The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics
"...Miller deals one by one with the [mostly absurd] criticisms of the Seminar. ...[There] is plenty of room for specific disagreements with the published results of the Seminar [I have pleny of qualms myself], but that's not the sort of trouble that called forth this book. Miller addresses himself to [one often suspects] willful misunderstandings and blatant misrepresentations of the Jesus Seminar. Sadly, the polemic Miller addresses here is the sort of underhanded mud-slinging practiced by politicians, usually not by scholars. ...Miller makes quite clear that much [criticism] stems from two sources: orthodox apologists who despise New Testament criticism for [inevitably] rocking, no, sinking the boat of traditional faith; and fellow critics to whom the findings and methods of the Seminar must be old news, but who do not want the New Testament's dirty linen to be hung out for the Babbit-like laymen and harumphing clergy on seminary boards to see." --infidels.org, February 2000"Miller engages some of the most severe critics of the work of the Seminar . . . in a courteous but trenchant critical debate about the methods and aims of research into the "historical Jesus." Miller's work will challenge the sometimes facile critics of the Jesus Seminar, give its scholarly critics food for thought, and help the general public understand what the fuss is all about."  --Harold W. Attridge, Yale Divinity SchoolProvocative and controversial ... lays out the significance of the Seminar's work for scholars, for society, and for the church. --Mark Allen Powell, author of  Jesus as Figure in History