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I am most appreciative of an e-mail message I received (May 97) from Mr. Malhon H.Smith, a distinguished professor and scholar at the prestigious Rutgers University. Many thanks again Mr. Smith! Your encouragement and criticism are most welcomed.
"Congratulations! your Human Story pages are easily the best documented & most objective piece of Jesus research that I have found on the internet in almost a year of surfing.
In just three years you've reached insights that most preachers & scholars who have spent a lifetime of gospel study have not grasped. I know, I'm one of them.
I'm putting a link to your website on the Virtual Religion Index at Rutgers U (address: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~religion/links/xnity.html [this is the old URL. To access this site, go to my "links" page]) & I plan to assign it as required reading for the Jesus course I teach each year. It will help me show how a careful reading of primary texts can free one from passive acquiescence to tyrannical interpretations of Jesus.The purpose of my course is to train students to form the type of independent evaluation of the historical evidence that you demonstrate so well.
I think the thrust of your reconstruction of both Jesus & the book of Revelation is on target (especially with regard to Jesus' family background & execution), although at a number of points I am less confident of the historicity of the data in the primary texts than you. (As a charter fellow of the Jesus Seminar I would have less red quotes & more pink, gray or black on some of these passages). But these points of difference are relatively minor.
My only real criticisms of your presentation are formal: (1) ... [technical problems which got solved] (2) Your anonymity [since then I indicated my full name, and now (Sept 97), wrote a brief "author's story"] is false modesty. You should let people know the human being that is the vehicle for such historical clarity. ...
Congratulations again:
Mahlon H. Smith"
In July 1998, at the end of another e-mail
message sent to me, Malhon wrote:
"P.S. Don't take my rebuttal personally.
I still admire you for authoring one of the
best Jesus sites on the Web!"