Jesus vs Yeshua, or "When did my ipod start lecturing me?"

well, i'm back in the blogosphere kids. i'd apologise for the delay but there really can't be anyone left reading this thing so it's really just for me at this point. Three cheers for egotistical self-voyeurism! (as if i don't already know what's going on in my life...)
anyway, on to what i have to say...
So about 2 weeks ago i downloaded a semester's worth of class lectures that were given on the topic of the historical jesus. The lectures were delivered at Standford by Tom Sheehan, and though i'm not sure of the date, by the books and significant figures he mentions i'd have to assume it was in the last 3 years. anyway, Sheehan was at one time part of the Jesus Seminar, a scholarly, if not self aggrandizing, group of researchers who set out to determine what they could about the "Yeshua of History" in the late 80's and early 90's. A fascinating subject to be sure but one which has inevitably taken hold of the gospels and (to borrow a phrase from NT Wright) "dug trenches where once there were gardens." Much of their collective hermeneutic can be traced back to a groundbreaking work by Rudolf Bultman called, "Jesus Christ and Mythology." In the book Bultman pushes for what describes as the need to "de-mythologize" the gospels. The modern mind he argues, cannot accept the accounts given by the gospel writers and therefore we must dig into the heart of the text to discover the true meaning.
At this point most conservatives would begin bashing and showing all the short comings of the jesus seminar, rudolf bultman, tom sheehan, liberals, the DNC, and hilary clinton. And most liberals would probably respond by asking the conservative to hold their IQ up on one hand. However, as i will likely convince neither party to drop their weapons, so to speak, i'd like to sidestep those issues (infinite though they may be) for a moment and focus on a smaller, quieter one... namely, What does it mean to think rightly about god?

You see, liberal scholarship for the last 200 years has approached the truth of god as displayed by the new testament as something to be wrought from its pages and then distilled into an existential truth so bland only an asshole would disagree ("of course peace is a good thing! of course we should respect one another!"). Conservatives on the other hand, largely as a reaction to this liberal shift in theological scholarship, have abandoned anything not printed on the pages of their King James bibles. The truths then that flow beyond the literal reading of the text are cordoned off because anything that's not literally truth is a slippery slope. And worst of all, most of us have been duped into thinking that existential or literal are mutually exclusive options.
So i'll ask you again, "What does it mean to think rightly about god?"... and just to give you a little more to think about, How literal (or non-literal) must your belief be for salvation?... just a thought...

"...Christians, if we are to be Christians, are going to have to stop fudging our belief that Jesus matters." - Stanley Hauerwas

"Is there anyone one who can recall
ever breaking rank at all
for something someone yelled real loud one time" - John Mayer, Belief