Rating: 
Summary: sensationalistic and pretentious, but interesting
Review: The so-called "Jesus Seminar", co-authors of this book, make the sensational claim that they can actually "hear" the voice of the historical Jesus in certain passages of the New Testament though not in others. Since historical attestation of the words of Jesus outside of religious works (i.e. canonical and extracanonical gospels) is non-existent, historians fall back on the phenomenon of multiple attestation (i.e. religious writings coming from seemingly separate traditions, i.e. John, the synoptics and/or Q, and, if you are willing to suppose a first-century source, the gnosticizing Gospel of Thomas, showing overlaps.) By diligent comparison of these sources, Bible scholars attempt to reconstruct the most probable authentic sayings at the points of overlap. This process is complicated, however, by the supposition that each independent tradition actually contains early and late strata, and that, according to the authors of this book, any eschatological or christological material in the Gospels must come from the later strata of the oral tradition. Furthermore, any incidental dialogue in miracle stories must also be made up, since it could not have survived an oral stage, and anything that fulfills Old Testament prophecy too closely must be looked at with suspicion. This leaves memorable one-line "zingers" as most probably going back to the historical Jesus, as well as parables that could have been remembered, as long as they are stripped of any "theological" flavoring. Once these criteria are set, the "seminar" votes on the sayings most likely coming from Jesus, and all of His words are given a red, pink, gray or black rating depending on their likelihood of originating with Him. This is all fine, of course, if your thesis is that the "historical Jesus" was an ordinary philosopher wanedering around Palestine who had absolutely nothing to do with the Savior of the Christian texts. This is a rather pretentious assertion considering the scarcity of independent, non-Christian texts. Moreover, once these points have been made in the introduction, the book becomes excruciatingly repetitious as the authors attempt to justify their rating of each individual passage according to the criteria. Moreover, their new translation, intended to sound to modern American readers as the original would have sounded to ancient Greek speakers, strips the texts of their time-honoured elegance and shocks the reader through Jesus' frequent exclamations of "Damn you...!"
Rating: 
Summary: A Liberal Look At the Words of Jesus
Review: The Jesus Seminar, whether famous or infamous depends on your religious barometer. This is not a book for the conservative Christian who accepts every word written in the gospels, Acts and the Letters to be the actual words of Jesus, written by his Apostles, (which the evangelists were not). If you are an open-minded seeker of truth and are not easily shocked by religious controversy, you will delight in this easily readable unbiased examination of the Words of Jesus and the attempts by the Seminar to pin down what really was said and by whom, 2000 years ago.
The Seminar is a group of liberal biblical scholars, with a historical perspective on Jesus. They, herein vote on the efficacy and accuracy of the recording of Jesus' words. Sentances in RED are those they believe probably came from the lips of the Master, pink, gray and black denote how the vote rated the words attributed to Jesus, only about 20% of which are accepted as most likely his ideas, as he might have spoken them.The of the rest of the gospels are seen as either created by the evangelists, writing 35 - 83 years after his death as more shedding light on their problems within the infant church of their day, than Jesus' struggles in his. Much of the rest of the material (of the gospels) is not rejected but instead subjected to varying degrees of uncertainty as to whether or not they were the original words and intent of Jesus or simply created by writers, redacters and revisionists, from tradition, hearsay, educated guesses by the evangelists om what Jesus might have said in certain situations, and/or insertions of self-serving, propaganda by biased others. If you enter the reading in a searching mode, ready and open to all ideas on who Jesus was and what he really did say, you will find this book very engaging. I was not at all threatened by the content, but a Catholic Fundamentalist friend was outraged by it. The book is simply an example of scholars doing what they are supposed to do, theorizing on something of which we have precious little unbiased material.
Have fun!
