Folks,
CCNL is orchestrating another of his cut and paste blizzards, in the course of which he now appears to come down definitively on the side of Jesus's being a mamzer (that was only a possibility when CCNL first weighed in). And his proof that Jesus was illiterate comes down to the fact that his teachers at the Jesus Seminar have chosen to ignore the Lucan report that Jesus read the Scroll of Isaiah in the Nazareth Synagogue because it isn't stated elsewhere in the Gospels.

Per CCNL, Luke had to have been making it up because:

"There is only one place in the NT that suggests Jesus could read i.e. Luke 4:16. This passage is not attested to in any other NT passage or in any other related document making it a later addition or poor translation as per most NT scholars' analyses. "

IOW, if it was not said in the first gospel (or maybe the second??), it is suspect. What if it had been written in the first? Why would it need to be said again in Luke? If the first were an exhaustive statement about the truth about Jesus, why would there need to be anything else written? On the other hand, if the first account were not exhaustive, why should anyone write a second anyway? Per the Jesus Seminar rule , if it is added, it is suspect.

Of course, CCNL and the JS don't accept Luke's explanation which is that he himself had spoken to people who had spoken to eyewitnesses (who well may not have been interviewed by earlier gospel writers). Brother Luke wrote:

"Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, F1 to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed."

The silliness of the Jesus Seminar's approach can be appreciated by entertaining this question: Why would something that appears in even the second gospel--but not the first--be at all credible? After all, had it been true, it should have appeared in the first.

What to do, what to do? Answer: not take CCNL seriously. As I noted at 7:07 AM today:
"It isn't even worth responding to dreck like CCNL's beyond noting that the votes of a group of scholars with axes to grind impresses me a lot less than the vast cloud of witnesses who have constituted the Church over the last 2000 Years."

With respect to the simple preacher man's illiteracy:

There is only one place in the NT that suggests Jesus could read i.e. Luke 4:16. This passage is not attested to in any other NT passage or in any other related document making it a later addition or poor translation as per most NT scholars' analyses.

See also Professor Crossan and Professor Reed's book, Excavating Jesus, p. 30.

See also Professor Bruce Chilton's commentary in his book, Rabbi Jesus, An Intimate Biography, pp 99-101- An excerpt:

"What Luke misses is that Jesus stood in the synagogue as an illiterate mamzer in his claim to be the Lord's anointed".

It is very unfortunate that Jesus was illiterate for it resulted in many gospels and epistles being written years after his death by non-witnesses. This resulted in significant differences in said gospels and epistles and with many embellishments to raise Jesus to the level of a deity to compete with the Roman gods and emperors. See Raymond Brown's 878 page book, An Introduction to the New Testament, (Luke 4:16 note on p. 237) for an exhaustive review of the true writers of the gospels and epistles.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus for an analysis of Jesus' life to include his illiteracy.

Patrick, Patrick, Patrick,

And how many years were Catholics subjected to the flat earth and "earth-centric" "dogma"??

Then there is the "max" of all brainwashes, the resurrection of the simple preacher man!!

And what are they now teaching about this major element of Christianity in graduate school theology classes at many Catholic universities (i.e. outside the Jesus Seminar/Project and historic Jesus exegete communities)???

"Heaven is a Spirit state or spiritual reality of union with God in love, without earthly -- earth bound distractions.

Christ 's and Mary's bodies are therefore not in Heaven. For one thing, Paul in 1 Cor 15 speaks of the body of the dead as transformed into a "spiritual body." No one knows exactly what he meant by this term.

Most believe that it to mean that the personal spiritual self that survives death is in continuity with the self we were while living on earth as an embodied person.

The physical Resurrection (meaning a resuscitated corpse returning to life), Ascension (of Jesus' crucified corpse), and Assumption (Mary's
corpse) into heaven did not take place.

The Ascension symbolizes the end of Jesus' earthly ministry and the beginning of the Church.

