Here are my thoughts, for what they're worth--

I agree that these days it's pretty easy to make a movie telling the world that Jesus actually dated Paris Hilton, or some other such sensationalist nonsense. It strikes me that over many periods of the 2000 year old Christian history (and even before that!), the secular world has found ways to mock and ridicule Christians. Noah and his ark would be a prime example of that. On the other hand, here we are, at this point in history, 2000 years after Jesus, and lots of people really want some hard evidence-- something, anything that they can grab on to and say "Ah ha! So there really is verifiable, extra-Biblical scientific data that proves [ fill in the blank ] about Jesus".

The thing it seems to come down to is that even if you put your trust in God, the Trinity, the Bible, etc, there's still a real divide between Christian communities. Without going into something you're probably well acquainted with, I very generally mean the difference between the contemporary fundamentalist Christians on one end, and the "progressive" church communities like the Unitarians and such on the other. How is a Christian really suppose to know what is the "truth" about Jesus and the rest of the Bible? Oh sure, experts of every kind will grandstand about it, and many even have done academic research, and have assembled fragments of information to point toward the "truth"... but basically these days what I sense is a kind of PR war that goes on amongst Christians for who has the intellectual rights, so to speak, on what the Bible is all about.

Which brings me to what you've said in your blog. When you say "do some first class documentaries with top flight evangelical scholars and others who see all this other stuff as pretty thin on credibility," who exactly is invited to that party, anyway? To make documentaries and the like that are compelling to thinking Christians and even the secular world, wouldn't you want people who are not only evangelical scholars and people who are out to basically discredit, but also people who are all over the spectrum-- like the "progressives", or the secular antiquities academics? Heck, why not even bring in people from other faiths, since they won't have the kind of emotional/spiritual attachment that we have? Maybe their eyes could help us see things from yet another perspective...? Or do you mean to suggest that if Hollywood poses the question and suggests any kind of answer whatsoever, the first move of all Christians should be to deny it, either by yelling or otherwise, and vigorously move to discredit it?

Thanks for your blog,

David