Everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) star New Testament scholar has a new book just in time for the Resurrection of the non-historical Jesus. We haven’t read it, nor do we plan to, but we do watch his YouTubes and expect that it contains the same “shocking” revelations known to literally everyone with a doctorate in New Testament studies. This time the subject is Heaven or Hell and SURPRISE, it isn’t what you were taught in Sunday School! GET THIS MAN BACK ON THE DAILY SHOW!
Look, we get it. Bart writes for a certain audience. His goal in life is to disabuse low-information believers and college freshman of the notion that Christian doctrine has been shaped solely by the recorded Greek or Aramaic rantings of a first and second-century fringe cult. But his crusade to expose the hypocrisies of the fundamentalists risks a different sort of Biblical literalism that undercuts the whole idea that religions evolve beyond their central texts and that’s OK.
We know his heart is probably in the right place (correcting our incorrect assumptions), but you only need to beat that drum so hard. After the first few books, the people he was going to convince are already convinced, while those who disagree disagree even more.
Certainly much of the annoyance directed at him from academic theological circles stems from the fact that he has figured out how to be famous and a Bible nerd. And hey, at least he has a PhD in the subject, unlike some. Still, we can’t help but feel that the whole “historical Jesus” project has already accomplished a lot, but now it is just turning people off.