Thank you for your further thoughts, Rusty. I agree entirely; the work of the Jesus Seminar was useful indeed in sorting out the (likely) more authentic teachings of Jesus from the words put into his mouth by the self-serving cult founded by Paul of Tarsus (as in virtually all of the book of John). My purpose in engaging Christians in this way is so as not to alienate them immediately by letting them cast me into the broad category of the "unsaved" or "heathen" or "heretics" but rather to keep the lines of communication open by showing respect for their icon, in order to scramble their printed circuit of "believers" vs. "nonbelievers" so that they can actually begin to expand their narrow ideology.