As a result of these efforts, an increasingly complicated system of source-hypotheses and reconstructed redaction histories has arisen, which is impressive for its assiduous scholarship but also seems dubious because of its internal contradictions. Meanwhile, the conviction that “scholars” today are telling us that everything in the figure of Jesus that transcends mere humanity is historically “explicable”, and thus not really historical, has emphatically impressed itself on the public consciousness and has made major inroads into the congregations of Christian believers in all the churches.
