Inconsistência Metodológica Jesus Seminar

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 59-84 www.brill.
nl/jshj
A Prophet Is Rejected in His Home Town

(Mark 6.4 and Parallels): A Study in the
Methodological (In)Consistency of the Jesus Seminar*
William John Lyons

University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
w.j.lyons@bristol.ac.uk
Abstract
While some might construct their view of the historical Jesus based upon the
published findings of the Jesus Seminar, others may re-examine individual
pericopae and argue that a change of ‘colour’ would be appropriate. Here it is
suggested that the arguments offered by the Seminar to justify the colouring
of one saying of Jesus—that a prophet is rejected in his home town (Gos.
Thom. 31.1, Mk 6.4, Matt. 13.57, Lk. 4.24, and Jn 4.44)—as a (deep) pink
are flawed. Arguments based upon multiple attestation, plausibility and
embarrassment are considered and rejected, leading to the conclusion that
black is the most appropriate colour for the saying. Two explanations for its
inclusion in the Gospels are offered: that it is a proverb inserted by the writers
because it mirrored their own circumstances, and the more speculative view
that the saying was viewed as appropriate because of Jesus’ own hyperbolic
characterization of discipleship (cf. Lk. 14.26).
Keywords
Jesus Seminar, methodology, Jesus as prophet, rejection at Nazareth
*) Thanks are here offered to Helen Bond, Andy Reimer, Lloyd Pietersen, and
James Harding for their comments on early versions of this piece. None bear any
responsibility for what follows, however.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/174551908X266033

60 W.J. Lyons / Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 59-84
1. Introduction
My interest in the material that follows was first aroused by the comments
of Robert L. Webb in an editorial foreword in the Journal for the Study of
the Historical Jesus (JSHJ).
Many of the articles published thus far [in JSHJ] have argued that a particu-
lar pericope or tradition is probably historical and then proceeded to show
the implications this has for understanding the figure of Jesus. While such
articles are the bread and butter of this journal’s focus, it would be equally
valid to have articles that argue that a particular pericope or tradition com-
monly used in historical reconstructions of Jesus has a provenance other
than the historical Jesus, and thus should not be used in historical recon-
structions of Jesus. This type of argument also makes a contribution to this
discipline, and such articles would be equally considered for publication.1
Webb’s comments prompted the following train of thought.

Now that the Jesus Seminar2 has completed its preliminary delibera-
tions on the various strands of the Jesus tradition and published their
colour-coded editions of the Gospels,3 the time appears to have come
1)
Robert L. Webb, ‘Editorial Foreword’, JSHJ 2.2 (2004), pp. 115-16 (p. 115). Part
of the explanation for this situation is the somewhat unique situation created by the
existence of the publishing arm of the Jesus Seminar, the Polebridge Press, and of a
scholarly journal and a magazine dedicated to its work, Forum and The Fourth R
respectively. The essays and books of the Fellows find a ready home in Santa Rosa,
California (though, of course, they are also published elsewhere). To a certain extent,
it is the outsiders who are left arguing against the Seminar’s minimalist positions that
JSHJ has initially attracted.
2)
The Seminar’s origins predate my involvement in biblical scholarship and it is only
very recently that I have become involved in studying the historical Jesus. However, I
would like to make clear that I do not regard the Seminar or its members as lacking
scholarly integrity and as simply to be dismissed. What follows hopefully constitutes a
critical yet playful engagement with their methods and published results.
3)
R.W. Funk, R.W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for
the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993); and R.W. Funk, R.W.
Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of
Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998). For the various meanings attached
to the colours, see M.A. Powell’s ‘Chart 3: What Do the Colours Mean?’ in his
W.J. Lyons / Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 59-84 61
for its Fellows to offer their own accounts of who Jesus was.4 One meth-
odological approach that might be widely adopted is that of Roy W.
Hoover: ‘I decided to compile and read through [the authentic words
of Jesus], printed in red and pink in [The Five Gospels]’.5 To my mind,
however, the creation of such a ‘database’ of authentic sayings implicitly
raises questions about the ongoing status of each of the red and pink
sayings and actions. According to Seminar Fellow, Mahlon Smith,
Fellows are of course free to adjust the density of particular elements from
previous voting by suggesting reasons for a different weighting. But the
rationale for such correction must come from insight into the capability
of particular items to account for other historically probable data rather
than from the unexorcised prejudices of our own poetic imaginations.6
Taking Webb’s call as a challenge, I came to wonder if there were

among the publications of the Jesus Seminar red or pink sayings or
actions that could be demonstrated to be more properly coloured black
The Jesus Debate: Modern Historians Investigate the Life of Christ (Oxford: Lion, 1998),
p 79. Colloquially, red is rendered there as ‘That’s Jesus!’, pink as ‘Sure sounds like
Jesus’, grey as ‘Well, maybe’, and black as ‘There’s been some mistake’. These simple
definitions will suffice here.
4)
Of course, individual Fellows of the Seminar have offered many such constructions
over the years (e.g. the many works of R.W. Funk, J.D. Crossan and M. Borg). The
colour-coded editions of the tradition increasingly demand an explicit interaction,
however, if only in the form of a negative response (cf. e.g. Seminar Fellow W. Wink’s
statement that he intends to ‘ignore the Seminar’s database and voting tabulations
when I begin to write on the Son of Man’ (http://www.westarinstitute.org/
Periodicals/4R _Articles/Wink_bio/wink_bio.html, accessed on 4 March 2006).
5)
‘The Jesus of History: A Vision of the Good Life’, in R.W. Hoover (ed.), Profiles of
Jesus (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2002), pp. 41-64 (p. 41). For a published
commentary on these verses intended to introduce the Jesus of the Seminar to a wider
audience, see R.W. Funk, A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision (Santa Rosa,
CA: Polebridge Press, 2002).
6)
‘Israel’s Prodigal Son’, in Hoover (ed.), Profiles of Jesus, pp. 87-116 (p. 89). Errors may
also have crept in and should be corrected. I have pointed out elsewhere that the account
of Jesus carrying his own cross in John 19.17 is considered authentic by the Seminar,
but coloured black in The Acts of Jesus, an obvious error in need of future correction
(‘The Hermeneutics of Fictional Black and Factual Red: The Markan Simon of Cyrene
and the Quest for the Historical Jesus’, JSHJ 4.2 [2006], pp. 139-54 [p. 144]).
(for reasons obviously unconnected with the ‘unexorcised prejudices’

