There's this notion that Republicans are the party of Jesus and the Democrats are the Godless party. Let's be clear for a minute. One party wants to give health insurance to the poor and the weak and the dispossessed, and one party wants to take away that health insurance and give tax breaks to rich people. You tell me: which side would Jesus fall on that argument?
I really believe that to have a full impression of Jesus, both as Christ as a man, you must know about the world that gave shape to him - the world out of which he arose.
The key to recognizing who Jesus was is to recognize this fundamental truth: He was a Jew.
When you're a brown Muslim from Iran talking about Jesus on TV, you need to keep your cool at all times, OK? That's not rocket science.
Paul's lack of concern with the historical Jesus is not due, as some have argued, to his emphasis on Christological rather than historical concerns. It is due to the simple fact that Paul had no idea who the living Jesus was, nor did he care.
Is it possible that Jesus, unlike 98 percent of his fellow Jews, was literate and educated? Yes, it's possible.
There is absolutely no difference between religion and politics at all in Jesus' time. In other words, every seemingly religious word that came out of Jesus' mouth had very clear and unmistakable political connotations to it.
You can be a follower of Jesus and not necessarily be a Christian.
I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived.
Many of the prophets of Jesus's time were thought to just be mad men, just sort of crazy people who were claiming to channel the divine. Perhaps that means we should be a little less judgmental of some of our own crazies talking about God on the corner. They might actually have found a pretty comfortable place in Jesus's time.
My biography of Jesus is probably the first popular biography that does not use the New Testament as its primary source material.
