The Jesus Seminar.

Every once in a while someone informs me a particular Jesus-saying in the gospels wasn’t actually said by Jesus. It’s extremely rare; it’s only happened to me thrice.

“No it was said by Jesus,” I’ll tell them. “Best we can tell, it’s been part of Christian tradition since the first century. it’s not a textual variant.”

“No it’s not,” they’ll respond, “because the Jesus Seminar says it’s not.”

First time I heard this, I laughed. A lot. “Who put them in charge of deciding what’s bible and what’s not?” As far as I knew, the Jesus Seminar people were just a bunch of crackpots.

Eventually I looked into this Jesus Seminar stuff and discovered… well crackpot isn’t the kindest way of putting it, but there’s an awful lot of cracked pottery involved in their setup. Lemme back up a bunch and explain what I mean.

The Jesus Seminar was the brainchild of liberal theologian Dr. Robert W. Funk (1926–2005), who created it to publicize his recently-founded Westar Institute, a nonprofit which promoted biblical studies from a liberal theological viewpoint. And before I keep flinging that term around, I’d better define it: Liberal theology presumes the theologian—not the Holy Spirit, scripture, and orthodox Christian tradition—is the authority when it comes to forming one’s beliefs about God. They decide what’s true and what’s not.

Based on what? Well, the conservative theologian will point to other authorities, like the Spirit, scripture, and tradition. Depending on the integrity of the theologian, they might not quote or interpret these authorities properly… but they do recognize it’s important to point to other authorities, and say, “They say so; it’s not just me.” Whereas liberal theologians don’t care if they’re the only ones saying so. They might point to the Spirit, scripture, and tradition, but they figure what ultimately decides whether something’s true or false about God, is them. And their commonsense, assuming they have any.

Hence liberal theologians don't do orthodoxy, don't recognize bible as authoritative, and frequently don't believe God intervenes in human history anyway. You might notice many of ’em go out of their way to reject orthodox and biblical ideas, just to show off how independent, novel, and radical they are. Plus it's great publicity. You’re not gonna gain notoriety for saying, “By golly, it looks like Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a virgin!”—unless you’re already well-known for denying every other creedal belief.

Funk was one of those guys. In 1985, he invited 50 academics and 100 laymen to join him at the new Westar campus in Santa Rosa, California, and participate in a seminar in which they’d vote on the legitimacy of 1,500 individual Jesus sayings, found in the gospels, the rest of the New Testament, and the Gospel of Thomas. Are they authentic Jesus, or hokum? Each participant voted by dropping a bead in a box:

• RED (3 points) meant it’s definitely Jesus.
• PINK (2 points) meant it’s likely Jesus—they were pretty sure he said something just like that.
• GRAY (1 point) meant Jesus didn’t say those exact words, but it’s consistent with his thinking.
• BLACK (0 points) meant it’s not Jesus at all.

The academics were largely legitimate biblical scholars, regardless of their liberal views. The laymen were… well, laymen. Not scholars. Churchgoers, and not. Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, who’d just directed his first American movie—hadn’t even made RoboCop and Total Recall yet—was one of ’em. He’s a Historical Jesus fan; he published a book about Jesus in 2008, and has wanted to make a Jesus movie in which he’s a radical political activist. Again, not a scholar. And y’notice the laymen outnumbered—and could easily outvote—the scholars.

What criteria did these people use for determining whether something truly came from Jesus or not? Well, having it in all the gospels certainly helped. They were also looking for certain traits: It had to be memorable; they figured Jesus would say catchy stuff, like “Don’t throw pearls to pigs.” They liked irony, so if Jesus’s teachings sounded ironic to them (“The last will be first, and the first last”) they figured he’d say that. They liked the idea of trusting God, so if Jesus talked about that (“Have faith in God”) they figured that was legit.

