The Jesus Seminar has come under intense criticism regarding its method, assumptions and conclusions from a wide array of scholars and laymen.
Ben Witherington,
Greg Boyd,
N.T. Wright,
William Lane Craig,
Luke Timothy Johnson,
Craig A. Evans,
Michael F. Bird,
Craig Blomberg,
Markus Bockmuehl,
Raymond Brown,
James D.G. Dunn,
Howard Clark Kee,
John P. Meier,
Graham Stanton,
Darrell Bock, Lutheran theologian
Carl Braaten has been sharply critical, saying "The Jesus Seminar is the latest example of a pseudo-scientific approach that is 'dogmatically' opposed to basic Christian dogmas, popularizing in the public mind
Harnack's view that an unbridgeable gulf exists between Jesus and the church."
Composition of the Seminar and qualifications of the members Luke Timothy Johnson, a historian of the origins of Christianity, One member,
Paul Verhoeven, holds no Ph.D. but a M.Sc. in mathematics and physics, not biblical studies, and is best known as a
film director. Johnson also critiqued the seminar for its attempts to gain the attention of the media for the 2000
ABC News program "The Search for Jesus" hosted by news anchor
Peter Jennings. Seminar critic
William Lane Craig has argued that the self-selected members of the group do not represent the consensus of
New Testament scholars. He writes: Of the 74 [scholars] listed in their publication
The Five Gospels, only 14 would be leading figures in the field of New Testament studies. More than half are basically unknowns, who have published only two or three articles. Eighteen of the fellows have published nothing at all in New Testament studies. Most have relatively undistinguished academic positions, for example, teaching at a community college. Others have made the same point and have further indicated that thirty-six of those scholars, almost half, have a degree from or currently teach at one of three schools:
Harvard,
Claremont, or
Vanderbilt University, all of which are considered to favor "
liberal" interpretations of the New Testament. To
open theist Greg Boyd, a prominent
evangelical pastor and theologian, "The Jesus Seminar represents an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking. It does not represent mainstream scholarship." New Testament scholar
Mark Allan Powell has stated: "The Jesus Seminar is not representative of the guild of New Testament historical scholarship today. Rather, it is representative of one voice within that guild, a voice that actually espouses a minority position on some key issues." In the first chapter of his 2010 book ''Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching'',
Maurice Casey, an
irreligious British scholar of the New Testament, criticizes the Seminar for having not included "some of the best scholars in the USA, such as
E. P. Sanders,
J. A. Fitzmyer, and
Dale Allison." He states that these glaring omissions were compounded by the fact that many of the supposed "experts" at the Seminar were young, obscure scholars who had only just completed their
doctorates. Casey sums up the voting process stating, "In practice, this meant an averaged majority vote by people who were not in any reasonable sense authorities at all."
Luke Timothy Johnson of the
Candler School of Theology at
Emory University, in his 1996 book
The Real Jesus, voiced concerns with the seminar's work. He criticized the techniques of the Seminar, believing them to be far more limited for
historical reconstruction than seminar members believe. Their conclusions were "already determined ahead of time," Johnson says, which "is not responsible, or even critical scholarship. It is a self-indulgent
charade."
William Lane Craig argues that the principal presuppositions of scientific naturalism, the primacy of the apocryphal gospels, and the necessity of a politically correct Jesus are unjustified and issue in a distorted portrait of the historical Jesus.
Raymond Brown likewise avers that the Seminar "operated to a remarkable degree on a priori principles, some of them reflecting antisupernatural bias. For instance, the bodily resurrection had no real chance of being accepted as having taken place. ... Again, almost as a principle, the eschatological character of Jesus' ministry has been dismissed..."
Dale Allison of
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, in his 1998 book
Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet, cited what he felt were problems with the work of (particularly)
John Dominic Crossan and
Marcus Borg, arguing that their conclusions were at least in part predetermined by their theological positions. He also pointed out the limitations of their presumptions and methodology. Allison argued that despite the conclusions of the seminar, Jesus was a prophetic figure focused to a large extent on apocalyptic thinking. Several Bible scholars (for example
Bart D. Ehrman, an agnostic, and
Paula Fredriksen, a Jew) have reasserted
Albert Schweitzer's eschatological view of Jesus. Casey argues that the Jesus Seminar's fundamental social goal was not to construct an accurate portrait of the historical Jesus, but rather to create "a figure whom [the Fellows of the Seminar] are happy with". Raymond Brown has stated that "a rigorous application of such criteria would leave us with a monstrosity: a Jesus who never said, thought, or did anything that other Jews said, thought, or did, and a Jesus who had no connection or relationship to what his followers said, thought, or did in reference to him after he died." J. Ed Komoszewski and co-authors state that the Jesus Seminar's "Criteria for In/Authenticity" creates "an eccentric Jesus who learned nothing from his own culture and made no impact on his followers". The same criticism has been made by Craig Evans.
Bias against canonical sources and for non-canonical sources Casey criticizes the Seminar for the "exaggerated importance which they have attributed to the
Gospel of Thomas", ==Conservative backlash==