Over at Bible Interpretation, Bruce Chilton has an interesting piece on 'Plus ça change… “The Jesus Seminar” and “The Jesus Project”'. The "Jesus Project" is a spin off from the "Jesus Seminar" in the sense of being a shift from a Jesus studied by liberals to a Jesus studied by atheists (generally speaking that is!!!). I liked Bruce Chilton's final paragraph:
The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion has put its reputation on the line in sponsoring “The Jesus Project,” but so far amateurism, special interest advocacy, and a lack of critical focus have undermined a commendably earnest intent. Anyone who has followed the work of “The Jesus Seminar” should have learned long ago that Fundamentalists are not the only partisans who permit their wishes to cloud what they see and that it takes more than a declaration of “objectivity” to acquire the discipline of reasoning from evidence, both textual and archaeological. But I gave the Seminar time, and I can see no reason not to hope that genuine exchanges of insight and a deepening of knowledge might emerge from the so far conventional proceedings of “The Jesus Project.”
HT: Mark Goodacre
