That said, a book review at MIT’s The Tech caught my eye, particularly the closing paragraph:

The historical Jesus that emerges from Ehrman’s mainstream defense is a purely human, miracle-free Jewish male with a very common name living in first century Palestine, who after an unremarkable youth went on to teach things that many others had taught before; one more apocalyptic preacher, among many others at the time, whose predictions were proven wrong within a generation; one more “troublemaker” crucified like countless others by the Romans after a drive-thru trial during the Pilate administration. Being such, the Jesus that can be reconstructed from history with any certainty is, for all practical purposes, as irrelevant as the mythical one, effectively shrinking the debate on his existence from a grandiose quest with theological implications to an inconsequential and endless exercise in academic hair-splitting.

John Shuck gives another review worth reading. He responds to Ehrman’s view of Jesus:

I find his apocalyptic Jesus really depressing. That Jesus is hard to preach. I am not sure if we have to have Jesus resemble Harold Camping to be a real guy. We might be skeptical of a Jesus we admire, but we might also be skeptical of a Jesus we despise. It may be equally hard to accept that Jesus is an onion. Peel off each layer of fiction until you get to…nothing? Give this country preacher a break! I have to encourage the folks, you know?

Shuck also has a worthwhile review of Robert M. Price’s The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems. He catches Price in one of his agnostic moods and quotes him:

There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth.

In a way, this isn’t all that far from Ehrman’s position. Ehrman would argue that Jesus probably existed and probably was an apocalyptic preacher. However, beyond that there’s little we can say, because all the details are mired in the religious belief of Jesus’ followers.

I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don’t believe in a personal God to whom I look for in comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice.

—Frank Sinatra

The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care much. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.

—Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being “sincere” and “standing by what he believes.” He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic.

I do love me some Wills, ever since I read A Necessary Evil in college. A few years after that he wrote a short biography of St. Augustine. Apparently he was struck by Augustine’s argument that honesty was always necessary, and he became frustrated with what he saw as dishonesty from the Catholic hierarchy.

From that frustration came his most controversial work, Papal Sin: Structure of Deceit. There he lays out most of the arguments he uses in the above article. It’s refreshing to see the Church get called to task for straying from its own principles.

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