A book takes on some two hundred scholars who claim that Jesus said only 18% of what the Gospels attribute to him, arguing that the ""real Jesus"" is the one experienced in the present through faith. Reprint. LJ.

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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.

53 of 58 found the following review helpful:

will the real Jesus please stand up?Oct 19, 2006
By Ashtar Command "Seeker"
"The Real Jesus" is a book by Luke Timothy Johnson, a former Benedictine monk who currently teaches New Testament studies at Emory University. Although the author is a scholar, the book is strictly speaking not scholarly. Rather, the purpose of "The Real Jesus" is to stimulate debate about various topics, including the Jesus Seminar, the current state of Biblical studies, the mass media, and, of course, the figure of Jesus.

The main bulk of the book contains a criticism of the Jesus Seminar, a group representing the ultra-liberal portion of the scholarly (and theological) spectrum. The Seminar, led by John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk, believes that most of the sayings attributed to Jesus weren't really spoken by him. Thus, the real Jesus was very different from the one we meet in the Gospels. The members of the Seminar also take a positive view of apocryphal texts, such as "the Gospel of Thomas" and "the Gospel of Peter", speculating that they might contain a more authentic picture of Jesus.

Apart from criticizing the ideas of the Jesus Seminar, Johnson also takes exception to their way of using the mass media. To Johnson, the Seminar is more a media phenomenon and less a scholarly enterprise. It's task is to change the perceptions of the public, not to influence their academic peers. (Ironically, this is the same kind of criticism natural scientists level at Christian creationists!)

Since Johnson is attacking the liberals regrouped around the Jesus Seminar, it's easy to assume that he is a conservative, even a fundamentalist. Actually, he is much more flexible. Thus he admits that the "historical" or "real" Jesus is very difficult to reconstruct. Extra-Biblical sources are scanty, and the New Testament itself is primarily a document of faith, rather than a strictly historical source. Any reconstruction will be on the level of probabilities rather than certainties.

Johnson believes that this doesn't threaten the Christian faith. But if the historical Jesus is impossible to fully grasp, why believe in the Christian message at all? Why not turn agnostic? This is a question Johnson cannot really answer. He seems to be saying that Jesus can be approached only through the tradition of the Church that canonized the Gospels in the first place. The historical Jesus isn't important. The resurrected, heavenly Jesus is. And he is experienced every day by the believers. The Gospels reflect this experience and are hence "real".

But are they? Isn't this really a form of Docetism, where the real Jesus doesn't matter, only the Christ of faith as he is described in later Church traditions? But if these traditions aren't real, aren't historically true, why believe them rather than the Gnostic message, or any other competing religious or non-religious message? What Johnson brushes aside as a typical "Protestant" problem - the attempts to prove that the Gospel narratives really happened - is a problem for Catholics as well, unless you want to end up with a completely irrational faith in some subjective experience or unattested dogma.

I give this book four stars since its thought-provoking, both when criticizing the Jesus Seminar for sloppy scholarship and when presenting its own theological alternative.

But is it true? That still remains the question.


27 of 30 found the following review helpful:

Will the real Jesus please stand up?Jun 07, 2003
By FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick"
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 award for the most influential religious figure of the past 1000 years. After several people on the panel offered opinions, the last person said that, in fact, the winner of the award should be Jesus Christ, who is just as real and alive today as 2000 years ago. And Maclaughlin agreed.

Johnson would have found this discussion edifying and consistent with his view of Jesus. Johnson throughout his career has devoted much effort toward defining what the word 'real' means. It simply is not the case that a Jesus that can be portrayed by a group of scholars as undiluted and well-researched by methods of historical criticism can in a definitive way be considered more 'real' than that Jesus who has been of influence and guidance to the church and world for the past 2000 years through scripture, creed, and inspiration. When the whole enterprise of finding the 'real' Jesus began in earnest in the scholarly sense, 'both the attackers and the defenders had accepted the same definition of truth...that empirically verifiable truth, in this case historical truth, was the only sort of truth worth considering'. (p. 60) Much of what is real escapes historical knowledge, Johnson argues, and much of what we consider to be the most important aspects of a person, event, etc. are those intangible qualities that can in no way survive into historical quantifiability.