Rating: 
Summary: Buy the book, read the book, then dump the book
Review: Just who is the Jesus Seminar? And what makes them an authority on Jesus and the New Testament? The Jesus Seminar comprises 70 or more 'Fellows', of which there are only about 14 reputable figures in the study of the historical Jesus, most notably John Dominic Crossan. About another 20, though not widely published, are recognizable names in New Testament scholarship, albeit mostly in the area of non-canonical gospels. The remaining 40 or so - more than half of the entire Seminar - are, by and large, unknowns. Most have published maybe 2 to 3 journal articles; several are recent Ph.D's whose dissertations happened to be on some Gospel theme. In fact, a search through 2 comprehensive databases of published books and articles revealed that about 18 of the Fellows made no contribution relevant to the New Testament at all! 36, or around half, received their education from or currently teach at 1 of 3 institutions, namely Harvard, Claremont and Vanderbilt, universities with some of the most liberal departments of New Testament studies in the world. Almost all the 'Fellows' are Americans, rendering European scholarship virtually unrepresented. All in all, the Jesus Seminar does not in any way even come close to reflecting a consensus of today's New Testament scholarship. And it is frightening to contemplate the souls that might be lost to consuming misinformation irresponsibly disseminated through fictional literature of this kind. Robert Funk, co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, states, "We want to liberate Jesus. The only Jesus most people know is the mythic one. They don't want the real Jesus, they want one they can worship. The cultic Jesus." So what gave the Jesus Seminar the notion that there is indeed a Jesus other than the one found in the Gospels? Have there been new archaeological finds that refute traditional Christian scholarship? The answer is simply, and emphatically, NO. So if perchance you have found this page in your quest to learn more about Jesus, you deserve more than what the Jesus Seminar has to offer. There are countless volumes that will acquaint you with Jesus as King, Servant, Man and God - in your course of study, I can assure you will find that He is all of that, and then some. But if you are considering this title despite the credentials of the Jesus Seminar, I implore you to not regard any Jesus Seminar publication as reference or source without also first consulting Jesus Under Fire by Michael Wilkins and J P Moreland (ISBN 0310211395), The Historical Christ & The Jesus of Faith by C Stephen Evans (ISBN 019826397X) and Jesus' Resurrection, Fact of Figment - A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludermann (ISBN 0830815694).
Rating: 
Summary: With their views, why are they wasting their time?
Review: This book purportedly attributes about 18% of Christ's words to him, and effectively makes the "historical" Jesus an ineffectual and ambivalent savior at best. Furthermore, the gospel writers are painted as plagiaristic authors with conflicting stories, poor memories and cleverly crafted insertions borrowing from mystical writings. To this I ask, other than to prove over 1 billion people wrong, create a windfall in financial gain, or for academic exercise, why are these otherwise highly intelligent scholars wasting precious time on a topic that ultimately has little perceived value other than to be an inaccurate historical account whose oldest surviving copies are dated over 175 years after the death of Jesus? In my view, they have demonstrated the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be toothless, exceedingly errant, and more importantly, a farce of grand proportions foisted upon a hope seeking public by fundamentalist zealots. From the Scholar's Version it appears the Gospel of Jesus Christ has very little value except for a few homilies and moral concepts spoken by a man in which people may place a most tenuous faith at best. I believe these scholars are clearly missing the larger context of the gospels with scholarship that runs counter to the science of modern day textual criticism that readily indicates the authenticity of the gospels. These are exceedingly foolish men with absolutely no heart for God. I think the Apostle Paul speaks to this best in 1 Corinthians 1:18-20 (NIV): "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"
Rating:
Summary: Can we ever look at the Gospels the same?
Review: There have been many critics of the Jesus seminar, many of which wouldn't be able to tell you the first thing about it, other then that it consists of a bunch of "Damn liberals".
With the release of "The Five Gospels" the ground breaking work of the Jesus seminar is finally allowed to speak for itself. The introductory sections to the Five Gospels are worth the ticket price alone, concise summaries of modern research and theories on the Gospels.
