archaeological research, has simply compounded the misunderstanding. The quest of the historical Jesus has been conducted as though it were like Madame Curie’s quest for radium, a process of filtering out all other elements until the final precipitate, the long-sought-for element itself was exposed to view. Or like the archaeologist digging down through layers of historical strata in the hope of uncovering some artifact in the earliest stratum that might explain why so much happened subsequently