Remember the Jesus Seminar? They were those scholars who voted away all of Jesus’ miracles and much of what He said because it didn’t seem plausible to them. You know, things like the resurrection and that kind of weird stuff. They voted on whether they thought Jesus REALLY said that or did that. Pretty much, miracles and all that oogedy-boogedy stuff were scorned.

One of the more well known books coming out of the seminar was the infamously color-coded “The Five Gospels,” which had its own translations of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from the New Testament but they also threw in the Gospel of Thomas for good measure. Jesus’ sayings appeared in red ink if the seminar deemed them historically reliable, pink if they were maybe a teensy bit reliable, gray if they were possible but pretty darned unreliable and black if they were improbable. Members of the Jesus Seminar used colored beads to vote on which kind of font would be used.

You might remember it was kind of a big deal for a while but year after year of demoting Jesus to a hippie from the Mideast only gets so much press nowadays as much of their “scholarship” has sadly seeped into the mainstream and they’re just not as radical or press worthy as they once were. So while bashing Jesus is so 90’s some of the Jesus Seminar folks have something new planned.

I don’t know if those folks are planning on getting their beads out again to vote on what Paul actually said and did, but according to Oregon Live Polebridge Press will be publishing “The Authentic Letters of Paul,” an original translation of some of Paul’s letters.

I’m thinking that Paul had a horse will get a pink text but falling off his horse on the road to Damascus will be downright gray and pretty much everything else that happened on the road to Damascus will get big fat black printing.

According to the website of Willamette University -the home of the seminar, the book claims that Paul did not write all the letters attributed to him in the New Testament.

I’m also thinking that all those things that Paul said about homosexuality might not make it to pink, never mind red.

You know, in the Bible there were those who walked away from Jesus saying “these teachings are too hard.” But somehow I think that’s better than those who pretend to stay and say, “Oh that’s not what Jesus really meant. Here’s what he really really meant.”

Those who hear but cannot accept still have a chance. Those who wont hear may be lost.