Video from FringePop321
The Jesus Seminar - Dr. Michael Heiser
"Dr. Michael S. Heiser talks about the Jesus Seminar in this episode of Fringe Pop 321. What is the Jesus Seminar, what does it promote, and is it something that should be looked at as valid from a theological perspective? To learn more about all of our Fringe Pop 321 episodes, visit our site at https://www.FringePop321.com." from video introduction.
Article Link, excerpt below: Unmasking the Jesus Seminar
Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar
Robert W. Funk made his greatest mark on the world, not through his academic efforts, but through his leadership of the Westar Institute, which he founded in 1985. This institute, though seemingly an academic think-tank, was in fact an agenda-driven effort to undermine orthodox Christianity. In saying this, I am not dishonoring the memory of Robert Funk, but in fact preserving his memory. As you’ll see later in this post, and in tomorrow’s as well, Funk was quite clear about his anti-Christian agenda.
Funk’s most successful creation was the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars and others (including film director Paul Verhoeven, who made such religious classics as Basic Instinct and Showgirls) who took it upon themselves to decide what Jesus really said and did. They made presentations and voted by use of different colored beads. This enterprise, though apparently objective, was in fact a stacked deck from the beginning. After all, Robert Funk himself determined who was in the Seminar and who wasn’t. If you knew anything about New Testament scholarship, you could see from the configuration of Jesus Seminar fellows that they were going to end up with a very minimal Jesus at best. (In fact seven of the fellows were colleagues of mine in grad school at Harvard.)
It was obvious from the beginning that Funk’s agenda for The Jesus Seminar was not consistent with classical Christianity. He said so himself in the very first meeting of the Seminar:..."
"The Jesus Seminar was organized in 1985 to renew the quest of the historical Jesus and to report the results of its research to the general public, rather than just to a handful of gospel specialists. Initially, the goal of the Seminar was to review each of the sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus in the gospels and determine which of them could be considered authentic..." from the article: The Jesus Seminar
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