Word: scholar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...exactly new: it roiled the consciences of European academics for 150 years and contributed to American Protestant schisms in the 1920s. But until recently, much of the current generation of churchgoers remained blissfully unaware of its tangles. No longer. In the past decade, iconoclastic and liberal biblical scholars have actively sought to publicize their views, breaking them out of the rarefied academic atmospheres where they have incubated. These radical exegetes have now stirred spirited rebuttals from conservatives and traditionalists who want to make sure the faithful hear their side of the argument. For example, the Seminar's 1993 book...
...life, noting, "We can't be sure of anything that Jesus actually said." Experts on all sides of the question are crisscrossing the country, debating before schools and congregations whose growing taste for the topic has surprised them. "You could be out there every week," marvels a circuit-riding scholar. Notes another: "There's an enormous appetite among ordinary churchgoers," who, he adds, "are very puzzled about what's going...
...standard for authenticity were agreement between the Gospels, there is less of that than one might imagine: the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are just two of several parables that appear in only one version. By 1926, Rudolf Bultmann of Germany's University of Marburg, the foremost Protestant scholar in the field, threw up his hands: he called for a halt to inquiries regarding the Jesus of history. So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that "we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus." He advised good Christian scholars to concentrate on the Jesus...
...telescope." The Seminarians circulated papers among themselves and met twice a year to vote on more than 2,000 separate pieces of scripture. They conceived a mediagenic means of voting: for each Gospel verse, each voter dropped a plastic bead in a bucket. The bead's color signified the scholar's opinion. The book quoted one participant's description: "Red: That's Jesus! Pink: Sure sounds like Jesus. Gray: Well, maybe. Black: There's been some mistake." The Five Gospels (the fifth one was Thomas') consisted of the holy text, likewise color-coded to indicate the Seminar's collated opinion...
...newly-tenured scholar could not be reached for comment yesterday