The Jesus Seminar sees its work as a first step, not the last word. It is a first step in that the Seminar's goal is to invite others to take seriously questions about the
historical Jesus and to provide reliable guidance toward some answers. But the Seminar's investigations are a first step in a more fundamental
way. Even if everyone comes to agree with the Seminar's findings, two supremely important questions would remain: 1) what did Jesus mean by
his teachings and his deeds, and 2) who was he? Coming up with a list of authentic sayings and deeds of the historical Jesus has been a signal
accomplishment, but it is really only a first step toward understanding Jesus. The list of authentic deeds allows us to see the difference between
what Jesus did and what the earliest Christians made him do in their stories about him, but these deeds need to be interpreted in order for us to
understand what Jesus was trying to achieve. Similarly, the list of authentic sayings enables us to distinguish his voice from the voices of his early
followers, but it only starts the process of understanding what message that voice was trying to communicate. The Seminar's list of sayings and deeds
is the final product of one quest and the raw material for another.
What did Jesus mean?
It is important to know whether a certain saying actually comes from Jesus,
but this may not tell us much about what the saying means. The Fellows discovered early on that consensus about the historicity of a saying does
not always indicate agreement about its meaning. Obviously, one needs some idea about the meaning of a saying in order to judge its historicity,
and the Seminar had numerous discussions about what certain sayings meant. However, unless a decision about a saying's meaning was crucial
for a decision about its historicity, the Fellow chairing the session would wield the gavel and refocus the agenda. No votes were taken on the meaning of sayings.
The history of Christianity bears abundant witness that the meaning of Jesus' life and teachings is often far from obvious. Biblical scholarship has
made much progress in understanding his words and deeds within their ancient context, but much remains uncertain.
Hearing what people say is one thing; understanding what they mean is
quite another. Nevertheless, knowing what Jesus really said is indispensable to discovering what he meant. The Seminar's list of red and
pink sayings can be the starting point for the effort to make sense of the teaching of the historical Jesus. The task is formidable, for it requires not
only understanding Jesus' sayings, but more importantly, discerning how the individual teachings fit together into a coherent message. A full
understanding of Jesus' message needs to take into account his deeds along with his words, to discover the connections among them, and to
interpret them within the real-life context of his time and place in all of its social, economic, political, and religious dimensions. So much remains to
be done. The Seminar hopes that its labor can provide a responsible foundation on which to build. By clarifying what the historical Jesus said
and did, the Jesus Seminar's work can help us hear more clearly the good news about the kingdom of God that compelled and empowered the heart and mind of Jesus.
Who was Jesus?
The Seminar's work contributes to, but does not directly produce, an understanding of who Jesus was. Any historically responsible answer to
this question must take into account what Jesus really said and did and distinguish that from what early Christians attributed to him and said about
him. However, a list of Jesus' authentic sayings and deeds does not yield any clear answer to the question of his identity. Let me briefly discuss three
traditional ways of understanding Jesus that will have to be reevaluated by anyone who takes the work of the Seminar seriously. My remarks here are
only sketches, and by no means definitive. They are meant only to give some preliminary sense of what implications the findings of the Seminar might have on our understanding of the historical Jesus.
1.
Jesus claimed to be the incarnate Son of God who came to earth to save us from sin. Belief in the divinity of Jesus arose among the first
generation of Christians and was given its official formulation by the Church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. For many Christians this belief is
the essence of Christianity and the standard of orthodoxy. Since this way of understanding Jesus is so fundamental for so many Christians, it is crucial
that we set it in proper perspective by recognizing that it is not a historical description of Jesus, but an affirmation of belief in his supernatural origin
and divine mission. It can be neither demonstrated nor disproven by any historical evidence. In this respect, the Seminar's findings can neither affirm
nor deny this belief. What historical research can establish is whether the statements in the gospels in which Jesus claims this status and role were
actually spoken by him, or were developed by early Christians and attributed to him after his death. The Seminar concluded in every case that these statements originated with the early Church.
The Jesus Seminar (and virtually all New Testament scholars who are not fundamentalists) maintains that early Christians made Jesus into the
spokesman for their own beliefs about him. So, for example, all the statements in the Gospel of John that presuppose belief in Jesus'
supernatural origin (for example, the "I am" statements) are colored black. There are some Christians today who accept that the historical Jesus did
not claim to be God. For most of the public, however, this is news, even though it is nothing new to biblical scholars and theologians. For centuries,
Christian theology established the divinity of Jesus by starting with statements in the gospels in which he claimed (or seemed to claim) to be
divine. The results of twentieth-century New Testament scholarship have caused theologians who accept the historical-critical study of the Bible to
abandon this approach. Some in the media have sensationalized this part of the Seminar's work, characterizing it as radical, provocative, or
iconoclastic. But this is so only because the Seminar is stating publicly what scholars and theologians in the mainline churches have known for decades.
