Loading...QUESTION:
Does the Jesus Seminar also reject the claim that the Baptist was an apocalypticist?
Bart Ehrman Jesus Seminar and John the Baptist
RESPONSE:
This is a great question, and I’m afraid I don’t know the definitive answer – in part because the Jesus Seminar did not have one and only one view on many topics. The Seminar was made up of a group of scholars who got together twice a year to discuss which aspects of the traditions found in the Gospels (mainly the canonical Gospels along with the Gospel of Thomas) were more likely to be authentic, and which, as a corollary, were likely to have been later creations of the early church as they told their stories about Jesus. The members of the seminar would then vote on each tradition – after extensive, learned discussion, and publish the results of their votes.
I should say that on many of the very broad and most important issues about the historical Jesus I was/am in complete agreement with the seminar. We all agree that:
- The Gospels contain numerous discrepancies, contradictions, historical and implausibilities
- One needs to examine each Gospel tradition carefully and critically to see if it is historically authentic
- This requires the rigorous application of historical criteria
- The most likely authentic material is to be found in the earliest layer of the tradition so that, for example, material found only in John is less likely to be historically accurate than material in, say, Mark or Q or even better Mark and Q, and so on.
At the same time, I fundamentally disagree with the view that emerged out of the Jesus Seminar, which insisted that Jesus was not to be understood as an apocalyptic preacher of the imminent end of history as we (or he) knew it. In my view, as seen in my recent posts, that’s precisely who Jesus was. In their view, not.
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Does the JS give reasons they don’t consider him apocalyptic?
Seems to me you define what one is and then apply the evidence.
Dom’s musings seem rather muddled to me at least.
I’d better post on that!
I don’t understand why so many scholars in the field and so much of the Christian clergy do not want Jesus to have been an apocalypse. It obviously threatens something, but I don’t understand what. Or, how would admitting he was an apocalypse change the orthodoxy that resulted?
I’ll post on that!
I can’t wait!
Can I assume that, if Jesus taught that there would be an imminent Apocalypse, and there *wasn’t* one (and here we still are, 2,000 years later) the implication would be that Jesus was *wrong*?
If so I can see how people would want to downplay Jesus’ Apocalyptic teachings.
Well, I think he was wrong about *that*, at least.
Seems like a pretty big thing to be wrong about (our covenant with God). I mean the implications are pretty big if he missed that one. Hard to argue his infallibility if he missed this one.
I think Jesus was dead on about how we should treat each other, but if he was wrong about God’s plans… its something a follower would want to bury, quickly and quietly.
Do you think there was some tweaking of what Jesus actually said by the gospel authors? I’ve been ruminating two ideas.. maybe they’re way off base in your view, I’m not married to them.. and they’re not fully developed in my mind… but what do you think of these two ideas?
1. Jesus seems to say even he doesn’t know when the SOM is coming back (at least not the day or hour). So there’s some admitted public ignorance by Jesus in regards to when the future SOM will come (“Only the Father knows” was Jesus’ message it seems). To me this indicates the possibility that Jesus wasn’t going around predicting a certain time (e.g. 70 reasons for 70!)… do you think he was perhaps less sure about *when* the end was coming than our gospels indicate? I know he seemed certain the temple would be destroyed within a generation (maybe 40 years at the most)… which leads to my second idea/question;
2) Is it possible that after Jesus correctly predicted the temple’s destruction within a generation’s time, the gospel authors (reflecting the common view of their time also) took advantage of the credibility boosting fulfilled prediction given by Jesus, and said “since he got that right, then the SOM must also be on his way… at the very doors even!… even though Jesus himself didn’t connect the two events”). In other words, did they combine into one event the SOM’s return and the temple’s destruction, when in reality, it wasn’t a single event according to Jesus (meaing he predicted the temple’s destruction in his generation, but he didn’t predict the same for when the SOM would return)? This would explain both his certainty of his generation seeing what would become 70 CE, and his public admission of his ignorance about when the SOM would return. I can’t help but see what looks like evidence for this in the so-called Olivet Discourse. The context seems to be Jesus predicting the temple’s destruction in their generation (that’s the subject that caused them to ask “when will this happen?”)… and then the coming of the SOM is added to the narrative by the gospel authors in an attempt to boost expectations of the SOM by connecting it to a recent event everyone knew Jesus accurately predicted would happen… I’m not saying I do believe this (maybe he did predict both as one event, and he was right about the temple and wrong about the SOM’s coming—unless the preterist view is right that 70 CE was his coming)… sorry it’s long-winded… but I’m wondering such ideas are possible in your view?
