My proposal in this book is that the same individual studied as the Jesus of history by academic research and accepted as the Christ of faith by confessional belief is the norm and criterion of the Christian Bible. In other words, the meaning of that Bible’s story is in its middle, in the story of Jesus in the Gospels and the early writings of Paul; the climax of its narrative is in the center; and the sense of its nonviolent center judges the (non)sense of its violent ending.
