Overcoming the "Jesus Seminar" With Counterproductive Features And the Gospel of Jesus Christ

The set of rules upon which the Seminar relies for constructing its "pool of (historical or authentic) data," have an unusual tendency from my standpoint. They either prove nothing at all, as indicated by my previous posts, or else (if we assume them for the sake of argument), they can be used to prove what Christians have been saying all along, confirming nearly the entire theological and historical substance of the NT. Here, I maintain that:

I. The CPF Criterion Establishes The Substance of the Christian Gospel

Using the counter-productive features (CPF) criterion, one could establish that the historical Jesus, was the Son of God, a supernatural, miracle-working Person, who alone fits the description of the anticipated Messiah of the first Testament. Here, the historical and canonical Jesuses look suspiciously similar. And the Christians know why.

A. The Preached Gospel Treated Collectively Passes the Counterproductive Features Crtierion. This is obvious from the predictable results of preaching it in the first-century Roman Empire.

Wherever Paul and others preached this message, persecution followed, and with great fervor. Teaching such doctrines would seem highly counter-productive in the short run, since few of us like to have many large stones tossed at us vigorously. Certain doctrines of the Christian faith necessarily proceeded in a directly counter-cultural direction, undermining the philosophical, theological, and political conventions native to the cultures Christian ministers encountered.

In fact, several Roman Emperors decided to have the Christians all killed, or else prevent their preaching altogether to end this religion, whichever was more convenient at the moment. The gospel simply proved too subversive (making its features counterproductive if you enjoyed living), so they made Christianity illegal. Said just a little differently, then, the counterproductive literary features criterion alone could be enough to establish nearly all of the Gospel material. This is because what the apostles preached, and what they wrote or dictated, remained the same over time. Neither Paul nor the others would permit "another gospel" at any price.

Although the Evangelistic impulse might have suggested compromise to gain more adherents, and the Gospel itself would have been altered significantly were it subject to "legedary growth" (for the sake of self-preservation if nothing else), Christians cared only for the truth, and for those to whom they preached it.

This is evidenced by the fact that they made the baptismal formula a direct affront on the claim of absolute authority by Rome's Caesar, which baptism was public and required one to swear, "Jesus is Caesar [Emperor, king of Kings]" (Kyrios ho Iesous). The NT says this several ways. See 1 Corinthians 12:13. This did not dispell the abuse they encountered. It invited it -- or else it invited conversion.

"Ho Kyrios" (THE Lord in Greek, not "a" lord), was a formal title of the Roman Emperor, and among his most exalted. The teachings of the Gospel regarding the Lord Jesus would necessarily offend each of three groups who formed its evangelistic targets, and thus each properly counts as a counter-productive feature of the Gospel accounts.

Yet thousands upon thousands converted to the Christian faith. There simply was no literary "accretion," and no good reason to think otherwise. If there were, we would have expected a radically different portrait of Jesus and his message, one consistent with the requirements of the Jewish faith, with then-popular Greek philosophy, and with Roman law. For such adjustments would have relieved them of the legalized persecution they experienced, the expulsion from Jewish society they incurred in many cases, and hostility of the Greek religious and philosophically-oriented groups. It also would have promised to draw many more converts without all the trials and tribulation. But the Christians went the other direction.

The Gospel was unalterable, and unaltered by "Christian communities," and it remained under the supervisorial control of the apostles and elders, as Luke indicates in Acts 15 and 21 (Jerusalem Council accounts). Thus, the "counterproductive features" (and multiple attestation) criterion of the Seminar clearly undermines one of its historical reconstruction methodological assumptions regarding the notion that the Gospel "developed" in the context of legendary growth, or well-meaning "pious additions." They cannot have it both ways. Either their criteria are good and their methodological assumptions false, or the reverse.

This point can be further established by examining many of the essential teachings of the early Christian commnities in light of the criterion of counterproductive features. Considered individually, a host of various Christian doctrines also pass this criterion. These include:

1. The Crucifixion of Jesus. Heroes do not die in fables. They rescue. The ordinary concept of Messiah at the time involved the conquest of Rome, not death at the hands of Rome (defeat). Even his own disciples scattered, and fell depressed when they saw him crucified. The two on the road to Emmaus spoke of Jesus in the past tense, saying they had hoped He was the Messiah.

