Footnote 3 – What Did Jesus Really Say?

“Mainstream” biblical scholarship refers to the type of biblical scholarship practiced in most university departments of religious studies and in seminaries of mainstream denominations, and thus in the training of their clergy (I refer generally to Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, some Baptists and, increasingly since World War II, Roman Catholics). “Fundamentalist” and much of “conservative-evangelical” biblical scholarship accepts a very different framework for understanding the Gospels, explicitly or implicitly affirming that the historical truthfulness of the Gospels is “guaranteed” by God.