[.ca] The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? the Search ... (ISBN 006063040X)

With their views, why are they wasting their time?:
This book purportedly attributes about 18% of Christ's words to him, and effectively makes the "historical" Jesus an ineffectual and ambivalent savior at best. Furthermore, the gospel writers are painted as plagiaristic authors with conflicting stories, poor memories and cleverly crafted insertions borrowing from mystical writings. To this I ask, other than to prove over 1 billion people wrong, create a windfall in financial gain, or for academic exercise, why are these otherwise highly intelligent scholars wasting precious time on a topic that ultimately has little perceived value other than to be an inaccurate historical account whose oldest surviving copies are dated over 175 years after the death of Jesus? In my view, they have demonstrated the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be toothless, exceedingly errant, and more importantly, a farce of grand proportions foisted upon a hope seeking public by fundamentalist zealots. From the Scholar's Version it appears the Gospel of Jesus Christ has very little value except for a few homilies and moral concepts spoken by a man in which people may place a most tenuous faith at best. I believe these scholars are clearly missing the larger context of the gospels with scholarship that runs counter to the science of modern day textual criticism that readily indicates the authenticity of the gospels. These are exceedingly foolish men with absolutely no heart for God. I think the Apostle Paul speaks to this best in 1 Corinthians 1:18-20 (NIV): "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"

Interesting on many levels:
The Five Gospels is the end product of years of research, thought, discussion, and voting by the Jesus Seminar. Description of how decisions were made and the color coding of text for estimated authenticity were fascinating in themselves. the Jesus Seminar is much more tranparent about how it works and the weaknesses of their method than any scholarly group I am aware of. ENRON could learn from this. News reports that only a small precentage of accepted texts could be attributed to Jesus were somewhat misleading in that the seminar did not include common phrases and amphorisms that Jesus may have used but that were not unique to him. The story of the Gnostic Gopel of Thomas was intriguing. Or you can ignore the controversies and just read a careful modern translation that is much more understandable than most.

Exciting and interesting search for truth:
This is a tremendous work for those interested in understanding exactly what it is that Jesus might have said and taught as closely as can be determined from the ancient writings of his followers. This includes the four Gospels translated directly from the ancient Greek and the new Gospel of Thomas, which was discovered in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi texts. The Gospel of Thomas, from a copy of an early third century manuscript, "has survived in its full form only in Coptic, although its original language was Greek." The translations are by a panel of Christian scholars, many from prestigious religious institutions such as the University of Notre Dame, DePaul University (J. Dominic Crossan), Xavier University, Eden Theological Seminary and Texas Christian University. It is "free of ecclesiastical and religious control, unlike other major translations into English." Jesus spoke and probably taught in Aramaic, his native language, and possible in Hebrew. His followers translated what he spoke into Greek and Hebrew, and passed the his teaching and the stories of his life down to another generation who copied those words into sayings and stories in Greek. These "gospels" were translated into Latin as the western word lost its facility with Greek. Those Latin words were then translated into early 17th century English. Today, when we read what people who didn't know Jesus firsthand had to say about his teaching, we are reading a translation of translations, and when you consider the ambiguity that normally arises in matters of religion and metaphysics, it is no wonder we have hundreds of branches of Christianity all claiming something different. Each Gospel is translated in modern English directly from its source language and color-coded "red," "pink," "gray," and "black" to reflected whether is very likely (red) or very unlikely (black) that Jesus might have spoken the words attributed to him. This is based on comparing the Gospels to each other and to other ancient written sources about Jesus, the language used, and independent historical sources. The controversial finding here is the claim that 82 percent of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels probably were not spoken by him, including almost the entire Gospel of John. This is no surprise to me considering the parallels between the miracles attributed to Jesus and the corresponding miracles attributed to the greek gods Jesus was originally competing against. Or when I think about the claim that the first miracle by Jesus was making more wine for people at a wedding who had already drunk the existing supply. When you look at the saints, rishis and avatars of other religious traditions, the admonition is to purify and cleanse oneself so as to be able to experience God within. Indeed, the early Desert Fathers of the Christian church practiced austerities and fasted to become pure. Hard to imagine Jesus creating wine so people could intoxicate themselves at a party. This accords well with Elaine Pagels contention in her new book "Beyond Belief" that the Gospel of John, the last to appear around 100 c.e., was written by someone who was attempting to refute Thomas, and its message that union with Jesus or God could be directly experienced in much the same way it has been written about in the Vedic tradition (India) by Christian mystics. What is valuable is that after each passage is translated, what follows is a scholarly discussion on how that translation was arrived at, background information, what exactly the words could have meant in another context or translation and how those words compare to the writings of the other gospels. Worth the price of the book is the first 38 pages that discuss the probable history of the Gospels, the saying of "Q" as a precursor to Matthew and Luke, the differences between John, Thomas and the other Gospels and how the scholars went about their research. Throughout the book side-pages explain terminology, Paul of Tarsus, the meaning of "tense" (the use of past tense or present tense in the writings), the "I am sayings in the Gospel of John. Also provided are direct comparisons of the gospel language from similar passages. The audience for this book is not those who wish to rely on faith in understanding Jesus. The findings are controversial, but book provides a great wealth of new information on the gospels of Jesus. It will give you tools to begin to evaluate for yourself as you read the passages of the gospels what Jesus might and might not have said.