of my own ‘poetic imagination’). The saying of Jesus eventually cho-
sen for consideration here is the one that holds—in various different
wordings—that a prophet is rejected in his own place. In the Seminar’s
second ballot on the saying as it appears in Gos. Thom. 31.1 in 1990,
50% voted red, 29% pink, 13% grey, and 8% black, sufficient to give
the text a ‘strong pink’ colouring with an overall rating of 0.74 (against
the 0.75 needed for a red rating).7 As J.R. Michaels points out, ‘[t]he
only saying of Jesus in the entire Gospel of John judged likely to be
authentic by the Jesus Seminar is [the prophet saying] found in John
4.44’.8 An eminently suitable choice, I decided.9
Another point requires explanation before we begin. The Jesus
Seminar, whose arguments about authenticity are being discussed here,
is a composite figure, a construct that emerges from the commentary
sections of The Five Gospels as ‘R.W. Funk, R.W. Hoover, and the Jesus
Seminar’ and from The Acts of Jesus as ‘R.W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar’.
Although the views of individual Fellows will appear at various points,
the ‘work’ being discussed will be treated primarily as that of a singular
entity, ‘the Jesus Seminar’.10
7)
Jesus Database (http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb022.html, accessed on 17th
January 2006); cf. Forum 7.2 [1991]). Of course, these figures imply that others—the
8% who voted for black—have already trodden a similar route with this text.
8)
‘The Itinerant Jesus and His Home Town’, in B. Chilton and C.A. Evans (eds),
Authenticating the Activities of Jesus [Leiden: Brill, 1999], pp. 177-93 (p. 177).
9)
Concerning the saying, J.D.G. Dunn states that ‘[t]here is a general willingness to rec-
ognize a saying of Jesus’ (Jesus Remembered [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004], p. 661
n. 213). Although what follows could be therefore be construed as an attempt to over-
turn this ‘consensus’, the simple truth is that the traditional opponents of the Seminar
are unlikely to be convinced by what follows. The argument offered here assumes an
acceptance of much of what the Seminar has already argued. Nevertheless, the conclu-
sion offered is one that might well bear some further thought from their opponents,
many of whom are happy to repeat some of the arguments used by the Seminar in con-
nection with this saying (cf. e.g. J.R. Donohue and D.J. Harrington’s echoing of the
Seminar’s conclusion that the ‘aphorism … circulated independently, with minor varia-
tions’ [The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 185]).
10)
How many, if any, of the Seminar Fellows are like this construct is difficult to say.
N.T. Wright has sought to exonerate many of the Fellows from any responsibility for
the commentary sections in The Five Gospels, laying the ‘blame’ for them at the feet
2. Arguments for a (Deep) Pink Saying
The ‘prophet without honour/favour’ saying is attested in five ‘Gospels’:

Gos. Thom. 31.1, Mark 6.4, Matthew 13.57, Luke 4.24, and John 4.44.11
Gos. Thom. 31.1: ⲡⲉϫⲉ  ⲙ ⲡⲣⲟⲫⲏⲧⲏⲥ ϣⲏⲡ ϩ ⲡⲉϥϯⲙⲉ ⲙⲁⲣⲉ

ⲥⲟⲉⲓⲛ ⲑⲉⲣⲁⲡⲉⲩⲉ ⲛⲉⲧ ⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ ⲙⲟϥ12
‘No prophet is accepted in his own village; no doctor heals those
who know him.’
// P. Oxy. 1.31: οὐκ ἔστιν δεκτὸς προφήτης ἐν τῇ π(ατ)ρίδι αὐτ[ο]ῦ
οὐδὲ ἰατρὸς ποιεῖ θεραπείας εἰς τοὺς γεινώσκοντας αὐτό(ν)
‘A prophet is not accepted in his own country; no doctor works
healing among those who know him’.
Mark 6.4: Οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἄτιμος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ

καὶ ἐν τοῖς συγγενεῦσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ
‘A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and
among his kin, and in his house’.
of Funk and Hoover (‘Five Gospels But No Gospel: Jesus and The Seminar’, in Chilton
and Evans [eds], Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, pp. 83–120 [p. 89]). The attribu-
tion of the views expressed to the Jesus Seminar as a whole, however, must be held pace
Wright to suggest some degree of assent by each of the Fellows to those views unless,
of course, they have publicly expressed their dissent (cf. e.g. W. Wink’s position in
n. 2 above) or published significant alternative accounts (cf. e.g. the use of Jesus
Seminar co-founder J.D. Crossan’s work in what follows below).
11)
Five Gospels, p. 280. The order that follows here is that of the side notes on p. 490
of The Five Gospels.
12)
Original language texts here are those found in T.O. Lambdin, ‘The Gospel
According to Thomas: Translation’, in B. Layton (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7,
Vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), pp. 53-93 (p. 66—Coptic), and in H.W. Attridge, ‘The
Gospel According to Thomas: Appendix: The Greek Fragments’, in Layton (ed.), Nag
Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, Vol. 1, pp. 95-128 (p. 120—Greek). Though Attridge regards
as it as ‘virtually certain that the Coptic was translated from a Greek form of the text’,
he goes on to suggest that it is not possible to be certain about the exact relationship
between our three extant Greek papyrus manuscripts (P. Oxy. 1, 654, and 655) and the
Coptic manuscript (pp. 99-101). He notes only one difference between the two ver-
sions of our saying—the appearance of the Coptic ‘village’ instead of the Greek ‘coun-
try’. This he regards as probably an example of ‘loose translation’ (p. 101). Crossan
Matt 13:57: Οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἄτιμος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι καὶ ἐν

τῃ oἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ
‘A prophet is not without honor except in [his] own country and in
his house’.
Luke 4:24: οὐδεὶς προφήτης δεκτός ἐστιν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ

‘No prophet is accepted in his own country’.
John 4.44: προφήτης ἐν τῇ ι᾽δίᾳ πατρίδι τιμὴν οὐκ ἔχει

‘A prophet does not have honor in his own country’.13
The Seminar sees the ‘adage’ as a ‘short, easily remembered … ironi-

cal remark that lent itself to oral transmission.’14 The single ‘aphorism’
of Gos. Thom. 31.1, Luke 4.24, and John 4.44 was ‘probably’ the earli-
est form of the saying, a view based on the principle that simpler equals
earlier.15 Not explicitly stated, but made plain by the side notes is the
Seminar’s view that the saying is attested by three ‘independent’ sources:
Thomas, Mark, and John.16 The variations in wording between these
sources are not seen as particularly significant:
Whether the prophet gets no respect or is not welcome is probably merely

a variation in the way that the core proverb was performed. The same can
be said of the variety of terms used for the place in question: ‘hometown’,
‘home’, territory’.17
concludes that ‘the two versions are probably as identical as texts in totally different
languages can be’ (In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus [San Francisco: Harper and
Row, 1983], p. 283).
13)
The Scholars Version does not always follow the grammatical form of the Greek
(e.g. ‘has no honour’; for ‘does not have honour’ in Jn 4.44), and the same Greek word
may be translated into an unhelpful variety of English terms (e.g. πατρίδι = ‘hometurf ’
[P. Oxy. 1]; ‘hometown’ [Mark, Luke]; ‘country’ [Matthew, John]). For the sake of
clarity then, the Greek translations of the saying used here are my own, the Coptic
translation is indebted to that of Lambdin (‘Gospel According to Thomas’, p. 67).
14)
Five Gospels, p. 491; cf. also ‘an ironical remark, short, witty, memorable’ (p. 198).
15)
Five Gospels, pp. 63, 491.
16)
Five Gospels, p. 490.
17)
It is not felt necessary, therefore, to provide any over-arching explana-

