You're right, and they've never tried to hide their naturalistic worldview. There should be a disclaimer whenever they appear on television as biblical "scholars." JESUS SEMINAR: NO HIDDEN AGENDA by Trevor Major, M.Sc., M.A. The Five Gospels (Funk, et al., 1993) is not your mother’s Bible. It is a reference work summarizing the present conclusions of Fellows of the Jesus Seminar. The authors wish you to know, from the very beginning, that this book is not the Gospel for conservative Christianity. They appear to sneer at translations “made by academics and endorsed by church boards” (p. xiv). They state that their translation, the Scholars Version, “is free of ecclesiastical and religious control” (p. xviii). Indeed, as its name intends to convey, this is a work “authorized by scholars.” By implication, other versions are suspect because their respective translators allowed their beliefs, or the constraints of church politics, to influence their work. Of course, anyone who has studied the history of translations acknowledges this potential bias, and compensates accordingly. The Five Gospels is no less deserving of careful consideration. For all its claims to objectivity, Bible students also must consider the translation biases of this new Gospel account. However, these biases go beyond a higher critical approach to translation. The authors make it known that their work upholds the naturalistic world view. http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/rr1994/r&r9411e.htm The Seventy Four 'Scholars': Who Does the Jesus Seminar Really Speak For? by Craig L. Blomberg EVALUATING THE JESUS SEMINAR'S WORK The Golden Rule ("Treat people in ways you want them to treat you") gets only a gray coloring by the JS because it is potentially self-centered. The real Jesus, we are told, would more likely have said something like, "Treat people in the way they want to be treated." Unfortunately, the JS did not apply this more "noble" approach to the Jesus of the Gospels. But even by the logic of the more "inferior" version of Matthew 7:12, it seems reasonable to apply the same method of color-coding to the work of these Fellows that they used on the five Gospels.We shall therefore organize our critique under three headings: (1) red or pink material -- that is, where almost all scholars would agree that the JS is probably correct in their presuppositions, methods, and conclusions; (2) gray material -- that is, where the JS's approach reflects views widely held in nonevangelical scholarship but suspect nevertheless; and (3) black material -- that is, where the JS is out of sync even with the majority of nonevangelical New Testament scholarship. The percentages of material that fall into each category correspond roughly to the percentages of the various colors of ink that the JS itself employed! http://www.rim.org/muslim/jesusseminar.htm
I think some of their critics take the JS more seriously than do themselves. I also think that part of the motivation of the JS is to generate discussions about the NT and the JS's coloring thereof. They have had some success here. The wee bit that I read about JS leads me to believe that they wanted to take a "liberal" approach to investigating the bible. Here liberal is in the eye on the beholder. For example, the JS is likely to discredit a Jesus sayings verse if the the saying in question predates Jesus's life (as seen say in other earlier writings, especially in the Greek/Hellenistic vien). I do not think that it unfair to expect the messages from the Son of God to be special. Miracles with an established history fall into the same category (but making the blind see and like miracles would seem to be standard fare for miracle workers.) Their take on miracles may not be fair but at least it is consistent.
I know you did not claim to be providing unbiased sources but ... From the front page of http://www.apologeticspress.org A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ABOUT AN IMPORTANT NEW BOOK Only on the rarest of occasions am I willing to recommend a book that I believe belongs in almost every single home. But this is one such book. Every so often, a book comes along that has the potential to affect, in an extremely positive way, the lives of thousands and thousands of people. Dinosaurs Unleashed is that kind of a book! In fact, I believe that this book is going to have a tremendous impact, not only on this generation, but also on future generations as its young readers devour its content. This full-color, 80-page hardback, written by Kyle Butt (the Director of Biblical Research at Apologetics Press) and Eric Lyons (our Director of Research), will engage even the most discriminating young reader. While this book is aimed specifically at children, people of all ages will be enthralled by the gorgeous pictures of these “terrible lizards,” and will thrill at the biblical and scientific evidence which documents that dinosaurs coexisted with humans— not all that long ago. Teaching children that dinosaurs and man coexisted? Not very intellectually honest imho.
Many apologetics sites contain certain viewpoints I don't agree with. I have yet to see scientific evidence that would convince me that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. For the record, I believe that the universe is between 8 and 20 billion years old, and I believe in the big bang theory. I believe Adam and Eve were the first humans God created. I know that microevolution is a reality, but I do not believe in Darwinism. I believe that Jesus Christ is God the Son, and that he literally rose from the dead. I believe that the Bible is the Word of God.
A good read. Clark's synopsis is that historians who try to find Jesus in the historic record end up recreating Jesus in their own image. Thomas Jefferson is one example of a party guilty of this offense. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/searching.html Elizabeth Clark: John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion and Director of the Graduate Program in Religion Duke University The quest for the historical Jesus has gone on for about three centuries. Now, the classical study of this was done by Albert Schweitzer, at the turn to the 20th century, in his book, "The Quest of the Historical Jesus." What he showed was that from the 18th century on, the attempt to find out who Jesus really was had been conditioned all the way through by the needs and wants and desires of the people who were writing the book.... So, Jesus turned out in the 19th century, for example, to look very much like somebody who would be happy with a form of relatively liberal social Christianity, such as might have been practiced in various western societies, at that time. I think that this approach to the study of Jesus actually is correct in the sense that even the early Christians looked at Jesus in a way that suited their needs for the development of the church and the Christian religion at the time. The quest for historicity, though, in the way we think of it, is more a modern quest. I think that people in the early church were very eager to use the stories and sayings of Jesus for purposes of moral edification, for building up the church, exhorting congregations, and so on but they really were not wracked with this question of historicity and was it authentic, in the way that people in the 19th and 20th century, particularly, have been. <for more follow the above link>