Check your preconceptions at the door:
Even it you disagree with the conclusions, it is worth considering the work and thought of the Jesus Seminar scholars to help you get a fresh "take" on your own beliefs. If you can keep your blood presure under control, the translations are interesting and well thought out. You learn more than you think you need top know about the voting procedure and how the seminare opporates, but I guess from being criticised they felt they needed to be transparent. I find it exciting to attempt to locate the human man before he became the Messiah.

Can we ever look at the Gospels the same?:
There have been many critics of the Jesus seminar, many of which wouldn't be able to tell you the first thing about it, other then that it consists of a bunch of "Damn liberals". With the release of "The Five Gospels" the ground breaking work of the Jesus seminar is finally allowed to speak for itself. The introductory sections to the Five Gospels are worth the ticket price alone, concise summaries of modern research and theories on the Gospels. I also found the "Scholars version" a highly readable translation. Where the Greek contains a colloquism, a play on words or outright bluntness, the translators have sought to reproduce this in English, the "present tense" originally found in Mark is also preserved. One of my favourite examples is when Jesus is brought before the High priest and asked if he is teh Messiah, he responds "You said it". But to me, the real value of "The Five Gospels" is the insight into the construction of the Gospels "Matthew" and "Luke". After examining the parellels between the source text Mark and Matthew and Luke, I cannot imagine any self respecting scholar denying Markan priority or the existance of Q while keeping a straight face. Previously, I was unaware that Matthew uses an amazing 90% of Mark, with Luke totalling around 50%, and noting instances where Mark is either left out altogether, "softened", or "improved" is a most revealing insight into the mindset of the Authors. After rereading the synoptics I was shocked at how foreign the Gospel of John is in comparison. As noted in the introduction, in the synoptics Jesus never talks about himself and speaks in parables. In John, Jesus tells no parables and talks about no one else except himself! Perhaps most striking of all is The Gospel of Thomas. The orthodox Church continues to rail against Thomas as " pure heresy" while more and more Christians are turning to the text for insights beyond anything in the canonised account. After examining the parallels between Thomas and the synoptics, it is impossible to call Thomas a work of "pure heresy", at worst it is 60% heresy! It is easy to criticise the criteria by which the Jesus Seminar worked, but no criteria was ever going to please everyone. For example, Matthew's sayings about maintaining the Law of Moses were voted "black" with the fellows believing Matthew was a "Rejudaiser", on the contrary it is my opinion that thse saying were an authentic part of Q and Luke ignored these passages for his Hellenistic audience. To the people who work themselves up in a tizzy because their favourite saying was voted black, I have a very simple solution. Get out your red highlighter and correct the "mistakes" of the fellows, but by no means throw the baby out with the bathwater! Stephenhanes@yahoo.com