On Jesus as a political figure
"[In one story,] Jesus walks into the temple, and he begins to cleanse it. He turns over the tables of the money-changers, who are exchanging the foul foreign currency of the Roman Empire with the Hebrew shekel, which was the only currency that the temple would accept. And then, of course, in a loud, booming voice, he says, 'It is written that my house shall be a house of prayer for all nations, and you have made it a den of thieves.'
"Now, as all historians recognize, this was the action that precipitated his arrest, his torture and his execution by the state. And there's a very simple reason for that: The temple was not just the center of the Jewish cult; it was, in many ways, the representation of the power and the presence of the Roman Empire."
On using The Bible as a source
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