tion as to the process by which each version of the saying reached its
present shape. In terms of its form, the Seminar seems happy to describe
the saying as a ‘proverb’.18
About its origins, however, they are somewhat less clear. Initially they
point out that although the saying sounds ‘like a general proverb’, it is
‘unparalleled in ancient sources’, a state of affairs which would normally
augur well for its being authentic Jesus material.19 Nevertheless, it does
have that ‘proverbial ring’20 and its eventual pink designation is explicitly
described as resulting from the conviction of ‘some of the Fellows’ that
the saying ‘may have been derived from popular lore’.21 Therefore, their
final conclusion is that the saying—despite its lack of ancient parallels—
originated as a pre-existing proverb ‘which Jesus probably quoted’.22
18)
Five Gospels, p. 280; Acts of Jesus, p. 85.
19)
Five Gospels, pp. 280, 491; cf. pp. 22-23.
20)
21)
Five Gospels, p. 198 (on p. 63 of The Five Gospels, it is an undifferentiated ‘the
Fellows’ who are said to have given the saying a pink designation). Perhaps typical of
the Seminar’s ambivalence is G. Lüdemann (listed as a fellow in The Acts of Jesus
[p. 540], but not in The Five Gospels), who initially states that the saying was a ‘general
wisdom statement’ that was inserted by Mark into the story of Jesus’ rejection in his
hometown before concluding, rather more ambivalently, that ‘the saying underlying
Mark 6.4 perhaps goes back to Jesus. But it could also have been put into the mouth
of Jesus later’ (Jesus after 2000 Years: What He Really Said and Did [London: SCM
Press, 2000], pp. 39-40).
22)
Acts of Jesus, p. 85. That this position can ‘switch’ so suddenly is perhaps due, not
so much to a dogmatic necessity, however, but rather because of a somewhat imprecise
use of the term ‘unparalleled’. W.D. Davies and D.C. Allison list some non-Christian
parallels including Dio Chrysostom 47.6, Epictetus Diss. 3.16, Apollonius of Tyana,
Ep. 44, and Pindar, Olym. 12.13-16. They conclude that ‘what we have in the Gospels
is probably a Jewish version of the common sentiment that great men are rejected by
their own’ (Matthew II: VIII-XVIII [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991], pp. 459-60).
J. Gnilka also notes the attribution of words with a similar sentiment to the men of
Jeremiah’s home town, Anatoth, in Jer. 11.21: ‘Weissage nicht mehr im Namen des
Herrn, sonst mußt du sterben durch unsere Hand’ (‘prophecy no more in the name of
the Lord, else you must die by our hand’; Das Matthäus Evangelium, I [Freiburg:
Herder, 1988], p. 514). While without identical extant parallels in the period, it seems
safe to conclude that the saying is not wholly implausible as part of the common lore
of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean.
In the introduction to The Five Gospels, the Seminar states that ‘the
followers of Jesus borrowed frequently from common wisdom and
coined their own sayings and parables, which they then attributed to
Jesus’.23 Clearly such a pre-existing proverb would normally be consid-
ered inauthentic, an imposition of the early church. Yet here that basic
insight is ignored and the Seminar’s customary skeptical stance is set
aside. What is the evidence that leads the Seminar to see this proverb as
‘typical of Jesus as sage and prophet’?24
Although the level of attestation of the saying is important, the
Seminar ultimately decided on its pink designation on the basis of
three claims made about its plausibility. First, the saying is said to be
plausible in the context of Jesus’ general activity.25 What he was doing
inevitably invited rejection from his contemporaries. Second, it is said
to be plausible in the case of his hometown, with the Seminar con-
cluding that
Jesus probably provoked resentment on the part of both his family and his
Nazareth neighbors: They perhaps thought he had exceeded his position
and place in their society.26
Finally, the ‘historicity’ of this scenario is further supported by the

Seminar’s claim that it is implausible that the evangelists would have
invented the story of Jesus’ rejection in his hometown.27 They conclude
that ‘[b]ecause Jesus was rejected in his own village, we can imagine a
plausible setting for his use of this witticism.’28
The Seminar offers additional commentary on how the proverb has
been incorporated by the authors of the canonical Gospels. Matthew,
according to the Seminar, has explicitly tied Jesus’ inability to do magic to
the lack of faith in his audience.29 Mark’s phrase, καὶ ἐν τοῖς συγγενεῦσιν
23)
24)
25)
26)
Acts of Jesus, p. 85.
27)
28)
29)
αὐτοῦ (‘and among his relatives’), is seen by the Seminar as an addition

(subsequently left out by Matthew and Luke) arising from two factors:
(1) Mark’s view of Jesus’ blood relatives as a negative counterpoint to
his ‘true family’ (cf. 3.21, 31-35); and (2) his familiarity with a tradition
that Jesus’ family had once considered him mad, a scrap of information
that the Seminar considers unlikely to have been something invented
by the church and hence authentic (with a 0.72 rating, this is another
‘strong pink’ text).30
Luke moves the saying to the start of Jesus’ mission (4.16-30), a
move that
underscores one basic rule of evidence adopted by the Jesus Seminar: the
contexts for sayings and parables provided by the evangelists often vary
from gospel to gospel and cannot, as a consequence, be taken as reliable
indices to the meaning of the saying or parable.31
Luke also adds his own explicit theological touch, the stories of the
Gentile widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian (4.25-27). He
thus provides a ‘symbolic foreshadowing of the church’s mission to the
gentiles in the book of Acts.’32 The doctor proverb (παραβολή) of 4.23
was ‘well-known’ in antiquity and the Seminar concludes that it is
‘highly probable’ that Luke ‘borrowed’ it and ‘put it on the lips of Jesus
in this context.’33 They also note that ‘it is possible that Luke was aware
of the two-line proverb preserved in Thomas, but decided to revamp it
to suit the story he was developing.’34
The Seminar points out that τῇ ἰδίᾳ πατρίδι (‘his own country’) in
John 4.44 does not refer to Nazareth, a fact that presumably underscores
30)
Acts of Jesus, p. 73; Five Gospels, p. 491; cf. The Jesus Database (http://www.faith
futures.org/JDB/jdb105.html, accessed on 9 May 2006).
31)
32)
33)
Five Gospels, p. 279; cf. p. 491.
34)
Five Gospels, p. 491. The Seminar suggests that echoes of this combination of
prophet and doctor may also be found in Mark 6.5 (where the Markan Jesus heals a
few sick people). They conclude that the doctor link was lost because the Church
eventually became more interested in Jesus the prophet than Jesus the healer (Five
Gospels, p. 491; cf. also Crossan, In Fragments, p. 285).
the methodological rule about the problematic nature of contexts for

sayings and parables noted above. The saying also disrupts the narrative
and they note that ‘some scholars’ think it may have been inserted later.
They conclude that it is another, ‘probably independent, witness to the
simple, early form of the saying recorded in Gos. Thom. 31:1’.35
To summarise, the Seminar believes that Jesus himself used a pre-
existing proverb, designating its earliest forms the deepest possible
shade of pink (a pale red?). They do so because of its level of attestation,
its plausibility in the context of Jesus’ ministry, and its implausibility as
a later—and somewhat embarrassing—invention of the church. If we
are to argue that they should have followed their original insight, that
it was the early church that applied this proverb to Jesus, then it is these
three elements that must be rendered problematic. Only then will this
saying be more properly ‘de-coloured’ to black.
3. Multiple Attestation and Its Limitations
In the Seminar’s account, it is clearly implied that the saying is triply

