I’m not sure it’s actually true that the majority of such scholars would say that Jesus had magical powers. Now admittedly my priors on this are mostly Catholic, and most of those Jesuit, and I don’t know a lot of evangelical new testament scholars; but it still appears to me that serious Biblical research is one of the best ways of convincing believing Christians that the religious world is not as they thought. Case in point: Bart Ehrman.
The poll would have to be anonymous to have any validity. There are a lot of priests, reverends, and theology professors who know how much they can and cannot say. Pay very careful attention to subjects an individual scholar does not talk about. Notice how many of them never mention the resurrection or the virgin birth, for example. OTOH they will talk about loaves and fishes and walking on water and Lazarus because they can get away with explaining those parts of the New Testament as understood by modern scholarship without being fired.
I’m not sure it’s actually true that the majority of such scholars would say that Jesus had magical powers. Now admittedly my priors on this are mostly Catholic, and most of those Jesuit, and I don’t know a lot of evangelical new testament scholars; but it still appears to me that serious Biblical research is one of the best ways of convincing believing Christians that the religious world is not as they thought. Case in point: Bart Ehrman.
The poll would have to be anonymous to have any validity. There are a lot of priests, reverends, and theology professors who know how much they can and cannot say. Pay very careful attention to subjects an individual scholar does not talk about. Notice how many of them never mention the resurrection or the virgin birth, for example. OTOH they will talk about loaves and fishes and walking on water and Lazarus because they can get away with explaining those parts of the New Testament as understood by modern scholarship without being fired.