"I realized, after studying much previous research on the question , that virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material from the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides' Bacchae, and Josephus. ...A literary origin is always to be preferred to an historical one in such a case. And that is the choice we have to make in virtually every case of New Testament narrative. There may once have been an historical Jesus, but for us there is one no longer. If he existed, he is forever lost behind the stained glass curtain of holy myth. At least that's the current state of the evidence as I see it."

“Alan Dundes has shown, the gospel life of Jesus corresponds in most particulars with the worldwide paradigm of the Mythic Hero Archetype as delineated by Lord Raglan, Otto Rank, and others.”

“My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more.”

“If someone charges that my endeavor here is wholly speculative, I congratulate him on his grasp of the obvious.”

“I find myself more and more attracted to the theory, once vigorously debated by scholars, now smothered by tacit consent, that there was no historical Jesus lying behind the stained glass of the gospel mythology.”

“One thing's for sure: if Mark Twain could have read A Course in Miracles, he never would have called the Book of Mormon "chloroform in print". Utterly without redeeming value , the only conceivable importance of A Course in Miracles is a testimony to the pathetic state of spiritual hunger and confusion on the part of late twentieth-century American "seekers.”

“Various hearers of Jesus may well be imagined as unwittingly embellishing their Lord’s teachings as they meant to do nothing but pass them along. I cannot be too severe with the man in Monty Python's Life of Brian who thought he had heard Jesus say, “Blessed are the cheese makers,” nor of his neighbor who glossed the saying to include “any manufacturers of dairy products.”