Second, Christians held that Jesus is divine -- God, the Son. Gods do not die. This would create problems for them in terms of explaining their theology to others.

Third, even the opponents of Jesus jeered him, "You saved others but cannot save yourself. Come down now from that cross if you are the Christ, and we will believe you." This shows that power, not public humiliation and torture reserved for the lowest kinds of people, was what everyone associated with the Messiah in all three relevant cultures of the ancient world in the first century.

The "Jesus Seminar" accepts this line of reasoning regarding the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth(over against Muslim theology), therefore affirming that Jesus was in fact crucified (for the most part) as the Gospels describe. As a brief aside, Muslims enjoy leaning to western scholarship to attempt the overthrow of biblical teaching, here or there. But such scholarship would destroy their own religious claims, since western historiography regards the crucifixion of Jesus as likely the best established fact in ancient history. Some people do not know how to pick their battles judiciously.

2. The Resurrection of Jesus.

If you were going to preach the Gospel to Greeks in the first-century, this is what you DO NOT INCLUDE. They had heard enough of the many "mystery religions," involving the resurrection of Osiris and the like, to laugh at the next similar claim. They suffered from "resurrection-story burnout." Second, the predominant influence of Plato's emphasis on the "shadowy physical world," and the superiority of the "world of the forms" to which the soul returns upon death, made resurrection far from desirable to most Greeks.

A Greek Gnostic saying of currency, 'Soma Sema' ["The body is a tomb"] meant that the human body is a tomb from which the soul must escape to leave behind its humiliating, debasing and enslaving appetites. The Stoics here agreed. The last thing many Greeks wanted upon death was to have to go back to jail. Resurrection simply was not on the menu, nor was it considered credible to claim that someone had indeed so risen.

3. Strict Monotheism.

This was fine in Jewish circles, but in a Greco-Roman polytheistic context, it meant undermining the basis of Roman law [The Emperor was supposed to be a god, and adherence to this or that god of the Roman pantheon was a matter of patriotic loyalty], and in some places, the economy. Greeks saw strident Monotheism as drab, unpatriotic to one's city-state, and a bit anti-intellectual. Ephesus, whose patron "Diana" was greatly dishonored by the apostolic Word, was thrown into a furor over the Gospel, since Paul was determined by it to overthrow their idols as "worthless things" which all needed to be "turned away from." Since there is but one God, all others must go. People who make their living from idol-construction and sales -- and many did -- found this prospect particularly impoverishing.

4. The Jewishness of the Messiah and Judge of All Men

Greeks and Romans had constructed mighty empires, and cultured the world with their ideas and innovations. Alexander of Macedon had Hellenized a large part of planet earth, and these people were fiercely proud of their Imperial heritage. Along came a preacher [Paul and others] who would make a man from a backwater country of little significance THE King of the world, greater than Alexander or Caesar? And he preaches total surrender to a dead man? [The resurrection claims of the Gospel aroused much suspicion back then too] This did nothing for the credibility of the Gospel.

5. The Counterproductive Features of the Gospel in a Jewish Context

A. Jesus is the Son of God.

Teach this, and you would be accused of blasphemy by the Jews. This carried the death penalty.
B. The ceremonial law of Moses bears no binding outward obligation any longer.

This is implied in the Christian claim that Jesus is the Messiah. Because of the coming of the Messiah, the substance to which the Older Testament's "types and shadows" had pointed, Christians viewed Jewish ceremonial regulations, and some others, as obsolete.

These included the OT dietary laws, holiday feasts, Saturday Sabbaths, circumcision, Israel's land laws, clean-unclean distinctions regarding clothes and hygiene, washings (purification rites), etc.

This fact renders as counter-productive features in a Jewish context the following teachings of the NT:

1. The Sunday [The Lord's Day] Sabbath (Christians met on the first day of the week for worship)

2. Baptism replaced circumcision as unnecessary

3. The welcoming of Gentiles, lepers, prostitutes and others by faith and conversion without any recognition of needed ceremonial purification or washings

4. The practice of the Lord's Supper

This ritual replaces all sacrifices of the first Testament, but is itself not a sacrifice. The NT presents a non-sacrificial religion (only One which is historical) to the Jews whose priesthood and entire religion depend upon this concept of sacrificial (piacular) atonement. Hebrews acknowledge that "Indeed without the shedding of blood, there is no remission [of sins]." But the Jews only knew of repeated sacrifice (morning and evening), and one only seemed like no sacrificial religion at all.

