The Hysterical Search for the Historical Jesus

By Don and Joy Veinot

We live in an increasingly postmodern age. Our leading universities are the setting for a revolutionary change in the manner in which we view past events. The history of the ancient world and even the history of our own century are being rewritten, “deconstructed,” interpreted in new ways. For example, columnist George Will writes,

“Without an intellectual anchor, cultural institutions are carried along by prevailing winds, which blow from the left. Familiar exhibits of this process are universities, where various subjects are enveloped in fogs of politics and abstractions. The Holocaust is being exploited by academic entrepreneurs and factions with political agendas . . . [it] is being hijacked, turned into an empty flask to be filled up with academic obscurantism and trendy political advocacy masquerading as scholarship.”¹

        Liberal professors and scholars are “politicizing” history, rewriting it to reflect their late-20^th-century liberal political worldview. Says Will,

“Comparing Nazi misogyny and the exploitation of Jewish women by Jewish men, Ringelheim has stressed the extent to which ‘the sexism of Nazi ideology and the sexism of the Jewish community met in tragic and involuntary alliance.’” “So,” remarks Will, tongue-in-cheek, “the Holocaust was a serious episode of sexual harrassment.”²

History in the Re-making

        As important as we feel it is that our university students are taught real history rather than bogus “deconstructions,” we feel that there is a far more dangerous (in a spiritual sense) rewriting of history that’s afoot and gaining momentum in our culture. Christianity and the Jesus of the Bible are being “deconstructed” right before our eyes. One would have to be living in a cave not to have noticed the articles that have appeared in our newspapers, magazines, and on public and cable television these past few years giving us the “real” scoop about Jesus and the Bible.

      This historical rewrite is being led by a group calling themselves the Jesus Seminar. Robert Funk, a retired professor from the University of Montana who was joined in 1985 by John Dominic Crossan, started this group. Bishop John Shelby Spong from New Jersey is also a Seminar member. Like those who are reinterpreting the significance of the Holocaust in secular history, these religiously liberal professors and scholars are “politicizing” religious history, rewriting it to reflect their late-20^th-century liberal religious-political worldview. According to these scholarly revisionists, the New Testament is really not history but religious myth and faith “stories.”

      The scholars of the Jesus Seminar begin from a perspective of denying the literal understanding of the Scriptures, and they seek alternative, metaphorical meanings behind the words and phrases of the gospel writers. The “explanations” they offer are often very far-fetched, and sometimes quite humorous to anyone who knows the Bible well. It is, indeed, a hysterical search for the “historical” Jesus.

      In the layman-friendly book by John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? he tells us that the Jesus Seminar meets twice a year for four days and involves 40-50 scholars.³ He admits they have received a lot of public attention.⁴ We would agree. In fact, there hasn’t been an Easter in recent memory which hasn’t brought about a number of stories in the major newspapers, radio and television with interviews featuring Dr. Crossan, Bishop Spong and others.

      Crossan⁵ is a very likable scholar, indeed. He is a very grandfatherly individual with an even temper and a wonderful Irish accent. He taught at DePaul University in Chicago from 1969 until 1995, at which time he retired and was made Professor Emeritus. The media in our culture greatly favors the anti-supernatural explanations offered by Crossan and his liberal colleagues and grants Crossan a fawning respect it would never accord to conservative, Bible-believing scholars. Surely, such a learned voice, affiliated with such an august body as the Jesus Seminar, is one that should be listened to, trusted, and quoted often.

Democracy in Action

        We must ask, how do the liberal theologians of the Jesus Seminar arrive at their novel conclusions? They discuss the text in question and, as Dr. Crossan writes, “we decide.”⁶ What do they decide? They decide what words Jesus actually spoke and which are myths, faith fables, and layers on the “Jesus Tradition.” This is done through a very literary, scientific, and irrefutable method. They

“vote in secret, using colored beads to indicate [their] views about how likely it is that the particular words actually came from the historical Jesus. A red bead means that the saying ‘most likely’ came from Jesus, a pink bead means ‘likely,’ a gray bead means ‘not likely,’ and a black bead means ‘very unlikely.’ ”⁷

By employing such an up-to-date, sophisticated methodology, is it any wonder they have “voted” that Jesus only spoke about 18% of the words attributed to Him in the New Testament?

They do not allow the New Testament text to govern their understanding of who Jesus was and is. Rather, they have a predetermined view of what Jesus was like based on their anti-supernatural and politically liberal bias, and they judge the text by their own preconceptions! Ask yourself, how could they vote on what Jesus did or did not say, unless they had already decided what kind of person He was and what He taught? It is a ridiculously circular process, guaranteed to “find” the Jesus they put there themselves, by ignoring the contrary evidence. It’s like a court trial where the guilt of the defendant has been predetermined, and all the overwhelming evidence suggesting his innocence is summarily removed from the record, based upon presumption of guilt. How fair would that be? We might see a hanging, but justice and truth would not be served.

Tools and Searchlights

        Crossan tells us there are a number of tools available to scholars in their work, and he admits that the tool one uses will determine what sort of Jesus is “found.” “Clearly, everything depends upon the methods used to uncover the facts about Jesus.”⁸

         Dr. Crossan refers to the three tools he uses in order to “deconstruct” Jesus as “searchlights.” The first of the three is “cross-cultural study.” With this “tool,” Crossan attempts to understand the social setting in which Jesus lived by comparing it with other Mediterranean cultures of the time.

