http://www.westarinstitute.org/Polebridge/Title/Credible/credible.html

Robert W. Funk, founder of Jesus Seminar, finds “A Credible Jesus” in his new book on Jesus’ vision for today

SANTA ROSA, CA – SANTA ROSA, CA – In A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision, published this month by Polebridge Press, Robert W. Funk, founder and director of the Jesus Seminar, works out the positive implications of his studies of Jesus.

Dr. Funk presents a rich conceptual framework for the fragments of aphorism, parable, and dialogue that represent the historical Jesus. The reader can take seriously the historic Jesus as a re-emerging spiritual leader for today without his having to be a cosmic agent of redemption.

“Bob Funk has spent his life amidst the language of Jesus,” John Dominic Crossan comments. “That language has come down to us as “Fragments of a Vision” but that is more appropriate than unfortunate. For, as this book argues, they envision God’s domain as another world that overturns the normalcy of our everyday one and that we can catch only in glimpses and live only in moments.”

The narrative gospels and Paul obscured Jesus the spiritual teacher by turning a Jewish iconoclast into a divine icon. The credible Jesus taught and lived an alternative vision for community in a world where God is present in the everyday.

Dr. Funk explains in simple language the “voice print” that we can attribute to Jesus. He draws the reader into God’s invisible realm, based on an ethic of trust, to be celebrated communally. Outsiders and outcasts are included, tribalism is transcended, new family ties and new relationships, even with “flora and fauna,” are forged, and social and economic systems are subverted.

In God’s domain there is no room for demons, rewards are intrinsic, and humor and humility mitigate morality. This Jesus announced the end of brokered religion and trust in a God who is not an oriental despot. The cross becomes “a symbol of absolute integrity, of the refusal to compromise.”

Robert W. Funk is founder of The Jesus Seminar and Director of Westar Institute, a nonprofit advocate for religious literacy. A Guggenheim Fellow and Senior Fulbright Scholar, he is the author of Honest to Jesus (1996) and co-author of the best-selling The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (1993).