The “scholar” usually has no standing as a Bible student, theologian, archaeologist, or anything else related to serious religious study.

But that need not hold him back. If he has a job—any job—on a university faculty, his “findings” will be treated respectfully in the press as a “scholarly work.”^86

Although such satirical comments remind one of Schweitzer’s similar remarks concerning the “imperfectly equipped free-lances” who composed the “fictitious lives of Jesus” from 130 to 200 years ago,^87 these statements cannot fairly be applied to all of the writings in this chapter. Yet they do remind us of characteristics that are true of many. Accordingly, while all of the theses surveyed in this chapter are refuted by the facts, some of them are additionally to be viewed from the standpoint of fictitious attempts to avoid the Jesus of the Gospels.

84 Louis Cassels, “Debunkers of Jesus Still Trying,” The Detroit News, June 23, 1973, p. 7A.

85 Templeton, Act of God; Irving Wallace, The Word(New York: Pocket, 1973); Og Mandino, The Christ Commission(New York: Bantam, 1981).

86 Cassels, “Debunkers,” p. 7A.

87 Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 38.