Hi Wil —
Much of this is being unearthed, exposed today and in the past century, increasingly more with each passing decade. As this occurs those who are strapped litterally to the unerring traditions, these sacred events that may or may not have occurred, they completely lose faith, and their belief, and start thinking their time with Christ and the bible a waste and reject everything. We've all seen it happen.
I think this is your hope, rather than a reality. From where I'm looking, there is an increasing weight of material that seems to indicate that Scripture is far more reliable as an historical record than we tend to allow — not a forensic history as is the rule today, but an accurate and reliable testimony of events passed.
There are even theories that the source of the material of John's Gospel is in fact
older than the Synoptics, because the miracle accounts are more 'primitive' and contain none of the growth and development evident in them.
As I think I mentioned elsewhere, historians are uncovering a huge wealth of incidental historical data from the Acts of the Apostles that 'infill' a picture of a Roman Empire teetering on collapse in the region, that led to the revolt and the raising of Jerusalem.
There's more truth there than you can imagine, let alone allow.
As Disraeli said, "Forget history, read biography" — there is much wisdom in his words.
The trouble with 'history' is, removed from its roots ands thus removed from contact with reality, man can spin anything he likes from the data, and does.
I think everything you claim will be shown to be the fruits of 'philosophical relativism' in a couple of generations; will be regarded as the false fruits of a flawed way of thinking ... a way of thinking that is already coming under the severest criticism in political circles.
Many look at results of the Jesus Seminar and say it blasphemy and they don't know what they are talking about.
I don't go that far. I side with the weight of serious scholarship, by which I mean the big names in Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran and other theological circles, who dismiss the Jesus Seminar as the 'third stage' in that fruitless and pointless 'Quest for the Historical Jesus'.
The Jesus Seminar 'voting system' is an object of ridicule in scholarly circles, and rightly so ...
Critics have voiced concerns that the JS methodology set out to prove its own presuppositions, and picked up and lost supporters on the way. Its conclusions were determined at the outset, invalidating all claims to responsible or critical scholarship. In the words of one scholar, "It is a self-indulgent charade." (Timothy Luke Johnson)
JS would have me believe that someone, or some group, within a generation of the events recorded in Scripture, effectively rewrote the history of Jesus that was circulating at that time, created a fiction about four times as large, all the while those who had witnessed Christ and his teachings — the early churches would have been founded by now, and the word spreading fast — suddenly underwent either collective amnesia in accepting this new fabrication as authentic, or dumped what they had seen and believed for this new story which in a very shor time was getting them killed in large numbers.
Many JS critics have observed that their assumptions depend on the fact that Jesus' disciples and apostles were either incapable of remembering or uninterested in recalling what Jesus said and did, and made it all up as they went along.
I have Catholic criticism which places the JS in context of the Quest, from the days of Reimarus and Strauss, and in fact accuses the JS of ignorance of its own heritage, let alone Christ's!
And all in all, the scholarship and methodology of the critics of the JS, some of whom were counted among its number, outweigh its claims. Sorry.
The key to me is delving into what bothers me, what sets my neck hairs on end...
And making it manageable, by explaining it away.
The difference between me and the Jesus Seminar, it seems to me, is that I believe there is always more to what we can discern from Scripture, whilst the JS believes there is actually less ... everything the JS preaches involves people abandoning and discarding what they have traditionally held, for what ... ?
... nothing.
They replace faith with incredulity, hope with skepticism ... they remove the Mystery from a Mystery Religion, purely on the basis that they can't bring themselves to believe in it, and they would reduce beatitude to banality.
Were the JS to be taken to the empty tomb today, they would come up with any and every possible permutation of what might, could and probably happened, except the Resurrection — that's ruled out, right from the outset.
People are looking for something they can believe in, Wil, not something they can't.
Thomas
