From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: An open question...
Date: 26 Aug 1992 13:56:08 GMT
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Reply-To: ncramer@labs-n.bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com


hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:
>tom@tredysvr.Tredydev.Unisys.COM (Tom Albrecht) writes:
>>What about the folks who are part of the so-called Jesus Project, 

I suspect you are talking about the Jesus _Seminar_.

Now I happen to be something of a fan of their work, although I do think
that what they are trying to do has been badly misunderstood.  In any case
I'm willing to play the role of their advocate in this discussion.

(As an aside, the JS is also developing into a great source for reference
works.)

>> ... who have
>>been telling us that much (most?) of the gospels are not the words of
>>Jesus, and therefore not historically accurate?
>They are either wrong or rabble-rousing.  

I don't think they are either.  My reading of their work is simply this:
that they are attempting 1] to lay out before the public what are the
results of modern Biblical (and particularly NT) scholarship and 2] to
explain how NT scholars have arrived at these results.

To emphasize a point that is stressed repeatedly in the publications of the
JS, very little of their work makes the claim of being original.  Rather,
they are attempting to lay before the public the current state of the
consensus of modern NT scholarship.  If the claim is made that verse X is
not an authentic statement of Jesus, it's not because the JS said so.
Rather because, in some broad way, this statement represents the opinion of
modern scholarship.

> ... That is, everyone
>understands that we don't have the exact words of Jesus.  I think even
>conservatives understand that, or they'd have trouble with the fact
>that the Synoptics use different wording for what seems pretty clearly
>the same statements.  

Well, we all could come up with any number of fundamentalist friends who
would be to serve as counter-examples here ;-).  But let's ignore that
issue for the moment.

Whether or not anyone (besides fundamentalists) believe these to be true,
what _is_ true is that in the mind of the public at large, this _does_
represent the view commonly held.

In short, in the public mind the perception of the level of NT scholarship
--and the answers that are given to these questions-- is almost certainly
represented by the likes of Pat Robertson and Josh MacDowell.  And it is
this grotesque state of affairs that the JS is trying to work against.

> ...  If they are saying that most of quotations from Jesus in
>the Gospels differ substantially from what he meant to teach, then I
>think they're barking up the wrong tree.

Or perhaps another way to view this is to say that this represents an
effort to discern what, in the multiple layers of material that compose the
text NT, what pieces represent _authentically_ what Jesus said.  Only when
you have determined that can you even think about beginning to approach
what he taught.

>>It seems to me that as soon as you admit error, it becomes very difficult,
>>2000 years removed from the actual events, to decide which statements about
>>Christ and His ministry are true and which are not.  If you admit to error
>>in the NT, there is absolutely no reason to believe in the supernatural
>>events, i.e., the resurrection.... 
>> ...  The gospel narratives becomes just so much whimsy, tossed about
>>by the lastest pontifications from higher critical blowhards and others
>>in the theological establishment.

But it seems to me that you are bringing a very modern, very 20th-century,
and --most importantly-- wholly inappropriate model of what it means to be
"historical" to the discussion.  As the NT says itself, these things were
written "so that you may believe".  Can you offer any evidence that the
writers of the NT were in any way interested in the notion of "actual
events" that you seem to be advocating?

The best expression of this position that I've found was given by Joseph
Fitzmyer.  He was discussing the various stories of Jesus' baptism.  In
particular he was listing the contradiction among the stories in the four
gospels (where/when the baptism took place, who was present, who performed
it, who was aware of the appearance of the Holy Spirit, what was said,
etc., etc.)

He concluded by saying: "These [contradiction] should indicate to us that
the importance of these stories lie elsewhere."

(An addendum to the above: It's seems clear to me that the logic here cuts
both ways.  At the bottom, fundamentalists are wrong not because their
claims disagree with observable fact, but because they apply a literalistic
interpretation in a realm in which this was never intended.  By the same
logic, attempts to show that the Bible is "false" by citing claims about
pi=3 or mutual contradictions in the story of the possessed swine, etc. are
equally wrong-headed and for the same reason.)

>> ...  If you admit to error in the NT, the an
>>objective basis for faith disappears, and true faith soon disappears as
>>well.

And I think this is the crux of the matter.  It seems to me that the phrase
"objective basis for faith" is an oxymoron of the highest order.


NICHAEL  
nichael@bbn.com  --                Bush/Gorbachev: One Down, One to Go