Historical Jesus Goes to Church, The

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2006 by Bloomquist, L Gregory

The Historical Jesus Goes to Church. Bv members of the Jesus Seminar. Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 2004. 136 pp. $18.00 (paper).

The chapters in this book were originally presentations by members of the Jesus Seminar concerning the significance of the authentic sayings and deeds of the historical Jesus (as discerned by the Seminar) for the church today. (The book does not state that the presentations were made to a gathering held in March 2003 of those who had "tried out" the Seminar's findings in church settings.) Only one non-Seminar member is represented in the book, namely Francis McNab, Executive Minister of St. Michael's Uniting Church, Melbourne, Australia, whose church actively seeks to implement the Seminars findings.

Roy Hoover, Stephen Patterson, and Lane McGaughy write provocatively-as if in a manifesto-that the Seminar's material authorizes a new church, shorn of patriarchal dominance and theistic language, which will finally bring to a close the long Dark Ages of Nicene traditionalism. Paradoxically, the more critically restrained and modest chapters by Hal Taussig, Joe Bessler-Northcutt, and Charles Hedrick ask whether such optimism is well founded, given the Seminars discernment of admittedly minimal and fragmentary data about the historical Jesus. They can see some implications for the church, but they carefully identify both areas where there may be implications and areas where there probably are none. Those already predisposed to the Seminars findings will enjoy confirming how the Seminar's work is used. Others, probably the majority, will find in this book further reminders of serious pitfalls in the Seminar's approach to Jesus, the Bible, and the church.

First, though the data concerning Jesus are admittedly f ragmentaiy, several of the authors do not hesitate to draw far-reaching conclusions. Glenna Jackson's statement that "the gist of the historical-Jesus sayings mandate a changed world" (p. 90) is typical. It simply ignores alternative arguments. In this case, for example, scholars-myself included-have carefully argued that these same sayings may evidence a Cynic-like wisdom that is sharply at odds with reformist approaches.

Second, Seminar members rely exclusively on historical-critical tools, ignoring contemporary scholarly approaches to biblical material (such as narrative analysis, the work of the Context Group, or Vernon Robbins's sociorhetorical analysis). Are the historical-critical tools of the mid-twentieth century still "the methods of modern biblical scholarship" (p. 11, my emphasis)?

Third, the chapters are unreflectively mainline Protestant and American and ignore other voices. There is no Roman Catholic, Eastern Christian, or evangelical perspective offered, nor even any European. More disturbingly, no non-Western voice is present, except those few that are allowed to be present in Jackson's chapter through her ears and voice-a white, middleclass, mainline Protestant, North American woman. In fact, one gets the uncomfortable feeling that several of these white, American authors are especially concerned about the traditional Christian teaching that is now reaching American shores from distant lands.

In sum, this book contains some interesting scholarly reflections but is mostly a series of policy statements for the creation of a new anti-Nicene "church" and continuing Seminar cautions against traditionalism. The Seminar would like to suggest that their new church will finally be a truly democratic and egalitarian one. Yet, if this book is any indication, this new "church" will rather be one in which a new clerisy-a haughty gentry that "knows better" than the democratic masses, who remain captive to traditionalist ideology and ignore, at their peril, the Seminars sage advice-guides its elitist adherents toward a worldly, therapeutic healing and washes its hands of the ignorant masses. How ironic that members of this new "church" will, in the end, likely resemble more the members of first-century priestly or scribal circles than they will the confused and ignorant crowds that followed the historical Jesus and sought of him what temple and synagogue could not offer!

L. GREGORY BLOOMQUIST

Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University

Ottawa, Ontario