Just Call Me Bob: The Wit and Wisdom of Robert W. Funk

"He was constitutionally incapable of being dull," says editor Andrew Scrimgeour of Robert Funk. "You do not need caffeine to stay awake through a Funk speech or essay." Robert Walter Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, was a leading New Testament scholar of the second half of the twentieth century. A natural problem solver and keen observer of life, he was educated at Butler and Vanderbilt and taught at universities from Cambridge, Mass to Missoula, Montana. In Just Call Me Bob, Funk delights and enlightens reader with his reflections on a wide variety of topics which, not surprisingly, include God, the Bible, Jesus, and academia. Scrimgeour has done a yeomans task, researching and then consolidating the wit and wisdom of Robert Funk under one cover. The result is a rich collection of sayings and writings, at times poignant, at times profound, even, at times, pugnacious. If we cannot laugh at ourselves and even about the things we hold dear, then God s reign has eluded us, Funk said on one occasion. The acquisition of information is no certain cure of ignorance, he said on another. In 1975 he wrote, Readers of the gospels speak glibly about the religion of Jesus because his followers created a religion about Jesus. It is not at all clear that religion concerns Jesus. To those who would address him as Doctor, Funk would respond, My name is Bob. Just Call Me Bob keeps faith with that sentiment. In its pages one comes to know the man through his ideas. And that, as readers will intuit, is the way he would have wanted it.

Robert W. Funk was a distinguished teacher, writer, translator and publisher in the field of religion. A Guggenheim Fellow and Senior Fulbright Scholar, he; served as Annual Professor of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and as chair of the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. Robert Funk was a recognized pioneer in modern biblical scholarship, having led the Society of Biblical Literature as its Executive Secretary from 1968 to 1973. His many books include The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (1993) and The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds (1998) (both with the Jesus Seminar) and Honest to Jesus (1996), and A Credible Jesus (2002). Andrew D. Scrimgeour is Dean of Libraries at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. He has held positions at Princeton Theological School, Harvard Divinity School (Boston Theological Institute), the Iliff School of Theology, and Regis University. He is the archivist of the Society of Biblical Literature and the founding archivist of the American Academy of Religion. He has published numerous articles in biblical studies, religious research methods, and bibliometrics. He is working on a biography of Robert W. Funk.