Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (1759)	9/11/1999 3:21:00 PM
From: jbe	Respond to of 6418

I don't have much use for the Jesus Seminar, either. One of the problems with it, incidentally, is that about half of the participants aren't even recognized Biblical scholars, let alone academics.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (1759)	9/11/1999 3:49:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6418

Another problem with the Jesus Seminar, demonstrating (to me, at any rate) its fundamentally non-scholarly approach: In March of 1985 Robert Funk, a well known New Testament scholar, presidedover the first meeting of a group of scholars that he had convened, dubbed "the Jesus Seminar." Meeting on the campus of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, the group embarked on an unprecedented project, to examine the available sources, canonical and non-canonical, in quest of "the voice of Jesus," i.e. "what he really said." The procedure would be as follows: the group would meet biennially, each meeting focusing on a particular set of sayings attributed to Jesus with discussion of previously circulated position papers, with the view to achieving a consensus on the authenticity or non-authenticity of each of the sayings. After discussion and debate a vote would be taken, with each participant casting a colored bead into a box. There would be four colors: red, indicating that Jesus undoubtedly said this, or something very close; pink, indicating that Jesus probably said something like this; gray, indicating that Jesus did not say this, though the idea(s) contained in it may reflect something of Jesus' own; and black, indicating that Jesus did not say anything like it, the saying in question reflecting a different or later tradition. [2] Each color would be assigned a rating (red=3; pink=2; gray=1; black=0), and the results would be tabulated to achieve a "weighted average" on a scale of 1.00 (.7501 and up = red; .5001 to .7500 = pink; .2501 to .5000 = gray; .0000 to .2500 = black). The tabulated votes would be reflected in the published results, in which sayings attributed to Jesus would be color-coded, in a kind of "red-letter edition" of the gospels. The Jesus Seminar proceeded in this fashion for six years, averaging around 30participants per session... id-www.ucsb.edu Problem, as I see it: 1) Scholarly questions cannot be decided "democratically," on a one man/one vote basis. In the area of scholarship, one man's opinion is NOT as good as another's. 2) Even if we grant that the purpose of the Seminar was not to determine The Truth, but simply the "scholarly consensus" about what The Truth is likely to be, this method still stinks (if you will pardon the expression). You can't take the opinion of, say, a well-known and respected Biblical scholar, with loads of publications to his credit, and then the opinion of a psychology grad student who wandered into the seminar that day, have them both vote -- say, one red and one gray -- and then average the two out to a pink to get a consensus! That's just not professional....