# Jesus Seminar **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 8, 2006, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840 "2006-06-08T04:42:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jebus\_H.Christ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Jebus\_H.Christ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jebus_H.Christ)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/1 "2006-06-08T04:42:46Z")
What is the view on Jesus Seminar? Was it top flight work into the historical Jesus? Or was it a politically motivated con job? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/2 "2006-06-08T04:58:43Z")
Well, it is not politically motivated and it is not a con job. One may question its procedures or results, but I have seen no reason to question the sincerity (or qualifications) of its participants. ---
**Author:** ![Jebus\_H.Christ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Jebus\_H.Christ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jebus_H.Christ)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/3 "2006-06-08T05:11:11Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Well, it is not politically motivated and it is not a con job. [/QUOTE] Poltically motivated was probably a bad choice of words. I meant something like their results were predetermined by their assumptions. William Lane Craig critizes the seminar for this. ---
**Author:** ![grimpixie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/4 "2006-06-08T08:09:41Z")
I think it would be difficult to gather a group of Biblical scholars together to debate the historicity of the Gospels without them having predetermined ideas on the matter!! The criticism that I have read of the Jesus Seminar revolve around the fact that it was (numerically) dominated by scholars of a more liberal than evangelical bent, and that because they used a voting system to determine the truth of various passages, these scholar’s opinion’s dominated proceedings. Grim ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/5 "2006-06-08T12:16:25Z")
[QUOTE=grimpixie] I think it would be difficult to gather a group of Biblical scholars together to debate the historicity of the Gospels without them having predetermined ideas on the matter!! The criticism that I have read of the Jesus Seminar revolve around the fact that it was (numerically) dominated by scholars of a more liberal than evangelical bent, and that because they used a voting system to determine the truth of various passages, these scholar’s opinion’s dominated proceedings. Grim [/QUOTE] This is sort of how the Bible was assembled in the first place. Monavis ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/6 "2006-06-08T15:51:39Z")
[QUOTE=Jebus H. Christ] Poltically motivated was probably a bad choice of words. I meant something like their results were predetermined by their assumptions. [/QUOTE] I think that one can make a case for a particular variation on this theme, but I am not sure that what happened amounts to “predetermined.” I suspect that the stated purpose of the group would have appealed to scholars of some philosophical inclinations while discouraging scholars of different inclinations thus filtering participation and subsequent assessments, but I doubt that scholars with opposing philosophies were prohibited from participating. In that the group was formed, pretty much as a reaction against the silencing of some of its older members by Fundamentalist schools in the early 20th century (a silencing that had no effect on European or Catholic scholarship), I would guess that there would be a certain predisposition among many of its members away from the more Fundamentalist positions regarding gospel scholarship, but I doubt that there was a specific finding or belief that was set before the group as a goal that had to be reached (beyond the goal of examining a broad spectrum of scholarship in a collegial atmosphere). ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/7 "2006-06-08T16:36:42Z")
The [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar) briefly summarizes the Seminar and some of the criticisms of it, and gives what looks like a pretty good list of books and links on both sides. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jesus-seminar/359840/8 "2006-06-09T02:09:20Z")
Here’s the view of L Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program, University of Texas at Austin. > [@](#): > > People think the Jesus Seminar is a radical bunch of weirdos. Well, they may be. But how radical they are is an interesting problem. They now find (I counted them one time) 54 authentic sayings of Jesus. That’s more than double what most scholars would say. Are they more radical, or are they more conservative? > **[Symposium - Faculty Panel And General Discussion | From Jesus To Christ |...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/symposium/general.html)**