There has never been a time when the life of Jesus has not presented some occasion for scandal. Although the primordial scandal of the Christian Gospel unfolded around the figure of a crucified Messiah, this book takes as its principal subject a derivative scandal: the scandal of the Christian Gospels; namely, the impediments – even offenses – to literary, historical, and logical sense that only seem to multiply in proportion to one’s intimacy with the narratives of the four Evangelists. The suggestion of such things will itself be scandalous to some.