-One Problem-
This having been said, there becomes a problem for those of us with a more modern, scientific/verification-driven sensibility, to think that if the resurrection is not a verifiable event, in what sense is it 'real'? Indeed, can it be 'unreal' in the historically-verifiable sense and still be 'real' in the faith-ful sense? And, is this faith something of real value even if it is tied to something 'unreal'? While there is a diversity in the text of images of Jesus both before and after resurrection, and this diversity should not be flattened but rather embraced and explored to make Jesus and Christianity a much more universal an all-encompassing possibility for all, this does not in the end answer the very basic question -- How can I believe this? -- that drives, and will continue to drive, people (scholars, clerics, and lay persons) who want to know how to reconcile something that is seemingly untrue with that which one must take on faith to be true.

-A Disclaimer-
I have never been offended or as off-put by the Jesus Seminar as has been Johnson, or indeed as have been many others. But then, I don't look to them for confirmation of my faith. Some Jesus Seminarians are good scholars and good writers, and I can find useful and valuable information from them regardless of whether or not I agree with their analyses or conclusions. Indeed, if my faith is such that it would be shaken by the Jesus Seminar or any such, then perhaps it deserves to be tested and shaken!

61 of 75 found the following review helpful:

Not merely an "attack" on the Jesus SeminarAug 29, 2001
By Tom Hinkle
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.

29 of 35 found the following review helpful:

A simple guide to what is wrong with the Jesus Seminar et alMar 29, 2005
By Christopher Culver
THE REAL JESUS is scholar Luke Timothy Johnson's critical response to several writers in the historical Jesus fad that grew quite large in the late 1980s and 1990s. Generously published in 1996 by HarperSanFrancisco, the same publisher of so many of the books Johnson criticises, the work is a necessary counterpoint to any book asserting to reach a historical understanding of Jesus.

Johnson does not stand against works exploring the historic nature of Jesus. He himself has worked in that field, and he praises John P. Meier's A MARGINAL JEW series. What draws Johnson's ire are those writers, most notably of the Jesus Seminar, who do not respect academic norms, inappropriately chase public attention, and generally present a serious enterprise as a sensationalistic pursuit.

Johnson's attack on the Jesus Seminar is sensible and will leave the reader with no doubt that theirs is not the way to approach history. Johnson uses writings from the Jesus Seminar's own leaders to show that they don't merely wish to approach Jesus as a person to shed better light on such a seminal personality, but rather in order to expressly convince orthodox Christians to leave their faith. Instead of carrying on the conversation in serious academic journals, the Seminar sends its findings to provincial newspapers, whose editors on religion lack the training to critically understand their press releases. The Jesus Seminar relies entirely on the Gospels for reconstructing a historical Jesus and give little attention to the earlier writings of Paul, which in several places give tantalising mention of Jesus' life.

Johnson examines the works of other writers as well. He criticises John Shelby Spong for entering the field with no specialised training and for seeking, just like the Jesus Seminar, more to "free" people from orthodox Christianity than to dispassionately explore the past. Similarly A.N. Wilson is condemned for his amateur book JESUS. Johnson laments the unfortunate popularity of Barbara Thiering's work in which an obscure and hardly-qualfied scholar sees a giant conspiracy (a la the DA VINCI CODE) within the gospels which no one for the previous two millennia has seen.

After looking at the sorely wanting techniques of the popularly-known writers, Johnson takes the reader through what can really be known about Jesus. Unlike the Jesus Seminar, he shows that reconstruction is not limited to Gospel material, but that supporting material from the writings of Paul, Josephus, and Tacitus must be taken into account. Johnson also attempts to show how orthodox Christianity has never really been about a historical Jesus, but rather a risen Lord whose power is manifest here and now. Because orthodox Christianity is not dependant on history, though it sees the Church as a continuation of some historical events, these books claiming to help orthodox Christians better understand their faith are missing the point.

My only complaint about the book is that Johnson's coverage of the Jesus Seminar is angry. This is somewhat understandable, the Seminar breaks many of the vital rules of academic discourse, but Johnson himself could have been more faithful to his ideals by rewriting certain passages in a more sober tone. Nonetheless, THE REAL JESUS is a useful book, a small voice of reason in a crowd of sensationalism.

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