NBC News' website reports on a new book, The Jesus Papers, by Michael Baigent. In the book, Baigent asserts that:

With the Bible as his source, Baigent reconstructed the story of the crucifixion and arrived at an entirely new version of events.

A secret deal with Pontius Pilate
He says Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesus’s death, actually made a secret deal to save his life.

Baigent: It was rigged. It was a fraud. I think the crucifixion was set up precisely to remove a particular political problem which both Pilate and Jesus found themselves within.

Pilate, Baigent argues, he needed to appease the crowd which was calling for Jesus’s death. But because Jesus had urged his followers to pay their taxes to Rome, Baigent argues Pilate also had an incentive to let Jesus live.

Baigent: It’s my hypothesis that he rigged the crucifixion such that Jesus would survive but very quickly removed Jesus from the scene.

According to Baigent, Jesus and his supporters were also in on this plot. Baigent acknowledges there no proof of his theory, but it was possible to survive crucifixion.

Throughout the world, Christians are rioting and calling for the swift execution of Baigent. NBC news reporter Sarah James has been forced into hiding. Book stores, including Borders and Barnes & Noble, have pulled the books from their shelves. Several prominent American universities are sponsoring forums so that students understand why this book so deeply offends many Christians.

Of course nothing in the above paragraph is true. When someone writes a book questioning the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and actually hopes to be called a heretic, nothing happens. There are no riots, death threats or tortured calls for a balance between exercising free speech and not offending the religion of others. In fact, most of the reviewers at Amazon seem more offended that Baigent is ripping off the "Da Vinci Code".

It's somewhat ironic to me that NBC Dateline can run this story and fail to compare the reaction to this book to the reaction to the Mohammed cartoons. Isn't there a story there about tolerance? I guess not. I guess when Dateline wants to find a story about tolerance, they're content to send some Arab-Americans to a NASCAR event and hope that some fans hassle them.