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Thirty Bible scholars passed a ballot box around the table, dropping in colored pegs or beads-red for yes, pink for maybe, gray for probably not and black for no.
They were voting on which sayings in the New Testament's Sermon on the Mount probably go back to Jesus himself and which were put into his mouth by gospel writers or church tradition.
The scholars were to base their votes on what the weight of biblical critical scholarship says and on their own research on the historical Jesus. The group, which includes some of the top American specialists on the New Testament, eventually will consider all of the roughly 500 sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament and non-biblical sources, some of which have been discovered and translated in relatively recent years.
`Ignorance of the Uninformed'
If the idea of voting on Jesus' sayings sounds provocative, that is precisely the intent of organizers of the so-called Jesus Seminar, a five- to six-year project just under way. New Testament scholar Robert W. Funk, the principal organizer, said he wants to seize the initiative from television evangelists who, in his view, deal in pious platitudes. He also wants to counteract apocalyptic writers who purport to describe a coming Armageddon-writers, he said, who "have too long played on the fears and ignorance of the uninformed."
Funk wants to acquaint the public with mainstream biblical scholarship and their findings about the most likely teachings of Jesus, even though the results may disturb many Christians.
The balloting, conducted at the Roman Catholic Saint Meinrad Archabbey and Seminary here in southern Indiana recently, amounted to bad news for the beatitudes and other sayings:
= Blackballed with virtually no discussion was one of Christendom's favorite beatitudes, or statements of happiness: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Similarly, "the meek who shall inherit the earth" got only six pink-red votes out of 30 cast.
= Only three of a dozen "blessings" and "woes" in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were deemed to have derived from Jesus, and a fourth ("blessed are you when men hate you. . .") produced an even split after some debate.
Three Beatitudes Pass
Winning favor were the first three beatitudes...