I received this email from a reader – well known to me – who asked that their name not be shared. But I think the point is very valid:

I started to read the review, as is my wont, but I stopped dead after the first block quote, and could not continue. Why? you might ask. I’ll tell you, in the form of a rant aimed at Sara Miles:

For the umpteenth fucking time, people, Jesus did not fucking roam through fucking Palestine. I’m sorry you are so hung up on your politics that you can’t help but spew this anachronistic nonsense, but it ruins your credibility and identifies you as a total asshole in the eyes of anyone who gives a shit about what Jesus of Nazareth may actually have said and done (that is, not the “Jesus of faith”). If your fantasy Jesus is a modern-day Palestinian Arab projected backward, fine, God bless. But just admit up front that you don’t give a flying rat’s ass about who your savior was on Earth — which, imho, makes your notion of who he is in heaven more than a little suspect. And while you’re at it, admit that it may be just a tad anti-Semitic to refuse to call your Jesus a Jew who roamed Galilee and Judea, with a stopover in Samaria. Like it says in — oh, I don’t know — the friggin’ TEXT.

P.S.: Your “Jesus was a Palestinian” bumper sticker is equally moronic, making my head explode as a historian, if not as a moderately well-read amateur theologian.