:One of the most remarkable examples of a man of extraordinary learning, pitching his argument to the wider reading public over the head of specialists, (populism) while presenting his work in such an intricate manner that only a specialist can work out what he is saying, and the average, even wellinformed reader can probably not make head or tail of it. It is, in itself a form of anti-Gospel evangelism, (his cultural and political, almost programmatic POV is alluded to by the triad of dedicatees, by the way), and like the Gospel evidence, his evidence can never be verified, and his scholarship, like the NT narrative, achieves ironic parity with it as a just-so story, or counterfactual. But this is of course irrelevant to our problem. Just a personal note.