Today’s Politically Correct “historical Jesuses” are no different, being mere clones of the scholars who design them.

Fundamentalism fills you with answers before you even think to ask the questions.

Now for me, music is indeed a spiritual experience. It may be hypnotizing or violently stimulating. I listen to and appreciate all kinds of music, from folk, to jazz, to classical, to hard core rock.

For Ehrman as for Schweitzer, Jesus must be acknowledged to have been a failed apocalyptic seer, whipping up excitement about the imminent end of the world and predicating upon that false prophecy his demand for repentance. Both Jesus scholars showed great courage in refusing to euphemize or sugarcoat the shocking truth.

Sadducees viewed the Jewish adoption of the resurrection doctrine as traditionalist Christians regard suggestions that reincarnation be worked into Christian theology.

Many New Testament scholars have observed that the conception of the resurrection body implied in 1 Corinthians 15 clashes so violently with that presupposed in the gospels that the latter must be dismissed as secondary embellishments, especially as 1 Corinthians predates the gospels.

The Holy Bible. Promoting ignorance and superstition for nearly 2000 years.

I wonder how appropriate it is to try to ‘argue someone into the kingdom.’ Many apologists hotly deny any such charge, but I don’t believe them. The tenor of almost all apologetics literature makes it plain that this is their intent.

The very admission of the need to harmonize is an admission that the burden of proof is on the narratives, not on those who doubt them. What harmonizing shows is that despite appearances, the texts still might be true.

What suggests to non-Evangelical scholars that the resurrection narratives contain legendary accounts? First there is a variety of apparent contradictions in the stories which in any ancient narrative would have to arouse the historian’s suspicion.