholastic discussion. The Jesus Seminar is not just telling family secrets, it is yelling them, going out of the way to attract media attention… By telling the family secrets in a loud voice, the Jesus Seminar is behaving in a way that typically triggers a family crisis.” (Pg. 68)
Robert J. Miller clarifies in an interview, “I have never understood our claim to speak for scholars to mean that most scholars agree with our specific findings or even with all of our methods. Not even members of the Seminar agree on these. What I do understand it to mean is that the Seminar’s fundamental views about the gospels---that they are not historically true in all their details; that some of the words attributed to Jesus were not actually spoken by him… that they are, to put it bluntly, a complex blend of fact and fiction, and that to discover the historical Jesus we need a critical sifting of evidence rather than theological assurances.” (Pg. 80)
Of Ben Witherington III’s criticism of the Seminar for not including fundamentalists, he responds, “obviously, if we start with the belief in the literal historicity of every verse in the Bible, we rule out, by definition, critical judgments about the historical reliability of anything in the gospels… For Witherington… the quest for the historical Jesus … consists only of fitting it all into a coherent and harmonized whole.” (Pg. 81-82)
He adds later, “Wouldn’t anyone who disrupted the temple on the scale that Jesus is reported to have done be perceived as a dangerous troublemaker, regardless of his message, or even if he had no particular message at all?… there is an assumption… that exists virtually unchallenged in all historical Jesus research… that there must have been a connection between Jesus’ death and his teaching, that he was killed because of what he stood for. While this is obviously a reasonable assumption, it is not a necessary one.” (Pg. 90)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the Jesus Seminar.
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