So Philip Pullman is taking up the cause again with 'The Good man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ' due to be published next Easter.

''By the time the gospels were being written, Paul had already begun to transform the story of Jesus into something altogether new and extraordinary, and some of his version influenced what the gospel writers put in theirs.

''Paul was a literary and imaginative genius of the first order who has probably had more influence on the history of the world than any other human being, Jesus certainly included. I believe this is a pity.''

(and how! says Carol)

Pullman told The Times newspaper that the idea of Jesus being the son of God came from Paul's ''fervid imagination''.

He went on: ''The story I tell comes out of the tension within the dual nature of Jesus Christ, but what I do with it is my responsibility alone. Parts of it read like a novel, parts like a history, and parts like a fairy tale; I wanted it to be like that because it is, among other things, a story about how stories become stories.''


Sounds promising.