<<If Allison is trying to revive this view, in opposition to those
Jesus Seminar people, who have blackballed 80% of the Gospels as "inauthentic", more power to him. >>
My hubby says that he sees this terrain just about as you do. I'll quote him, talking to you, now: "The Jesus seminar more and more looks like an attempt to recuperate Jesus as a non-apocalyptic religious 'actor,' a sort of sage concerned with spreading good values for their own sake. Some of the stars of the Jesus seminar made a very explicit effort to type him as a philosopher along the lines of the itinerant Cynics, an effort that has fizzled spectacularly. The hysteria, of course, is about the meaning of Jesus's ethical/lifestyle injunctions and what should be made of them. If they were designed to induce divine intervention, and quick, then they didn't work, and their long term relevance is certainly called into question. I agree that Schweitzer overreached with his proposition that Jesus intended to offer himself as a catalyst, although his behavior in Jerusalem was certainly very provocative (assuming that it happened at all.)" |
