Is the account of Jesus in the Gospels a reliable portrait of a historical figure, or an invention that needs to be demythologized? Because of the rise of higher criticism and the antisupernaturalistic presuppositions that often accompany that enterprise, modern biblical scholarship has raised the question of the historical Jesus.

An eighteenth century-Christopher Hitchens, Baron d’Holbach begins this polemical tome with the rebuke, “Although the writings of the New Testament are in the hands of everyone, nothing is more uncommon than to find the professors of Christianity acquainted with the history of the founder of their religion; and even among those who have perused that history, it is still more rare to find any who have ventured seriously to examine it.” Taking his title from Pilate’s words in the Latin text of Joh...