Week 4

March: Vol 1 - John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powel

The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? - Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar

   How about this for a Bible study exercise? Create your own "sayings Gospel!"
   Step 1: Divide the Gospels amongst yourselves. If you have 8 people, you can each take half a Gospel.
   2: Read through your portion of the Gospel. Slow down and take your time when you get to the words of Jesus. A red letter Bible might be helpful.
   3: Write down all the words of Jesus that strike you as "sayings." Leave space between each saying. 
   What is a saying? You tell me! My working definition is - a short statement (one or two sentences) that begs you to use it again and again, not necessarily in it's original context. A proverb, a pun, a punch line, a "pithy" aphorism, a strange comparison, a dramatic pronouncement. As you're doing the exercise, imagine yourself "listening" to Jesus. What short sayings would you remember the most? Don't record whole parables or stories; leave those for the next Bible study exercise.
   4: Get together with your study group and share your findings. Compare and contrast your experience. Was it fun? Insightful? Misleading?
   5: Cut up your papers so that each saying is on it's own strip. Try to match identical or very closely "parallel" sayings and tape them together.
   6: If you have time, try to collect your sayings into thematic family groups. Such as, love, role reversal, apocalypse, faith, etc.. Whatever yall can agree upon. Try 12 groups at first. Then seven. Then three.
   7: As a final activity - try to make a Top-Ten list; ten sayings that seem to summarize or represent all of Jesus' sayings.

   The Five Gospels has inspired me to do this activity! Maybe I can try it over the next couple weeks and post my list. 
   This is a wild book with a wild history. In the early 90's Robert Funk and the Westar Institute, a think tank out in California, put together a team of New Testament scholars, collaborated on a translation of the four canonical Gospels as well as the Gospel of Thomas, then voted on the "authenticity" of the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels (their plan was to vote on the deeds at a later date - has that been published?). 
   Among the many questions they had to answer were - how can you divide the Gospel words of Jesus into discrete sections in order to vote on them? how can you vote on them in a way that reflects the diversity of opinion in the group (the weighted average solution was brilliant)? how can you possibly find the "pre-Christian" words of Jesus (by using various criteria, which they inconsistently applied, in my opinion)? how can you determine which words or stories could have survived the "oral transmission" phase of Christian history? and, among the many orally transmittable words and stories, which ones are probably "commonplace proverbs" that worked their way into Christian teaching in the early years of the religion?
    Their findings are fascinating, and just as fascinating are the descriptions in the book of their disagreements, debates, and commitment to the voting process. Also fun is the translation itself. Some notable differences from the NRSV:
   -Congratulations, you poor! {Blessed are the poor}
   -In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom {word; logos}
   -they consistently use "trust" instead of "faith" or "believe," for example "Don't be afraid, just have trust" (Mark 5:36), or "I swear to you, even if you have trust no larger than a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move." (Matt 17:20)

   As for March, a graphic novel about John Lewis, I'll describe that next week, after I've read Vol 2 and 3. Vol 1 was amazing! So cool!