The Gospels Revisited - The Jesus Seminar

I meet Course students who don't have the familiarity with the Christian tradition to appreciate some of the comments in A Course In Miracles, and the evident allusions to New Testament stories, and some of them would like to find a decent source. At the present time this edition, The Complete Gospels,  is arguably the finest resource one could consult, in particular also because it simply presents all the different gospel traditions side by side, without overly emphasizing those that Christianity declared to be the canon of the NT. It is the most neutral and unbiased way to be introduced to this important cultural good. For people who have been exposed to a lot of this material in their upbringing, but who want to take a new look at it, this edition naturally is the best source.

The Jesus Seminar is doing an incredible job in making many materials accessible. For my upcoming book Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course In Miracles, I have extensively consulted The Five Gospels, and I'm discussing that book's conclusions about the authenticity of Thomas sayings in an appendix to the book. While I'm not really using this edition for my book and this blog is really focused on materials for the book, I still want to post this note here, if nothing else because I mentioned in my discussion of The Five Gospels that there is a need for this kind of an edition. I may also remind the reader that Gary Renard has shared with us that Pursah favors The Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Phillip.

This book is brilliant, and very helpful. It provides modern, clean very non-denominational translations of the Gospel materials, and the only deference it shows to the canonical gospels of Christianity is by putting the synoptics first, though in chronological order (Mark first), not in orthodox theological order (Matthew first), and prefacing John with the putative "Signs" gospel that may have preceded it.  Then follow the sayings gospels, specifically the reconstruction of Q as well as Thomas. Chronologically these actually are deemed to precede Mark at least as a general literary form, so this is the one compromise to the Christian orthodoxy that this book makes. The time line which the JS believes in is in sync with Pursah's position in Your Immortal Reality, to wit, the kernel of Thomas may have been together by ca. 50 CE. (When we're in the presence of the Jesus Seminar it is politically correct to use 'CE' in lieu of 'AD.') The bulk of it would seem to have congealed ca 70-100 CE, but the JS pointedly observe that Thomas must have been 'together' before the synoptic Gospels, based on the internal evidence of the sequence of ideas as much as literary form between the sayings traditions and the synoptics. Helpfully the book also presents the Greek Thomas fragments from Papyrus Oxyrrhynchus, which are of some interest because of the variations they show.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that one of the reasons they feel Thomas congealed as a document only at the same time as the narrative gospels would be because they feel they have to account for the gnostic influences, and gnosticism doesn't take off till later. We may look at that question differently with Pursah and the Course, and understand that some of what Jesus taught originally definitely was grist for the mill of gnosticism, and Jesus did not start out as an orthodox Christian but some of his words sounded 'gnostic' and so the material became tainted with gnosticism later. On the contrary Jesus' original teaching contained some elements, including that of an inner knowing, or 'gnosis' of truth, which naturally lent themselves to be expanded upon by later gnosticism (and often distorted in the process), while the emergent orthodoxy edited that tendency out of his teachings with Paul leading the charge.

Next follow the Infancy Gospels which are rather late myths, then Fragmentary Gospels, some of which are still highly interesting,  followed by the Jewish-Christian Gospels and then Orphan Sayings and  Stories. The whole makes for a very complete and balanced edition, and very worth perusing. It should also be remembered that many Jesus stories apocryphal and otherwise were not gone when the church forbade them or destroyed the manuscripts. One example is the beautiful legend of St. Christopher. Never mind the church abolished him from the register of saints, for being fictional, the influence his story has had on the western mind can hardly be underestimated, witness the many images of St. Christopher in medieval art. The same applies for much of the apocryphal material - the church may have successfully destroyed the books, but the traditions frequently lived on.


If there are shortcomings they are easily offset by the many merits of this publication. I note in the introduction that the emphasis still is on wanting to understand the history of Christianity, which is not interesting to me. What interests me is the tradition of the teachings of Jesus, and this collection can shed light on that. Some word choices in the translation are a definite improvement such as "change of heart" for the Greek "metanoia," which is much better than the God-awful "repentance" of traditional Christian (read Pauline) translations, and a beautiful parallel to the Course's "change of mind," which would arguably be more accurate since Greek "noia" comes from "nous," which definitely does mean mind, but "change of heart" certainly conveys that meaning if in a less technical and more poetic sense.

Sometimes the preference for a what is supposedly contemporary language pours too much water in the wine of good translation and compromises the meaning. An example is a key phrase in Mk 4:34, which I'm quoting here in both the SV and KJV versions:
Yet he would not say anything except by way of parable, but would spell everything out to his own disciples. (Mk. 4:34 SV)
But without parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples. (Mk. 4:34 KJV)
The original Greek, however "kat idian" connotes "privately," or "individually" and clearly that is the whole point of the statement, which is irretrievably lost in the smooth language of the SV. This is where it is clear that linguistics is not the only qualification to translating, understanding the subject matter is equally relevant, and that comes only through the experience of actually practicing what Jesus teaches.

There are other places where the effort to bring a fresh and modern translation occasionally goes overboard in my view. Greek 'basileia' does mean kingdom, and the choice to use instead 'God's Imperial Rule' is at least equally debatable, and I find that Pursah's choice of  'God's Divine Rule' would be far preferable and less ambiguous as a translation, particularly in view of how Jesus speaks of giving to the Emperor what is the Emperor's - clearly ' Imperial'  would be primarily associated with the empires of the world. But again those are minor points in the overall scheme of things - readability and relative freedom of the homogenizing influence of Christian theology on most translations are important steps in the right direction.