<p>Modern historical study of the Gospels seems to give us a new portrait of Jesus every spring--just in time for Easter. The more unusual the portrait, the more it departs from the traditional view of Jesus, the more attention it gets in the popularmedia. </p><p>Why are scholars so prone to fabricate a new Jesus? Why is the public so eager to accept such claims without question? What methods and assumptions predispose scholars to distort the record? Is there a more sober approach to finding the real Jesus? </p><p>Commenting on such recent releases as Bart Ehrman's <em>Misquoting Jesus,</em> James Tabor's <em>The Jesus Dynasty,</em> Michael Baigent's <em>The Jesus Papers</em> and the <em>Gospel of Judas,</em> for which he served as an advisory board member to the National Geographic Society, Craig Evans offers a sane approach to examining the sources for understanding the historical Jesus.</p>