Other Jewish-context CPF's from the NT include:

i. The doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus.

Jesus' opposition implicitly accused him of illegitimacy. John records this humiliating and blasphemous insult. This argument shows up in the Talmud two centuries later as well. So we know it was current from the time of Jesus forward, and represented a handy occasion for accusation against the Christian message, and the Lord Jesus, for those who sought one. The notion of a virgin birth seemed like a weak cover-up to many for "the obvious."

ii. The doctrine of the better priesthood of Jesus, that of the order of Melchizedek.

We know from the Book of Hebrews -- a sermon -- that Christians preached this to Jewish and Gentile Christians alike. This implied the obsolescence of the entire Temple complex and Aaronic priesthood. This alone would virtually secure the wrath of the Jewish authorities. And it did.

iii. Jesus was the final prophet, the Son, a greater prophet than Moses, a mere servant

This forms a subtheme of the Book of Hebrews. Moses represented the best of the prophets and the oldest to Jews, who regarded age as a sign of honor. Jesus died at about 33, and had said he was greater than Abraham. Christians taught he was greater than Abraham by his priesthood. "You are not yet fifty and you have seen Abraham! they challenged Him." Jesus then asserted his superiority to both Abraham and Moses in one utterance: "Before Abraham was, I AM."
The Seminar, of course, dismisses most of John as a late accretion with an indeterminant trajectory for its various constituent pericopes. Nevertheless, it contains many passages which pass different criteria they propose. Early Christians preached doctrines consistent with Jesus actually saying this [Coherence], and it would have got them in trouble [Counterproductive features], which means this passage is criteriologically "multiply attested."

And authentic texts confirmed by such criteria from the Synoptic Gospels have Jesus saying and doing things consistent with such claims as well - i.e. forgiving sin - which only God could do in Jewish theology. This renders John's passage multiply attested textually as well by the Coherence criterion. Later, if God wills, I will show this same conclusion confirmed [again] by the Criterion of Palestinian Environment -- making the plain Greek of John 8:58 (Prin Abraam genesthai, ego eimi) "4 for 4."

In sum then, the criteriology of the Seminar, if we assume them for the sake of argument prove far more than they intend, confirming the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the most unlikely message ever to succeed, born in a tri-cultural context guaranteed to prove hostile to its promotion at almost every point. If this "Gospel" was the accretive effort of the collective wisdom of Christian communities (merely the wisdom of men) one point is clear -- they were the dumbest people on planet earth.

God deliberately stacked the odds against the Gospel, and then empowered his people with miraculous gifts and callings in the foundational generation of the Church, so that the Gospel came not merely with the eloquence of man's wisdom, but a demonstration of the Spirit's power. The miraculous power with which Paul and the others proclaimed the gospel mightily overcame the objections of those around them. Even such men as Elymas were silenced (blinded), so that none could withstand the goodness of God, so that everyone believed whom God had set apart for eternal life. (He is the Good Shepherd. His sheep can run but they can't hide.).

The criterion of counterproductive features highlights two facts historically:

1. The Christians did not budge or fudge on anything they had received from God as revelation by Jesus and the apostles.

2. Something miraculous then had to account for the extraordinary success of the Christian Gospel in a world utterly set against it, philosophically, theologically, legally, and culturally.

It would seem that the "counterproductive features" of the Gospel accounts (its antithesis maintained against the surrounding pagan cultures) turned out to be a source of its great success (a highly productive evangelistic feature). And the foolish turned out to be the wise. Just as it is written in the law of the Lord (1 Cor. 1:18-20; 23-25):

"For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?"

And again:

"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock [counterproductive feature], and unto the Greeks foolishness [a really counterproductive feature, meaning "madness"]; But unto them which are called, both [of] Jews and Greeks, [Jesus] Christ [is] the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

Next I will continue to consider the Bible in light of the other criteria offered by the Seminar; and (surprise) it does more of what you have just seen. You can file this under "unintended consequences." This happens because "the foolishness of God is wiser than men."