Jesus' crucifixion is considered by scholars as the most indusputable fact about the historical Jesus. Even a revisionist and radical skeptical, religious pluralist and atheist scholar like John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar has conceded "That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be" (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 145).When reading carefully and sympathetically (but critically too) the version of the historical Jesus created by the leading members of the Jesus Seminar (specially of religious pluralist Marcus Borg), one topic always appeared in my mind: If Jesus was like that, how the hell are we going to make sense of his crucifixion?
Just for the record and summarizing: As I've explained and documented in other posts, the version of the historical Jesus of people like Borg is of a non-exclusivistic Jesus, a Jesus compatible with religious pluralism, i.e. a Jesus who (in regards to other spiritual leaders and religious traditions) is essentially nothing special. This "nothing special" version of Jesus is part of the large secularistic agenda of the Jesus Seminar: namely, to undermine and destroy traditional Christianity.
In Borg's own words, his version of Jesus (misleadingly and falsely presented as the version accepted by contemporary mainstream Jesus scholarship) is a version which "undermines a widespread Christian belief that Jesus is unique, which is commonly linked to the notion that Christianity is exclusively true and that ‘Jesus is the only way." ( Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 37. Emphasis in blue added)"
In summary, Borg's version of Jesus is straightforwardly a religious pluralist version of Jesus.
In order to make his pluralistic case, Borg has to evade or misrepresent (with misleading considerations about "metaphors" and "meanings", a tactic used as red-herrings) the clear evidence for the historical sayings of Jesus implying his exclusivistic self-perception and the evidence for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. Borg is forced to deny the radical sayings of Jesus implying his exclusivistic position regarding God and specially the sayings in which Jesus stood and spoke with divine authority (i.e. in matters in which only God has authority, which again implies his exclusivism and divinity).
It is absolutely crucial to understand why Borg's pluralistic position requires, as necessary condition, to avoid these exclusivistic sayings of Jesus or any fact or saying implying Jesus' divinity or his bodily resurrection. If you understand this point, your understanding of the Jesus Seminar project, and particularly Borg's, become evident and understable. (In future posts, I'll discuss some of these sayings in detail and document how Borg and other pluralists misrepresent them in order to undermine their historicity or the exclusivistic interpretation/reading of them).
Borg's Jesus amounts to a kind of teacher of wisdom, a mere teller of stories and a speaker of great one-liners whose purpose was the transformation of people's perception. At the center of his message was an invitation to see things differently.
Now, if it is essentially what Jesus did and taught, how the hell can we explain his crucifixion?
In the traditional portrait of Jesus, his crucifixion was due to Jesus' radical claims implying his divinity and exclusivism (as the only Son of God, as a divine man who stood and spoke authoritatively in matters which belong only to God, etc.) and therefore his claims were considered blasphemous (= irreverent and offensive to God). In this traditional understanding, Jesus was clearly a threat, specially when he spoke with the authority of God (e.g. changing the Old Testament laws given by God). In this understanding, the crucifixion is the kind of punishment that you would expect to a person who uttered radical blasphemous claims implying divinity and exclusivity.
For any objective researcher, I think, the historical evidence clearly indicates that Jesus' crucifixion was instigated by his blasphemous claims, not by imaginary "invitations" to see differently through a bunch of nice stories and great on-liners.
In Borg's pluralistic and undermined version of Jesus as a nice teacher whose main message was simply to "invite people to see differently", the crucifixion of such a person becomes largely inexplicable. How could such a nice person to be an actual threat deserving so a severe punishment?
The explanations of the crucifixion given by Crossan, Borg and other religious pluralists and atheists in the Jesus Seminar are very weak and implausible, and it is testimony of the extreme weakness of their revisionist case for the historical Jesus. It actually makes me more sure and confident that their portrait of the historical Jesus is largely false (and note that we are not including here the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. If the latter is considered, Borg's pluralistic case is essentially destroyed).
Initially, I thought that I was exaggerating too much the apparent tension of the strongly undermined pluralistic version of Jesus of people like Borg and the fact of the crucifixion. But soon I discoveried that many leading Jesus scholars who don't buy the pluralistic version of Jesus created by Borg (and others) have noted the same problem.
For example, John Meier comments "such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him threaten no one" (A Marginal Jew, vol. 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, p.177)
In conclusion, the undermined and religious pluralistic version of the historical Jesus created by people like Marcus Borg is unlikely to be true given:
1-Jesus' crucifixion
2-Jesus's true historical sayings implying his exclusivity in divine matters (which fits perfectly with and explains point 1).
3-The fact that the early Church considered that Jesus was God (a fact inexplicable given that Jews were hard-core monotheistic believers, i.e. believers in just one God, and it was considered strongly blasphemous to consider that a mere man was God. Contrary to the Jesus Seminar's anti-Christian prejudices and assumptions, it is very unlikely that this divine view of Jesus was a pure invention. Jews had every religious predisposition against Jesus, or any other man, to be God. This fact is best explained by Jesus' actual sayings implying his divinity, and hence its exclusivity regarding God, which in turns explains why his claims were considered blasphemous and in turns explains the fact of his crucifixion).
3-Jesus' resurrection (provided it happened... if it happened, then the arguments of point 2 become stronger and Borg's religious pluralistic case is destroyed).
Borg's religious pluralist understanding of Jesus cannot explain well the 3 points mentioned above, except in a very ad hoc, idiosyncraitc and contrived way. Borg only can evade them or force idiosyncratic interpretations of the evidence (interpretations which only atheists, religious pluralists and people hostile to traditional Christianity would buy. Reseachers or students outside these 3 biased groups would very easily recognize the strongly biased anti-Christian approach of the Jesus seminar and Marcus Borg to the historical Jesus).
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