You may want to read my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, where I talk about such issues (and many more). The basic and fundamental view of critical scholars is that the words of Jesus were indeed modified and even invented by story tellers prior to the wrigint of the Gospels. (I also deal with the issue in my more recent book, Jesus Before the Gospels).
Thanks, I have JBtG (just haven’t read it quite yet.. I will… I’ll get the other one too… but are my guesses at least possible in your view? (basic yes or no would do—I’ll read your two books for the detailed answers)
Also, really quick. I like to balance my sources of info… so I like to read Christian scholars too… I just bought Craig Evans “Fabricating Jesus”—what are your thoughts on this book (if you have any)?
Possible? Sure. Craig Evans. He’s a friend and we have a very good working relationship (you can see our debates on my youtube station, and here on the blog). But I do not think this particular book of his does much more than present that standard evangelical line with strongly apologetic overtones.
Hi,
So, according to the seminar, Jesus is better understood as what?
Thanks a lot!
A very wise Jewish teacher who had clever one-liners; some of them think that he was principally a cynic-like Jewish thinker; others that he was a Jewish holy man; others … other things. Anything but apocalyptic!
What can be postulated (historically) about the circumstances of John’s arrest and death? Are these events found anywhere outside the NT? If Jesus and John were both apocalyptic prophets, is it just mere coincidence that they both encounter the same fate (to be put to death) in the hands of the authorities?
Thanks a lot again!
Josephus also talks about John — but I’m out of town (in Las Vegas, talking about Jesus!) and not near my books, and don’t want to give it all from memory. Maybe someone else can provide the lack. Volunteers? As to your other question: there were other apocalyptic prophets, predicting the coming destruction, who were also wiped out. It wasn’t a popular view with the authorities. (Which may be why Josephus, who was writing in part for a Roman audience, did not play up John’s apocalyptic views.)
Jewish Antiquities, book 18, chapters 5 and 2 talks about John
Bart, asking for volunteers to respond to this is tantamount to asking if someone would like to tell you that James was Judas!
Prof Ehrman
John the Baptist is one of those figures in the New Testament who fascinates me most. I hope you will devote some posts to the subject either now or later. As you yourself have pointed out the gospel writers are clearly uncomfortable with him. They can’t write him out of the script so they have to accommodate him. There seems to be so much going here just over the hill, obscured from our sight, so I realize some speculation may be involved. Please do.
1. What do you think the real relationship between Jesus and John was? Could Jesus have been one of John’s followers who broke out on his own?
2. How much continuity do you think there was between John’s message and Jesus’ message? (I realize they were both apocalypticists but would we have heard any of the fire and brimstone preaching from Jesus or the love thy neighbor stuff from John?)
3. If I’m remembering correctly, Josephus spends much more time discussing John than he does Jesus. Do you think Josephus regarded John as the more important figure of the two?
4. I’m given to understand that John still had disciples into the second century. Is this true? What do we know about them, if anything?
Thanks!
Good idea. I’ll think about it. Short answers, for now: 1. I think Jesus was his follower; 2. Lots of continuity with some big differences — including the fact that Jesus thought that he himself would be king of the coming kingdom; 3. Yup; 4. Yup, probably. We don’t know much about them, but assume they were apocalyptic Jews who thought that John’s message was on target and that destruction was near.
There’s very little evidence (just a few minor agreements) that Jesus’ baptism by John was part of the hypothetical Q document. Q 7 would be read as only John’s disciples having direct contact with Jesus and that story highlights apparent differences between John and Jesus (the former eating no bread and drinking no wine and the latter glutton and drunkard). Most believe that Jesus was probably baptized by John, thinking that Mark would not have invented this story since it created difficulties for later gospel writers who variously downplayed the event. But it is possible that Mark, writing in the wake of the destruction of the temple, wanted to portray a stronger connection between Jesus and John, the apocalyptic prophet. See, Jesus was also an apocalyptic prophet preaching the destruction of the temple and the imminent end of the world. But the earlier writings of Paul emphasize baptism, and this may be hard to imagine if the early Jesus movement was not somehow associated with John the Baptizer’s movement. In this way, I see Paul as an important early witness to those who want to reconstruct an historical Jesus, even though he says very little about the historical Jesus.
