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December 17, 2008
Project-ing Jesus
A group of scholars begins new quest for the historical Jesus on "methodologically agnostic" grounds.
The inaugural gathering of The Jesus Project, a group of biblical scholars and academics in related disciplines embarking on a five-year quest to unearth the historical Jesus, took place in Amherst, N.Y. December 5th through 7th. Historian R. Joseph Hoffman, Chair of The Scientific Committee for the Study of Religion (CSER), the Jesus Project's sponsor, describes the group's intent and operating principles on its website.
The Jesus Project, as CSER has named the new effort, is the first methodologically agnostic approach to the question of Jesus' historical existence. But we are not neutral, let alone willfully ambiguous, about the objectives of the project itself. We believe in assessing the quality of the evidence available for looking at this question before seeing what the evidence has to tell us. We do not believe the task is to produce a "plausible" portrait of Jesus prior to considering the motives and goals of the Gospel writers in telling his story. We think the history and culture of the times provide many significant clues about the character of figures similar to Jesus. We believe the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible. We regard previous attempts to rule the question out of court as vestiges of a time when the Church controlled the boundaries of permissible inquiry into its sacred books. More directly, we regard the question of the historical Jesus as a testable hypothesis, and we are committed to no prior conclusions about the outcome of our inquiry. This is a statement of our principles, and we intend to stick to them.
The project was devised more than two years ago, and officially launched at a January 2007 conference, "Scripture and Skepticism," at the University of California at Davis.
CSER's website provides a list of notable attendees at this December's gathering, as well as a schedule of proceedings, and a follow-up report.
Public radio WBFO 88.7 FM in Buffalo interviewed one scholar involved in the project, Robert M. Price, two days before the event. According to his website bio, Price attended a fundamentalist (his word) Baptist church early in life, was involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship during his time at Montclair State College, and received an MTS degree in New Testament from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the late ''70s. Since this time Price has distanced himself from evangelical Christianity, collected two PhDs, moved in and out of various forms of institutionalized liberal religion, and written numerous books. A 2007 release, Jesus is Dead, argues, according to its back cover, that
(1) not only is there no good reason to think that Jesus ever rose from the dead, (2) there is no good reason to think that he ever lived or died at all.
The publisher also notes that readers of the book
will have ammunition with which to counter the arguments of muscular apologists such as Gary Habermas, N.T. Wright, or William Lane Craig.
Price's inclusion in a study group premised on the belief that "the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible" has not been lost on Dan Wallace, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and Executive Director for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Blogging at PrimeTimeJesus, Wallace writes:
No one is neutral when it comes to Jesus, and we might as well all admit that fact. It is beyond my comprehension how a man who has explicitly and frequently written that the historical Jesus is a myth could be a part of this project.
The Jesus Project's next conference is tentatively scheduled for May 2009 in Chicago. Papers from the December 2008 conference will be published in 2009 by Prometheus Books under the title Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry.
Comments
From at least the 4th century C.E., the world has accepted the Church's definition of Jesus as their divine Son of God displacing (superseding) the Torah with himself as "grace," as described in the Christian NT. Thus, Jesus is intractably anti-Torah (antinomian) and contradictory to documented history: the Judaic context, which defines the historical Jew as a Torah-teaching (pro-Torah) Pharisee Ribi: Yehoshua. Playing games with these names changes neither character any more than switching the names of a rose and an onion would change the characteristics of either. Jesus is the intractably contradictory polar opposite of Ribi Yehoshua. Thus, the very phrase "Historical Jesus" is an intractable oxymoron, pre-ensuring that any quest for it is impossible.
The historically-documented Judaic context defines and constrains the very real, historical Jew who was a Torah-teaching Pharisee Ribi -- and let that, instead of Paul (who, Eusebius documented, was excised by the original Netzarim as an apostate) and post-135 C.E. Hellenist Roman fabrications, mold their conclusions about him and his teachings.
Instead of looking for the oxymoronic "Historical Jesus," start looking, for the first time, for "Historical Pharisee-Ribi Yehoshua." You can start your search, and find an enormous amount of information, at www.netzarim.co.il.
Paqid Yirmeyahu
Paqid 16, The Netzarim, Ra'anana, Israel
Israeli Orthodox Jew (Teimani Baladi Dardai)
Advancing Logic as Halakhic Authority
Welcoming Jews & non-Jews
The Netzarim
Posted By: Paqid Yirmeyahu | December 17, 2008 11:30 AM
"We regard previous attempts to rule the question out of court as vestiges of a time when the Church controlled the boundaries of permissible inquiry into its sacred books." Where have they been living the past 200 years? If this is one of their starting assumptions, I don't think I would trust their version of history.
Posted By: Mike Hickerson | December 17, 2008 11:31 AM
let God be true, and every man proved a liar. oh well, the battle continues...
Posted By: david york | December 18, 2008 9:03 AM
Let's face it there is a war against Christianity in this country. How do you fight against it when you can't say the word God in school and it's becoming "politically incorrect" to talk about religion anywhere. I think, no hope the end is near because it is becoming uncomfortable. Nevertheless I am ready to die for My Lord who died for me.
mjs
Posted By: M J Spaulding | December 18, 2008 7:33 PM
I thought people by now got fed up with Jesus Seminar Gang for more than two decades.
Well we got here finally a clone of it for a new century. It seems parallel to but might be encouraging than intensifying activity by internet community of anti-Christian movements all over the world (not just muslim) while the religion of Christianity is digging its own grave yard with charlatans and hypocrites of shallow prosperity gospel, and healing and tongue speaking shows, and ritual pomposity.
Yeshua might blink and blink His eyes, saying 'Pity on you'.
Time to get unplugged from religions. This book would be a food for soul - 'Unplugging from Religion ... Connecting with God' by Greg Albrecht at www.ptm.org.
Posted By: Ounbbl | December 19, 2008 8:50 PM
Well, all I know is that at this time of year, Judaism is celebrating the reconstruction of the Temple while Christians are giving honor to the incarnation of God in Man[kind] in Jesus of Nazareth. The silliness of a quest for the historical Christ is realized in the notion that Christ is the context for all of history and is, Himself, sovereign to it. The very ontic nature of [the Christian] God is evidence enough for the person of faith. In this reality, our search for God is brought to a happy conclusion and while all other alternatives leave us asking for more proof, a renewed quest, and one project after another. Ah . .. the wisdom of this world, ain't it something ?? !!
John Smithson
Pastor (ret)
Friend of Israel
Disciple of Jesus of Nazareth
Posted By: John Smithson | December 22, 2008 6:08 PM
Screwtape would be proud.
Posted By: Randy | December 24, 2008 12:47 PM
Neo-Gnostism, self-importance, grace killers, nothing new under the sun.
Posted By: bhill | December 29, 2008 11:25 AM
EstimadosSeñores, sigo con mucha atencion el proyecto Jesus,pero deberia existir una pagina o seccion en español, Atte. Peter Leyton Rodriguez. Sur de Chile
Posted By: Peter Leyton | April 19, 2009 9:30 PM