🚀 go-pugleaf

--- Forwarded from mailing list.  Reply to uus-l@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ---

>While I agree with most of your response to Robert -- and acknowledge its
>higher quality in breadth vs my response, which was quite particular -- I
>must take issue with some of your points.

Okey doke. I expect worse flames to follow, so I'll take this opportunity
to get in practice.  ;)


>My understanding of the Jesus Seminar is that it is looking for words
>reliably attributed to Jesus, and simply not concerning itself with the
>miraculous.

The problem is that the impossibility of miracles is rather frequently used
as a criterion in separating the historical Jesus from the Christ of Faith.
The gospels depict a Jesus who anticipates the crucifixion, resurrection,
and destruction of Jerusalem, for example. JS discounts the authenticity of
these passages, not for text-critical reasons, but because "Jesus could not
have known that..."

I don't in the least fault them for doing this; but their reason for doing
so is an implicit acceptance of the modernist worldview and an implicit
rejection of the miraculous worldview. For someone who believes in an
omniscient God who entered the world as Jesus, the JS reasoning will
certainly appear circular.

>
>I believe Robert's reference to dishonesty was not relative to those who
>see divinity in Jesus but those who, having learnt this kind of material
>and method in seminary, leave it behind and preach the Literal Word of God
>once they get into their pulpits. From a postmodern perspective I have no
>problem with clergy who shift theological gears between the minster's
>study and the pulpit, but I have a *big* problem with those who do not let
>the "flock" in on the possibility of more than the latter gear.

Well said. But would Trapp (or you) attribute dishonesty to humanist
academics who teach college courses on the Bible or comparative religion
and do not let the class in on the possibility of Christianity being God's
revealed religion?

>If only
>for very practical, partisan purposes, if mainstream congregations for the
>last 50 years had been hearing of these different frames of reference, the
>Radical Religious Right would stand out very starkly as the panicked
>millenniarists they actually are, and those mainstreamers would not be
>nearly so slow to smack down the RRR for presumptuously claiming to speak
>for all Christendom.

Amen!

>
>> I appreciate the Jesus Seminar's work. I think they do a respectable job
>> of looking at Jesus from within the context of the modernist worldview,
>> which is certainly an informative and interesting exercise. But I think
>> it quite misses the point if we're interested in the religious meaning
>> of Jesus (and what other meaning of him has anything more than academic
>> relevance?).
>
>I fail to see how application of the best scholarly tools to sort out the
>reliability of sayings attributed to Jesus, can fail to touch the religi-
>ous meaning of Jesus. If the core texts and the redacted texts do not
>conflict, this might be properly called an academic exercise. But where
>they do conflict, a difference is created between those who find they have
>been following a Christianity rooted in Christ and those following a
>Christianity rooted in early Christians. The latter may properly be seen
>as having entered a religious crisis. Far be it from us to deny it to
>them; some of these chickens have been waiting almost 2,000 years to come
>home to roost.

I guess I see Jesus as *primarily* a cultural construction of the early
Christian community, based in part on what we now call "the historical
Jesus". Some time back, Doug Muder made an analogy with King Arthur. King
Arthur *is* the legend, regardless of whether or not parts of the legend
have historical precursors. If we discover that the "historical Arthur" was
a completely unremarkable Saxon warlord or Roman general, do we then
rewrite Malory and say "here is the real story, use this instead"? No, the
historical reconstruction will be of interest to scholars, and will make
only a minor perturbation in the cultural understanding of the legend.

Of course, as you note, there is a problem here for those many who believe
that the Jesus of the gospels *is* the historical Jesus, and take that
belief as important or even crucial. But this is just the familiar problem
of being a religious person in a modernist culture. A few people who have a
deep intellectual commitment to pulling the rival worldviews together in
some coherent way may make good use of the Jesus Seminar work. But the
Jesus who loomed over western culture for nearly twenty centuries is the
Jesus of the gospels, and he's the one we have to come to terms with in our
various relationships with Christianity.
>
>> The religious meaning of Jesus is to be found in Jesus as he was known
>> to those who chose to make him central to their religious life, such as
>> the writers of the early Christian scriptures.
>
>"Such as" here stretches over a bit of a gulf. Out of a community number-
>ing in the hundreds at least, the writers of the early Christian scrip-
>tures might have fit comfortably into one transcontinental bus. It can be
>seriously questioned if any of them were eyewitnesses, and at least one of
>them was a know bureaucrat and spinmeister. Surely they were inspired by
>the total community, but did they represent it?

It doesn't matter. Did Malory represent his English readers? His French
sources? The Arthur of history? The writers of the gospels defined Jesus
for the subsequent centuries. Some other people might have delivered us a
different Jesus, but they didn't. Historical Jesus research might succeed
in shifting the center of gravity of our images of Jesus back toward an
Arian or Unitarian view. If so, then perhaps future generations will be
reconstructing us. What will there reaction be? "Wow! We've been reading
the gospel according to Funk in our churches for generations; but now we
discover that we have original documents from two generations after Jesus,
so let's go back to them, instead of using this weird 20th-century
redaction that reflects the modernist anxiety over "historicity" and
"objectivity" instead of the real message of Jesus!"

I do think the historical reconstruction will be quite useful to a number
of people as a kind of counterpoint in contemplating the image of Jesus.
But I don't think the Jesus of historical reconstruction inspired a world
religion; the Jesus who did that was the Jesus of Paul and the evangelists.
>
>> That Jesus was a cultural construction of Christianity, just as the
>> Jesus Seminar's Jesus is a cultural construction of modernism. Whether
>> you are Christian or not, it seems that the former is a lot more
>> significant than the latter.
>
>Certainly the former has been the more significant in the years that are
>now history between Jesus' ministry and the present. Which construction is
>more significant henceforth will depend on the level of honesty, as Robert
>uses the word, of mainline Christian clergy.

One can be honest to history, or honest to the myth. Joseph Campbell would
remind us that the latter option may represent a deeper truth. I tend to
think that the historical reconstruction simply could not ever have the
signficance of the myth, because it touches nothing particularly deep in
human religious life. So what if some guy 2000 years ago spouted
deliciously clever social wisdom and pissed of the political authorities?
Why should anyone but an obsessive historian care? The culture has already
consigned thousands of such individuals to oblivion. To the extent that the
historical image of Jesus supplants the mythic one, the significance of
Jesus himself will evaporate.

I think there is some virtue is using the history to inform and enrich the
myth. But using history to usurp the myth (which seems to be Funk's agenda)
seems quite ironic. If it succeeds, it becomes an irrelevant project!
People are fascinated by the Jesus Seminar's results. Why? Because of the
aura of importance surrounding Jesus. Why is that aura there? Because of
the myth!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Tadfor Little                   telp@Rt66.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA)
Telperion Productions  http://www.rt66.com/~telp/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Om Asato Maa Sadgamaya   Tamaso Maa Jyotir Gamaya