"Faking Jesus" by Robert Conner

That Jesus Studies is rife with flawed scholarship, special pleading, fideism, rank speculation, manufactured relevance, careerism, homo‑phobia and the misogyny that homophobia implies, sectarian allegiances, personal agendas, fraud and simple incompetence should come as no surprise to anyone conversant with the field. Indeed,whether Jesus Studies is even an academic discipline as usually understood is debatable, and that Jesus Studies has precious little to do with history is certain. Mainstream scholars have understood for quite some time that the gospels are not history by any modern definition. It is widely con‑ceded that the gospel authors were writing decades after the events they purport to relate, that the writers were pseudonymous, that they were not eyewitnesses, that both the provenance and intended audience of each gospel is a matter of conjecture, and that the primary sources on which the gospels are ultimately based are unknown and unknowable. It is universally conceded that no original exists for any gospel and that the gospels that have survived are copies of copies that preserve variant wording. LINK.