Yes, the baptism is not in Q. But JB is — and so almost certainly Q indicated that JB and Jesus were closely associated. And it does portray JB preaching a strongly apocalyptic message.
apparent differences between John and Jesus (the former eating no bread and drinking no wine and the latter glutton and drunkard)
______
Remember, Luke has John in prison when Jesus is baptized. The developing tradition was to distance Jesus from other Masters, John and James (‘Judas’ is James, inverted). If you really want to take an intellectual journey, read Robert Eisenman. He goes into the no eating and drinking OF JOHN and JAMES, and the glutton ‘Jesus’ business as gospel invention to discredit those close to Jesus, here even Jesus himself in order to separate them.
Bart, you crazy guy! You in Vegas yet? Don’t spend all your time at the casinos and strip clubs now, OK? Ha! Just kidding!
Yup, here as we speak. What a place….
What evidence is there OUTSIDE THE NT that John was an apocalyptic prophet? Josephus does not describe him in that way, does he? So, what other credible sources are there for John’s apocalyptic message? Isn’t it plausible that, because Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, his followers portrayed John in that way in order to legitimate the message of Jesus? After all, Jesus’ followers do seem to have co-opted John by repackaging him the “forerunner” of Jesus.
I think we’ve had this discussion before! Outside the NT there’s one source. That source doesn’t say he was or wasn’t, but is completely amenable to the apocalyptic view that all the sources *behind* the NT assign to him.
Is “completely amenable to” really “probable” [the standard you and other historians say is required] without further evidence? “All the sources behind the NT” assign John the role of knowing himself to be the forerunner of Jesus; yet, as far as I know, no historian finds that credible. From what you’ve presented here (and elsewhere), I’ve seen no explanation of how you can so confidently distinguish what “all the sources behind the NT” say about John as apocalyptic prophet from what those very same sources say about John as messianic forerunner. As I noted in my original question, the writers of the NT [and/or their underlying sources] have clearly repackaged John to suit their purposes, and it seems to me that historians would want some evidence on which to make the sort of distinctions you [and others] so willingly make. So, no, we haven’t had this discussion before, because a discussion involves more than what’s happening here.
I’m always happy to hear a better explanation of the data!
David,
You perceive correctly:
the writers of the NT [and/or their underlying sources] have clearly repackaged John to suit their purposes,
The scholars are all guessing. Only the Masters know. They are here at all times. Read what they say:
http://www.scienceofthesoul.org/product_p/en-056-0.htm
http://www.scienceofthesoul.org/product_p/en-057-0.htm
John was A MASTER (‘savior’). The gospel authors were trying to HIDE him, just as they did James, the successor. He was not only “a herald”, but a predecessor! He baptized Jesus, for heaven’s sake.
“You were willing TO REJOICE for a season in HIS LIGHT”. John 5:35. Who has “Light” but a savior? WHO is rejoiced over, but A SAVIOR? “No one born of women greater than John”. Matt. 11:11. Jesus was born of Mary, and SHE was “woman”. What’s that say about John?
All the verses before 14 in the John prologue build up JOHN, not Jesus. He was the one who “gave power to become children of God”, NOT JESUS. Jesus is introduced by the segue, “AND the Word became flesh [again!] ..”
Luke tries to hide John as baptized of Jesus, putting him IN JAIL. He was embarrassing to the Pauline proto-orthodox church. James is similarly obfuscated in “the Betrayal”, which stars fictional ‘Judas’ as James, INVERTED. He was successor, not traitor. I cover all the support details in a book, excerpted in pertinent part here:http://www.judaswasjames.com/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-says-Saviors-ebook/dp/B00CFWE40I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378005590&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bible+says+saviors
David,
“Forerunner” is a simple misunderstanding of OT ‘prophecy’. Compare the Dead Sea Scroll copy of Malachi 3:1-2 to the received version:
RSV: “Behold I send my messenger to prepare the Way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and a fuller’s soap.”
DSS: “Therefore behold I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me. And THEY will suddenly come to his temple, the Lord whom you seek and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire; behold he himself comes, says Yahweh of hosts, but who can endure THEM when THEY come?”
