The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels

I had the privilege of having Luke Timothy Johnson as my professor in various Christian-themed courses when I was an undergraduate at Indiana University, and hope that I am counted among the 'wonderfully responsive classes of undergraduates at Indiana University' to which he refers in his preface. (p. xiii) -The Jesus Seminar and Other Charlatans-As the word 'charlatan' derives from the Italian cerretano, meaning an inhabitant of Cerreto, a village near Spoleto, Italy, famous for quacks, perhaps Johnson would not object to using the word in connection with the Jesus Seminar, a 'village' as it were of historical Jesus research quackery. Johnson finds the Jesus Seminar lacking in integrity in both method and conclusion -- he finds irritating 'its indulgence in cute and casual discourse'. (p. 15) He finds their hunger for media exposure damaging to the overall enterprise of scholarship, and is deeply distrustful of the intention of their research and conclusions. The manner of determining historicity (the use of a coloured-ball voting mechanism, etc.), the exaggeration of prominence of the group of scholars who comprise the Jesus Seminar (a small amount given the large number of scholars in the world), and the tendency to depart from the stated purposes of finding an historical Jesus without theological taint and bias make the project a dubious enterprise for Johnson. 'The Seminar has not consistently followed the very criteria it established.' (p. 26) Their tendency toward rejecting anything canonical (and often completely ignoring Pauline and other epistolary sources), and instead elevating non-canonical sources to prominence, strikes Johnson as being as non-objective as the Seminar's members tend to make accusation of the canon.Following his discussion of the Jesus Seminar, Johnson illustrates several recent offerings in the field of the historical Jesus (not necessarily by members of the Jesus Seminar) who illustrate current and popular trends. These authors include Barbara Thiering, Bishop Spong, A.N. Wilson, Stephen Mitchell, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Burton Mack. Johnson identifies patterns in each of these, many appearing as subtle trends rather than direct statements made on the part of the authors, such as rejection of the canonical Gospels and other scriptural sources as the most reliable source of information, as well as each seeming to have a theological agenda behind the 'historical' development. Because these are not explicit, the average reader in schools and pews will likely not notice, or only slowly notice, the bias in these so-called more objective works.-Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up-At the beginning of the year 2000, John Maclaughlin held on one of his broadcasts the 'Awards for the Faux Millennium'. Without getting into the debate over when the millennium really begins (or indeed if that is truly important), it was an interesting look back at the history of the millennium. However, I was intrigued by the awa

Johnson's book is excellent. His basic thesis is that a historian must either accept that the four canonical gospels and Acts are fairly accurate, or not. And if not, the historian can't then claim to discover some "new Real Jesus", because without these five books there is absolutely no other source that gives even the rudiments of a chronology of Jesus and his followers, or even the rudiments of Jesus' motivations. Hence any reconstruction without these books is just speculation.Johnson shows how both the respectable critics (Brown, Meier) and the fanciful pseudo-critics (Funk, Crossan) extrapolate well beyond the evidence available. Typically, they come up with a hypothesis in chapter one, add a new hypothesis in chapter two, and then by the middle of their books they are writing as if the "results" of their early chapters are certain. Johnson calls this the error of "creeping certitude".I should point out that Johnson is NOT discussing much about his own views regarding the historical truth of the Gospels. His views tend to be close to the Brown / Fitzmyer school -- the Gospels give an accurate summary of the teachings and actions of Jesus, and although many individual sayings or actions may be non-historical, each gospel taken as a whole accurately preserves the character and message of Jesus. But even if you incline towards a stricter view of the gospels' historical accuracy (a la Hahn / Laurentin / Blomberg) you will still fully appreciate Johnson's critiques of the failings of some modern scholars. On rare occasion, Johnson makes the same mistakes he is criticizing (on p. 150, he makes an assertion about what was in the mind of those who selected the Christian canon, even though on p. 132 he argues that historians have no business saying what was in someone's mind without direct evidence). And when he is talking of God and his Son, he sounds almost Arian (e.g., top of p. 142). But these issues are not germane to the main point of the book, which is a critique of how the historical-critical method is used by New Testament scholars.

Luke Timothy Johnson is no fundamentalist. Johnson works in the milieu of critical scholarship while still maintaining a vibrant faith, much like the late Raymond Brown. Therefore, his observations in this book should not be dismissed as the rantings of rabid anti-scholar. There is much more to this book than criticism of the Jesus Seminar. The issues involved in contemporary biblical scholarship in general are articulated well. The main point of the book is that there are such severe limitations in historical research that any historical reconstruction of Jesus, i.e. "the historical Jesus" cannot be "the real Jesus" that is worshipped and followed by the church. The real Jesus is the one presented by the Gospels, and indeed by other sections of the New Testament (the letters of Paul, James, I Peter, etc.) Although the Jesus Seminar takes the brunt of the criticism here, Johnson also points out some of the methodological missteps of less radical scholars such as John P. Meier. This book makes some valid points and is essential reading to get another view in the lively area of contemporary Jesus scholarship.

For readers who only have a passing awareness of the current group of modern skeptical scholars such as Crossan, Mack, Borg, etc. need to read this book. Mr Johnson briefly summarizes the viewpoints of the skeptical critics and then proceeds to demonstrate their frequent inconsistencies. I've read a great deal of traditional scholarship and some of the more radical (Crossan, etc.). This book was written 3-4 years ago and the skeptics have yet to answer Johnson's charges. If you want to know why you should be wary of swallowing this new school of Jesus research, then you should read this book. I challenge any supporter of Crossan, Borg, or Mack to read this book and then to honestly answer Luke Johnson's questions that he poses to the radicals. The silence is still deafening.

As a former Biblical studies student (M. Div. from Yale Divinity School) turned philosopher, I read this book with the greatest of interest. The primary reason I forsook my OT and NT studies was a despair at how irrelevant and superficial and sceptical the entire discipline had become. Despite the constant hawking of new discoveries and new breakthroughs in Biblical studies, I felt myself as both a human being and a Christian completely alienated from the vast majority of scholars working on the Biblical materials. (I should add that I gave up Biblical studies before arriving at Yale, but I do believe that Brevard Childs is an exception to all of this. Had I not already been burned out, I would have profitted from having studied with him.)Timothy Luke Johnson does an absolutely marvelous job of analyzing how and where things went wrong in NT studies. Had he just set out to criticize the Jesus Seminar (and easy undertaking--the vast majority of important NT scholars on both the left and right of the theological spectrum look askance at their efforts), it would have been an entertaining exercise in debunking. But what I didn't expect was a balanced and incisive analysis of where things went wrong in Biblical scholarship. I do recommend this book as an important corrective to the misguided and rather silly efforts of Robert Funk and his cohorts, but even more I recommend it as an analysis of where things went wrong and as a guide to how we might get ourselves back on track. After having plowed through tedious and uninsightful works by Funk, Crossan, and Pagels in recent months, I found this book to be a complete breath of fresh air.