attested, with three independent sources, Thomas, Mark, and John.36
To achieve the purpose of this article, the aim should clearly be to
reduce the level of attestation to a single textual source and thus remove
the validating tag of ‘independent attestation’.37 In order to do this,
however, it is first necessary to consider increasing the number of inde-
pendent sources.
35)
Five Gospels, p. 412. In The Five Gospels the Gospel of John is itself seen as an inde-
pendent source (p. 16), though a more ambivalent position appears in The Acts of Jesus.
There it is noted that John is thought by some to know Mark and perhaps Luke, with
the Seminar concluding that ‘[w]hatever the compositional theory, … the Fourth
Gospel is not thought to provide independent historical attestation of events in the life
of Jesus (p. 19; but note the independence argument reappearing on pp. 388-89).
36)
Five Gospels, p. 490; cf. pp. 16-19.
37)
It would then be tempting to try to invoke Seminar Fellow J.D. Crossan’s ‘rule’ that
singly attested sources should play no part in constructing the historical Jesus (The
Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant [San Francisco, CA: Harper
SanFrancisco, 1991], pp. xxxii-iii), but of course there is no compelling reason why his
own rule should be accepted by the construct ‘Jesus Seminar’ being investigated here.
In his own works, John D. Crossan has consistently argued that the
saying is ‘multiply attested’ with four independent sources.38 His addi-
tional independent source is Luke 4.24. Though acknowledging that
Luke has the Markan saying to hand, he suggests that on this occasion
the evangelist has relied on a second source.39 His decision to describe
Luke as working in this way is quite understandable. In contrast to Mark
and Matthew’s use of ἄτιμος (‘without honour’) in a conditional sen-
tence (cf. εἰ μή, ‘except’), Luke uses the term δεκτός (‘acceptable’) in an
absolute sentence with a negated noun: οὐδεὶς προφήτης δεκτός ἐστιν
ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ (‘no prophet is accepted in his home town’). In
terms of its differences to Mark 6.4, this version is surely as worthy of
consideration for independence as John 4.44 (also an absolute sentence
but with the verb negated, and τιμὴν rather than δεκτός).
The Seminar of The Five Gospels comes closest to adopting this view
when they suggests that ‘the earliest form of the saying is probably the
aphorism consisting of a single line found in Gos. Thom. 31.1; Luke 4.24;
and John 4.44’ and that ‘it is possible that Luke was aware of the two-
line proverb preserved in Thomas.’40 Their ambivalence on this point is
clearly demonstrated, however, by their continuing to see Luke 4.24 as
being dependent on Mark 6.4.41
As already noted above, the Seminar describes the differences in the
wording of the sayings as ‘probably merely a variation in the way that
38)
In Fragments, p. 281; The Historical Jesus, pp. 434-36. Though one of the co-founders
of the Jesus Seminar and therefore—in some way—connected with the construct Jesus
Seminar under investigation here, Crossan’s views on this saying do clearly stand over
against the views of that entity. In what follows then, he will be used as an external
(though closely related) conversation partner and his arguments used to problematise
those of the Seminar.
39)
In Fragments, p. 282. Crossan does not supply arguments for this position in The
Historical Jesus, being content to describe the saying as ‘well attested’ (p. 347).
40)
41)
Cf. the placing of Luke with Matthew and Mark in the side notes on p. 490 of The
Five Gospels, and their comment that Luke omitted the Markan phrase ‘and among his
relatives’ on p. 491. The Seminar may simply have made a mistake here. But even if
this is not the case, the Fellows may wish to reconsider their position after seeing here
the ramifications of that particular decision.
the core proverb was performed’.42 This flexibility suggests that even envis-
aging a difference in usage could easily have led to a difference in written
form, regardless of the words provided by any source. Taken in too strong
a sense, however, this view also removes any possibility of providing an
account of the development of the tradition on the basis of the words
used. This appears to be the case for Crossan. He writes that
[w]hen one compares the different versions of the prophet saying … , it

seems evident that we are dealing with performancial variations that do
not allow or need any further decision concerning the oral original. Thus,
for example, the use of ‘honour’ in Mark and Luke [sic = Matthew] and
of ‘acceptable’ in Luke and Thomas are free performancial variations that
allow of no further choice between them.43
He sees the Luke/Thomas wording of the saying as being the earlier

version only because of a ‘major indirect consideration’, his preference
for seeing the dual form of the saying in Thomas as being more original
than the single form of the canonical Gospels.44
Such an argument can go both ways, however. While arguing for
Thomas as the earlier version, Crossan states that ‘Luke cites another
proverb in 4.23 that invites a counter-proverb such as that in Gos.
Thom. 31.b [sic]’.45 The conclusion that it was precisely the link in
Luke (or, perhaps less likely, in Mark) that did ‘invite’ the later deci-
sion to pair two such proverbs is relatively unproblematic. On this
basis, the double logion could just as easily be seen as being dependent
on one of the Synoptics (almost certainly Luke) and not as an inde-
pendent source.46
The Seminar’s argument that the simple saying did not derive from
the more complex saying clearly shows them to be less sceptical about
the value of ‘performancial variations’ than Crossan, however, and per-
haps provides the strongest piece of evidence that Luke did have access
42)
43)
In Fragments, p. 284—emphasis added.
44)
In Fragments, p. 284.
45)
In Fragments, p. 284—emphasis added.
46)
Cf. e.g. Davies and Allison, Matthew II, p. 460.
to a second tradition.47 Since their general statement equating simplicity