I also found the "Scholars version" a highly readable translation. Where the Greek contains a colloquism, a play on words or outright bluntness, the translators have sought to reproduce this in English, the "present tense" originally found in Mark is also preserved. One of my favourite examples is when Jesus is brought before the High priest and asked if he is teh Messiah, he responds "You said it". But to me, the real value of "The Five Gospels" is the insight into the construction of the Gospels "Matthew" and "Luke".
After examining the parellels between the source text Mark and Matthew and Luke, I cannot imagine any self respecting scholar denying Markan priority or the existance of Q while keeping a straight face.
Previously, I was unaware that Matthew uses an amazing 90% of Mark, with Luke totalling around 50%, and noting instances where Mark is either left out altogether, "softened", or "improved" is a most revealing insight into the mindset of the Authors. After rereading the synoptics I was shocked at how foreign the Gospel of John is in comparison. As noted in the introduction, in the synoptics Jesus never talks about himself and speaks in parables. In John, Jesus tells no parables and talks about no one else except himself! Perhaps most striking of all is The Gospel of Thomas. The orthodox Church continues to rail against Thomas as " pure heresy" while more and more Christians are turning to the text for insights beyond anything in the canonised account.
After examining the parallels between Thomas and the synoptics, it is impossible to call Thomas a work of "pure heresy", at worst it is 60% heresy!
It is easy to criticise the criteria by which the Jesus Seminar worked, but no criteria was ever going to please everyone.
For example, Matthew's sayings about maintaining the Law of Moses were voted "black" with the fellows believing Matthew was a "Rejudaiser", on the contrary it is my opinion that thse saying were an authentic part of Q and Luke ignored these passages for his Hellenistic audience. To the people who work themselves up in a tizzy because their favourite saying was voted black, I have a very simple solution.
Get out your red highlighter and correct the "mistakes" of the fellows, but by no means throw the baby out with the bathwater! Stephenhanes@yahoo.com
Rating:
Summary: Interesting on many levels
Review: The Five Gospels is the end product of years of research, thought, discussion, and voting by the Jesus Seminar. Description of how decisions were made and the color coding of text for estimated authenticity were fascinating in themselves. the Jesus Seminar is much more tranparent about how it works and the weaknesses of their method than any scholarly group I am aware of. ENRON could learn from this. News reports that only a small precentage of accepted texts could be attributed to Jesus were somewhat misleading in that the seminar did not include common phrases and amphorisms that Jesus may have used but that were not unique to him. The story of the Gnostic Gopel of Thomas was intriguing. Or you can ignore the controversies and just read a careful modern translation that is much more understandable than most.
Rating:
Summary: Check your preconceptions at the door
Review: Even it you disagree with the conclusions, it is worth considering the work and thought of the Jesus Seminar scholars to help you get a fresh "take" on your own beliefs. If you can keep your blood presure under control, the translations are interesting and well thought out. You learn more than you think you need top know about the voting procedure and how the seminare opporates, but I guess from being criticised they felt they needed to be transparent. I find it exciting to attempt to locate the human man before he became the Messiah.
