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In this provocative book, noted scholar G. A. Wells tells the story of Higher Criticism: the close study of the scriptures that reveals difficulties and discrepancies. Wells traces the discipline’s German beginnings, exploring the problems in the New Testament that prompted scholars to revise traditional theories of the scriptures’ origins. Wells then traces the development and reception of these views from the 18th century to today. Drawing on current biblical scholarship, Wells explains how the Jesus of Paul’s epistles differs radically from later versions and addresses conservative Christians’ attempts to reconcile them. He carefully analyzes what the New Testament says about miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Nativity, Jesus’ conflicting genealogies, the Resurrection, the post-Resurrection appearances, and the failed prophecies of imminent apocalypse. Wells persuasively profiles the New Testament as a fascinating but flawed collection of incompatible viewpoints, revealing Jesus as a shifting, ambiguous, legendary figure who reflected the evolving teachings of a fragmented, emotion-based cultic movement.

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Why do so many people – sometimes even intelligent people – swallow the preposterous claims of religion? G.A. Wells, the leading freethinker of our time, tries to shed light on this puzzle in his entertaining and enormously learned book, Belief and Make-Believe.Professor Wells begins by analyzing the nature of belief. To dispel popular confusions on the relation between words and thoughts, he compares the thinking process of scientists, laymen, and chimpanzees.The power of emotion and instinct to help form people's ideological outlooks is analyzed by preference to «defiance» and «reliance», polar attitudes which arise from the need for dominance and submission in primate groups. Wells shows the influence of defiance and reliance in patriotism and in monotheistic religions, where submission to the will of the omnipotent is a wonderful technique for feeling secure in the face of life's actual and ineradicable dangers.Since the knowledgeable Christians now accept that the Bible is uneven, unreliable, and sometimes morally abhorrent, and that the New Testament account of the origin of Christianity is mostly legend, various attempts have been made to save something from the debris by selective re-interpretation. Wells evaluates several typical examples, showing how the apologists shrink from the clear implications of their arguments, which would demolish the whole edifice of Christian doctrine.Finally, Professor Wells debunks some of the extravagant and mystical claims that have been made for the arts, notably poetry, as quasi-religious vehicles for gaining insights into the human condition.

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"Using his probing intelligence to criticize the views of pundits from Locke to Chomsky, from Ayer to religious apologists, G. A. Wells has produced a lively essay on the persistent mistakes that have been made in understanding the relations among things, words, and ideas. The chapter entitled 'Language and the Bible' is a gem. It should delight skeptics even as it challenges believers. What's in a Name? shows, as if it still needed to be shown, that Wells is one of the foremost religious critics of our time."–Michael Martin Professor of Philosophy, Boston University

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