with originality is hardly sufficient on its own to convince,48 the weight
of the argument lies principally on their ability to demonstrate that the
saying found in Luke 4.24 cannot be derived from that of Mark 6.4.
Unfortunately, there seems little difficulty in seeing the Lukan saying
as deriving from the Markan saying. The Lukan Jesus closes his pro-
grammatic reading from Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue with the
words κηρύξαι ἐνιαυτὸν κυρίου δεκτόν (‘to proclaim the acceptable
year of the Lord’; 4.19).49 By altering the Markan saying so that the word
δεκτός (‘acceptable’) is repeated within a context of rejection only five
verses later, Luke has created a deeply ironic echo, foregrounding the
notion of what is or is not acceptable for his ensuing account of Jesus’
ministry.50 Since the word δεκτός possesses a positive connotation, the
conditional construction that was necessary for Mark’s negative term
ἄτιμος (‘without honour’) was rendered redundant. The Lukan saying
was thus simplified into an absolute sentence.51 The Seminar is right not
to try to adopt Crossan’s four independent sources!
47)
48)
As J.P. Meier has argued,
[i]t is no means invariably true in the Gospel tradition that the shorter text is earlier
than and independent of the longer text containing the same material. Matthew usu-
ally shortens and streamlines Mark’s miracle stories, but he is no less dependent on
Mark for all the brevity. In fact, it is quite possible that a tradition may not develop
along a straight line of shorter to longer or longer to shorter, but may meander back
and forth (A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol.1: The Roots of the
Problem and the Person [New York: Doubleday, 1991], p. 132).
49)
The presence of δεκτόν (‘acceptable’) in this passage is obscured in the Scholars
Version (‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s amnesty’).
50)
Cf. e.g. J.A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke 1-9 (New York: Doubleday,
1985), p. 528; L.T. Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
1992), p. 80; and J. Nolland, Luke 1-9.20 (Waco, TX: Word, 1989), p. 200.
51)
Though Luke and Matthew both have a tendency to ‘improve’ Mark’s Greek, it is
perhaps noteworthy that it is Luke alone who opts for simplicity here. Matthew has no
interest in δεκτός (‘acceptable’)—the word does not appear anywhere in his work—
and, on this occasion, does not choose to alter Mark’s sentence structure (but note the
following comments on John 4.44).
This conclusion also has implications for two of the Seminar’s three
independent sources, however. If it is accepted that the complex Mark
6.4 could have been easily recast as the simple Luke 4.24, then both
Gos. Thom. 31.1 and John 4.44 are also rendered problematic.
P. Oxy. 1.31 differs little from Luke 4.24—the former has a negated
verb rather than the latter’s negated noun—and the appearance in that
manuscript of what now appears to be a specifically Lukan word, δεκτός
(‘acceptable’) strengthens the view that the dual saying originated as a
response to the invitation issued by Luke’s own doctor proverb (4.23).
If that is the case, this logion does not provide us with an independent
source for our saying.
R.E. Brown notes that the saying in John 4.44 has the negative style
of Luke and the vocabulary of Mark and Matthew.52 As with Luke,
the form of the sentence is negative and absolute rather than Mark’s
positive but conditional form (though it is the verb that is being negated
rather than Luke’s noun). John’s use of τιμήν (‘honour’), however, probably
echoes the wording that Mark would have used with such a sentence
structure.53 The differences between Mark 6.4 and John 4.44 are there-
fore actually of less significance than those between the Markan saying
and Luke 4.24. Though Brown himself concludes that John 4.44 is a
variant form of a traditional saying rather than a selective borrowing
from the Synoptic evangelists, his alternatives pose a false dichotomy. It
is not necessary to choose either (a) the saying as a traditional form that
possesses both Markan and Lukan attributes but is independent of
them (as Brown and the Seminar do), or (b) the saying as the product
of an author picking material evenly from two literary sources. Rather,
the Johannine saying is better understood as having been derived directly
from the Markan form of the saying alone by a writer or redactor who
52)
The Gospel of John, I-XII (ABC 29; New York: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 187-88; cf.
also B. Lindars’ conclusion that the ‘vocabulary is close to that of Matthew and Mark,
but the form is nearer to Luke’ (The Gospel of John [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1972], p. 200).
53)
John’s simplification with τιμήν (‘honour’) further supports the argument that
Luke’s modification of the saying was not driven by simplicity, but rather by his
interest in δεκτός (‘acceptable’).
desired a simpler sentence structure, but did not possess Luke’s interest
in δεκτός (‘acceptable’). If that is the case, John does not provide us
with an independent source to our proverb either. The Seminar is left
with only a single independent source, Mark.
By suggesting Johannine dependence on the Markan form of the
saying and Thomasine dependence on Mark via Luke, this view moves
beyond the ‘evidential rules’ laid out by the Seminar as to Gospel rela-
tionships;54 blanket claims about the independence of John and Thomas
are both set aside. The temptation must surely be for the Seminar to
reject these arguments at once. But two points can be made to forestall
an immediate rejection of this position. First, it should be remembered
that seeing one Thomas logion as dependent on the Synoptics certainly
does not mean that all of the other logia in Thomas are dependent. The
case for each should be argued on its own merit. Second, it remains
highly likely that John 4.44 was an insertion by a later redactor. While
it is being increasingly argued that John had knowledge of Mark,55 it
seems even more likely that a redactor working with the Fourth Gospel
at the late date generally envisaged would have come into contact with
one or more of the other Gospels.
For the present, however, let us accept their reluctance. Attestation
alone, after all, is not how the Seminar explicitly justifies its views on
this saying (and the reduction of this saying to single attestation would
not in any case mean that the saying was necessarily inauthentic). How
well do their additional justifications for the authenticity of Jesus’ use
of this saying fare under critical examination?
54)
Cf. esp. Five Gospels, pp. 9-16.
55)
R. Bauckham, for example, has argued for John’s familiarity with Mark, but not
with Luke (‘John for Readers of Mark’, in R. Bauckham [ed.], The Gospel for all
Christians [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998], pp. 147-71). Similarly, Crossan has also
suggested that John’s passion and resurrection accounts are ‘dependent, but creatively
so, on the Cross Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels’ (Historical Jesus, pp. 431-32), argu-
ing that the presence of the literary-theological structure underlying Mark 14.53-72 in
John 18.13-27 is evidence that Mark was a source for John (‘Historical Jesus as Risen
Lord’, in J.D. Crossan et al, The Jesus Controversy: Perspectives in Conflict [Harrisburg,
PA: Trinity Press International, 1999], pp. 1-47 [pp. 23-26]).
4. Plausibility and Its Limitations
The next strand of argument invoked by the Jesus Seminar relates to the
proverb’s plausibility in the twin contexts of Jesus’ wider ministry and
his reception in Nazareth. The particular understanding of the ministry
and activity of Jesus here is, of course, that of the Jesus Seminar itself.
Jesus is seen as a wise sage, whose insights threaten the present order,
leading to a glad acceptance by the lower classes, but a firm rejection by
the powers-that-be.56 There seems little doubt that the Seminar’s Jesus
would have been rejected by some of those who encountered him. But
is it likely that such a Jesus would have experienced total rejection dur-
ing his ministry?
There is no doubt that the Gospels themselves portray Jesus as being
rejected by whole populations during his wider ministry elsewhere. He
is rejected by the Galilean cities of Corazon, Bethsaida, and Capernaum,
by the crowd before Pilate, and by the Jews as a whole. Do these
accounts provide evidence to support the claim that the experiences of
his wider ministry make his rejection in Nazareth plausible?
First, during his time in Galilee Jesus is portrayed as pronouncing
woes on Corazon, Bethsaida, and Capernaum for their apparently com-
plete failure to respond to his miracles with repentance (Mt. 11.20-24/Lk.
10.13-15; cf. also Lk. 10.12-14 and its parallels, Mt. 10.14-15 and Mk
6.11). The Seminar does not see this material as authentic, however,
arguing instead that these words reflect the frustration, not of their
Jesus, but of later ‘Christian prophets following the failure of missions
like the ones referred to in Q.’57 Jesus, they suggest, would hardly have
told the cities ‘to go to hell, especially after teaching his disciples to love
their enemies.’58 The total rejection of the Seminar’s Jesus by the Galilean
cities is thus fiction.
Second, Jesus is shown being totally rejected in Jerusalem. In response
to Pilate’s offer to free a prisoner, the priests incite the crowd to reject
Jesus and ask for the release of Barabbas (Mk 15.11). In turn Matthew
56)
For a presentation of the Jesus who emerges from The Five Gospels and The Acts of
Jesus, see Funk, A Credible Jesus.
57)
58)
adds Pilate’s hand-washing and the crowd’s acceptance of responsibility

for Jesus’ blood to the Markan scene (Matt. 27.24-25). The Seminar
regards virtually all of the passion narrative as inauthentic, however. In
particular, Mark 15.11 is described as ‘the product of Mark’s vivid
imagination’59 and as ‘Mark’s invention with mea culpas’.60 Matthew is
described as
‘having aggravated the tragic fiction … by having Judeans embrace collec-

tive guilt for themselves and their children, although many of them had
been followers of Jesus and many others probably knew little or nothing
about him.61
The total rejection of the Seminar’s Jesus in Jerusalem is again consid-

