Status Updates From Hidden Gospels: How the Sea...

Very interesting. I am reading it as I have become interested in apocrypha and whether the Gnostics were really on to something. It is not a spoiler to say Jenkins thinks popular and academic claims have made too much of a "historical Jesus" attested to better by non-canonical books (and more feminist and more Jewish Messiah than an expansionist savior). .,.

After a vituperative introduction, the book settles down to an interesting discussion about the difficulties of textual analysis and dating of ancient documents. There's a section (too long) on why journalism picks up the most radical and unfounded theories, but, by and large, the book is an interesting contrast to those put out by the members of the Jesus Project.

This guy is priceless. On page 15 he accuses the decline in the quality of scholarship in the field "above all [on] the influx of women scholars" who can't do good research but interpret data to reinforce their preset agenda. I do have to admit that I appreciate it when he compares the modern American spiritual search to the "quest for the inner child."

We'll see if I manage to finish the book.

Ha! This book contains a scathing (and still highly accurate) analysis of Claremont Graduate University's religious studies program, particularly its role in the creation of the media-friendly-but-ideologicalky-biased Jesus Seminar!

This man does not like Mormons. He also doesn't seem to know much about them; and the sources he cites re: Mormons aren't from actual scholars or from any Mormon sources, but rather from non-academic anti-Mormon activists!