Max: Bart Ehrman, the Un-Dawkins

The old subversive line goes, "The last Christian died on the cross." But it would be more historically accurate to say that Jesus was not a Christian at all, but a Jewish apocalyptic prophet. It was only with his followers that "Christianity" came into existence. Ironically, Jesus preached a profoundly Jewish religion: It was the later Christians (including John and Paul) who turned Christianity into the virulently anti-Semitic religion it was to become.

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[Biblical Scholar Bart] Ehrman is hard to categorize. He's a bomb-throwing moderate, a non-dogmatic rationalist. Unlike outspoken critics of religion such as Sam Harris, he does not regard organized religion as dangerous, nor does he claim that any rational person of intellectual integrity must embrace the same conclusions he does. He insists that he is not out to convert anyone, and has nothing but respect for his fellow scholars who know the same historical things he does about the Bible, yet continue to be devout Christians.

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