The Jesus Project in Amherst: Reopening the Question of the Historical Jesus

This Just arrived in my inbox. It may be a little hyped (and a little early for the headline), but it certainly got my attention enough that I am really considering submitting a paper or two. Check it out.

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PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Nathan Bupp

Phone: (716) 636-4869 x. 218

E-mail: nbupp@centerforinquiry.net

Quest for the Historical Jesus Begins Anew

Amherst, New York (December 08, 2008)—Scholars gathered this past weekend, December 5-7, in Amherst, New York, for the inaugural meeting of The Jesus Project in a renewed quest for the historical Jesus. The project, sponsored by the secular think tank Center for Inquiry and its Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER), is an effort by historians, biblical scholars, and theologians to determine what can be reliably recovered about the historical figure of Jesus, his life, his teachings, and his activities, utilizing the highest standards of scientific and scholarly objectivity.

An earlier inquiry, “The Jesus Seminar,” founded by Professor Robert Funk in 1985, concerned itself primarily with the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels and related sources. Dr. R. Joseph Hoffmann, chair of the Project and CSER, said that the “The Jesus Seminar had difficulty separating itself from the faith commitments of its members. Its agenda was not exclusively, but in large measure theologically driven. Its conclusions and methods raised more questions than they answered.”

The project has drawn together a diverse and rich group of scholars, including, among others Gerd Lüdemann, Paul Kurtz, Robert Price, James Tabor, Robert Eisenman, David Trobisch, Bruce Chilton, Dennis MacDonald, and R. Joseph Hoffmann.

At the session this past weekend, participants agreed that a rigorous scientific inquiry was needed, and that the Project would be committed to a position of neutrality towards the sources used as “evidence” for the Jesus tradition. Participants represent a wide variety of perspectives, ranging from Tabor’s argument that there is substantial evidence that the tomb of the family of Jesus has been located, to the view that the evidence for the existence of Jesus as an historical figure is not persuasive. “Jesus remains after 2,000 years the most fascinating figure of Western civilization,” said James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty: A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. “Scholars now at the beginning of the twenty-first century are able to take advantage of a plethora of new texts, sources, and methods, including the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, various lost Gospels that are not in our New Testament, and a rich archaeological record.” Tabor says that scholars today find themselves uniquely positioned to examine the issue of who Jesus was in new and challenging ways. During the closing conference round-table, Tabor was quick to emphasize that “the Jesus Project repudiates any theological agendas, special pleading, or dogmatic presuppositions.” All members of the project share a common commitment to the importance of applying scientific methodologies to the sources used to construct the Jesus tradition.

The Project has outlined a set of priorities for its next meetings, including a “consistent” translation of the Gospels, an inquiry into the causes of the canonization of the existing New Testament documents, parallels between Islam and early Christianity in delineating its sacred books, and the need to carve a middle path between what Hoffmann describes as “Da Vinci Code sensationalism and the truly fascinating story that underlies the history of Christianity.”

Papers delivered at the conference will be published under the title “Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry,” by Prometheus Books in 2009. The Project’s next conference is scheduled tentatively for May 2009 in Chicago.

*Listen to Robert Price interview about The Jesus Project on WBFO, Buffalo’s NPR affiliate.

CSER was founded in 1983 and is now a research committee of the Religion and Science division of the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. It encourages the use of the historical and applied sciences in the study of religion and provides educational programs for the public as part of its religious-literacy initiatives. The Center for Inquiry/Transnational is a nonprofit, educational, advocacy, and scientific-research think tank based in Amherst, New York. Their research and educational projects focus on three broad areas: religion, ethics, and society; paranormal and fringe-scienceclaims; and medicine and health. The Center’s Web site is www.centerforinquiry.net .

This Weeks Projects

I promised everyone some blog posts last week the last few weeks, but because of life issues I have had to put them off for more important matters.  Thankfully, I will have some available time this week within the next week to deliver what I could not by tonight.  This includes the following (so stay tuned and keep checking in to see what I’ve written – or subscribe to this blog):

1. A blog on ancient literature and its composition, model use, genre, and most important of all, how ancient authors learned how to compose literature (the use of ‘ancient’ here should be read as ‘hellenistic and roman period’) This is taking longer than I would have preferred.
2. The second installment of my disagreement with John Loftus.  He has three parts and I will have to work on my response to his second part sometime this week sometime in the near future.  My apologies to those readers and John Loftus in particular for not being able to complete this task as quickly as I had hoped.
3. I am reading Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, by Nicholas Ostler.  I hope to finish by the end of the week (because it is on loan and needs to be returned by then) and when it is done, I will be writing a review of it here.
4. I would like to write another installment of my ‘Why the Gospels Contradict each Other’ series, but doing so is time consuming–more than other blog articles.  I will work to include an article in this series this week, but I cannot make any promises.
5. The first installment you’re likely to see is an article on how classical peoples and behavior compared to our modern society.  In antiquity, out of fear of eternal powers and all encompassing fate, some turned to mystery religions to deal with and try to predict not only their own ends, but the ends of others and even life itself.  Today, people hold similar fears, and even more pressing, realistic ones (nuclear holocausts, bioterrorism, etc…), but instead of joining mystery religions, many turn to metaphysical spiritualism (i.e. Sylvia Brown) or self-help (Wayne Dyer, Dr. Phil).  I want to explore why this happens, how people went from joining religions and partaking in rituals to spending hundreds of dollars on pseudoscience and con artists.  It is not so much that these people have changed how they interpret the world (its still all completely huey), but rather it is the means by which they buy into it – the method in which the message is transmitted – that has changed.  I thought it may make an interesting article. I decided to scrap this one.