Radcliffe Emerson

I'll throw an interesting tidbit into all this. The Jesus Seminar has studied this stuff for over 20 years. I have their book called 5 Gospels, in which the things that Jesus may actually have really said are highlighted in red from the main 4 gospels, and less than 20% of his sayings in the bible are actually things he may have really said. The comments about returning and being son of God according to the JS were never said by him, they were added by others.
I thought that was pretty interesting.

CX

Actually only since 1985. Furthermore the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar are viewed with skepticism by many in the academic community. I think they have done some very good work, but The 5 Gospels is solely the work of the group's founder Bob Funk and not necessarily representative of the findings of the group as a whole. It strikes me that sometimes Dr. Funk's conclusions are overly ambitious based on the available evidence.

Cronus Malor

The anti-christ is a friend of mine named Devin. According to Jerry Fallwell, the anti-christ is alive today, and is a young jew. Devin is a young jew, and the first didgits of his SSN are 666. How much more proof do you need?

cydonia

It would be funny to compare all of us being antichrists to all of us being rap musicians, we could try to out do each other in our killer lyrics about how we are the real antichrist, not some faker antichrist.

Nickle

I was listening to Art Bell once. The guest that show swore he knew who the antichrist is and where he lived; and even met him.
I wish these stories would spread more in the Xtian community. I'd like to start seeing houses go up for sale cheap.
"Sure I'll sell you my house for a dollar, but it won't matter--the end of the world is coming."

Now as to why I was listening to Art Bell, I'm not sure.

Methodissed

I always thought it would be fun to approach someone while they were preaching imminent doom to see how much of their money/belongings they were willing to part with. In theory, you could do well. If anyone knows of an Apocalypse nut in the Minneapolis area, give me a shout

Radcliffe Emerson

[QUOTE]Originally posted by CX:
[QB]

Actually only since 1985. Furthermore the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar are viewed with skepticism by many in the academic community.


I thought the foreword in the 5 Gospels said since 1978. They also claim that while the academic community publicly is skeptic, that's mostly due to the majority of the public and established churches holding the belief. That in private, many of those same academic people have agreed with them, but don't want to go public with their opinions.

I personally think they're on to the truth about Jesus much more than any established biblical beliefs.

CX

[quote]Originally posted by Tyr Anasazi:
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The Jesus Seminar was founded as part of the Westar Institute in 1985. I'm not sure when Westar was started so it may be referring to that. As to the conspiracy of silence, I've been involved in private discussions with several scholars who have made known their skepticism. In general the objection is to the methodology used to determine the "authentic sayings". I think Bob Funk has done some great work, but he is a little bit "out there". In the end I think the "truth" about Jesus is mostly unknowable. We simply have to few sources of information and those we have are clearly a product of sectarian bias.

Radcliffe Emerson

Thanks for telling me that. Of course his books would never reveal that scholars are skeptical about the JS methods, it only goes on about how traditional people quietly agree in private.
It's a shame the JS doesn't have more validity however, it would be nice to believe in a Jesus that only said a few of the things attributed to him, rather than all of the b.s. It pretty much leaves me back where I started.

CX

For the most part we can't really know what Jesus said. We only have a handful of documents that quote him, he never wrote anything himself, everything we have is written in Greek whereas whatever he did say he said in Aramaic and we have very little support for the gospels prior to the 4th century. Based on that I would hypothesize that certainly not all and perhaps not very much of what Jesus says in the NT did he actually say.