This section claims that much of the reported words of
Jesus were not spoken by him. It uses the results of the much-criticised
Jesus Seminar.
Click here for a collection of articles about the Jesus Seminar.
But very briefly:
- The Jesus Seminar is not a representative view of Christian scholarship.
Despite there being hundreds (maybe thousands) of seminaries across the USA, the
selection of participants was very narrow, with almost half of the participants
coming from three of the most liberal seminaries.
- The results were dependent upon the presuppositions of the participants.
The participants almost completely reject the idea of God acting in history,
and so any of Jesus' miracles, or any sayings of his which predicted the future,
were automatically ruled out. It is not hard to guess what these scholars would
have said if asked whether the Qur'an was dictated to Mohammed by an angel!