Product Description

The pioneering work of the Jesus Seminar has come in for high praise as well as searing denunciation from the press, the clergy, the scholars. Now a veteran member of the Seminar, Robert Miller, examines its agenda and its inner deliberations, dissecting the rationale of the Seminar's historical work and clearly explaining what its findings portend.In The Jesus Seminar and its Critics, Miller sets the record straight where necessary and even highlights the substantial points on which the Seminar and its critics agree. He weighs the major criticisms that have been put to the Seminar and exposes their hidden assumptions. He shows how critics use hostile rhetoric to duck uncomfortable questions that must be squarely faced in any honest assessment of the historicity of the gospels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1474641 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .53 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

Harold W. Attridge, Yale Divinity School
"Miller engages some of the most severe critics of the work of the Seminar . . . in a courteous but trenchant critical debate about the methods and aims of research into the "historical Jesus." Miller's work will challenge the sometimes facile critics of the Jesus Seminar, give its scholarly critics food for thought, and help the general public understand what the fuss is all about."

Mark Allen Powell, author of Jesus as Figure in History
"Provocative and controversial, The Jesus Seminar's research into the historical authenticity of sacred traditions has been condemned as "grandiose," idiosyncratic," and "reprehensible." With this book, one of its most prominent members seizes the offensive and responds to criticisms foul and fair. With varying degrees of passion and restraint, Miller lays out the significance of the Seminar's work for scholars, for society, and for the church."

infidels.org, February 2000
"...Miller deals one by one with the [mostly absurd] criticisms of the Seminar. ...[There] is plenty of room for specific disagreements with the published results of the Seminar [I have pleny of qualms myself], but that's not the sort of trouble that called forth this book. Miller addresses himself to [one often suspects] willful misunderstandings and blatant misrepresentations of the Jesus Seminar. Sadly, the polemic Miller addresses here is the sort of underhanded mud-slinging practiced by politicians, usually not by scholars. ...Miller makes quite clear that much [criticism] stems from two sources: orthodox apologists who despise New Testament criticism for [inevitably] rocking, no, sinking the boat of traditional faith; and fellow critics to whom the findings and methods of the Seminar must be old news, but who do not want the New Testament's dirty linen to be hung out for the Babbit-like laymen and harumphing clergy on seminary boards to see."