Only Luke's Gospel records it. The Assumption ties Jesus' mission to Pentecost and missionary activity of Jesus' followers The Assumption has
multiple layers of symbolism, some are related to Mary's special role as "Christ bearer" (theotokos). It does not seem fitting that Mary, the body of Jesus' Virgin-Mother (another biblically based symbol found in Luke 1) would
be derived by worms upon her death. Mary's assumption also shows God's positive regard, not only for Christ's male body, but also for female
bodies." "Heaven is a Spirit state or spiritual reality of union with God in love, without earthly -- earth bound distractions

Christ 's and Mary's bodies are therefore not in Heaven. For one thing, Paul in 1 Cor 15 speaks of the body of the dead as transformed into a "spiritual body." No one knows exactly what he meant by this term.

Most believe that it to mean that the personal spiritual self that survives death is in continuity with the self we were while living on earth as an embodied person.

The Ascension symbolizes the end of Jesus' earthly ministry and the beginning of the Church.

Only Luke's Gospel records it. The Assumption ties Jesus' mission to Pentecost and missionary activity of Jesus' followers The Assumption has
multiple layers of symbolism, some are related to Mary's special role as "Christ bearer" (theotokos). It does not seem fitting that Mary, the body of Jesus' Virgin-Mother (another biblically based symbol found in Luke 1) would
be derived by worms upon her death. Mary's assumption also shows God's positive regard, not only for Christ's male body, but also for female
bodies."

Amazing how this agrees with Professor Crossan and the Jesus Seminarian's conclusions based on attestations and stratums.

See http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php/017_Resurrection_of_Jesus for added details.

Folks,
CCNL trashes Jesus Christ, the most revered person in the History of the World, and characterizes him, among other things, as a hallucinating illiterate (possible) mamzer whose followers made up many of his doings and actions to impress others. Only 30% of what is written about him in the NT is supposedly authentic. CCNL's authority for this anything but new interpretation is the "professors' collective" known as the Jesus Project. This chip off the old professoriate has even determined that Jesus was illiterate. Thus, what is written in Luke 4:16-21 about Christ's reading the words of Isaiah in the synagogue is supposedly just another fabrication by those tricky Christians. Or is the professoriate straining to make up stuff against the Christian Religion?

It isn't even worth responding to dreck like CCNL's beyond noting that the votes of a group of scholars with axes to grind impresses me a lot less than the vast cloud of witnesses who have constituted the Church over the last 2000 Years.

Flaws and errors in the biblical text- (for those eyes that have not seen)

Jesus was an illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter/ simple preacher man who suffered from hallucinations and who has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer from Nazareth (Professor Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus). Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.

The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
For added "pizzazz", Catholic/Christian theologians divided god the singularity into three persons and invented atonement as an added guilt trip for the "pew people" to go along with this trinity of overseers. By doing so, they made god the padre into god the "filicider".

Current crises in the RCC:

Pedophiliac priests, atonement theology and original sin!!!!

Luther, Calvin, Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley, Roger Williams et al, founders of Christian-based religions, also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of "pretty wingie thingie" visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).

Current crises in other denominations:

Adulterous preachers, "propheteering/ profiteering" evangelicals and atonement theology.

Robert Norris writes:

"Some Christian communities have tried to impose their interpretations upon the individual study of the Scripture suggesting that because the Bible was God's gift to the church, the church alone has the teaching authority to provide the correct interpretation of the text."

In fact, Jesus didn't write word one of the New Testament while He was here on Earth, nor did He even commission the Church to write the New Testament. Rather, He commissioned the Church to teach all nations and in the course of that Teaching Mission, various churchmen (Peter, Paul, James John, Jude, Matthew, Mark and Luke) had occasion to write down some of their teachings which we recognize as having been inspired by God. Thus, the New Testament along with the other teaching of the Church (such as the Creeds and the Catechism) is the Church's inspired gift to the faithful.

God's gift to the Church is the teaching gift conferred by the laying on of hands that Brother Paul talks about with his suffragan bishop, Timothy: " For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands...Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us....what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well. " (2 Tim. 1:6-2:2).