Rating:
Summary: Exciting and interesting search for truth
Review: This is a tremendous work for those interested in understanding exactly what it is that Jesus might have said and taught as closely as can be determined from the ancient writings of his followers. This includes the four Gospels translated directly from the ancient Greek and the new Gospel of Thomas, which was discovered in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi texts. The Gospel of Thomas, from a copy of an early third century manuscript, "has survived in its full form only in Coptic, although its original language was Greek." The translations are by a panel of Christian scholars, many from prestigious religious institutions such as the University of Notre Dame, DePaul University (J. Dominic Crossan), Xavier University, Eden Theological Seminary and Texas Christian University. It is "free of ecclesiastical and religious control, unlike other major translations into English." Jesus spoke and probably taught in Aramaic, his native language, and possible in Hebrew. His followers translated what he spoke into Greek and Hebrew, and passed the his teaching and the stories of his life down to another generation who copied those words into sayings and stories in Greek. These "gospels" were translated into Latin as the western word lost its facility with Greek. Those Latin words were then translated into early 17th century English. Today, when we read what people who didn't know Jesus firsthand had to say about his teaching, we are reading a translation of translations, and when you consider the ambiguity that normally arises in matters of religion and metaphysics, it is no wonder we have hundreds of branches of Christianity all claiming something different. Each Gospel is translated in modern English directly from its source language and color-coded "red," "pink," "gray," and "black" to reflected whether is very likely (red) or very unlikely (black) that Jesus might have spoken the words attributed to him. This is based on comparing the Gospels to each other and to other ancient written sources about Jesus, the language used, and independent historical sources. The controversial finding here is the claim that 82 percent of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels probably were not spoken by him, including almost the entire Gospel of John. This is no surprise to me considering the parallels between the miracles attributed to Jesus and the corresponding miracles attributed to the greek gods Jesus was originally competing against. Or when I think about the claim that the first miracle by Jesus was making more wine for people at a wedding who had already drunk the existing supply. When you look at the saints, rishis and avatars of other religious traditions, the admonition is to purify and cleanse oneself so as to be able to experience God within. Indeed, the early Desert Fathers of the Christian church practiced austerities and fasted to become pure. Hard to imagine Jesus creating wine so people could intoxicate themselves at a party. This accords well with Elaine Pagels contention in her new book "Beyond Belief" that the Gospel of John, the last to appear around 100 c.e., was written by someone who was attempting to refute Thomas, and its message that union with Jesus or God could be directly experienced in much the same way it has been written about in the Vedic tradition (India) by Christian mystics. What is valuable is that after each passage is translated, what follows is a scholarly discussion on how that translation was arrived at, background information, what exactly the words could have meant in another context or translation and how those words compare to the writings of the other gospels. Worth the price of the book is the first 38 pages that discuss the probable history of the Gospels, the saying of "Q" as a precursor to Matthew and Luke, the differences between John, Thomas and the other Gospels and how the scholars went about their research. Throughout the book side-pages explain terminology, Paul of Tarsus, the meaning of "tense" (the use of past tense or present tense in the writings), the "I am sayings in the Gospel of John. Also provided are direct comparisons of the gospel language from similar passages. The audience for this book is not those who wish to rely on faith in understanding Jesus. The findings are controversial, but book provides a great wealth of new information on the gospels of Jesus. It will give you tools to begin to evaluate for yourself as you read the passages of the gospels what Jesus might and might not have said.
Rating:
Summary: Weird scholarship.
Review: This translation of the Gospels makes use of some good linguistic ideas, and is often fresh and lively. Some of the historical principles from which the fellows operate are reasonable. Mostly, though, this work is arrogant and silly. The arrogance is directed first towards those thousands of scholars who do not share JS views, whom they dismiss in insulting and unfair terms, secondly, towards the general public, whom they casually assume to be uninformed, or misinformed, fools (why else would we doubt the JS?), and most of all, towards the authors, editors, and compilers of the canonical Gospels. I do not share their contempt in any case. And I ultimately find the scholarly argument made here not only mistaken, but absurd, for at least five reasons. First, it is absurd to call Thomas a Gospel. Etymologically, Gospel means "good news;" Thomas introduces no news, good, bad, or indifferent. Historically, Gospel refers to the canonical four. Thomas does not resemble them in any way, other than borrowing some material and the name of a guru. (I