Block 3 - The Jesus Seminar

Robert Funk is a New Testament scholar who never hesitated doing things in an unconventional way. During the early 1980's he became rather annoyed that Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other preachers with right-wing politics and large followings could get a hearing on national TV, but the liberal academic viewpoint never attracted any attention in the national media. So, in 1985, with the assistance of some 30 like-minded scholars he established the Jesus Seminar (at its peak nearly 200 New Testament scholars were associated with the Jesus Seminar). The intention was to gather a large number of historical critical New Testament Scholars together, and at the end of lengthy deliberations on the historical veracity of the sayings and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, using different colored beads they would vote on whether a particular saying was most certainly spoken by Jesus (red bead), probably spoken by Jesus (pink bead), probably not spoken by Jesus (gray bead), certainly not spoken by Jesus (black bead). All of the sayings in the four canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas were broken down into 1,500 individual sayings. Over the course of the next 6 years (1985-1991), the Jesus Seminar met periodically and voted on the sayings of Jesus after due deliberation.

When all was said and done, the results were compiled by Robert Funk into a book entitled: The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (published 1993). As you might imagine, not that many sayings of Jesus were included in the book in red type. The voting was weighted in the direction that authenticity was not assumed, but must be proven. Therefore, at least 75% of the scholars (in attendance when a vote on a particular saying was taken) had to vote with a red bead in order for that saying to be included in the book in red type. It would not take too many gray or black beads to pull a saying out of the red level and on to the pink level, where pink still has a high level of probability but not unanimity among those scholars. To give you a good example of how this plays out in practice, here is the rendering of the Lord's Prayer in Funk's Five Gospels. Funk and his friends also came up with a new translation of the Gospels that fits their conclusions about the meaning of the sayings of Jesus in their original historical context. As will be obvious, any translation is also an interpretation.

Our Father in the heavens, your name be revered, Impose your imperial rule, enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. Provide us with the bread we need for the day. Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. And please don't subject us to test after test, but rescue us from the evil one.

As you can see, unanimous approval was hard to find. But those words in pink means a majority of the scholars believed those words come from Jesus. Only that which is in Black means that a majority of the scholars who voted thought those words did Not come from Jesus.

Leafing through Funk's book, there is not a lot that gets put in red letters. Most of the red letter sayings are parables, The Leaven in Dough (Mt. 13) , The Laborers in the Vineyard (Mt. 20), The Good Samaritan (Lk. 10), The Dishonest Manager (Lk. 16). Most of the remaining parables are in pink type, meaning that over 50% of the voting scholars were convinced they came from Jesus. Other statements that get red letter treatment are the discourse about "Don't Worry" (Mt. 6), Luke's version of the Beatitudes (Lk. 6), and paying Caesar (Mk. 12).

There are No red letter sayings in the Gospel of John. The only line in the Gospel of John that receives pink letters is a short phrase that appears elsewhere in the Gospels: "A prophet gets no respect on his own turf" (Jn. 4:43). The rest of John is in black type with a few scattered sayings in gray.

Some sayings in the Gospel of Thomas get the red letter treatment, but these tend to be ones that appear also in the Synoptics and were given red letters in the Synoptics.

After completing the project on the sayings of Jesus, the Jesus Seminar undertook the same project with regard to the actions and deeds of Jesus. The results were published in 1998 as: The Acts of Jesus, What Did Jesus Really Do? Very little in this book receives red letter treatment. The few statements that are in red tend to be statements that Jesus was born, Jesus was baptized, Jesus went to Capernaum, Jesus was crucified. Only those actions of Jesus which even the most skeptical scholar would have to admit are historically true are given the red letter treatment.

As the work of the Jesus Seminar progressed, Funk did his best to attract media attention. During this same time, a prominent member of the seminar, Marcus Borg wrote a book on the life of Jesus for a popular audience, and wasted no time in accepting whatever opportunity he could find to discuss his book and the work of the Jesus Seminar on national television. Though other scholars attempted to get a piece of the media spotlight (following Funk's suggestion), Borg was the most successful in coming up with "sound bites" that worked in that medium of national TV coverage. As time went on, John Dominic Crossan, whom I would label the third of the three most important scholars in the Jesus Seminar, did get his face on TV at ABC and PBS and the History Channel, which all produced specials on the Life of Jesus based on the work of the Jesus Seminar.