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interviewed you.
First, some background. In 2000, ABC's Peter Jennings gave us "The Search for Jesus," a television special in which for the most part channeled the Jesus Seminar—that coven of New Testament scholars who basically contend that Jesus of Nazareth didn't say or do many of the things reported in the Gospels. The "Jesus and Paul: The Word and the Witness," seemed more balanced, and more respectful of traditional beliefs.
Yeah, I know these guys. Laughable and sloppy exercise that had as the razor edge criteria -- "What do I think Jesus was like and would have said."
Robert Yarborough, Eta Linnemann and others have thoroughly dismantled the tripe from that effort but that is not the side that ABC et al wish to set out. Yarborough actually debated some of the "Seminar" guys. His final point was -- "You like the Jesus who says let the children come to me and come to me and I will give you rest but not the Jesus who says I am the way, truth and life I and the father are one. You present a Jesus who is a wandering esoteric sooth sayer and promoter of peace and kindness. Why would anyone want to kill someone like that?"
The Jesus Seminar cabal is back, of course. Its founder, Robert Funk, appears, as does his former co-chair, John Dominic Crossan, continuing to spout his theory that Jesus' body was eaten by wild dogs. But Jennings did take care to include many more conservative Christians among his scholarly commentators, including, most notably, the respected evangelical Ben Witherington and Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic, to complement N.T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham, who back in 2000 was practically the only traditionalist Christian in Jennings' lineup. As I recall, Jennings took some heat in 2000, so maybe he tried to present a more "balanced" view this time.
I know those guys. The line is this -- The 12 who were with Jesus for 3 years did not understand him or really know who he was. No one in the first century got it. No one has gotten it for 20 centuries. But we -- we have gotten it.
We group of cynical, post-modern, internationalist, secularists and surprise of surprises -- Jesus was a cynical, post-modern, internationalist, secularist. Just like us. Who would have guessed this?
The truth is that there are hundreds of sound, evangelical scholars who are in seminaries and universities who match degeee for degree w/ the heretics. But heresy is fun and orthodoxy is dull.
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