10-12-2004, 12:09 PM
Allow me to post just a little bit on why I don't accept the claims of this "Jesus Seminar":
Quote:*They reject miracle stories out-of-hand as fiction on the allegation that miracles aren't possible.
Tell me how any <b>Christian</b> can reject miracle stories? The Bible is full of them. It is something that is practically a given to believe in. How then can they be called Christian?
They have made this <b>assumption</b> that all miracle stories must have been created over time to embellish the story of Jesus. What gives them the authority
Quote:They presume the faith-motivated first Christians weren't interested in history, and willingly put words into Jesus' mouth to fulfill their own needs. Under their brand of "criteria of dissimilarity" the only words they accept as authentic to Jesus and thus not borrowed, are those which differ from both the concerns of the early church and from the surrounding Judaistic culture.
Again, what kind of scholarship is this?
They even had some Jews and atheists as part of their list of "scholars". More than half of the so-called scholars are virtually unknowns in the field of Biblical and Christian scholarship, having only written a few papers as part of their educational requirements.
Now, I would never talk badly about Jews but if they are still "Jews", how would they know (or not know) what Jesus said? Many of them don't even accept that Jesus ever existed. But the Jesus Seminar people thought that they could be considered New Testament scholars??
I do question the group's credibility.
They wish to water-down the Gospel and are extremely liberal. I no more accept their word on something than I accept the "Progresive Muslim" teachings on Islam.