ered fiction.
Finally, the Seminar notes that the placement of the proverb before
references to the activities of Elijah and Elisha among the nations in
Luke 4.25-27 makes explicit a ‘central theme’ in the third Gospel;
namely, that ‘Jesus is to be rejected by his own people but accepted by
the pagans’.62 As the Seminar’s comments above on the Judean crowd in
Jerusalem make plain, however, they simply do not believe that such a
simplistic and theologically motivated portrayal accurately reflects the
historical situation that their Jesus inhabited. The total rejection of
Jesus by all Jews is therefore also fiction.63
59)
Acts of Jesus, p 153.
60)
61)
62)
63)
Other accounts that might appear relevant include the rejection of Jesus by the
unclean spirits (e.g. Mk 1.24; 5.7), by the Pharisees (e.g. Mk 3.6; 10.2), and by
the chief priests and scribes (e.g. Mk 11.18, 27-33; 14.10-11, 14.55; but cf. 12.28-
34). Yet even if considered wholly authentic—and the Seminar is singularly unim-
pressed by most of these accounts (cf. e.g. Acts of Jesus, pp. 69, 112 on Mk 3.6 and
10.2)–none show that Jesus was rejected elsewhere by a populace similar to that in
Nazareth. The extended form of the parable of the vineyard with its depiction of the
rejection of the Son (Mk 12.1-11/Mt. 21.33-43/Lk. 20.9-18) does show such a rejec-
tion, but its similarity to the Gentile replacement theme of, say, Luke 4.25-27 would
clearly lead the Seminar to question its authenticity (Five Gospels, p. 101).
It is surely significant that, by the Seminar’s own account, there is

apparently no factual basis for the view that their Jesus was rejected by
whole populations elsewhere. Their claim that the experiences of his
wider ministry render his negative reception in Nazareth plausible is
therefore untenable.
If it is accepted that the Seminar’s Jesus had little or no difficulty relat-
ing to peasants elsewhere, the question arises as to why he would have
been unable to do so in his hometown. In explaining his rejection at
Nazareth, the Seminar focuses upon what they see as the fundamental
mismatch between his behaviour and his own lack of status.64 They note
the crowd’s surprise about ‘where he had acquired his knowledge’ and
suggest that the use of the designation ‘Mary’s son’ by the people of
Nazareth shows that there was also ‘some question’ about his paternity.65
One of the Seminar’s own statements about Jesus’ reception in
Nazareth, however, raises a significant problem for this view: ‘It is prob-
ably no exaggeration to say that Jesus’ friends and neighbours from his
home village were impressed with his wisdom, and surprised at the same
time.’66 Though the Seminar focuses on the element of surprise and
quickly turns it into the smouldering resentment that led to rejection,
we are still left to wonder both why these people were impressed and
about what the actual content of his words might have meant to them.
It is suggestive that in Luke’s version of events in Nazareth we read that
after Jesus’ opening words, Kαὶ πάντες ἐμαρτύρουν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐθαύμαζον
ἐπὶ τοῖς λόγοις τῆς χάριτος τοῖς ἐκπορευομένοις ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ
(‘and all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words that
came out of his mouth’; 4.22a). Here it is not the contents of his teaching,
64)
In a significantly different proposal that might nevertheless be adopted by the Seminar,
Crossan suggests that they would have been aggrieved, not because Jesus was speaking
out of place, but because his repudiation of brokerage effectively denied them the ben-
efits that his newly-elevated status within the patronage system should have brought to
them (Historical Jesus, p. 347).
65)
Acts of Jesus, p. 203; cf. p. 85. This view is further developed by Lüdemann ( Jesus
after 2000 Years, p. 40). Others point out, however, that Jesus’ designation as ‘Mary’s
son’ does not necessarily involve a derogatory element (cf. esp. Donohue and
Harrington, who list a number of contemporary males also known by their mother’s
names [Gospel of Mark, pp. 184-85]).
66)
Acts of Jesus, p. 84—emphasis added.
but the secondary introduction of the Gentile replacement theme that

leads to his rejection. Given the positive reception enjoyed by the
Seminar’s Jesus elsewhere, there seems little reason to doubt that Luke’s
account may well be accurate on this point.
Given that the words of the Seminar’s Jesus appear to have been well
received by—at least—some of his audience in Nazareth, it seems doubt-
ful that those people would have subsequently rejected him because of
questions about his lack of personal status and legitimacy.67 Just as peo-
ple elsewhere had done, they would have recognised that his message—
exemplified especially in his own lack of self-aggrandisement68—was
deeply subversive of the powers that held sway over their lives.69
67)
One might also ask of Crossan just how much lost personal benefit it would have
taken to achieve such a high level of blindness to the wisdom of Jesus’ message.
68)
It is interesting to note, as R.W. Funk points out in his A Credible Jesus, that our say-
ing is in fact one of only ‘two or three exceptions’ to the ‘rule’ that Jesus ‘does not indulge
in self reference’ (p. 154). In the Seminar’s words, ‘Jesus rarely makes pronouncements
or speaks about himself in the first person’ (Five Gospels, p. 32). In contrast to both Funk
and the Jesus Seminar’s accommodation of this exceptional feature of the saying, how-
ever, it will be regarded here as yet another reason to question its authenticity.
69)
Another explanation for Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth that might be co-opted by the
Seminar has been offered by B.J. Malina and R.L. Rohrbaugh (neither of whom is listed
as a member of the Jesus Seminar in The Five Gospels or The Acts of Jesus). They argue that
the people were upset because Jesus’ gain in honour necessarily meant that someone else
must have lost out—honour being a ‘limited good’ (Social Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992], p. 106). But this extrapolation
of the notion of limited good from the economic sphere into the sphere of more intangi-
ble items like honour has long been subjected to severe criticism. In a early critique of
George Foster’s seminal article (‘Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good’,
American Anthropologist 67 [1965], pp. 293-315), John G. Kennedy points out how far-
reaching and questionable are the assumptions that underlie the transferring of an already
deeply problematic economic ‘limited good’ to less tangible community assets:
When [it] is extended to the two … propositions, that other nontangible and less
community bound “goods” are perceived in the same fashion and … that the gains
of the individual are threats to the community as a whole, it seems the inferences
have gone far beyond the evidence (‘Peasant Society and the Image of Limited
Good’: A Critique, American Anthropologist 68 [1966], pp. 1212-25 [p. 1213]; cf.
also J.R. Gregory, ‘Image of Limited Good, or Expectation of Reciprocity?’, Current
Anthropology 16 [1975], pp. 73-92 [contains a response by Foster himself (pp. 86-87),
and a reply by Gregory (pp. 90-92)]).
The Seminar’s claim about the plausibility of the saying in its Nazareth
setting clearly relies less on the intrinsic likelihood of the events described
and more on the belief that the early church would not have invented
the story of Jesus’ rejection in his hometown.70 How convincing is that
claim? After all, by the Seminar’s own account, the early church did
invent his rejection by the Galilean towns, by the Jews of Jerusalem,
and by the Jews as a whole. Is it really so implausible that the church
created the Nazareth scene and placed our saying into the mouth of Jesus?
5. Embarrassment and Its Limitations
Our final consideration of the origin of the prophet-hometown saying

