This book is a hilarious parable of what happened in the formation of the religion called Christianity from the teachings of Jesus, by Peter and Paul, regardless of whether you believe its tenets in the literal sense. Its conclusions are at least solid on the spiritual level, for they reflect precisely what the ego will do again and again to distort the teachings of Jesus to mean something entirely different. Jesus warned us of that. It is the reason why the Thomas Gospel speaks of the "hidden" teachings in its introduction, indicating that these were spoken to the apostles personally, but on a spiritual level these are the things Jesus is still teaching and has always taught.

In Logion 13 he also warns us of the resistance of the world to his teachings, ultimately warning Thomas that even his fellow apostles would stone him, if he told them what Jesus taught him personally. These types of things have often been misunderstood, and led the world to glorify martyrdom, etc. which was not the point. Fortunately we have A Course In Miracles today, and it completely revolves around having us understand the psychological dynamic of why the ego does not want to hear the teachings of Jesus. That is for me the context in which I say that I read this book purely as a parable for what happened to transform Jesus's message of inner truth, of restoring our relationship with God, to the worldly religion that became serviceable to the Roman Empire a few centuries hence, and for which one way or another Paul (and also Peter et al.) laid the foundation, regardless of whether you choose to accept the specific points of this book. It is what happened in spirit.

The format of the book is a dialog on the David Letterman show, and the parties are a traditional theologian and an author who thinks Paul was a secret agent for the Romans, whose entire purpose was exactly to put the teachings of Jesus on their head, and co-opt his person (now safely dead) in the service of Caesar. It makes a fun read, even if I would personally find that it is way overboard in certain respects. However it is certainly serves to make the point of just how much Christianity turned the teachings of Jesus on their ear, though the gist of this book seems to be that therefore Jesus is not to be taken seriously either, which is where I feel it goes overboard. So I see this book as a magnificent pun, but I don't take it seriously, for coming from the standpoint of A Course in Miracles as well as the Thomas Gospel, and you'll definitely get a chuckle out of these scenes.

One important aspect of the book, which I do take quite seriously, is that it really exposes just how much we are inclined to look back in history, and project into it what we think today. It is almost impossible not to. This frequently comes to light in things like the books of the Jesus seminar, which is doing so much good work in providing a more objective look at Jesus, yet still very often many of the members of this group continue to write as if Jesus were really a proto-Christian, whereas the only sane conclusion is that Christianity was entirely invented after his death, and he was merely bombarded into one posthumously, and proclaimed to be the founder of Paul's religion, when in fact founding any religion was the last thing he wanted to do.

Unfortunately the second half of the book slides into a very common misinterpretation of Jesus, as your normal supermarket variety revolutionary, a sort of an ancient Che Guevara, which is getting tired by now, and a favorite ploy to deny the truly revolutionary teachings of Jesus. Love and forgiveness are far more revolutionary than cheap violence, but the world has a great stake in not recognizing it, so that mis-casting Jesus as a Che Guevara equivalent actually reduces his teachings to a level of manageable threat.