| The Jesus Seminar is a very small, self-selected group whose opinions represent
a tiny minority of New Testament scholars. Because they know their findings
are rejected by mainstream scholars (and for good reason), they decided to
instead to go directly to the media, and because the media loves controversy
their publicity is extremely disproportionate to their actual influence.
Their results:
- Jesus did not say 82% of what the gospels attribute. Of the remaining
16%, they are only sure 2% is authentic. For example, in the Lord's Prayer,
the seminar only believes Jesus said "Our Father".
- The seminar then published "The Five Gospels", which contains the
"regular" gospels along with the seminar's findings, along with the Gospel of
Thomas (which is also rejected by mainstream scholars).
The group is basically trying to say Jesus was just an interesting guy, maybe
even extraordinary, but definitely not supernatural; He was not God or the
Messiah, and definitely not somebody with much relevance today.
Also see: What's wrong with the Jesus Seminar?, Gospel of Thomas, Are the
gospels reliable?
| 
