[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Jesus Seminar Criteria

Kenneth Hammond ask why New Testament scholars go about their work.
There must be a wide variety of motives and purposes.  Mine is this:
Having experienced a mystical encounter with what seems to be a 
living spirit, since the day I first called out to Jesus as Lord, 
and found several hundred amazing (to me) coincidences consistent
with specific requests made to my God-concept while invoking the
name of Jesus, I have wanted both to experience more of this while
gaining understanding of the source book for this experience.
I was raised under Hindu teaching and lived several years in 
Islamic countries, where religions teach a great breadth of ideas
and mystical experiences.  having made my choice to follow the 
teachings of Jesus as an adult, I want an adult certainty that it
is the teachings of Jesus, and not the accretions of religious
zealots which might have been imported into the oldest accounts of
Jesus and his teachings, nor the culturally-determined conclusions
about Jesus from the part of either fuzzy-minded religionists or
linearly-trapped scholars with anti-supernaturalist presuppositions.
Thus I have fond some amount of relief from the absurdities of
textually-uncertain manuscript and translational variations, and
from many subcultural pits of even those who first told me about
Jesus.  Yet I almost constantly remain doubtful that I have under-
stood the intended meanings of the most strongly-attested NT 
passages, or have come in to the intended outcomes of those 
passages.  Nevertheless, I find in mental-emotional-spiritual
communion with what I believe to be the living spirit of Jesus
what I think I read about his having taught while upon earth.
Thus I doubt both the accuracy of the preachments of my local
fellowhsip and the methodologies of Jesus-debunking literary
guesswork.

Dr. GALEN CURRAH                      currah@iclnet93.iclnet.org
Western Seminary               Division of Intercultural Studies
5511 S.E. Hawthorne, Portland OR 97215 USA     Tel. 503-233-8561
Fax 503-234-1639 or 503-239-4216             Amateur radio N7SBB
References: