Jesus Christ

In How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman explores how a Jewish preacher from Galilee was transformed into a deity. "Jesus himself didn't cal himself God and didn't consider himself God," Ehrman says.

Reza Aslan converted to Christianity when he was a teenager, but became more interested in Jesus than as a Messiah. His book, Zealot, considers Jesus in the context of the time and place he lived in.

What did Jesus look like? In their new book, The Color of Christ, Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey explore how different groups have claimed Jesus as their own — and how depictions of Jesus have both inspired civil rights crusades, and been used to justify the violence of white supremacists.

Bible scholar Bart Ehrman says the Gospels are at odds with each other on important points regarding the life, death and divinity of Jesus.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright are co-authors of the new book "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions." The two scholars offer dramatically different views on Jesus and his teachings. Marcus. J. Borg provides liberal interpretation of Jesus. He is the author of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time." N.T. Wright takes a more traditional view of Jesus. He is author or Jesus and the Victory of God."

Richard Horsley and Neil Silberman. The two have collaborated on a book incorporating history, archaeology, and politics to contextualize the time of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. The book is "The Message and the Kingdom" (Grosset/Putnam). Richard Horsley is a professor of religion at The University of Massachusetts. Neil Silberman is the author of "The Hidden Scrolls."

Reynolds Price... writer, teacher, poet ... has turned his attention to the life of Jesus and the gospels. His latest book, "Three Gospels" (Scribner) is a translation of the gospels of Mark and John from the original Greek and includes a new gospel, "An Honest Account of a Memorable Life". In 1984 Price was diagnosed with spinal cancer, and became paralyzed from the waist down. His other books include, "The Promise of Rest", "A Whole New Life" and "The Collected Stories".

Professor John Dominic Crossan. A native of Ireland, ordained as a priest in the U.S. (he left the Priesthood in 1969), Crossan now teaches biblical studies at DePaul University. Crossan is a founding member of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who meet to determine the authenticity of Jesus' sayings in the Gospels. Crossan's new work is "Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography" (HarperCollins) which seeks to place Jesus in the context of his Jewish, Mediterranean and peasant roots; to see him as a Socratic philosopher and radical egalitarian.

Martin Scorsese's new movie, The Last Temptation of Christ -- adapted from a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis -- takes its cues from old western movies. Film critic Stephen Schiff says the director evangelizes through the back door, convincing us that we really are watching the greatest story ever told.