MICHAEL BAIGENT'S NEW BOOK is reviewed by New Testament Professor Richard Ascough in the Ottawa Citizen:

A matter of faith: While the Gospel of Judas was meticulously verified, we'll just have to trust Michael Baigent about The Jesus Papers

Richard S. Ascough, Citizen Special
Published: Friday, April 14, 2006

As the Christian church worldwide prepares to celebrate its most sacred of liturgical dates, the figure of Jesus looms wide in the popular, secular press.

From cover stories in major news magazines to lengthy newspaper articles to television spots, Jesus has grabbed the attention of faithful, agnostic and atheist alike. At the centre of this year's fascination with the person and work of Jesus is a book called The Jesus Papers written by Michael Baigent, who has made headlines for his failed attempt to sue Random House, the publisher of The Da Vinci Code by author Dan Brown.

Held up against recent events, Mr. Baigent's evidence for The Jesus Papers sounds suspiciously more like the claims first made for the James ossuary than those made for the Gospel of Judas.

[...]

I think that's generous. We actually had the ossuary to study, unlike Baigent's Aramaic manuscripts.

The most sensationalistic detail of the book, however, is the existence of the "Jesus papers" themselves. Mr. Baigent claims to have seen two Aramaic documents from the first century, written by Jesus to the Jewish court, the Sanhedrin, denying his divinity outright and stating that he merely claimed to be filled with the spirit of God.

Since Mr. Baigent cannot read Aramaic the owner of the documents summarized their contents for him. Alas, Mr. Baigent tells us, the owner of these documents must remain anonymous.

In sum, we are asked to trust Mr. Baigent's faith in an unnamed businessman who told him that his documents contained one of the most explosive claims in history. The veracity of Mr. Baigent's arguments boils down to how much faith we will put in Mr. Baigent.

All this is true, but in addition there are unlikely elements in Baigent's story which make me suspicious of it. I'm not going to take it seriously unless he produces these Aramaic documents and makes them available for scholars to study. If they do exist at all, it is astronomically unlikely that are really autograph documents by Jesus.

Trust, but verify.