What they didn’t consider legit, were End Times stuff, miracle stories, stuff about the church (’cause they didn’t believe Jesus intended to start any church), anything where Jesus talks about himself (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”). Plus if something is found in one gospel but not the others, they presumed the author of that gospel was pushing his agenda, not Jesus’s.

The end result? They published a new translation of the gospels, color-coded to how they voted. Black meant most voted black; red meant most voted red. Thus you wind up with a Lord’s Prayer which looks like so:

Matthew 6.9-13 Jesus Seminar version

9“Instead, you should pray like this: Our Father in the heavens, your name be revered. 10Impose your imperial rule, enact your will on earth as you have in heaven. 11Provide us with the bread we need for today. 12Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us. 13And please don't subject us to test after test, but rescue us from the evil one.”

So the only thing they deem Jesus definitely said was “Our Father,” and he definitely didn’t say “in heaven,” nor “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” nor “Deliver us from evil.” And only mighta said the rest.

In this way, with this criteria, 82 percent of Jesus’s teachings got nullified. Don’t have to follow them anymore! Of course if he’s not really divine, and doesn’t wholly speak for God, you never had to follow him anyway. So this isn’t really about growing closer to Jesus, nor learning to follow him better; this is just a fun intellectual exercise.

The fringiest of fringe groups.

Like I said, Westar invited 50 scholars to be part of this seminar. (Really 49; Funk was already there.) There are a lot more liberal theologians than that in the United States. Because most colleges teach philosophy and religious history—and the people teaching those classes tend to be theologically liberal. True, sometimes they’re theologically conservative, but that’s uncommon. Theological conservatives tend to stick to religious schools.

So, visit any theological convention which caters to people who teach in secular universities, and you’ll easily find a few hundred liberal theologians right there. Even biblical studies conventions hosted by conservative Evangelicals are gonna have a few liberal theologians in the mix, ’cause if the speakers are well-known scholars, they wanna hear ’em regardless of their methodology. Betcha you’d find at least 50 liberal theologians in attendance.

If you talk to these theologians about the Jesus Seminar, you’ll find most of them think it was a ridiculous stunt. Voting on whether Jesus said stuff? With 100 laymen as part of the vote? Come on. That’s not how anybody does scholarship!

So why do people take it seriously? Well, certain conservatives take it seriously because, in their paranoia, they really think this is how all liberal theologians think. They really think liberal theologians would take this seriously. They really believe liberal theologians would strike four-fifths of Jesus’s teachings out of the New Testament.

Probably ’cause they’ve never read a liberal theologian’s book, nor taken a Historical Jesus class. So they aren’t aware your average liberal theologian quotes extensively from the New Testament gospels. True, they may not personally believe everything in ’em—nor believe Jesus is God, nor believe the miracle stories. But they largely do accept Jesus gave the teachings we find in our bibles. They figure the apostles kept ’em, and wrote them down, because Jesus said ’em. Or at least the apostles believed Jesus said ’em.

The rest who take it seriously, haven’t looked at the Jesus Seminar all that closely. Usually we’re talking about antichrists who just wanna troll Christians, who figure the Jesus Seminar gives them ammunition. But it actually doesn’t. Whenever skeptics read up on the Jesus Seminar, they quickly discover these guys did not bother with proper academic methodology—and if they debate a Christian who knows this, they’re gonna lose the argument. It’s not gonna make their case like they hoped. So they dismiss it. As one should.

The Jesus Seminar simply succeeded in what it set out to do: Publicity. They got tons of publicity for Funk, the Westar Institute, their seminar, and their publications. They got Christians talking. They got antichrists talking too—“Ha-ha, the Christians were wrong!”—and provoked a whole lot of furor and writings. They did interviews. They sold books. They got people looking at what Jesus said—and in some cases, might’ve caused some people to actually crack open a bible, discover Jesus, and start to doubt their atheism. It’s not all bad.

But yeah, if anyone quotes the Jesus Seminar like it’s any kind of legitimate authority, feel free to laugh at ’em same as I do.