Jesus, History, and Mt. Darwin

Book excerpt: Written in the genre of Henry David Thoreau's travel-thinking essays, Jesus, History, and Mount Darwin: An Academic Excursion is the story of a three-day climb into the Evolution Range of the High Sierra mountains of California. Mount Darwin stands among other mountains near fourteen thousand feet high and that are named after promoters of religious versions of evolutionary thinking. Rick Kennedy, a history professor from Point Loma, uses the climb as an opportunity to think about general education and how both the natural history of evolution and the ancient history of Jesus can find a home in the Aristotelian diversity of university methods. Kennedy offers the academic foundations for the credibility and reliability of accounts of Jesus in the New Testament, while pointing out that these foundations have the same weaknesses and strengths that ancient history has in general. Natural history, Kennedy points out, has a different set of strengths and weaknesses from ancient history. Overall, the book reminds students and professors of the wisdom in being humble.