Posted by bill on October 28, 2000 at 19:07:23:
Has anyone been keeping up with the machinations of the Jesus Seminar?
Being a good 5 with my antennae out for subversive issues on the horizon,
I went to one of their meetings and found it all very interesting, and not boring
at all!
Among their pronouncements:
-There was no resurrection
-There was no virgin birth
-The 3 wise men and star etc is a fable designed to fulfill prophesies of the Talmud.
-Jesus was probably born in Nazareth
-Jesus had no interest in forming a church
-Most of the Gospels were heavily edited by later authors to conform to
what the Church needed in order to control people's lives (8s and 1s?)
-Most of the miracles were added to compete with very similar
'pagan' (Greek) hero feats.
FYI the J Seminar is composed of about 75 or so phd level bible scholars
or ancient language scholars from the academic world (specifically; not
affiliated with any churches....too dogmatic). They vote on what Jesus
*really!!! ;-}* said and did, and have produced a book "The Fifth Gospel,"
by Robert Funk to document their sorcery. A good intro to all of this is
"Honest to Jesus" by the same author.
One of their discussion topics and postulates was 'God is a metaphor' that
needs updating.
I doubt this is a very high stakes topic for most 5's...or maybe it is....anyway
I'd be interested in anyone's views.