listed 45 characteristics that the Gospels shared, and found that Thomas shared only half a dozen or so -- fewer than any other ancient work in my study.) Why, then, call Thomas a Gospel? Other than using the work as a "sharp stick to beat orthodoxy," the term does not fit. Second, some of the methods adopted here for determining if a saying is accurate are, as other reviewers have pointed out, clearly fallacious. "Sayings and parables expressed in 'Christian' language are the creation of the evangelists or their Christian predecessors." What would result we adopted that rule for the works of JS writers? We would have to conclude that none of the JS books, this one included, were written by their purported authors! This is not a rule that scholars use in any other case, because it would render all scholarship absurd, as it does here. "Only sayings and parables that can be traced back to the oral period, 30-50 C.E., can possibly have originated with Jesus." This is silly. My grandmother wrote poetry at age 95. If she were 15 years old in 33 A.D., she could have written a first-hand account of the ressurection in 113 AD! Why is it impossible that first-hand accounts of Jesus' life -- to say nothing of oral tradition -- could have been written 63 years before that date? Third, the fellows display a naive and ill-informed scientism. "The Christ of creed and dogma, who had been firmly in place in the Middle Ages, can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo's telescope." Yet Galileo himself affirmed that creed. Many astronomers (not all Christians) have even found the cosmos they saw through modern telescopes an aid to faith. Fourthly, the JS editors have a bit of a martyrdom complex. They complain about "inquisitors," "witchhunts" and "public attacks (criticism?) from those who lack academic credentials." But what about "attacks" on their methods and assumptions from leading scholars? (See John Meier, N. T. Wright, and E.P. Sanders, for powerful examples of such criticism.) They seem under the curious assumption that the "scholarly" method of dealing with informed criticism is to accuse one's critics of being in the thralls of "neo-orthodoxy," then treat the substance of the criticism with haughty silence. Fifth, the scholars find it "difficult to imagine" Jesus claiming to be Messiah, since he also taught humility. But it is possible to be both humble and believe one is called by God to accomplish great things -- Confucius is one example. Thus, for want of imagination, (or psychological reach, perhaps) they throw out a third of the evidence. For unwillingness to consider the supernatural, they throw out another third. And this is the "open-minded," "unbiased," and "dispassionate" way to do scholarship. I am honestly amazed that so many intelligent scholars can convince themselves that Thomas is a Gospel, and is similiar in important ways to the canonical Gospels. It reminds me of C. S. Lewis' comment on a similiar blunder by Bultmann, "After a man has said that, why must we attend to anything else he says about any book in the world?" If anyone has an answer to either question, please enlighten me. christthetao@msn.com
Rating:
Summary: Putting the 18% in Context
Review: Sensationalist accounts of this academic endeavor are quick to proclaim such things as "Only 18% of the attributed sayings of Jesus are authentic, says Seminar". Reactions to that kind of bold statement, as one can witness just by reading the other reviews here, tend to be pretty knee-jerky in one direction or the other. But let's look at what that 18% actually represents. It doesn't represent, or even claim to represent, the entirety of the recorded words of Jesus. The 18% represents basically the minumum amount of data that can be critically and historically traced back to Jesus in more-or-less the form we now have it. Excluded are sayings demonstrating strong signs of linguistic redaction, sayings which seem tailored to later theological disputes, and sayings which would have been so common in first-century Palestine that they can't be isolated as coming from Jesus. The Seminar's methods are inherently reductionist, sifting through the evidence for data that "stands out", leaving as black and gray material that comfortably "fits in". In reality, it's quite remarkable that as much as 18% passes through these strict methodological filters in tact. So, really, the headlines should read: "Academic Seminar concludes that AT LEAST 18% of the words attributed to Jesus can be traced back to him using critical historical methods." Regarding the remaining 82%, some will say it's nearly all bunk, some will say that the 82% is just as reliable as the red/pink 18%, but any responsible intellect will not accept either premise at face value. Rather, they may begin to understand the gospels themselves as historical reflections, as documents containing truth on different levels, from remembered fact to metaphorized divine truth. That said, there certainly are problems with this book. In my opinion, they start with the editorial remarks by Funk and Hoover, which reflect their own somewhat confrontational view and not necessarily that of the seminar as a whole. The commentary wasn't a collaborative effort, and it wasn't voted upon by the members. Funk and Hoover (and of course, all of the sensationalistic accounts) are probably most responsible for the view of this book as some sort of attack upon the Christian faith. Yet, any person of any theological inclination ought to find a useful resource here, provided they themselves are capable of thinking critically about the undertaking and the methods employed.
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