Concept

Jesus Seminar

Overview

The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 50 biblical criticism scholars and 100 laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk that originated under the auspices of the Westar Institute. The seminar was very active through the 1980s and 1990s, and into the early 21st century.

Members of the Seminar used votes with colored beads to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. They produced new translations of the New Testament and apocrypha to use as textual sources. They published their results in three reports: The Five Gospels (1993), The Acts of Jesus (1998), and The Gospel of Jesus (1999). They also ran a series of lectures and workshops in various U.S. cities.

The work of The Jesus Seminar continued after the death of its founder (2005) and was succeeded by two seminars: The Seminar on God and the Human Future and The Christianity Seminar. The latter published its first report in 2022, After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements. The seminars are the scholarly program units of Westar Institute. Westar publishes a bi-monthly magazine for the general public, The Fourth R: An Advocate for Religious Literacy.

The Jesus Seminar has come under intense criticism regarding its method, assumptions and conclusions from a wide array of scholars and laymen.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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OUR ENGLISH BIBLE. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. Our English Bible is a translation from the Hebrew and the Greek. The English Bible which is in ordinary use is called the Authorized Version, or King James' Version. It is a translation made by a body of learned men and published in England in 1611, during the reign of James I. The Revised Version is an improved…
Martin Luther, An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism
States what Jesus Seminar is.
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Traditional scholarly practices are undergoing tremendous transformations as a result of the emergence and growing prominence of what is called network-mediated scholarship.
Library of Congress, Workshop on Electronic Texts
States what Jesus Seminar is.
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Of this intercourse, the several _interviews_, which appear to have had place, will form the links. Correspondent to those _interviews_ will be found to be so many _visits_: all of them, except one, visits made by him to the great original metropolis of the Christian world--Jerusalem:--the scene of the acts and sufferings of the departed Jesus:--the ordinary abode of these his chosen disciples and successors. If, to…
Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul, but Jesus
Close in meaning to Jesus Seminar; the term itself is not named.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Cynicism (philosophy).

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