Jesus, Abba, and the Jesus Seminar
Jesus, Abba , and the Seminar Ronald V. Huggins Midwestern Journal of Theology 8.1 (Fall 2009): 41-56 Robert W. Funk is dead. Even as I report the fact a pun flutters near at hand begging me birth it in print. Out of respect for the dead and delicacy over the tender feelings of certain of my readers I resist to return once again to my original point: Robert W. Funk is dead. But it wasn’t always so. Yes, I know: that goes without saying, since being dead implies you were once alive, as in the well known sepulchral epitaph: sum quod eris, fui quod sis (or as a memorial brass in St. Olave, Hart Street, London puts it: “as I am you shall be, As I was, so be ye”). For a long time during my scholarly transversions Funk seemed more than a little alive, indeed bigger than life, and at no time more evidently so than when he gave his opening remarks on “The Issue of Jesus,” at the very first meeting of the once infamous and now sometimes recollected Jesus Semin