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Not long ago, topics like textual criticism and the extra-biblical Gospels elicited yawns from my seminary students. I went through the obligatory motions of covering these staples of New Testament study, knowing that no matter how hard I tried, questions would be rare and engagement minimal.

All that has changed. Topics like the James ossuary and the Gospel of Judas have hit Times Square, not only pricking the attention of seminary students, but also garnering coverage from journalists and culture-watchers, from CBS News's traditional news team to 360 Degrees's Anderson Cooper.

In the last five years, numerous books on early Christian history have made the bestseller lists. Specials on figures like Jesus and Constantine are produced at a rate that could fill historical cable channels around the clock. And when People magazine weighs in on movies like The Passion of the Christ, you know something new is happening in the world of religion news.

We are seeing a growing public interest in Jesus and the early church. There are two kinds of presentations on these topics: scholarly books and "new find" announcements. Both kinds need our attention because the way this information is released is changing, making it more difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Every Christmas and Easter season, a "blockbuster" story proclaims the need to redefine Christianity. (This Christmas season, the media is touting a book by liberal scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan titled, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Birth.) I tell my students to take their inoculation shots and get ready to engage.

When I started my teaching career, scholars' books were usually fact-checked and peer-reviewed by other experts before being released. And it was rare for scholars to summarize the results of one side of a scholarly debate and take their results directly to the public, as Borg and Crossan have done and are doing again. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this approach, as it is part of open discussion in the public square. But we must recognize that what is presented as the "scholars' point of view" in national magazines and on TV specials is often only some scholars' point of view.

The Net, cable TV, and the increasing popularity of books on such topics have given the public fresh and more direct access to these debates. When stories and claims are taken directly to the public—and often there is a great deal of money to be made in breaking the "news"—it is crucial that both sides of the debates get heard as scholars go back and forth on topics as formative as Jesus' identity. My word to you when you hear about scholars revealing new things about Jesus is simply to check it out. Make sure you get the rest of the story when the "new, industrial-strength" Jesus is presented.

As for archaeological finds about Jesus, the way these are shared with the public is also changing. News conferences make the point directly to the public, bypassing the usual vetting by peers of distinct persuasions that used to occur in the initial rounds of scholarly debate. Often, fact-checking is minimal. This March I appeared on the Discovery Channel's Koppel on Discovery, alongside William Dever, to critique the Jesus family-tomb story. Dever and I differ on how we handle the Bible, but we agreed on this find. The research highlighted in the special sidestepped any normal vetting and gave archaeology a bad name. Dever saw it as pure hype. Although I agreed with him, I thought to myself, Things will never go back to the way they were.

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December 2007, Vol. 51, No. 12