The Christianized 9th century text is attempting to separate the Messenger from “the Lord”. The original has John and the Messenger, the Holy Spirit as ONE. John isn’t a “forerunner”. He IS “the Messenger”, when he comes at his second “coming” in the disciple (the “temple”). The Paulines did evedrything they could think of to corrupt and misinterpret the Tanak to support a superior Jesus Christ, at the expense of predecessor savior John the Baptist, and successor James the Just. The evidence for this suppression floods out in a tsunami when you know what it is really going on in the New Testament.
http://www.judaswasjames.com/
Great post. Even good scholars, like Crossan, sometimes see what they want to see and slant the evidence.,
Hi Bart, rather off topic I know but is there any material found only in the gospel of John that you think is historically reliable? Thanks.
Hmmm. Great question. I think the call of the disciples in ch. 1 is completely feasible. But for the most part, if it’s only in John, it’s highly suspect for me. I’ll have to think about more….
Bart,
John was a Mystic. He taught the coming of the “Messenger” (Malachi 3:1). He was the herald of the coming of the one who “will baptized with the fire of the Holy Spirit” (himself as second coming for his disciples) not “with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. The gospel authors did whatever they could to hide the fact that, like James, John was a Master, or savior. Luke even locks him in jail while Jesus is supposedly baptized by him as in Matthew. It was an embarrassment to the early church to have their sinless savior in need of baptism. All Masters receive “baptism”. I have seen this transition myself in India. It is just a passing of the “torch”. It was “the kiss” in the Betrayal, or the sop of bread (Gospel of the Hebrews has it go to James the Just) — just inverted there into a betrayal, not a succession, to hide the successor: ‘Judas’, the stand-in for James.
Again, where is there anything John or Jesus said that indicated that they thought the end of this earthly world was coming? Jesus said – explicitly – that his kingdom was NOT of this earthly world: John 18:36.
Everybody thinks that since the world didn’t come to a cataclysmic end back then with Jesus flying down from the ‘clouds’ above that he was wrong about his Matthew 24 coming. Maybe everybody was looking in the wrong direction — up and out instead of in and up ~ ! The day you realize that the entire scriptural corpus — all traditions, all genres — is mysticism based, is the day you will understand it.
Allow me a post to show you and everyone here how all traditions are THE SAME at their heart (the NT is inverted), and I will explain everything: Apocrypha, canon, Gnostics, DS Scrolls, my modern Sant Mat, Mandaeans, even the Qur’an (the Messenger), everything.
I believe you *have* been trying to convince people on the blog of this….
“You were willing TO REJOICE for a season in his *Light*”. John 5:35. Who else besides A SAVIOR has “Light” and elicits “rejoicing”? Hmm?
I’d settle for hearing your objections.
You haven’t yet engaged my case. All you do is mock me, and mischaracterize my positions. I never said I would translate the Gospel of Judas without knowing Coptic. I said I could HELP with it. Choices are made in any translation, and I can be of tremendous HELP to you scholars. I never want to BE a scholar, seeing where it takes them!
For someone like myself who has a difficult time even believing that Jesus existed ( so far only your thoughts on the subject have convinced me that he at least did exist ) I find it far more reasonable to accept your view which is based on logic, evidence, and just plain old common sense.
Dr. David Galston, (in his book, EMBRACING THE HUMAN JESUS) criticises your use of the word “apocalyptic”. I quote, “Defining Jesus as “apocalyptic prophet” involves many and various problems, and Ehrman can be criticised for not sharing the subtleties involved. Care must be taken to note that in the biblical mind, the apocalypse is not about the end of history; it is not even about history coming to a screeching halt. It is, instead, about the transformation of history”. On a note, He says He does not critique you on the last point, since you know and state this conclusion. However, sometimes your flair for the dramatic hides the point you are making; says Dr. Galston.
According to Dr. Galston again: “Even if we should reach the conclusion that the historical Jesus is best understood as an apocalyptic prophet, it would still be wrong to think that in the act of announcing the end-time he imagined something beyond this world. In the apocalyptic view of things, the transformation of the world involves God ridding the world of evil and setting time back to square one, which was once the Garden of Eden”
I still need to understand why the apocalyptic debate is such an issue? Especially if we consider that the historical Jesus was very human like us?
