The Case For Christ

to me, 'Well, Greg, it looks like the scholars disagree with
you,' and he threw the magazine at me!" Boyd shook his head in
both sadness and disbelief. "You see, that article gave him the
reason to stop taking me seriously. Even though he knew I was a
scholar, he interpreted this article as saying that the majority
of scholars-at least, those who aren't wacko fundamentalists-hold
these views."
I could empathize with Boyd's story, having heard too many
people equate the Jesus Seminar with all scholars. "Do you think
that impression is an accident?" I asked.
"Well, the Jesus Seminar certainly portrays itself that way,"
Boyd replied. "In fact, this is one of its most irritating
facets, not just to evangelicals but to other scholars as well.
If you look at their book The Five Gospels, they give 'seven
pillars of scholarly wisdom,' as if you must follow their
methodology if you're going to be a true scholar. But a lot of
scholars, from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, would have serious
reservations about one or even most of these pillars. And the
Jesus Seminar calls its translation of the Bible 'The Scholars
Version'-well, what does that
imply? That other versions aren't scholarly?"
He paused for a moment, then cut to the core of the issue.
"Here's the truth," he said. "The Jesus Seminar represents an
extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the
far, far left wing of New Testament thinking. It does not
represent mainstream scholarship, and ironically, they have
their own brand of fundamentalism.
They say they have the right way of doing things, period." He
smiled. "In the name of diversity," he added with a chuckle,
"they can actually be quite narrow."
DISCOVERING THE "REAL" JESUS
"At least," I said, "the participants in the Jesus Seminar have
been very up-front about their goals, haven't they?"
"Yes, that's right. They're explicit in saying they want to
rescue the Bible from fundamentalism and to free Americans from
the 'naive' belief that the Jesus of the Bible is the 'real'
Jesus. They say they want a Jesus who's relevant for today. One
of them said that the traditional Jesus did not speak to the
needs of the ecological crisis, the nuclear crisis, the feminist
crisis, so we need a new picture of Jesus. As another one said,