disassociated from brilliance or intellectual capacity. Not one in a thousand will spontaneously think of him in conjunction with words such as “well-informed,” “brilliant,” or “smart.” Far too often he is regarded as hardly conscious. He is looked on as a mere icon, a wraithlike semblance of a man, fit for the role of sacrificial lamb or alienated social critic, perhaps, but little more.2 Given that we fail to see Jesus as an intellectual, we of course don’t model our intellectual lives after him.