A Response to Concerns about The Jesus Project

Jesus Project v. Jesus Squad?

I apologize for the delay in responding to concerns raised by the Jesus Project website, called to my attention by Gerd Luedemann. I have been away from the blogosphere teaching a course at the Moscow State University summer session, aptly titled "From Religion to Science". I must say, the whole eruption strikes me as a bit strange and misinformed. Let me explain what I believe to be the origin of the confusion. As always, the facts are rather more mundane than the speculation to which internet musings give rise.

1) The Jesus Project was announced at an international convention of scholars in January 2007, co-sponsored by CSER and the Religion Program at the University of California at Davis, "Scripture and Skepticism." Its announcement was public and explicit, not an "event" of the internet grapevine. Many, not all, of the scholars attending that conference asked to be included in the work of the project and included on its listserv, the progenitor of the Project website. James Robinson, in particular, agreed to serve as a senior consultant to the project and has acted already in that capacity in an article published in the latest number of the CSER Review. I mention this specifically in reference to a false report published on "Dr Jim West's" blog in which Professor Robinson is alleged by Roger Pearse not to know about the Project: nothing can be further from the facts. False report, of course, is the culture in which blogging thrives. But even bloggers have a minimal responsibility to fact and to discovering facts.

2) In substantial ways the Project formed a continuum with the Scripture and Skepticism conference. An email from me in February 2007 (and two subsequent emails) asked those wishing to separate themselves from the work of the Project as it developed or to remove their names from its listserv to do so by a return email to me; I received no indication at this point from any conference participant that s/he wished to be removed from the list. My general feeling was and is that enthusiasm for the potential of the project was running high. On the contrary, I have had frequent and cordial communications from the Listserv members—occasionally reaching an academic high pitch, as during my public criticism of the Talpiot Tomb extravaganza. Some of those who may now seem disaffected with the Project have also been disaffected by my public comments on Talpiot. Scholarship is not extravaganza, and it distresses me that the Jesus Project seems to have been thrust by its detractors into a circus arena.

3) Very recently I have had a message from John Crossan who has been a fellow of CSER for several years, asking to be removed from the list. This request is in response to "doubts" engendered on the blog-space of "Dr Jim West," to which he has posted a comment. I obviously respect Dom's wishes, irrespective of their genesis, because he is a scholar whose work I admire and trust. Despite the comments I have seen quoted in the blogosphere in the last week, no one else associated with the Project has written to me other than out of concern.

4) Nonetheless, I promised mundane reasons for the confusion and mundane they are:

The names of scholars for the CSER conference, together with invited scholars and others who had written to inquire about becoming a "fellow" of the Project were submitted (by me) to the CSER intern for biographical profiles. This was her significant summer project. As membership in the Project is limited to 50, letters of invitation were sent to a very few scholars not associated with the UCD conference. In the case of all but one of these invitations, the response was affirmative. The work of selection—as Professors Luedemann and Price will attest--has been painfully slow. The suggestion that the Project hastily assembled an anthology of "big names" to give credence to predetermined conclusions is ludicrous and intemperate and displays an extraordinary unfamiliarity with its history, and of the conference that gave it birth.

Around the time the Project was announced, expressions of concern were raised, to me personally and to Bob Price and Gerd Luedemann, by certain members of the Jesus Seminar that the Jesus Project was being touted as a "substitute" for their work. One can understand that concern since the Seminar was controversial in its own right, and early publicity about the Project seemed to suggest that it would outdistance its predecessor in controversy. However, I can say with certainty that it has never been the object of the Project, explicitly or implicitly, to challenge or "complete" the work of the JS, much of which it regards as significant. The JP is not so much picking up where the JS ended, but beginning at the point it might have begun—with the question of the historicity of Jesus. If the press spun the purpose of the Project differently it suggests only how little one can control journalistic simplisms.

Anticipating a formal launch of its academic work in 2008, the Project floated (I have to stress this word) a website. It is here that an element of confusion enters the picture. While the website was only a model of things to come, a compilation of biographies of the entire list—UCD, listserv, and "under consideration"--was posted to the site together with some sample texts as active information. What was meant as a test has lingered on the site as a done deal. This was done largely because we were being hammered for information and were late in conceptualizing the site itself. The posting was premature; the website was not flagged as under construction. Results ran ahead of planning. Indeed, the website was (is) a work in progress: Even at the time of this writing, only a fraction of the 50 scholars comprising the Project have been chosen and perhaps they will not finally be chosen until January 2008. A fair number of those whose biographies were floated had already been deselected. My own work schedule has kept me—and there is real guilt in this—from surveilling the progress of the site, which I regarded as internet clay and not the pot. The very tentative nature of the site was not made clear on the site itself, and should have been.

