1996 - Birger A. Pearson - The Gospel According to the Jesus Seminar

The essay published here is a slightly expanded version of an article published in Religion 25 (October, 1995), pp. 317-38. That article represents results of a graduate seminar in New Testament that I conducted for the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, during the Fall semester of 1994. The seminar, “Examining The Five Gospels,” was devoted to a critical analysis of the work of the now famous “Jesus Seminar,” as published in its “red letter edition” of the four canonical gospels plus the Gospel of Thomas. My seminar was held on the campus of the Pacific School of Religion, where, nine years before, the Jesus Seminar had begun its work. It provided me with material for lectures on historical Jesus scholarship in general, and the Jesus Seminar in particular, at Indiana University Bloomington in November 1994, and at UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz in May 1995.