I'm in New Orleans on Mission Trip with our Youth Community, and our groups are heading back to the University of New Orleans after their very hot Wednesday. Quickly, while they're wandering in and getting cleaned up, I thought I might try to direct any of you to a "just for fun" quiz that, when you complete it, will provide you with a pretty comprehensive outline of the conclusions(so far) of the scholars who have worked together on the "Jesus Seminar."
Go to www.westarinstitute.org . At the upper left of your screen you'll see a graphic about the Jesus Seminar. Just below it will be a link inviting you to take a biblical literacy quiz. Click it, take the quiz (it's not tough -- even I did pretty well!), check your results, and then keep clicking to find a really thorough summary of this group's conclusions about all manner of things.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
Marcus Borg is one of the primary contributors to our on-going Living the Questions conversations; much of what he shares in those conversations is outlined in in his very compact little book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith. As he tries to answer the question "What Manner of Man was Jesus?" Borg suggests, these "impressions" of Jesus...
"Jesus' verbal gifts were remarkable. His language was most often metaphorical, poetic, and imaginative, filled with memorable short sayings and compelling short stories. He was clearly exceptionally intelligent...In contemporary terms, he was gifted as both a right-brain and left-brain thinker...
"He used dramatic public actions. He ate meals with untouchables, which not only generated criticism but also symbolized his alternative vision of human community... There was a radical social and political edge to his mission and activity. He challenged the social order of his day and indicted the elites who dominated it. He had a clever tongue, which could playfully or sarcastically indict the powerful and proper...
"He was a remarkable healer: more healing stories are told about him than about anybody else in the Jewish tradition...There must have been something quite compelling about him. He also attracted enemies, especially among the rich and powerful.
"And finally, he was young, his life was sort, and his public activity was brief. He lived only into his early thirties, and his public activity lasted perhaps as little as a year (according to the synoptic gospels) or as much as three or four years (according to John). The founders of the worlds' other major religious traditions lived long lives and were active for decades. It is exceptional that so much came forth from such a brief life.
(from Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, p. 30-31)
"Jesus' verbal gifts were remarkable. His language was most often metaphorical, poetic, and imaginative, filled with memorable short sayings and compelling short stories. He was clearly exceptionally intelligent...In contemporary terms, he was gifted as both a right-brain and left-brain thinker...
"He used dramatic public actions. He ate meals with untouchables, which not only generated criticism but also symbolized his alternative vision of human community... There was a radical social and political edge to his mission and activity. He challenged the social order of his day and indicted the elites who dominated it. He had a clever tongue, which could playfully or sarcastically indict the powerful and proper...
"He was a remarkable healer: more healing stories are told about him than about anybody else in the Jewish tradition...There must have been something quite compelling about him. He also attracted enemies, especially among the rich and powerful.
"And finally, he was young, his life was sort, and his public activity was brief. He lived only into his early thirties, and his public activity lasted perhaps as little as a year (according to the synoptic gospels) or as much as three or four years (according to John). The founders of the worlds' other major religious traditions lived long lives and were active for decades. It is exceptional that so much came forth from such a brief life.
(from Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, p. 30-31)
Monday, June 8, 2009
The Book of Jesus
Ten or twelve years ago Calvin Miller edited a volume he titled The Book of Jesus: A Treasury of the Greatest Stories and Writings about Christ. The book doesn't pretend to be a scholarly argument and has no real interpretive agenda; rather it is a collection of pieces ranging from "one-liners" to fairly complete essays and reflections from about 200 different contributors. Some date to the earliest days of the church (for example, the Gospels and the Roman/Jewish historian, Josephus), others from the Conciliar Age (eg. Augustine and Anselm), and still others from the rest of the centuries "CE". Some of the writers are the "usual suspects" for such a volume, (the aforementioned, the reformers, contemporary or nearly contemporary voices like Fred Buechner, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, Desmond Tutu), while others are surprising because they were or are not Christians (like Gandhi and Sholem Asch) or because you wouldn't expect them to have anything to say about the subject (like Charles Dickens or Christopher Columbus.)
The volume makes no great or profound argument about Jesus, but it does provide a wide range of diverse voices that have given voice to how a pretty remarkable group of people. They range from things that claim to be historical accounts (like Josephus: "...about this time lived Jesus, a wiseman, if it is proper to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, -- a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many of the Jews and many of the Greeks"), to contemplative poetry (like Thomas Merton's The Flight into Egypt -- "Go Child of God, upon the singing desert, Where, with eyes of lame, The roaring lion keeps thy road from harm"), to comedic retellings of parables (like Robert Farrar Capon take on the laborers in the vineyard -- "There was a man who owned a vineyard. His operation was not on the scale of E&J Gallo, but it was quite respectable: let's put him in the Robert Mondovi class....").
We have a couple of copies floating around here if any of you want to borrow it. Again, no profound conclusions, just lots of info from lots of people.
The volume makes no great or profound argument about Jesus, but it does provide a wide range of diverse voices that have given voice to how a pretty remarkable group of people. They range from things that claim to be historical accounts (like Josephus: "...about this time lived Jesus, a wiseman, if it is proper to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, -- a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many of the Jews and many of the Greeks"), to contemplative poetry (like Thomas Merton's The Flight into Egypt -- "Go Child of God, upon the singing desert, Where, with eyes of lame, The roaring lion keeps thy road from harm"), to comedic retellings of parables (like Robert Farrar Capon take on the laborers in the vineyard -- "There was a man who owned a vineyard. His operation was not on the scale of E&J Gallo, but it was quite respectable: let's put him in the Robert Mondovi class....").
We have a couple of copies floating around here if any of you want to borrow it. Again, no profound conclusions, just lots of info from lots of people.
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