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The Five Gospels

Summary

The Jesus Seminar's color-coded translation of the four canonical gospels plus the Gospel of Thomas — with each saying rated by scholars on its historical authenticity.

Core Contribution

Color coding: red (Jesus said it), pink (sounds like Jesus), gray (not Jesus but his tradition), black (later addition). Result: only 18% of the words attributed to Jesus were likely actually spoken by him. The methodology of scholarly voting on authenticity. The inclusion of the Gospel of Thomas as the 'fifth gospel' — legitimizing a non-canonical source. Enormously controversial in both academic and popular religious circles.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • The methodology of voting (scholars casting colored beads into a bucket) was attacked as a media stunt by critics and defended as democratic scholarly deliberation by its practitioners. Either way, it received enormous media coverage.

Historical Influences

Albert Schweitzer Bultmann

Intellectual Lineage

Historical Jesus Studies Biblical Criticism

Allied Works

The Historical Jesus Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography A Marginal Jew

Contemporaries & Peers

Jesus and Judaism A Marginal Jew

Minds Influenced

Historical Jesus Research

Intellectual Posterity

Historical Jesus Studies

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