The story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told that helped shape Western culture.

Teacher, leader, savior.

Okay, enough of that. That's from the History Channel. It's a documentary, of course, on Jesus.

They run it every year around Easter, and it's a way to try and attach some history to the whole

Jesus thing in a way that really isn't very historical.

And that whole topic is particularly relevant today's show.

I mean, that's what today's show is about.

I have a Christian history smackdown with a guy I really like and respect.

Attorney-turned author and investigative researcher journalist,

William Ramsey, who was nice enough to kind of indulge me in this dialogue about this history.

Here's a clip.

The most quoted in reference Christian thinker who knew Peter

and all those other people, right? So that's also another kind of problem with the Josephus kind of

view of the gospels being, you know, pure political document. But there's some other elements

within Christianity that don't comport with

the kind of superficial surface kind of generalized doctrines that Christians and

non-Christians perceive as being what Christianity is about. Yeah, I just, that winds up sounding a lot like gobbly good to me. I mean, there is no,

just because there is no, you know, you can cherry pick out of Paul and I can cherry pick out of Buddha.

And I mean, again, the part about Christianity that I think a lot of us sit back and go, how are you

even processing that is to say, there's this special time? There's this special time 2,000 years

ago. Well, what about all the people that came before? Welcome to Skeptica, where we explore

controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics.

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