Amaleq13

AFAIC, this "summary" bears little resemblance to the offered quotes. There is nothing in them to suggest anyone is "distancing themselves" from Vermes' characterization.

His statement clearly referred to "third questers" as a group and clearly qualified his claim as asserting "general" acceptance on the part of evangelical apologists. If Blomberg, Boyd, and Habermas belong in that category, the offered quotes appear to be entirely consistent with his statement.

That you have clearly obtained an inaccurate implication from exapologist's statement is not his problem.

Steven Avery

Essentially it was used as a back-door to try to give a type of apologist's legitimacy to the humanist/Judaic views of Vermes. As if the apologist folks weren't aware of his views on Jesus, or they embraced or accepted them. Of course they are radically different than Sanders and N.T. Wright. Occasionally a bunch of names are put under a 'third quest' umbrella, quite dubiously, so that can be an example of 'categorizing for convenience' rather than accuracy. As I remember N.T. Wright considers his inclusion in that grouping as being rather dubious terminology.

That's fine, it was the ambiguous category language on the front end used for the nonsensical and false chastising that was dealt with.

The people who the apologists will respect vis a vis their presentation of Jesus from the so-called third wave will be folks like Sanders and N.T. Wright, while Vermes will be viewed as historically of interest (1st century Judaism), but way off on his presentation of what the NT teaches about Jesus Christ.

By imposing a clashing category group, a false type of chastisement/mockery ("gleefully refer") was put forth, and its been busted. Nobody in apologetic-land gleefully refers to Vermes "NT portrait of Jesus". Simple enuf.

Shalom,
Schmuel

Ben C Smith

It was Wright who coined the phrase third quest, and IIRC in NTPG he included Vermes as one of its first members, as it were.

Third wave? Funny cross-up, that. The third wave is a charismatic church movement, not an historical Jesus movement.

Ben.

exapologist

I've now gone from creeped out to repulsed. I'm not willing to dialogue with a person who's proven themself to be routinely dishonest.

mikem

I once tried defending the historical account of Jesus last week in Jerusalem, using Sanders, and I will never forget the drubbing I received. His defence of the basic historicity of the gospel narrative of Jesus life quite simply does not stand up to argument, nor would Vermes' account. They neither of them take seriously enough the role of the gospel writers, preferring to see them as embellishers of a pre-existent narrative rather than it's creators.

Steven Avery

Thanks, Ben. maybe I ran into some of those churches a while back.. ahh yes, I see the Vineyard is in that ballpark.

The third quest is such a 'big tent' .. even Ben Witherington puts himself inside, doctrinally you could find folks in the quest tent for just about anything, and a 'majority' is unlikely for any claim. Ultimately the lens of 1st century Judaism is the defining feature, quite a reasonable lens. David Flusser was doing that stuff nicely years back, when many of us were wee young folks.

You can appreciate a lot of their studies, clearly they are far more in the ballpark than the Jesus Seminar mishegas. Even if you sharply disagree with the various viewpoints. In fact in a doctrinal or spiritual sense, you will have to disagree with most of the viewpoints, since they themselves are all over the map.

For ex, it seemed to me that you were playing games for some gratuitous nonsense remarks, the gleeful stuff, taking adavantage of the big tent category. At times, depending on mood and tone, that type of stuff I react to.. My apologies for overreacting, since the whole issue was minor, and mostly semantic parsing.

One person talking about the third quest could be thinking of works by Wright or Witherington, or the respectful historicity of Flusser, while another is talking of the sly cutting presentations of Vermes, or the liberal views of Crossan or Borg. What is a majority of what ?

An interesting related note and article
http://www.caspari.com/mishkan/zips/mishkan33.pdf
Radical Gospel Criticism and the Modern Jewish Study of Jesus -
Donald A. Hagner

"It is no small irony that Jewish scholars tend to respect the historical reliability of the gospels more than their radical Protestant counterparts. This is often because they recognize the authentic Jewishness of specific data in the Gospels. These ring true to what they know of the first-century Jewish context."

In my experience, you can add Professor Schiffman to that group as well, as when he discussed the feasibleness of the historicity of the evening Sanhedrin trial. Much more respectful of the Gospels than the radical and liberal 'Christian' scholars.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Ben C Smith

That is because doctrine has little or nothing to do with their unifying feature, which you point to next...:

The Jewishness of Jesus is, AFAICT, the distinguishing characteristic of the third quest.

Unfortunately, Flusser held some lines on the synoptic problem that I find rather difficult to accept.

Crossan is definitely not a part of the third quest. In fact, I think a strong case could be made that Wright coined the term precisely as an umbrella under which Crossan would not fit. Borg, IIRC, Wright places on the fringe of the third quest.

Other definite nonmembers: Mack, Kloppenborg, the rest of the Jesus Seminar (except Borg and maybe a couple of others), anybody who likes Wrede.

Ben.

Chris Weimer

It's sad when you have to assume something a priori in your methodology to make your conclusions fit with the thinking of the time. Given that even I think that Jesus was ultimately Jewish, this didn't come about from accepting that as a fact, but from my own studies which indicates it so. I have more respect for Crossan in this respect than Wright.