MY PERSONAL QUESTION: I still have to hear a scholar who will explain to me; “WHY WAS JESUS KILLED – assuming He was not a criminal but a peacemaker?
I await your comments.
I’m onot sure how Mr. Galston has acquired access to “the biblical mind” (!).
I discussed why I think Jesus was killed in my discussion of Reza Aslan a couple of weeks ago. He *was* a criminal in the eyes of Rome. But he didn’t favor violence. He simply thought he would be the future king, and that was a capital offense.
I thought Crossan or the Jesus Seminar viewed John’s gospel as the earliest? Or, am I thinking of the Gospel of Thomas?
No not John. Thomas is earlier than the others for some of them.
I wonder if someday we couldn’t get you to go into the history of the views of academia on apocalypticism a bit more. It doesn’t sound as if there was some sanction or self labeling of apocalypticists (would Jewish activists have used such a Greek word as apokalupsis?) as such from 400 BCE to 100 CE after all, and in the past (In my memory of some of the trade books and maybe here on the blog once at least) you’ve dropped fascinating breadcrumbs about Schweitzer not being the first to call Jesus an apocalyptic prophet but rather being the most effective early advocate of the view. Any chance of some exegesis or is the history of history out of bounds?
Good idea. I’ll add it to my list.
given that many good scholars don’t seem to like the view that Jesus was an apocalypsist preacher, maybe it would be good if you did a post or 2 on the rebuttals against your position and where you think they fall through.
Good idea!
This illustrates the all-too-common problem of adapting data to fit one’s view rather than adapting one’s view to fit the data!
Can we learn something about the preaching of John the Baptist from the current religion called Mandaeism? (They have a “Book of John the Baptist”, which is a dialog between John and Jesus.)
They claim historical continuity with JB, but I don’t know if it’s a plausible claim or not (or how we would be able to judge). Of course both Roman Catholics and Appalachian snake handlers direct historical continuity with the teachings of Jesus! 🙂
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. THY KINGDOM COME. Thy will be done, ON EARTH as it is in Heaven.” There; and then. Period.
It doesn’t get any plainer than that.
I certainly find all your arguments convincing. But I’m curious as to how some members of that seminar might have argued against John’s being an apocalypticist (if in fact any did). I have the impression we know relatively little about what he actually said and did.
We hear of people’s going out to a river to be baptized by him. But he must have built some kind of reputation first! I wonder, did he *start* by going into villages, preaching, and “baptizing” with whatever water was at hand? And then, when he’d made something of a name for himself, did he have full-time disciples who went into villages to “advertise” when he’d be at the river? (I confess I’m not even clear as to whether he was active in Galilee, Judea, or both. He was certainly arrested and executed in Galilee…)
My sense is that most of them do see Jesus as an apocalypticst. But maybe I’m wrong. Your second paragraph sounds plausible to me. In the Gospels he’s in Judea.
Since you seem to think Jesus was primarily an apocalyptic preacher, and that almost everything else about him is better understood under that hypothetical construct, would you say John the Baptist and Paul embraced the same sort of end times theology, causing them to also proclaim God’s impending intervention and the coming of a new kingdom? And if not, why not?
Yes, John and Paul had similar views in teh broad sense, though John did not think that Jesus would play a major role, and Paul thought Jesus was the whole point.
Perhaps in the “broad sense” John and Paul had similar apocalyptic views, yet they were miles apart about the details. Same goes for Jesus. Trouble is the “End Times” never happened, and even though John and Paul and Jesus each espoused different eschatological beliefs, these were only a small part of their separate religious missions and messages. As far as prophetic prognostications go, JC is in between JB and SP, but less dependent upon JB and much less like SP. More to the point, even without proclaiming a “new kingdom to come” (which most people and history have come to ignore or reject), nearly all the other things Jesus said and did still survive quite well…WITHOUT AN APOCALYPSE!
I don’t recall if this is something I read somewhere, or something that popped into my head while reading about this topic, which was the possibility that John was an apocalypticst, Jesus not so much, and then when Jesus died and his followers came to believe he had been raised from the dead, their reaction was: “The resurrection of the dead has begun! John was right, the kingdom of God *is* at hand!” (I get the impression that Paul took the resurrection of Jesus to be the harbinger of a more general resurrection, at least.)
