Readers who follow my personal blog will have learned that there has been quite a back-and-forth between me and Dr. Michael Licona after I reported that Dr. Licona appeared to be speaking up in defense of Dr. Craig A. Evans's comments. Evans agreed with notorious skeptical scholar Bart Ehrman that Jesus never uttered the statements given in John in which Jesus clearly claims to be God. Evans's further idea is that these incidents are "'he is' confessions of the Johannine community" expounding and elaborating on some other teaching by Jesus of the doctrine. Evans also agreed with Ehrman that the historical facts in the gospel of John are "just nuggets," a status Evans contrasted with his own view of the (presumably more historical) synoptics. Dr. Licona has since distanced himself somewhat from Evans's position, while continuing to boost and even expand upon arguments for it and while insisting quite emphatically that "by no means" would it mean that John is historically unreliable even if it were true.
I decided to go ahead and put a lot of material into my most recent response to Licona, now up here, including some specific responses to Licona's theories about specific passages in the New Testament. At first I was going to keep my reply as short as possible, but I gradually changed my mind as I realized that more people may read this reply than other posts I have written on the subject. I plan tonight, if possible, to go ahead and create a "Licona" tag both here at W4 and at Extra Thoughts, and that will make my posts on this debate easier to find. Meanwhile, if interested, settle in and enjoy the current post.