The Irresponsibility of New Testament Scholarship in the Twentieth Century

Extract

A brilliant young German New Testament scholar said to me recently in an e-mail message, “What is more, scarcely anything new can ever be said; mostly it is the arrangement of well-known thoughts from a new point of view that is helpful and releases new impulses. Really new thoughts are accordingly received with great scepticism. So I often ask myself what we are actually doing.” That on the one hand, and the spurious excitement of the “Honest to Jesus!” movement, publicising the work of the Jesus Seminar, on the other hand. The Jesus Seminar meets several times a year in the United States and sets itself to decide by vote the likely authenticity of the sayings of Jesus and of events in the Acts of the Apostles. It was founded by Robert Funk. His book, Honest to Jesus, aims “to set Jesus free”, to “demote Jesus”, and to “declare the New Testament a highly uneven and biased record of various early attempts to invent Christianity.” The show will be on the road in the United Kingdom when Funk visits the country from the end of March AD 2000 to the beginning of May to hold seminars and rallies. It seems that close detailed scholarship by individuals dealing with the New Testament is regarded as boring and that the only excitement is to be gained by joining with others and getting Bishop Spong to puff your book, trying to shock the public in echo of Bishop John Robinson.