begins by noting the inherently contradictory attitude adopted by the
Seminar to the ‘basic rule of evidence’ mentioned above, that ‘the con-
texts for sayings and parables provided by the evangelists … cannot … be
taken as reliable indices to the meaning of the saying or parable’.71 Here,
however, Mark’s narrative setting for the proverb is being used by the
Seminar as a historicising mechanism that not only serves to justify its
inclusion among the authentic historical Jesus tradition, but also to
explain—and thereby constrain—its meanings in its various other tex-
tual locations.
Yet Gos. Thom. 31.1 has no narrative context, John 4.44 appears to
exclude Nazareth as a possibility for the πατρίς (‘homeland’) involved,72
and Luke—though a ‘copyist’ of Mark—did not apparently intend
the saying to relate primarily to rejection in Jesus’ hometown but
rather to indicate his rejection by all of the Jews. According to these
Honour is simply too diffuse a concept within a peasant society for Malina and
Rohrbaugh’s claim that it is a ‘limited good’ to be convincing. We need to look
elsewhere—i.e. away from the ministry of the Seminar’s Jesus—for our answers.
70)
Acts of Jesus, p. 73; cf. Five Gospels, pp. 280, 491.
71)
72)
Michaels argues that the difficulties of John 4.44 are such that the Johannine saying
should be interpreted as indicating the itinerant nature of Jesus’ ministry, as showing
that he should not remain in any one place for too long (‘The Itinerant Jesus’,
pp. 180-83). Πατρίς would then stand for ‘any village, not a particular one’ (p. 181; cf. also
his comments on Luke 4.24, pp. 183-87).
writers, the event at Nazareth was not the only context in which the
saying could have been used in connection with Jesus. Is the Seminar
really justified in taking Mark’s account of events at Nazareth and
allowing that setting to dominate their treatment of the historicity of
the saying in this way?73
Here the notion of the early church’s embarrassment about certain
events—and hence the implausibility of their late creation—becomes sig-
nificant. The Seminar has argued that the evangelists (for which, read
Mark) would not have invented the story of Jesus’ rejection in his home-
town.74 But employing the notion of embarrassment in relation to this
text is not unproblematic. As Mark Goodacre has noted, the relationship
between multiple attestation and embarrassment is an intriguing one.
I can’t help thinking that one cancels out the other. If everyone, Q, an
independent Thomas, Mark, Matthew, Luke all have this same material,
who is embarrassed about it? The multiple attestation is itself an argu-
ment against embarrassment.75
In contrast to our proverb, the statement that Jesus’ family thought him
mad (Mk 3.21b) possesses a much stronger case for using embarrass-
ment as an indicator of authenticity.76 Matthew and Luke both drop v.
21b, as did some later copyists of Mark,77 and when similar accusations
against Jesus appear in John (8.48, 10.20), they are attributed to a dif-
ferent group altogether, the Seminar’s ‘Judeans’.78
73)
It is also noteworthy that Mark probably shared aspects of Luke’s view on Jewish
rejection of Jesus. M.D. Hooker writes about Mark 6.4 that ‘Jesus’ rejection by his
own … is emphasised throughout Mark’s Gospel …. The failure of his own nation to
respond to him, and their consequent rejection by God, will form the climax of the
story’ (The Gospel of Mark [London: A & C Black, 1991], p. 152).
74)
75)
In a weblog comment on a different text (http://ntgateway.com/weblog/2005_11_
01_archive.html, accessed on 23 January 2006).
76)
Cf. the Seminar’s view of this verse in The Acts of Jesus, pp. 72-73.
77)
The Western texts D and W read instead ‘when the scribes and the others’ (cf. B.M.
Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament [Corrected edition;
London: United Bible Societies, 1975], pp. 81-82).
78)
Acts of Jesus, pp. 198-99, 294-95; cf. also p 73.
The multiple reproduction of the prophet saying strongly suggests,

however, that it was viewed, not as embarrassing, but rather as being in
some way applicable to the audiences of the (differently contextualised)
evangelists. The question is, did its applicability flow from its place in
the life of the historical Jesus or from its relevance to the experiences of
the early Church? Was it bedrock tradition as the Seminar claims, or
was it rather theological and pastoral interests historicised?
6. The Rejection of the Church as the Background for the

Prophet-Hometown Saying
Rejection in one form or another probably became something of a fact

of life for the early believers.79 As the message of the Seminar’s Jesus was
transmuted into the call of the Church’s Christ, ‘conversion’ was increas-
ingly experienced as a call to difference, expressed in terms of social
separation from others within family and society, in occasional conflict
with Pagans and Jews, and, eventually, in both discrimination against
and criminalisation of those who professed Christ.
In Paul’s early discussion about a believer with an unbelieving part-
ner, he suggests that the most desirable outcome is that the marriage
should continue, but finally allows that the couple may peacefully separate
if the latter insists upon it (1 Cor. 7.12-15).80 With increasing conflict
with both Jews and Gentiles, however, the outcomes in the later Gospels
become considerably narrower.
Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and
revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man!
79)
See the extended discussion of E.W. Stegemann and W. Stegemann, The Jesus
Movement: A Social History of the First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), pp.
317-58; cf. also J.T. Sanders, ‘Social Distance between Christians and Both Jews and
Pagans’, in A.J. Blasi, J. Duhaime, and P.-A. Turcotte (eds), Handbook of Early Christianity:
Social Science Approaches (New York: Altamira Press, 2002), pp. 361-82; and H. Remus,
‘Persecution’, in Blasi et al., Handbook of Early Christianity, pp. 431-52.
80)
As G.D. Fee points out, however, this final conclusion is implicit throughout the pas-
sage (The First Epistle to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987], pp. 298-99).
Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in
heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets (Lk. 6.22-23).81
Following persecution and eventually criminalisation, only one out-

come is finally left.
Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and
you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will
fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another (Mt. 24.9-10).82
This observable trajectory of increasing tension combined with decreas-

ing outcomes suggests that the second evangelist would have had quite
sufficient reason by the late 60’s CE to create the Nazareth scenario and
place our saying on the lips of Jesus in that context. For Mark, Jesus
must surely have been completely rejected by family, neighbours, towns
he had visited, the Jews as a whole, and the world, just as he and his
audience were increasingly being rejected by those same groups (cf. e.g.
Mk 13.9-13a).
Given the Seminar’s view of Jesus and their usual acknowledgement
of Mark’s creative abilities, they should have concluded that our prov-
erb was first connected to an incident in Nazareth within the mind of
Mark rather than within the life of Jesus.83 Matthew and Luke then
used Mark’s account, with the other Gospel writers, John and Thomas,
81)
Luke 6.22-23 is coloured grey by the Seminar, signifying its setting in the life of the
early church. They write:
‘Some earlier form of the fourth beatitude may go back to Jesus; it had to do with
those who suffer now. In its present form, however, it reflects conditions of the Christian
community after persecution had set in’ (Five Gospels, p. 290—emphasis added)
82)
On the black Matthew 24.9-14—the black signifying another early church product—
the Seminar writes:
The prediction of things to come are actually statements of things that had already
happened to the Christian Community by the time Matthew wrote: torture, mar-
tyrdom, loss of faith under duress, betrayal of one Christian by another, false
testimony during trials. Like Mark, Matthew urges believers to persevere (Five
Gospels, p. 247—emphasis added).
83)
Cf. my comments on the Seminar and Mark’s ‘master status’ as a ‘writer of fiction’
elsewhere (‘Fictional Black and Factual Red ’, pp. 151-52, esp. n. 53).
either using Mark (as per the argument above) or knowing of the say-
ing independently and also considering it as being applicable to their
own experiences of marginalisation. In sharp contrast, however, the
rejection of the Seminar’s Jesus and his message remained the preroga-
tive of the powerful and not the downtrodden, the prerogative of the
few, but never that of the whole.
7. A Speculative Alternative – the Ministry of Jesus as the

