Biblical studies

UNBELIEVING "SCHOLARS" SAY BIBLICAL JESUS IS A PHONY MYTH WHILE BOGUS "JESUS SEMINAR" DOES SAME

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• published: 04 Apr 2012
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"Dealing with "God Hating" Atheists, Agnostics, Know-It-Alls" is at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL640E505B96CD6B39. Over and over again, it is seen that liberal, radical, postliberal, atheistic & existentialist scholars, in seeking the supposed real Jesus, inevitably start their quest with a very definite view in mind that validates whatever their own presuppositions are. Not surprisingly, these scholars invariably end up 'discovering' the exact kind of Jesus they were looking for, one that bears virtually no resemblance to the Jesus actually discussed in Scripture. Debate clips between Robert Funk of the "Jesus Seminar" & Dr James White of Alpha & Omega Ministries (website: http://www.AOMIN.org) are interspersed throughout this radio presentation. At the end of the debate Funk tells the radio host & guests to "go to hell." Larry Wessels, director of Christian Answers of Austin, Texas/ Christian Debater (YouTube channel CANSWERSTV; see our 19 playlists on numerous topics posted on our channel page http://www.youtube.com/user/CAnswersTV?feature=mhee; websites: http://www.BIBLEQUERY.ORG, http://www.HISTORYCART.COM & http://www.MUSLIMHOPE.COM) presents another broadcast of his radio program "Christian Answers Live!" hosted by Lee Meckley. The special guest for this broadcast is Robert B. Strimple, President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California. Dr. Strimple has authored such books as "The Modern Search for the Real Jesus." The "Jesus Seminar" is a group of around 150 people, including a few "scholars," who meet to discuss the historical Jesus. It was founded in 1985 by the late Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan. They meet and vote with colored beads to decide which sayings of Jesus are authentic and which are not. This group is very liberal (meaning "unbelieving" of the Gospel records) and that denies Jesus' deity and substitutionary atonement. They also deny the sufficiency of the Bible and consider extra-biblical resources as equally or more valid than New Testament documents. Only 14 members of the Seminar qualify as being "scholars." One quarter of the group, though, are complete unknowns (one is a movie producer), and half of them come from a cluster of three ultra-liberal schools: Harvard, Claremont, and Vanderbilt. Clearly, the Jesus Seminar cannot be viewed as a relevant cross-section of academic opinion. It means theirs is only one voice of many, viewed even by liberal scholars as suspect and on the extreme fringe. The Jesus Seminar meets twice a year to dissect biblical passages. Their goal: separate historical fact from mythology. So far, they have rejected as myth the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the virgin birth, all Gospel miracles, and a full 82% of the teachings normally attributed to Jesus--all dismissed as legendary accretions with no historical foundation. For example, only two words of the Lord's Prayer survive as authentic: "Our Father." Robert Funk calls Jesus a "secular sage who satirized the pious and championed the poor." He then adds, "Jesus was perhaps the first stand-up Jewish comic. Starting a new religion would have been the farthest thing from his mind." Isn't that an odd thing to say about Jesus? Jesus didn't rise from the dead. He didn't work miracles. He didn't give us the greatest teaching in the world. Instead, He was a stand-up comic, according to the founder of the Jesus Seminar. The most important question one can ask of any point of view (a question almost never asked by the press) is this: Why do they believe it? This allows us to determine whether the reasons lead properly to the conclusions. Everyone has a starting point. The place the Seminar begins is carefully concealed from the public at large, but it's the most critical issue. Why do they claim there is no evidence for the resurrection? That is the key question. Their reasoning goes something like this: It's impossible for the Gospels to be historically accurate, because they record things that simply can't happen, like dead people coming alive again and food multiplying--miracles, in other words. We live in a closed universe of natural order, with God (if there is a God) locked out of the system. If miracles can't happen, then the reports in the New Testament must be fabrications. Therefore, the Gospels are not historical. Further, if miracles can't happen, then prophecy (a kind of miraculous knowledge) can't happen. The Gospels report that Jesus prophesied the fall of Jerusalem. Therefore, they could not have been written early, but after the invasion of Titus of Rome in 70 A.D. In addition, they could not have been written by eye-witnesses, as the early church Fathers claimed. Notice that the Jesus Seminar doesn't start with historical evidence; it starts with presuppositions, assumptions it makes no attempt to prove. This is not history; it's philosophy, specifically, the philosophy of naturalism.