In any event, the confusion has resulted from two sources, website construction debris and delays. To suggest that there is any other motive or cause for the confusion is offensive and untrue. While the work of review continues, I have asked that the website be temporarily taken down. But I stress: temporarily. This is not in response to any complaints I have received from anyone listed as a "fellow"—indeed, only the exception noted above has asked to withdraw because of the blog assault. It must be also be stressed however, that scholars associated with Scripture and Skepticism event at UCD have been routinely updated about the project.

I am distressed therefore that a very few of those who have been associated with the Project, the listserv, and the recent coverage of the Project in the CSER Review have claimed, or rather are reported to claim, no prior knowledge and are responding on the blogosphere in a way rather different than their private replies to me. Because of this discrepancy, we are reissuing letters of invitation to those selected for participation.

What can explain this sudden interest in the Project so many months after the UCD event? Obviously this project is controversial and for that reason, since its conclusions and even the discussions leading to those conclusions have yet to eventuate, it would be foolish to claim for it the sort of "authority" that might be gleaned from compiling "big" names in New Testament studies. The need for authoritative voices in biblical scholarship (as I have said since the beginning) has to be weighed against the need for an approach which is not merely "non-confessional" but non-parochial and non-theological. The Project is not about name value—that indeed was my criticism of the Talpiot project, by the way: that one can achieve a scholarly consensus on a controversial theme by force majeure and editing out inconvenient opinions—but about the importance of skeptical inquiry in biblical history. That purpose is unchanged. CSER and the JP represent the need for critical examination as a value in nonparochial religion scholarship

Some unanswered and partially answered questions. Did mysterious opponents of the Project catch us in an oversight—an internet Jesus Squad? Yes, and they will best know their motives for wishing to do so. Was there unfriendly agitation at the beginning of the blog-assault? I'm afraid so. Have the agitators derailed the project? I hope not. I hope that they will welcome the sort of open and honest debate that such an investigation requires, free from the self-interest of theological assumptions that have too often determined the status quaestionis. Did Jesus exist? Can we know, one way or the other? What are the implications of any conclusion that might be achieved?

One thing is certain, the dead horse theory that has prevented scholars from taking up the question in earnest has also encouraged extreme and fantastic answers to the question of Jesus' existence by a new generation of myth-theorists outside the academy and pan-gnosticists within. The Project is cold comfort equally for those who want to spin cosmic Christs and those who say no-one takes the question of non-historicity seriously any more. It is a mark, perhaps, of a malaise in biblical criticism that pivotal questions cannot be taken seriously. It is a challenge to fantasists and to those who are just completing their masterworks on the "real" Jesus, the perennial genre. The Jesus Project will have its enemies.

I (politely) ask the blogmasters to desist from speculation based on misinformation, or worse; the desire to do harm: I recognize no names, among the bloggers, of anyone who has been invited at any stage to participate in the JP. (If they wish to submit a cv for consideration, I encourage them to do so.) I do, alas, recognize a few names of people who might want to see its work summarily dismissed and discredited. What a shame. I ask they hold their fire until there is something to assess and not try to thwart us at the beginning of an organizational period. It serves neither serious NT scholarship nor the nonparochial study of biblical literature if those who wish the Project harm are enabled to dominate discussion of the Project's purposes, especially through the uncontrolled methods of Bible-blog.

A final note, the sinister: In several cases the opponents of the JP have attempted to intimidate scholars who have been named as members of the Project. Members of the JP have been approached by one Jesus Squad advocate with this language:

"I am surprised to learn that you are listed on the website of the 'Jesus' Project' sponsored by the atheist Center for Inquiry." Other approaches have used the phrase "founded by Paul Kurtz and R. Joseph Hoffmann." One hardly knows what to make of such a query, or what an unsuspecting recipient would make of it. The Jesus Project is defined by a clear purpose; that purpose is not limited to the interests of biblical theology. To associate it with an organization dedicated to science, reason and free inquiry—surely not atheism—could only enhance that purpose. But in fact, the Project is not sponsored by the Center for Inquiry; it's associated with an organization I have chaired for several years and helped to found in 1983, CSER, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. The Center has no direct interest in the Project or control over its conclusions. Paul Kurtz is not a member of the Project nor its founder.

It remains to be restated: The Jesus Project is methodologically agnostic about the existence of Jesus. While it understands the theological contexts out of which the biblical materials arises, It is also programmatically non-theological. There is nothing to fear from such an investigation. The responses of a few so far expresses a fear of open and honest discussion. The website when it is ready for public view will reflect the state of plnd not the state of discussion. I hope that this will satisfy our opponents in the same measure it tries the patience of our supporters. More than this, I hope that those who now oppose the Project will learn to support it as they come to a fuller understanding of its objectives.

To end this on a conciliatory note: granted that the website engendered confusion, it is best now to move on. If anyone within eyeshot of these words has an interest in the project—keeping it honest, above board, and free of the trammels that have crippled similar efforts: please write to me. I welcome serious and direct inquiries and will do my best, now that I am stateside again, to answer them fully and in a timely fashion.

R. Joseph Hoffmann

Chair, CSER