Background for the Saying
The above scenario locates the reasons for this particular proverb’s being
added to the Jesus story and for Mark’s creation of the Nazareth account
as its setting firmly within the later experiences of the Church. But
there is another possibility. Might there have been some feature of the
ministry of the Seminar’s Jesus himself that contributed to the develop-
ment of this rejection passage?
According to the Seminar, ‘Jesus’ characteristic talk was distinctive—
it can usually be distinguished from common lore’.84 Just how distinc-
tive his language was can be seen by the kind of terms that are used to
describe his speech in an introductory section of The Five Gospels, enti-
tled ‘Distinctive discourse’.85 Words like ‘extravagance’, ‘exaggeration’,
‘humour’, ‘paradox’, ‘contradiction’, ‘vividness’, and ‘strangeness’ are all
used to characterise a rhetorical style that used either a ‘surprising twist’,
an ‘odd image’, or an ‘inverted symbol’ to ‘frustrate everyday expecta-
tions’, to ‘cut against the social and religious grain’, and to lead to a
‘reversal of roles’.86 By way of a summary, the Seminar concludes that
‘Jesus’ style was to refuse to give straightforward answers’.87
84)
85)
Five Gospels, pp. 30-32.
86)
Five Gospels, pp. 30-32. In view of what follows, it should be noted that the word
‘exaggeration’ clearly is intended to include the use of hyperbole. Elsewhere Funk has
summarised the Seminar’s Jesus’ style as ‘[He] distorts and dismantles the everyday
world by indulging in metaphor, hyperbole, caricature, reversals, ambiguity, paradox
and parody’ (Credible Jesus, p. 13).
87)
But such a rhetorical technique could easily lead to misunderstanding

(as the Seminar obviously tends to assume elsewhere). The following
saying of Jesus about discipleship is recorded in Luke 14.26: ‘Whoever
comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.’ This
saying—a Q verse designated a paler pink by the Seminar (0.56 rat-
ing),88 but certainly harsh enough to warrant attribution to the Seminar’s
Jesus—provides a shockingly hyperbolic description of the degree of
separation that true discipleship involves. As the Seminar puts it, for
Jesus, ‘family ties fade into insignificance in relation to God’s imperial
rule, which he regarded as the fundamental claim on human loyalty.’89
Such a way of expressing his view of discipleship could easily have led
to Jesus’ words being taken too literally by some, however, and may in
itself have led to the problems that the Seminar’s Jesus appears to have
had with some members of his own family (cf. Mk 3.21b). What if a
similar misunderstanding took place in the case of Mark’s account of
the events in Nazareth, with the (exaggerated) degree of complete sepa-
ration involved in Luke 14.26 being reproduced as the (literal) degree
of rejection ‘experienced’ by Jesus in his hometown?90 This is certainly
not to say that Mark knew the Q saying directly, but rather to suggest
that the Nazareth account may have originated in the second evange-
list’s historicising of the traditional rendering (or renderings) of Jesus’
rigorous view of discipleship that had been handed down to him.
8. Conclusion
Future dealings with the red/pink sayings/actions of the Jesus Seminar

will necessarily involve an investigation of the current list for indications
88)
http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb089.html, accessed on 16 May 2006.
89)
90)
Ironically our saying, considered by the Seminar to be authentic because it describes
the events in Nazareth literally, is listed by Funk as a typical example of Jesus’ over-
stated and non-literal style: ‘Because Jesus was a social deviant, he concludes that he
cannot be honoured by hometown folks. That is not necessarily true either, though the
proverb would have it so’ (Credible Jesus, p. 13).
that certain ‘unexorcised prejudices’ of the Seminar’s own ‘poetic imagi-

nation’ have already contaminated the published database. In the case
of the prophet-hometown saying, the Seminar has chosen to ignore its
own historical reconstruction saga—that highly inventive gospel writ-
ers often either created or appropriated common sayings that fitted
their life experience rather than drawing on material from the life of
Jesus—because of a degree of methodological inconsistency.
The application of the criterion of embarrassment to a saying that
was reproduced without embarrassment in so many different texts has
effectively led to the creation of a presumption of authenticity for
Mark’s account of events in Nazareth. It is the spurious plausibility thus
generated that has led the Seminar to accept Mark’s setting for the say-
ing as a historical and normative one, despite their own ‘rule of evi-
dence’ that such Gospel settings should not be used in this way. They
have thus allowed themselves to be drawn into a process of creatively
(poetically?) imagining and reconstructing the various possible motiva-
tions of the people involved. On this occasion, they have succumbed to
Mark’s rhetorical abilities and bought what they have usually accused
the second evangelist of peddling, fake authenticity. Correcting this
methodological error and discarding (exorcising?) the poetic presenta-
tion of the deeply resentful Nazareth crowd from the picture should
result, however, in the rapid decolouring of Mark 6.4 and its parallels
to a more apt black.

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Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008) 59-84 www.brill.

A Prophet Is Rejected in His Home Town

William John Lyons

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/174551908X266033

Webb’s comments prompted the following train of thought.

Taking Webb’s call as a challenge, I came to wonder if there were

(for reasons obviously unconnected with the ‘unexorcised prejudices’

2. Arguments for a (Deep) Pink Saying

The ‘prophet without honour/favour’ saying is attested in ﬁve ‘Gospels’:

Gos. Thom. 31.1: ⲡⲉϫⲉ  ⲙ ⲡⲣⲟⲫⲏⲧⲏⲥ ϣⲏⲡ ϩ ⲡⲉϥϯⲙⲉ ⲙⲁⲣⲉ

Mark 6.4: Οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἄτιμος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ

Matt 13:57: Οὐκ ἔστιν προφήτης ἄτιμος εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι καὶ ἐν

Luke 4:24: οὐδεὶς προφήτης δεκτός ἐστιν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ

John 4.44: προφήτης ἐν τῇ ι᾽δίᾳ πατρίδι τιμὴν οὐκ ἔχει

The Seminar sees the ‘adage’ as a ‘short, easily remembered … ironi-

Whether the prophet gets no respect or is not welcome is probably merely

It is not felt necessary, therefore, to provide any over-arching explana-

Finally, the ‘historicity’ of this scenario is further supported by the

αὐτοῦ (‘and among his relatives’), is seen by the Seminar as an addition

the methodological rule about the problematic nature of contexts for

3. Multiple Attestation and Its Limitations

In the Seminar’s account, it is clearly implied that the saying is triply

[w]hen one compares the diﬀerent versions of the prophet saying … , it

He sees the Luke/Thomas wording of the saying as being the earlier

to a second tradition.47 Since their general statement equating simplicity

4. Plausibility and Its Limitations

adds Pilate’s hand-washing and the crowd’s acceptance of responsibility

‘having aggravated the tragic ﬁction … by having Judeans embrace collec-

The total rejection of the Seminar’s Jesus in Jerusalem is again consid-

It is surely signiﬁcant that, by the Seminar’s own account, there is

but the secondary introduction of the Gentile replacement theme that

5. Embarrassment and Its Limitations

Our ﬁnal consideration of the origin of the prophet-hometown saying

The multiple reproduction of the prophet saying strongly suggests,

6. The Rejection of the Church as the Background for the

Rejection in one form or another probably became something of a fact

Following persecution and eventually criminalisation, only one out-

This observable trajectory of increasing tension combined with decreas-

7. A Speculative Alternative – the Ministry of Jesus as the

But such a rhetorical technique could easily lead to misunderstanding

Future dealings with the red/pink sayings/actions of the Jesus Seminar

that certain ‘unexorcised prejudices’ of the Seminar’s own ‘poetic imagi-

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