Was Jesus of Nazareth a religious loon?

[Abaddon_ire]

The Jesus Seminar coded the entire Gospel of John as being black, indicating that not a single phrase as recorded in that Gospel was spoken by the historical Jesus.  Do you agree with their conclusions?  If so, how can John be an "ancient biography" of Jesus if it did not record anything that he said??

No, I don't agree with the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar. They are representative only of one radical strand of thinking within academia, and did their work mostly last century. Their methodologies are highly questionable. The widely available criticisms of their methods are multiple and deep.

(also see below)

P.S. I think that you are quote-mining from Professor Ehrman.

How am I quote-mining? I mean, what is the context which means it doesn't mean what it seems to mean?

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If Cephas is Peter, but it was some other guy that gospel writers turned into Peter.

We all have our opinions, and that is good. Cephas is Peter, that's a given in academia.  Similar to earlier in the thread, the reader can choose whether to agree with the consensus of the large number of experts in their field (who individually know more about this stuff than the sum total of all of us on the forum), or to agree with some bloke on an internet thread.

Sure, Paul's teachings are different if not opposite than Jesus's, that's why some Christians consider Paul to be the antichrist.

Paul's teachings are fully in line with Jesus's.

I'm sure these people exist, and no doubt you have links, but I've yet to come across any of them in any way. They're hardly mainstream or even tiny tributary.

The first thing to notice is how Paul claims to know this information: he says he received it “from the Lord,” not from anyone who was actually there. Then we go back to Galatians 1. 11-12.

So why did Paul have to tell his flock as though he was the only one who knew this story?
Paul’s Lord’s Supper does not look like a historical account of a “last supper” (a term he never uses), but a celestial vision of ritual instructions from his Lord, directed to future generations and not to any disciples at dinner.

Received from the Lord in Gal 1:11-12 simply refers to Paul's conversion on the Damascus road, emphasising it was direct from Jesus rather than evangelism.

The word in Greek is parelabon which has the meaning of handing on a tradition. Paul is dealing with misuse of the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor 11, and is reminding his readers that it has a meaning and purpose, which was given by Jesus Himself and passed on through the Early Church. Thus he's saying, 'This institution was started by Jesus, and I told it to you just as it was told to me'. 

The theology of that meal, later given the name Last Supper, is rich and deep, and very different to your portrayal. The actual historicity is confirmed by the criterion of multiple attestation and the criterion of coherence. Indeed Wikipedia states about the last supper “Jesus having a final meal with his disciples is almost* beyond dispute among scholars, and belongs to the framework of the narrative of Jesus's life”.

In fact it's a good example of how history was preserved, despite going through minor mutations in retelling. We may not have the Jesus-cam exact words, but we do have a very clear image of what happened.



(*The 'almost' bit being some Jesus Seminar members, of course, and this merely illustrates their slot towards the end of the spectrum. See above)

And that is baloney. There are no eye-witnesses nor any attestations.