User talk:2600:6C44:7800:E54:604C:D4B9:9918:3EB4

Crossan credentials
It's always valuable, of course, to know and assess the credentials of those cited as experts in a given field. Unfortunately, Dominic Crossan is cited frequently in this and other New Testament pages as a "recognized authority" on the biblical world. Perhaps. But credentials don't make the scholar.

Crossan, it should be noted, was a leading voice of the now defunct "Jesus Seminar" group of religious academicians of the last several decades of the 20th century. Their proud claim to fame was that they refuted the longstanding claims of credible biblical historians regarding the historicity, composition, meanings and attribution of the New Testament writings. Their well-publicized mantra of "searching for the Historical Jesus" (a/k/a, "the REAL Jesus") provided numerous magazine cover stories and documentary films during this period -- many of which can still be seen on cable today. Their collective academic achievements and supposedly purely objective assessment of extant findings and related data allegedly boasted a new, skeptical, "scientific" look at the old story of Jesus of Nazareth. Many welcomed their contributions -- and, indeed, they made some.

But, knowledge and pomposity does not a scholar make. One of the crowning achievements of the Jesus Seminar (as noted in their own self-promotion) was the fact that these brilliant minds, these masters of logical insights and unflinching critiques of their peers and predecessors' careful -- though sometimes subjective -- analyses of the known and deduced facts was their manner of determining which of Jesus' reputed sayings, interactions and "miracles" were true and which were fabrications of his passionate, though less intellectually disciplined, devotees. Their methodology? Seminar members used votes with colored beads to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth" (wikipedia article, titled "Jesus Seminar"). In other words, each eligible voter would choose one color bead to affirm the authenticity of each verse in the gospels and another color to reject it. Verses that gained a substantial number of "good" beads were accepted by all as true and those that failed to gather the requisite approval were determined to be attributable to false authors, myths, scribal errors, later editors and, generally, an elite group of would-be saints determined merely to preserve, proclaim and protect the reputation of a "god/man" apparently too incompetent and weak to do so himself.

Dr. Crossan's expertise has to be suspect for a variety of compelling reasons, not the least of which is his complicity in advocating such a whimsical and infantile method to determine the Bible's historical legitimacy. (Note: Such an objective is certainly valid, in this writer's opinion, when pursued with the nobility and due humility of a true scholar.) To take a cavalier approach to the study of such a significant (even unparalleled) person's life and influence is not playful, it's shameful. To then claim exclusive authority to teach one's "expert" conclusions to others is sad, at best. I would urge readers of this and related articles that quote Dr. Crossan and his Jesus Seminar colleagues to assess their expertise using a more proven and scientifically credible technique than these "Jesus" Seminarians had in claiming such "expertise."