The Historical Jesus, Fundamentalism, and more...

ASK GREG!

Q. I have read a lot lately about Bible scholars who are not certain about what sayings of Jesus are authentic and what ones are not.  How do we know?

SHORT ANSWER:

Whether the sayings are authentic or apocryphal, we (all of us) will still use Jesus as a Rorschach Test—projecting our own biases onto him—unless we discipline ourselves to help each other through mutual discernment.

LONG ANSWER:

The author of the question is probably referencing The Jesus Seminar which has been around for over a quarter of a century.  This time this group of over a hundred scholars tries to determine the likely authenticity of the sayings of Jesus.  The question in each case is whether this is a true saying of Jesus, or is based on a true saying, or is most likely a saying that has no basis in the teachings of Jesus.  As just one example, the Seminar’s consideration of Luke 18:9-14 yielded high marks for authenticity.  In this passage Jesus tells a parable “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”  He juxtaposed a Pharisee and a tax collector.  The Pharisee offers a prayer listing his own good deeds and pious practices. The Tax collector contritely cries, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  In keeping with one of the major themes of Luke’s account of the Gospel, Jesus has a Damon Runyon twist at the end of the parable which inverts the expected conclusion:  “I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  The ironic inversion at the end was the key to high probability that Jesus actually said it, according to the members of the Seminar.  “Irony” is one of the three criteria the seminar uses for authenticity.While I am no fan of the Jesus Seminar, I will be the first to admit that it has a lot going for it, at least on the surface.  Among the members are some very bright scholars (Marcus J. Borg and John Dominick Crossan, for example).  The attempt to get a handle on what Jesus actually said and who Jesus actually was as a historical figure is intriguing.   The Jesus presented by the seminar is my kind of guy, a spiritual leftist who sticks it to the “man.”Why, then, would I have a problem with the Jesus Seminar?  Leftist though I may be, when it comes to academic integrity I am an arch-conservative.  The premises of the Jesus seminar are all based on assumptions that predict the outcome of the investigation before it begins.  The members go hunting for a specific kind of Jesus, and as people have done through two millennia, they will find the Jesus they are looking for, just as apologists for American “rugged individualism” will inevitably find a Jesus that seems remarkably like John Wayne. Obviously this is not a problem peculiar to the Jesus Seminar.  We all project our view of the universe onto Jesus and on our reading of scripture in general.  That is as true of the detractors of the Jesus seminar as it is of the Jesus Seminar.One of the salutary features of the three-year lectionary is that we are forced to encounter these texts over and over, and if we pay close attention to our own readings we will see how our interpretations will vary precisely because we are bringing different concerns to the experience each time.  It is for a similar reason that my observant Jewish friends caution against the study of scripture apart from a group.  We need to constantly be aware of the variety of ways a text can be interpreted.  This is one of the many reasons why we are called together in ecclesia.  Our subjective projections are continually challenged as we learn to be a community of interpretation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  And if that community does not have disparate voices, the exercise will descend into a shared monomania.The Jesus Seminar is a college of the like-minded, just as a quite different group of biblical scholars about a hundred years ago were a college of the like-minded when they produced that series of volumes entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, thus giving us that movement known as Fundamentalism.  Let the prejudices go.  That group also had some excellent minds.  With both the Jesus Seminar and the Fundamentalists the problem was not the direction of the interpretation, but the single-mindedness of the interpretation and the lack of humility in the face of the problematic nature of historical evidence, particularly in the pre-modern eras.A little over a decade ago I was asked by an Anglican magazine to write a brief op-ed piece summarizing several lecture series I had given on the various quests for the “Historical Jesus.”  I concluded that small essay with the following sentence:  “In short, for this aging and tired historian, the Jesus who died and rose again, the Jesus who is the Word incarnate, and the Jesus who promised eternal life, will have to suffice. The evidence does not support this view of Jesus, but my faith does.”   It is in the liturgical assembly, in acts of ministry, and in relationships facilitated and sustained by our baptism that I find Jesus.  My Lord will not conform to my projections, or yours, or anyone’s.  Jesus will not be a lefty because I want Jesus to be a lefty.  Jesus will not be a literalist because Fundamentalists want him to be a literalist. Jesus balks at being an item on a Rorschach Test for any of us.Let us be more concerned about whether others will perceive Jesus projected into our lives and whether we are conformed to the one who renews all life.