It's Jesus Week on the History channel

[elf]

I had somehow managed to blot this out of my head. The couple of weeks before Easter, the History channel goes overboard with the crucifixion stories. Endless, endless semi-documentaries (with extensive reenactment sections involving bearded men in tan and brown robes), telling "the story of Jesus" as if it were established fact. They quote a whole bunch of people who point to translations of Bible verses as proving this or that aspect of the story, and a cluster of later historians.

They quote *Constantine* as some kind of evidence that Jesus lived. Because Constantine dreamed about Jesus and followed the instructions in the dream and won battles, ergo Jesus must really have helped him in war.

It's a fascinating exercise to watch the "documentaries" and poke holes in them, sort out which bits are just anthropology, and which are elements of Jewish culture & prophecy, and how they tie those together to insist that, since [X] is how a person who acted like Jesus would've been treated, he must've done the things accredited to him. ("A certain type of criminals were crucified; the story says Jesus was crucified and he was that kind of criminal; this proves he lived," rather than "this proves the people who put the stories together knew the local culture.")

Sigh. At least Dan Brown's not on the bestseller charts at the moment; those shows were worse. It was like watching a show use Hannibal Lector as an example of the flaws in the psychiatric industry.