For myself, it’s mostly the “vulgar ignorance,” etc., that I notice. Jefferson’s New Testament textual criticism is enjoyable.

(It has ever since it adopted a denialist position on overpopulation a couple decades ago, and has only become worse in recent years.)

I get the Covid booster every year. Flu, about half the time. Covid scares me much more than influenza (I haven’t had influenza since the 1990s; it’s easier to avoid).

I haven’t, but I will. :-)

I am sure that there were oral traditions in play, but, in most cases, I see no reliable way of differentiating what may have been an oral tradition from what may have been simply invented by the author for his own purposes. The gospels are primarily works of literature, not history.

3/n

This strikes me as the most charitable reading of the gospels that the evidence reasonably allows. The gospels are written so as to *appear* as history, but that appearance does not hold up. I think they are primarily works of literary invention. Historical fiction.

2/n