Over the past two thousand years, countless personalities have been projected onto the enigma we know as Jesus: a first-century rabbi, capable of miraculous healing, or a magician faking cures; a Prophet, or a deluded visionary; a heretical Jew, or God in human form. In this work of accessible scholarship, Pagels explores a wide range of sources-including the Bible, the earliest reports of Jesus's life, and the secret 'gnostic gospels, ' discovered in the 20th century-to break down these contradictions and paint a richer and more complex portrait of Jesus in his own time.