78 Ibid., pp. 159–160, 191.
79 Ibid., pp. 78–79.
80 Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, Holy Blood, pp. 303–304.
81 Ibid., pp. 307–308.
82 Ibid., p. 103.
83 _Ibid.
for one’s own desired results. One is reminded here of Louis Cassels’ evaluation of such attempts to “explain away” the facts. The amazing thing about all these debunk-Jesus books is that they accept as much of the recorded Gospels as they find convenient, then ignore or repudiate other parts of the same document which contradict their notions.^84
The trustworthiness of the Gospels, the failure of the swoon theory in all of its forms, the lack of a valid historical basis, and the decidedly illogical lines of argumentation demonstrate the failures of these theories. This is not even to mention their hopeless contradiction of one another as well. Summary and Conclusion
There have been many popular attempts to discredit the Jesus of the Gospels. Even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these attempts were prevalent. While they have been rejected almost unanimously by careful scholars, especially those who remember similar attempts disproven long ago, they still receive widespread attention among lay people. There have even been strictly fictional, novelistic attempts to deal with these subjects.^85
It is because of this attention among the general populace that we have considered these popularistic “lives of Jesus” in this chapter. Accordingly, we investigated hypotheses involving swoon, Qumran connections, perversions of Jesus’ message, and theses involving Jesus as an international traveler. Each was refuted on its own grounds by a number of criticisms.
Louis Cassels responded rather harshly to such “debunking” attempts:
You can count on it. Every few years, some “scholar” will stir up a short-lived sensation by publishing a book that says something outlandish about Jesus.
Page 1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829
