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Crossan vs. Jesus
The photograph gracing the cover of the July 17th Chicago Tribune Magazine
was that of John Dominic Crossan, a professor at De Paul University in Chicago
as well as an ex-priest. The title of the article was "Searching For Jesus" with
the following question attached; "Can this man change what Christians believe?"
The article was extremely one sided, with several pages given to Crossan and a
few paragraphs given to those who disagree with him. Crossan believes most of
the gospel was made up by early Christians to "sell" their reason to be
Christians to others. He believes that Jesus was only a mortal man, conceived
and born the natural way. He performed no miracles, was killed and His body
"probably eaten by wild dogs." He is a charter member of "The Jesus Seminar", a
semi annual conclave of liberal Biblical scholars who get together and debate
whether portions of the gospel really happened or not. They have pretty much
decided that Jesus did not really say 82% of the things the Bible says He did.
How do they arrive at such conclusions? They sit around a U-shaped table and
vote with colored beads, with different colors representing votes of "It
definitely happened", "It probably happened", "It maybe happened" or "It
definitely did not happen." Of course, anything hinting of the miraculous is
out.
The bothersome thing is, while the arguments in the article was absolutely
unimpressive to the informed, I suppose many who glanced over the article
probably think
the Bible has been disproved. There are too many glaring inconsistencies, they
want you to believe, in the gospels. Interesting that the only one they used in
the article concerns the crucifixion; Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus said,
"My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" while Luke has "Father, forgive
them," and John, "It is finished." How it never enters into these doubters'
minds that Jesus hung on the cross for six hours and thus had time to say all
those things is beyond me. I suppose its the same old thing that Jesus said;
"Hardened hearts, closed eyes and unhearing ears." (Or did He say that; shall we
vote on it?)
Anyway, our material published in Expository Files makes it clear that our faith
is not determined by what the Jesus Seminar does. Neither is our faith
unreasonable
and without evidence. Warren and I hope you have enjoyed issue 1.9 and we'll see
you in October, Lord willing. (October? Already? Where did the summer go?)