“What can scholars tell me about societies that, like the one in which Jesus lived, have elites and peasants, colonial subjects and imperial rulers? To take an example: If I am tempted to picture Jesus as a literate, middle class carpenter, cross cultural study reminds me that no middle class existed in ancient societies and that the peasant class from which he came is largely illiterate. So I am kept from imagining a Jesus who could not possibly have existed at his time and in his situation.”⁹

        Crossan asserts that Jesus and most of His followers were illiterate, and that the disciples who wrote the gospels were far better educated than Jesus possibly could have been. These writers supposedly took it upon themselves to “fix” this problem by elaborating on what Jesus said and did, even though the writers of the New Testament explicitly deny doing this. John says,

“This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24, NIV).

        Of course, in our postmodern world, we could argue about the meanings of John’s words. For example, the truth of John’s statement might depend on what our definition of “is” is. Does the statement mean that the testimony is true for all time and under all circumstances? Or is the testimony true only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, during March, April and May, and only in a leap year? We insist that John means his testimony IS true in the generally accepted sense of the word. Webster defines “is” as “third-person singular, present indicative of ‘be.’ ” John’s testimony be true, it is not some made-up story. That’s the sense here.

      Yet, we are asked to believe Crossan, rather than the eyewitnesses of the events, without any proof whatsoever that the gospel writers fudged their report in any detail. Crossan’s cross-cultural suppositions are not convincing. It was common practice for young men in Israel to be taught to read the scrolls, memorize Jewish history, and participate in discussions with the men in the synagogue. Luke reports that Jesus read from the scrolls in the temple (Luke 4:16), and we will believe Luke until proof is forthcoming that he lied about this. Nevertheless, the issue of Jesus’ literacy is a moot point to a person who believes the biblical text. In the Bible, Jesus is presented as being God incarnate, a unique person who has the very mind of God. A secular education will neither make nor break such a person.

Deconstructing a Deconstruction

        Let’s turn the tables on Crossan. He says it is impossible to imagine an illiterate Jesus saying and doing the things that Jesus is portrayed as saying and doing in the New Testament. How possible is it to imagine an illiterate peasant doing and saying the things that Crossan asserts that He did? Crossan’s Jesus is a political-social revolutionary. Historically, social revolutions such as Crossan envisions are fomented by the university-educated elites of society such as Karl Marx and Vladamir Lenin, and their ideas make their way down to the peasantry and working class, as well as to successive generations of student radicals. Crossan has Jesus going about announcing a divine social revolution,¹⁰ speaking out against colonial imperialism,¹¹ domestic violence, and systemic abuse of power.¹² His “illiterate” Jesus fully understands the nuances and recognizes the injustices of the political and economic structure,¹³ and he exposes the evils of institutionalized racism and sexism.¹⁴ Crossan can imagine this Jesus, but not the Jesus of the Bible??? This highly imaginative picture of Jesus as a “power-to-the-people anti-establishment radical” would indeed be hysterical if it were not deceiving so many people.

Searchlight #2

        The second “searchlight” Crossan utilizes is “historical study.” He looks at the dealings between the Jews and the Greco-Romans. How did the two groups get along? We must agree that historical study is a very valuable tool. Conservative biblical scholars use the historical, grammatical method of study to place texts into their proper context. The difference is that they look at the historical setting as a whole, whereas Dr. Crossan limits his “study” to the political atmosphere. A plain reading of the biblical text gives no indication that Jesus was the least bit interested in politics other than to teach obedience to the laws of the land. But, unfortunately, an apolitical Jesus is not the kind of Jesus that Crossan wants to “imagine.” In order to “imagine” the type of Jesus he wants, he dismisses truly relevant historical information concerning the miraculous events of Jesus’ ministry, and he reimagines Jesus only as a fully human, political revolutionary. Crossan mentions the first century historian Josephus’ words about Jesus, that He “was a wise man ‘who wrought surprising feats,’ ”¹⁵ but, amazingly, Crossan does not allow those words to suggest to him that perhaps Jesus truly did perform supernatural miracles.

        It is incumbent upon Crossan, I would think, to apply his “historical study” “searchlight” to his own version of events. He claims that the disciples of Jesus continued His mission after His death. Surely we should be able to find some historical verification of the first-century socialist revolution initiated by the radical of Nazareth! Was His failure and theirs so complete that every scrap of evidence was eradicated?

Searchlight #3

        Crossan’s third “searchlight” is so-called “textual study.”¹⁶ This is, according to him, the most difficult task.

“I have to distinguish between three levels of literary tradition. At the first level the tradition retains sayings and happenings that go back to the historical Jesus. At the second level those retained Endnotes

1.) Academics diluting and distorting Holocaust, syndicated columnist George Will, June 18,1998. 2.) Ibid. 3.) John Dominic Crossan, Who is Jesus? (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), xv. 4.) Ibid. 5.) Crossan doesn’t fit neatly into the category of “postmodernist,” but then, few people do. Postmodernism is still a fledgling movement that only recently began coalescing around a few central doctrines. Even settling on one basic definition of what postmodernism “is” can cause arguments among postmodernists. On the other hand, Crossan’s approach to the life of Jesus is compatible with various postmodernist approaches. Many practitioners of “deconstruction,” after all, focus on exposing hidden political agendas lurking in both the text and its readers. And the postmodern emphasis on multiple, equally valid “perspectives” on the text has created an atmosphere congenial to the Jesus Seminar. 6.) Ibid., xv. 7.) Ibid. 8.) Ibid., 5. 9.) Ibid., 6. 10.) Ibid., 55. 11.) Ibid., 65. 12.) Ibid., 59-61. 13.) Ibid., 65. 14.) Ibid., 64. 15.) Ibid., 155. 16.) Ibid., 7. 17.) Ibid. 18.) Ibid., 8. 19.) Ibid., 92-93. 20.) Ibid., 136.

21.) Ibid., 8. 22.) Ibid. 23.) Ibid., 55. 24.) Ibid., 144. 25.) Ibid., 27. 26.) Ibid., 145.

27.) Ibid., 145-46. 28.) John 8:24, NASB.