I find anthropology is a marvellous discipline to shock me out of my own world into another world.

Jesus' death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for one hundred years after his crucifixition, we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus.

I find anthropology is a marvellous discipline to shock me out of my own world into another world.

Now when you get something like the Apocalypse of John, when this avenging God is going to have blood to the bridle bits for 200 miles, I think that's venous, I don't think that's justice, I don't think that's Jesus, and I don't think it's the God of Jesus. That's the killer God, and the trouble with the killer God is that it justifies us doing the same, and in fact it invites us maybe to start with a bit.

What I notice, as a historian reading stories about so-called nature miracles, the walking on the water, or the miraculous catch of fishes, they're done especially for the insiders, for the disciples. Usually healings and exorcisms are done for people along the road, as it were. Jesus doesn't come on the water to save the fishing fleet from Capernaum, he comes on the water to save the disciples. It's a parable, dummy, it's a parable, don't you get it? If the leadership of the church takes off in a boat without Jesus, it will sink, it will get nowhere.

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

I can be absolutely comfortable with an apocalyptic Jesus because he was simply wrong. As long as he's wrong I don't worry about him, and basically everyone else who was announcing in the year 2000 at midnight, the end of the world is coming, I expect them to be wrong. Now if they're right of course, I'll be very uncomfortable that night. But as long as everyone for 2000 years has been wrong about the apocalypse, I can be quite comfortable with it. It's space fiction.