ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book desires to contribute a small part to the continuing quest for a fuller account of Christianity’s origin. It offers the conjecture that the Renaissance in Europe was the great womb that gave birth to both historical and literary criticism. The book focuses on two writers of antiquity, one a Greek historian and the other a Greek-speaking novelist. It explores the fruitful hypothesis that the earliest Christians envisioned a Christ who was the opposite of Gaius Caesar Germanicus, nicknamed Caligula. The book explores the difficult question of whether Jesus was a historical figure whose followers somehow both preserved and systematically distorted his mission, message, and person. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, historical inquiry into the emergence of first-century Christianity resurrected a fresh search for the historical Jesus.
