For Eisenman, after showing scripturally illiterate church- goers the shortcomings of the gospels themselves, demands that parallel accounts - which have all the drawbacks of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - be taken literally. He adds a dollop of passion to the mix in his outrage at the historical "injustice" that has befallen James.His trump-card in all this is his knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of texts and fragments found in 1948 in the Holy Land and dating from Christ's time. Eisenman has long campaigned for these to be more accessible to scholars. Yet the best he can manage in relation to James is that there are parallels between Jesus's would-be brother and the "righteous teacher" figure referred to in some of the scrolls.The irony is that, 50 years after their discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls have generated an industry in precisely the sort of populist speculation that, behind all the pseudo-academic jargon, lies at the core of Eisenman's book. Barbara Thiering's 1992 Jesus The Man was the most celebrated example. At the very least, the scrolls are as complex, contradictory and coded as any passage of the Bible.
Amateurs should proceed with caution, and beware of selective quotation without reference to a context that is still little understood. And woven into the web of the scrolls' mystery has to be the question of why they were abandoned in a cave in the first place. It could conceivably have been because they were considered of no importance at the time.Professor Eisenman would like to see himself as breaking the taboos of traditional biblical scholarship and bringing a new authenticity to the understanding of our Christian heritage. What he manages instead is a book that will mount a feeble challenge to Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods and Michael Baigent et al's The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, in the lucrative market in fascinating but fanciful investigations into religious "mysteries".8 Peter Stanford's 'The Devil: A Biography' is published by Mandarin at pounds 7.99.. Tony Blair yesterday attacked the "grotesque nerve" of John Major as the Prime Minister prepared to go to the Palace this morning to ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament, at last triggering the election for 1 May. With gloves off for a six-week campaign that could see the first televised leadership debate, Mr Blair, in an interview with The Independent, accused the Tories of doing a somersault on the need to help Britain's have-nots. Ministers were braced for a call today to Downing Street that would end the phoney war, and begin one of the longest campaigns of the post-war period, in an attempt to close the record Labour lead.
Mr Major is expected to visit a marginal constituency in the London area this week.Mr Major's attempts to regain the initiative by accepting Mr Blair's challenge of televised debates, after a lacklustre conference in Bath and the launch of the Tory election slogan - "You can be sure of the Conservatives" - became bogged down in a dispute over terms for the debate. Mr Blair said Mr Major was still "mucking around" by refusing to allow Paddy Ashdown to join in. A Blair aide said the Tories were engaged in a scam to make sure a debate did not take place by imposing impossible conditions.Mr Blair also told The Independent it was "ridiculous" for the Conservatives to blame Labour councils for the failings of a Conservative government; that Baroness Thatcher was right to say he was a British patriot who would defend the national interest in Europe; and that the Tories believed they had a divine right to rule."They have a sort of sense of outrage and anger that the Labour Party has finally got its act together and offers a creditable alternative. They think it's very impudent of us," he said.But his toughest attack was in response to Mr Major's campaign theme, delivered to the Conservative Central Council in Bath on Saturday, that the Conservatives should now turn their attention to helping society's have-nots. Mr Major said: "We are out to make sure that those who don't have, do have That revolution began years ago.
Now it is time to move it into a new phase."Mr Blair said: "That is nerve of the most grotesque sort, to claim that they are the party to heal the fractured society, when they have spent 18 years creating it - and a large part of that time saying there's no such thing as society at all."They are doing it because people believe the Conservatives increasingly represent the few, not the many, and therefore they are desperate to try and salvage some of their credibility on this question. But I think people will say 'Who is best after 18 years in office to heal the divisions of our society - the people who created them or those that have been drawing attention to them?' "As to yet another reported endorsement for Mr Blair from Lady Thatcher, who is reported to believe that Mr Blair is a patriot who will defend British interests in Europe, the Labour leader said: "I hope that is true. I am a British patriot and I believe that Britain is entirely safe in our hands But what is important ... is that our attitude to Europe is driven by our genuine national interest, and not by internal party bickering, which is what has happened with the Conservatives."Although government sources refused to confirm that Mr Major will go to the Palace today, a Labour source said: "Major wants to have his day - he needs the flummery."There was more woe for Mr Major as West Midlands MPs ignored pleas for unity from Michael Portillo by calling for the Tories to raise the issue of immigration in the campaign and to oppose entry into a single European currency..
