Hadge, nice to hear from you - and I like the blog and your description of ‘open ground’. We’re trying to do something similar in London.

I take your point about facile reconstruction ‘to suit our original assumptions or preferences’. At the moment it seems to me that Wright brings less of a modern agenda to the task of interpretation than Borg, but that may just expose my particular prejudices. Still, I think we have to take seriously both the historical question and the question of what constitutes an ‘accurate’ reading of the texts. It is clearly important that this remains an open process, an ongoing conversation. But I also feel that something usable needs to emerge from it at a grassroots level - something clear enough and powerful enough to motivate things like worship, ministry, and mission. And surely, if I choose to be baptized into Christ, I need to have a fairly clear idea what I’m letting myself in for.