re: #327 Walter L. Newton

I know what the Jesus Seminar’s purpose was (is?). I was just interested in your understanding of it. There purpose was to textually examine the gospels and decide, through all the tools available to textual critics, which words could be actually attributed to Jesus and which words and phrases were probably simply attributed to Jesus.

This had nothing to do with the monks, or copying or rally anything like that, since the Jesus Seminar dealt with the earliest texts available, and nothing beyond about 300 C.E. They also used gnostic text and partial text when available.

The whole purpose was to try to verify, using multiple sources, which words would have a better chance of being authentic. It certainly was not an iron clad study, and they have been criticized a number of times by other textual critics who found their methods to be heavy handed.

Bottom line, there is no way to assure anyone of the authenticity of barely any of the words of Jesus, since we are not even sure if anyone who wrote anything was even a first hand witness. Most biblical authors were certainly not.

But I think you’re missing my point. They didn’t have to just rely on the earliest manuscripts, because I think the monks did an outstanding job of copying the manuscripts. I think some of the later manuscripts could have been safely used.

And I have good faith in Luke’s work in investigating the stories, as a historian, to then write them down. So I believe his original letter would have been quite trustworthy, and any problems that have come down since then are probably small errors due to copying—which should be minimized, based on how monks tried to assure accuracy.