COMMENTARY : Did the Jesus Seminar Draw From Faulty Assumptions? : Theology: A professor sees more indications of truth in the Gospels than evidence to support scholars who discount the accuracy of the writings.

The recent “findings” of the Jesus Seminar have evoked a deluge of disbelief--not disbelief in the Jesus of the Gospels as the panel advocates, but disbelief that esteemed Bible scholars would discount the obvious historical value of the Gospels.

How did it happen?

The “analytical tools” of seminar members are seriously flawed. A massive cover-up has veiled this fact, and only in the last decade or two have members of the scholarly community stepped forward to admit the wild-goose chase of fellow academicians. An example is Leander Keck of Yale Divinity School who has acknowledged that Gospel scholarship “has pursued the wrong question for 200 years.”

The flawed tools include several foundationless assumptions. A pillar of modern criticism is the unproven theory that Mark’s Gospel was earliest with Matthew and Luke copying and adapting from him. B. H. Streeter’s “proofs” of Markan priority were widely cited for many years, but now have been largely discarded as useless, with nothing to replace them. Matthean priority, the unanimous view throughout Christian history before questionable modern “discoveries,” is regaining popularity.

Another crumbling pillar of modern criticism is its assumption that the Gospel writers depended on each other’s writings. Yale University’s Wayne Meeks has reminded us of the essentially unanimous view of precritical Christian tradition that each Gospel writer worked independently, never seeing the work of another, much less copying or adapting from it. Albert Lord of Harvard University also supports this tradition of independence.

Jesus Seminar assumptions fly in the face of this unanimity--but that is not all. They attribute unimaginable embellishments to the Gospel writers as they worked from earlier sources which themselves supposedly had already been heavily exaggerated and distorted. The Gospel writers either lied or were out of touch with the real world, they imply. Such a presupposition is another defective tool of recent scholarly paraphernalia because available information does not point toward untruthful or unrealistic writers.

How could people fabricate stories that emphasize truthfulness so strongly? To uphold high ethical standards, they had to tell the truth about what they saw and heard. John, for example, insisted on the validity of his report. He expressed assurance that he was telling the truth because he saw with his own eyes what he wrote about (John 19:35). Liars do not foster high standards of truthfulness.

The Gospel writers had to be accurate , too (Luke 1:3-4). The still-living eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, both his friends and his foes, would have objected to inaccuracies in the Gospels if there were any. The complete absence of objections is evidence of a total absence of inaccuracies.

The traditional view of the Gospels is far more credible than modern conjectures that attribute errors to them. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John represent the ultimate in historical reliability and can be harmonized with one another quite satisfactorily.

Matthew and John, two of the 12 apostles, were eyewitnesses to most of what they wrote and had Jesus’ promise of future help from the Holy Spirit in recalling what they had seen and heard (John 14:26). Mark wrote on the basis of his extended exposure to the teaching of Peter, another of the 12, and Luke produced his Spirit-inspired work through painstaking research in eyewitness resources.

Many others besides the 12 benefited in person from Jesus’ teachings, so a wide assortment of oral reports and short written excerpts were in circulation for the writers to draw from. Of course, the writers probably exchanged information on a personal basis, but except for John, who wrote 20 or 30 years later, none of them saw the work of another before writing his own.

William F. Albright, this century’s foremost biblical archeologist, rightly observed the implausibility of supposing the assorted pre-Gospel traditions to have been edited into a homogeneous document such as the fictitious “Q” source frequently cited by the Jesus Seminar. The circulating reports about Jesus were marked by variety and were not forced into a stereotyped mold before the four written Gospels.

Unquestionably many aspects of uniform apostolic preaching were memorized by folks whose memories were keenly developed because they had few written materials. This is one way of explaining widespread word-for-word agreements among the Gospel writers.

Yet at times variety in the tradition shows itself in differences of details in the accounts. Different sources preserved similar sayings and activities of Jesus from different occasions and even differently worded restatements of similar thoughts on the same occasion. Rather than reflecting editorial liberties by early Christians, these constitute accurate historical supplements of each other.

The issue at stake in the current debate initiated by the Jesus Seminar is perceptual correctness. Whose perception of Jesus depicts the real Jesus, the perception of the earliest Christians or that of specialists working nearly 20 centuries later? The tools of recent scholarship are at best suspect, so the verdict must favor the historical accuracy of the earliest perceptions found in the four Gospels.

The Bible as literature stands in a class by itself because it is no mere human product. It is ultimately the result of God the Spirit using human authors to write what he revealed to them through various means, including their own experiences.

Since the “Spirit of truth” is the source of the Gospels, we must attribute to them truthfulness in the highest sense. The Jesus of the Gospels is without question the Jesus of history.

It is sad that scholars with such respected credentials and keen intellects should, for whatever reason, falter at the fundamental stage of “tool” selection. But the testimony of God always supersedes the opinion of man.

Since the 1st Century, except for isolated cases, the four Gospels have been universally acknowledged to be accurate accounts of Jesus’ life on Earth, his death and his Resurrection. At this juncture in history, we are witnessing another temporary and isolated challenge of historical facts, but truth will ultimately prevail as it always has.

BACKGROUND There have been strong reactions to the findings of the Jesus Seminar, a national group of liberal-to-moderate biblical scholars, that Jesus said only about 20% of what is attributed to him. Bob Thomas, a New Testament scholar, gives a fundamental evangelical view of the seminar and its findings.