Chapter 6: Is Jesus of History = Jesus of Faith?

Jesus seminar and such

Example of their conclusion:
Of all sayings attributed to Jesus in NT -->
- 82% of it wasn't said by Jesus
- 18% of it is in doubt
- rest of it was said by Jesus

The Lord's Prayer?
Only one word of it can be attributed to Jesus: "Our Father".


Writings from the radical fringe

Jesus Seminar's folks *does not* represent the mainstream NT scholarship.
It is an ".. extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of NT thinking.."


Discovering the 'real' Jesus

According to Jesus Seminar, Jesus is first of all, should be a naturalistic Jesus. They ruled out supernatural Jesus from the very start.


Giving evidence a fair hearing

Major assumptions of Jesus seminar:
- Gospel is not reliable
- Supernatural Jesus does not exiist

What will you get based on those above?


Critiquing the criteria

- Double dissimilarity
"We can believe Jesus said something if it doesn't look like something a rabbi or the later church would say"
... But Jesus is a jew and founder of the church!

- Multiple attestations
"We can only be sure Jesus said something if it's found in more than one source"
... But a lot of historical fact that deemed to be true is sourced from a single source.
... But they treat matthew, mark and luke as a single source.


But Jesus is not unique, there's a lot of wonder workers like him in history

... But the scale of the wonders is not matched.
... But the attributed authority is different


But the story of Jesus looks very much like the amazing apollonius

... But the story of apollonius has only a single source, written 150 years after his death, written by order (financial motive), the writing style is really different (it was said... etc).


But the gospel sounds alike to many other religion, death.. resurrection

But christianity has roots from jewish faith, which is zealously guarded by the jews the,selves.
There is no similarity between resurrection a la other religion with Christianity.


History vs Faith

Theological truth is based on historical truth, that's the way the new testament talks.