Who have you read that you would class as being in "the strange deserts of modern 'Jesus scholarship'?"

To say "read" implies more focus and study than I have actually given the subject. Perhaps better to say, "encountered and swerved away from in perplexity." Theorists who claim that Jesus was a simple peasant wise man, and that much of what he "said" was invented or changed later by Paul, or the Early Church, or the authors of the Gospels.

And there was that much-publicized "Jesus Seminar," which was supposed to provide some sort of objective scientific lucidity to the study of the New Testament by collecting a bunch of scholars and having them vote on each item as authentic or not. (As Wright points out, the problem with that was that those judgments could only be made on the basis of pre-existing theories about Jesus.)

And Wright mentions lots of others I'd never heard of, such as that Jesus was a Cynic, or that he was planning armed revolution against Rome. And there's the intricate theorizing about the sources of the synoptic gospels. Such as source "Q," which is the material in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. Which led to intricate theories about what Q really meant to say!

I'll just mention one little interesting thing Wright points out. Jesus was largely preaching to oral cultures. And we know from studies of existing oral cultures that they can preserve their stories with astonishing fidelity over many generations. And it is thus perfectly reasonable to suppose that the Gospels, which were probably written down after the calamities of AD 70, preserve the sayings of Jesus almost word-for-word. And since he was going from one village to the next preaching, he presumably told them same parable many times, and therefore when one parable has different versions in the Gospels, they may each be accurate.

I see. So you haven't actually read any of what you are criticizing.

Well, I'll state frankly that I haven't yet read any Wright, although I gave his speech a quick read and, having found some solid meat in it, am going to return to it and give it a more thorough reading. I know that Wright has a high reputation even among those who disagree with him, so I would welcome a chance to read the book you refer to when you're done with it. For the moment, however, I will say only that for me there's a strong odor of straw man about some of his arguments, and a few hand-waving assertions as well--which is to be expected in a speech as opposed to a scholarly work.

(That's not to say that there aren't a lot of neo-Gnostics around. I nearly fell into that camp myself for a time--it's a bit of a hazard for liberal Quakers in particular. But I still believe there's value in many of the extra-canonical scriptures, although they are probably most useful, for Christians anyway, in the light of the canon.)

Now to speak of what I do know. I have read books by Borg, Wink, and Crossan, who I believe are all on the "Jesus Seminar" side of things (Borg, IIRR, was actually part of it). And I strongly suspect--feel free to correct me if I am wrong--that you are repeating what you have heard about "Jesus Seminar" scholarship--as well as lumping many different viewpoints into that category as shorthand for "people who disagree with a man whose views I find agreeable"-- rather than speaking from a position of actual knowledge of the methods they use.

Crossan in particular is excruciatingly careful to make clear what his methodology is, and lays out repeatedly where his arguments must be attacked to falsify his hypotheses. And having read his magisterial The Birth of Christianity, which deals with the transition between the historical Jesus and earliest Christianity, I know for a fact that several of the assertions you make above are false, and am reasonably sure that you do not understand the methodology that you are criticizing, which, for Crossan at least, comprises, to name a few, social-scientific, historical, and literary criticism of Biblical texts along with cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and much more. The breadth of his scholarship is amazing and humbling.

For instance, the idea of "astonishing fidelity" in oral cultures is, quite simply, a myth, as revealed by solid field research from anthropologists who extensively studied actual oral cultures. And in reality, Wright doesn't claim "astonishing fidelity." Instead, he speaks of a "world of informal but controlled oral tradition." [his emphasis]

Simply put, storytellers in an oral culture do NOT reproduce stories with astonishing fidelity. Quite the contrary, the stories are NEVER the same from one telling to another. Instead, they are assembled anew each time from what I might call tropes, and what Crossan calls "multiforms." It is these that are the basis of Wright's actual argument, which Crossan deals with at great length. The most interesting thing is, however, that the listeners will insist that the story was exactly the same, even though a recording may reveal that they differed in length by as much as 50%.

What people remember is semantic relationships, especially surprising ones, such as what Crossan calls Jesus's "strange and disturbing equation of children and kingdom. [his emphasis, p. 86] Then they reproduce them in a variety of ways (multiforms). And finally, at some point, "literacy writes it down and checks all future formats against the established original format." (Crossan, p 87)

In truth, verbal memory is better in a literate society. As Ulric Neisser says in Memory Observed: "Literal verbatim memory does exist...It makes its appearance whenever a performance is defined by fidelity to a particular text." [his emphasis]

Finally, I do not think you are making an honest argument when you call the scholars who disagree with Wright "theorists," which I suspect is merely a rhetorical term you use to categorize people whose arguments--perceived secondhand, at that--you are uncomfortable with. Even a cursory look through Crossan's book, for instance, reveals a devout Roman Catholic whose rigorous intellectual honesty shines from every page. He lays out in great detail how he, and scholars like him, use cross-cultural anthropology and a host of other tools to try to determine, as much as possible, what Jesus said and did--and to determine the limitations of what we can know. You may disagree with their conclusions after reading them, but to assert what you have without actually doing so is dishonest, and something that I believe Wright himself would disavow.

I am properly rebuked for writing my impressions, rather than what I know for sure. Perhaps I'll make reading Crossan my next project.

(If he's anything like Wright, who typically takes about 200 pages just to set the scene or discuss epistemology before starting his history, this could be a long road.)

Indeed, if Wright is as careful as Crossan in making sure the reader understands his methodology, which I expect he is given his reputation, then it will be a long road. Crossan's book, which I'd be happy to loan you, is about 700 pages long. I'm almost afraid to get his one on the "historical Jesus."

Amen.

And we'll be happy to loan you our volumes of Wright, once we have them in hand. (I got book 2 of this series from inter-library loan, thus learning of the existance of vol.1, but not learning of vol. 3, which grew to 800 pages out of what was going to be the last chapter of vol. 2. But 3 turned out to be already on our shelf because Charlene had bought it. In hardcover, and so we wanted to order hardcovers of 1 and 2 to match, but those were only published in hardcover in the UK. Thanks to the Internet used copies are on the way.)

Wright says there are only 2 more to come, but who knows.