Scholars to debate if Jesus existed
Group to discuss, test truth of Bible
Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Internationally recognized biblical scholars are set to launch The Jesus Project, a new endeavour to examine the historical existence of Christ.

The project is intended to pick up where the controversial Jesus Seminar left off in its research into the veracity of Jesus's words and deeds in the Bible.

The seminar has lost momentum in recent years, but in its heyday, about 200 scholars met regularly to discuss whether Jesus really behaved as the Bible says he did.

The scholars voted using a system of beads -- red for accurate, pink for probable, grey for possible but unreliable, and black for improbable -- and found 82 per cent of Jesus's sayings, and 84 per cent of his deeds were unreliable to improbable.

Conservative Christians and many scholars of all stripes were outraged. Some theologians believed the seminar drove a wedge further between faith and reason, while others in more liberal churches said their faith was, in fact, bolstered by the research.

Now, the Jesus Project "will take off where the Jesus seminar left off," says Nathan Bupp, spokesman for the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, the group sponsoring the conference at the University of California this month. "It will breathe new fire into it. We will not close the door on free inquiry." the rest