Colour and Criticism: Light on the Gospels

The interrogation ofan ancient text is not a pastime for those determined to reach assured results. 1 The inertia ofthe human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant .mass - which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught - but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse