COMMENTARY : How Should the Jesus Seminar’s Conclusions Be Viewed? : Pro: More than two centuries of critical biblical scholarship has provided ample grounds to judge the reliability of the Gospels.

More than two centuries of critical biblical scholarship has produced a significant array of criteria for judging the reliability of the Gospel reports of what Jesus said and did.

The author of Mark, the oldest Gospel, for instance, was not an eyewitness of the events and words he records. Indeed, Mark may have employed hearsay evidence that passed through several persons.

The voice of Jesus has been muffled to a greater or lesser extent by those who revered him. The first Christians gathered and edited all sorts of lore that they attributed to him.

Over a six-year period, the fellows of the Jesus Seminar found that sayings that most likely originated with Jesus were short, provocative and memorable--principally aphorisms (pithy sayings) and parables.

Unless sayings were brief and striking, they would not have survived the 20- or 30-year period of oral transmission that separates the public activity of Jesus from the earliest written texts (AD 50 to 60).

Mark 10:25 preserves a saying that satisfies perfectly the criteria for the aphorism: “It is easier for a camel to squeeze through a needle’s eye, than for a wealthy person to get into God’s domain.”

A good example of a short, memorable parable is found in Mark 4:30-32:

“To what should we compare God’s imperial rule, or what parable should we use for it?

“Consider the mustard seed: When it is sown on the ground, though it is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth, . . . it comes up, and becomes the biggest of all garden plants, and produces branches, so that the birds of the sky can nest in its shade.”

If we examine the surviving Gospel records, including the (apocryphal) Gospel of Thomas and the hypothetical document Q used by Matthew and Luke, it is readily observed that Jesus speaks in adages or parables, or in witticisms formulated as rebuff or retort in the context of a dialogue or debate. It is clear that the long monologues found in the Gospel of John were not verbatim reports of Jesus’ speeches and include reflections of the evangelist.

Biblical scholarship before the formation of the Jesus Seminar found that later followers attributed statements to Jesus in his style and spirit. Also, the Christian community culled the Hebrew scriptures for proof that Jesus was truly the Messiah, even putting words from the Old Testament on Jesus’ lips when he is on the cross.

The Gospel writers often, according to earlier biblical studies, expanded on Jesus’ sayings or parables, sometimes recasting them as allegories. Some sayings of Jesus reflect the new movement’s goal to announce the good news to the whole world (Mark 13:10).

These criteria, among others, were refined and expanded by fellows of the Jesus Seminar.

Their votes produced a minimum core of authentic sayings, which frankly many individual members would personally augment. Nearly every rejected saying that underwent close examination had advocates for its authenticity, myself included.

This core of about 230 sayings provides a reasonably coherent picture of what the Jesus of history probably said and, as such, establishes starting points for determining other things that may have originated with him:

* Jesus’ sayings were distinctive in style and substance.

If the language of a saying or parable sounds like Matthew or Luke, we must assume that the evangelist (author) has created the saying or parable. Language typical of the early Christian teachings is always suspect.

* Jesus’ words cut against the social and religious grain.

If Jesus said that those who do not hate mother and father, and brother and sister, cannot be his disciples (Luke 14:26), we have something with a powerful social or religious edge. If he enjoined his disciples to let the dead bury their own dead (Matthew 8:21-22), he was challenging the rules for basic religious and moral behavior. If he congratulated the poor on their poverty (Luke 6:20), he was not saying the ordinary thing. (As the Christian movement matured it would have tended to soften such radical injunctions to align them with the mainstream of social life and thus open the movement to a wider participation.)

* The sayings and parables tend to surprise and shock; they call for a reversal of roles or frustrate everyday expectations.

This criterion is based on several of the great narrative parables, such as the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35), the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-15) and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), as well as on aphorisms like the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-23) or the injunction to lend to those from whom one can expect no return (Thomas 95).

* They are often characterized by hyperbole, humor and paradox.

In one parable of exaggeration (Matthew 18:23-35), a servant was forgiven a debt of $10 million by his king, but sent a fellow servant to prison because he could not come up with an obligation of $10 to him. It is comical to imagine people with logs sticking out of their eyes trying to pick specks out of the eyes of their brothers (Matthew 7:3-5). “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44) is another paradox: enemies that are loved are no longer enemies.

* They have concrete images, but unspecified application (in their original formulations).

His figures of speech are drawn from the ordinary, everyday world--a master calling his steward to account, a dinner party, a harvest of grapes, a buried treasure. His listeners undoubtedly clamored for explicit instructions, but Jesus gave them more questions, more parables with unclear references, more responses that waffle: “Pay the emperor whatever belongs to the emperor, and pay God whatever belongs to God” (Mark 12:17).

* Jesus’ sayings sometimes reflect his association with social and religious outcasts such as toll collectors and prostitutes.

For that reason, fellows endorsed as authentic a saying that gave favorable recognition to eunuchs, a much-despised class of males (Matthew 19:12).

Critical scholars of the gospels, who must be on guard against their own theological biases, also should not try to find a pleasant, useful or compatible Jesus. The quest is for a Jesus who is historically plausible in the context of First-Century Galilee and not totally divorced from Jewish and Hellenistic influences. He will be a Jesus with whom we may not be entirely comfortable.

Next Saturday: Bob Thomas, a professor at The Master’s Seminary, gives a fundamental evangelical view.

PRO AND CON

There have been strong reactions both pro and con to the findings of the Jesus Seminar, a national group of liberal-to-moderate biblical scholars, that Jesus only said about 20% of what is attributed to him. Robert Funk, who organized the Seminar partly to counteract fundamentalist claims of an inerrant Bible, outlines here criteria that shaped the group’s conclusions. Robert Guelich, another New Testament scholar, takes issue with the skeptical premises of the Seminar.