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Questions on the Historical Jesus by Marvin Pate
Marvin Pate, Professor of Christian Theology at Ouachita
Baptist University, seeks to get at the heart of the study of the historical
Jesus in recent times. The format of the
book follows the most pertinent questions regarding the historical Jesus from
what’s at stake with the four gospels, the Old Testament and the Messiah, and
the historical reliability of the gospel accounts. While study of the historical Jesus
continues, Dr. Pate handles the most significant questions for the church and
the academy concerning this avenue of study.
What comes out of the book is a well-reasoned, fully researched, and
thorough investigation of not only the historical Jesus but those who have
written on this subject over the years.
While many today have heard of the Jesus Seminar and
their work, few have really dived into how and why they came up with their
results. After finding only 18% of Jesus’
sayings and acts deemed authentic, we are left to wonder how they came to these
assumptions (57)? Pate notes that they
used two criteria mainly, the criteria of dissimilarity and the criteria of
multiple attestation. In a word, the
criteria of dissimilarity “states that a saying or deed of Jesus that stands
out both from his Jewish heritage and from his later followers (the church)
truly goes back to Jesus (57).” The
criteria of multiple attestation states that, “If a saying or deed attributed
to Jesus occurs in two or more of these sources, it is thought to be authentic.
If it occurs in only one source, it is not thought to be attested to and
therefore is not considered authentic (57).”
The result is that (58),
“…Jesus, he ends up with no connection to his Jewish
heritage and no ties to the church he founded. In other words, the Jesus
Seminar portrays Jesus as a “talking head” with no body. So this “talking head”
Jesus appears to be is nothing more than a Greek style philosopher who utters
mere moral maxims about how to treat each other, but who makes no claim to be
the Messiah, announces no kingdom of God, makes no proclamation against sin,
and subverts no religious establishment.”
The surprising element in all of this work by the Jesus
Seminar is that Jesus ends up looking a lot like a modern day religious wisdom
teller, not someone who was crucified on a Cross.
In Question 20, Pate takes up the question regarding why
we have four gospel accounts, not one, or not many more. After surveying the ground of the traditional
view that the NT provides reliable record of the four eyewitnesses and their
various perspectives, Pate brings to the foreground the liberal attempt to
dismantle authority and continuity. Pate
draws on the work of Ben Witherington III who argues that the form of gospels
that liberal scholars promote are full of Gnostic thought, but this thought
didn’t come about until at least the 2nd century and there is no
evidence that any Christian church recognized Gnostic texts as authoritative
(205). Further, the multiple Gospel accounts
give different perspective that fill out the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, thus giving readers a fully orbed view.
This is an excellent book on the historical Jesus that
presents the material in a compelling manner, clear with arguments from the
best sources.
Thanks to Kregel Academic for the copy of this book in
exchange for an honest review.
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