I’m not saying this is a more plausible argument than yours, not by a long shot. It’s just something I either read or that popped into my head. 🙂
Interesting idea. It would presuppose that the followers of Jesus had John the Baptist on the brain. I’m not sure they even knew him. But it’s an interesting scenario you’ve sketched! (The real problem of it is that if the followers of Jesus had not been apocalypticists in the first place, they would not have udnerstood Jesus appearance to them afterwards as a “resurrection” — since that was an apocalyptic perspective).
Crossan in the ‘Birth of Christianity’ states the Kingdom of God movement was not apocalyptical but rather ‘ethical eschatology’ meaning a divinely mandated, non violent resistance to Rome’s oppression. Could you decode that Bart if you get time. Did Jesus move away from JBs message to one of his own.
Crossan thinks he did. And since Crossan himself believes in non-violent resistance to the forces of injustice and oprression in our world (as do I!!) he sees that Jesus had just the same agenda (as I do not!)
I agree Bart. Crossan seems to overlay his own influences.
If Jesus’ main concern was not non violent resistance to oppression from Rome. Could you give your own summary sound bite. Thanks for your work.
quote: “for example, material found only in John is less likely to be historically accurate than material in, say, Mark or Q or even better Mark and Q”
Can any material be found in both Mark and Q (given the definition of Q)?
Yes, there are the Q/Mark overlaps (or doublets), where the same story in different forms is found in both.
In a published debate with Dale Allison, I recall Dom stating that his concern wasn’t so much whether or not Jesus was Apocalyptic or not, but whether he was Primary-Apocalyptic or Secondary-Apocalyptic. He defined a Primary-Apocalypticist as one for whom the Divine Intervention is the most important part of his/her message while a Secondary-Apocalypticist is one who believes in Divine Intervention, but does not use it to justify his/her message. Perhaps this specification was just an attempt to salvage his claims but it does seem worth pointing out.
Interesting. I didn’t know that Dom was saying that these days. It does seem to be a bit of a backtrack.
LUKE 8 : 35-36
Mark 16:5
mark 14:51
thats thee same person ?
Probably not.
ok what about acts 14:12 what the story of zuess in the bible how many times is he mentioned ?
Once in the NT.
The Horus/Christ parallels are so similar even their baptism at 30. Then Zechariah seems to proclaim a kingly messiah, a priestly messiah and a messiah who would be a voice from the wilderness as an advent. John the Baptist as a kinsman of Jesus is the holy man who doesn’t seem to know the “true” mission of Jesus. I do favour your view that Jesus was an apocalypticist like his mentor John the Baptist though Jesus went on to over shadow John though they both met tragic end for their beliefs. From the sketchy history, we can learn so little about their relationship but the times seemed rampant with similar apocalyptic prophets but Jesus became the dominant one.
I’ve never seen that Horus was “baptized” “at 30.” Do you know where this is found (in an ancient text)?
Excellent point which led me to examine this proposition and found that I may be under the sway of certain Horus/Christ parallels that may be supposition rather than drawn from ancient writings and therefore groundless. Some of us need to be more critical and examine evidence more closely. To err is human but it’s good to have someone with more knowledge set you on the correct path. I should resist the leap to quick conclusions even when they look tantalizing. Thanks, Bart !
I love Bart Ehrman.
I have to say, I think you’re mischaracterizing Crossan here. I read the book in question and I don’t think his argument is that the early Christians simply “reverted” to following John’s teachings. I’ll have to get the book off my shelf, it’s been a few years since I’ve read it, but I don’t remember that whatsoever.
I’m thinking about this because I’m trying to find the strong case that John actually WAS apocalyptic. I know that’s the traditional view, but I’m coming up pretty empty trying to find actual positive evidence of it outside the gospel accounts, which were obviously biased.
Yup, dust off that book!
Dear Dr Ehrman,
I noticed that, 7 years ago, you wrote a post about “The Jesus Seminar and John the Baptist” (January 21, 2014) and you wrote about the “Jesus Seminar” here and there on your blog. You state that “on many of the very broad and most important issues about the historical Jesus I was/am in complete agreement with the seminar” but you have never dedicated a post about it.
Could you please write a whole post about the story of the “Jesus Seminar”? How did it begin? Who are the main scholars?
I would surely read that!
Thanks
Good idea!