It's a good thing that most people in the real world keep their religious beliefs - or lack of them - to themselves.

I also have a copy of Thiering's book. Overall I found it less than convincing but otherwise a valuable read. In particular I found her explanations of how the Jews would have understood the virgin birth to be insightful and interesting.

Equally her exploration of the Essene practice of having multiple ways of understanding a particular text was important.

However I think she went a little (a lot?) to far with her discoveries and when she started talking of Jesus being the Wicked Priest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I think she lost a fair bit of credibility. Nonetheless, Australia was worse for her passing a few years back.

If you're interested in this type of thing, another book you might like to track down is The Secret Life Of Jesus by Robert Macklin written around the same time as Theiring's book. Again, an insightful reappraisal of what we know about Jesus from the Bible, the various gospels that didn't make the grade at Nicaea and other texts. To my way of thinking a more satisfying though less well-known book than Theiring's. In it he, for example, using the Talmud to speculate that Jesus was sired by a negro Roman soldier and that this (being mulatto) would explain why he was something of an outcast in Jewish society. Lots of similar things to ponder.

mhaze,

Thanks for the book reference. I shall look it up.

Straight back into silliness for the first day after Easter, deputy premier of Queensland has accused the PM of "fomenting vaccine wars with the states to distract from the Higgins alleged rape and sexual harassment stories.

I broke the rule of of a lifetime about lying low on public holidays and went for walk, to be forced off the footpath by people dragged along by packs of dogs, accosted by a drunken African, and shouted at by a yob in passing car who felt the need to call me something ending in 'c...t'. Public holidays are a nuisance, irrespective of what they are for.

"Public holidays are a nuisance, irrespective of what they are for."

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was Jesus's view as well...."you're gunna put nails through my wrists? Well that's a nuisance."

The silliest and most hypocritical thing about people taking religious holidays, killing themselves and others on the roads, getting drunk and obnoxious, ceasing to be productive, is that few of them are the slightest bit religious themselves.