Each year in early spring, during the season of Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Easter, a plenitude of books, magazine articles, and television shows about Jesus appear. The reasons for this are many and, mostly, obvious. Jesus sells, for a start. And there are millions of people devoted to his teaching and self-sacrifice, in a variety of Christian sects. Even among those who have no special allegiance to a particular branch of Christianity, there are plenty of seekers as well as agnostics and atheists who harbor a certain curiosity about Jesus and his story.
And why not? Jesus remains the most influential person in history, one who has inspired untold followers for millennia. Some consider him the Son of God, the only way to eternal salvation. Others consider him an ethical teacher whose pronouncements in the Sermon on the Mount offer a way of behaving in the world that promotes solace as well as social justice. Wars have been fought over him: a remarkably ironic fact when discussing the Prince of Peace.
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