JESUS IN ENGLAND (NOT): In the Daily Mail, Peter Stanford examines the historical evidence and realizes it adds up to very little. Well done. Excerpt:

Another version of the story claims Joseph [of Arimathea] went to Glastonbury with Jesus before his 'nephew' started preaching in public.

Legend has it that the 20-year-old Messiah built a church from mud and wood there and dedicated it to his mother. It stood in the grounds of what went on to become Glastonbury Abbey.

The new film, which cites the second story, includes testimony from the sixth-century St Gildas that just such a building existed in Glastonbury.

But while the claim is fantastic, it was made more than 500 years after any possible visit and hardly counts as an eye-witness account of Jesus toiling over the construction of an English chapel.

And besides, in medieval times, they rarely let facts get in the way of a good story. After all, a visit by Christ, however fanciful, would have been a major draw for a location's pilgrimage trade, sucking money into the coffers.

But the film does uncover some fascinating details - and provides plenty of circumstantial evidence that Britain was the centre of learning for any wealthy young Palestinian in the 1st century AD.

Even so, Rome was a whole lot closer to Nazareth than England, and it is hard to imagine why a knowledge-hungry Jesus would bypass the centre of arguably the greatest civilisation the world has ever seen in favour of a small town in Somerset.

It is also doubtful that Druids made gentle schoolmasters. After all, most contemporary references to 1st century Druids describe them as bloodthirsty warriors rather than the Mr Chips of the Dark Ages.

Roman historian Tacitus, for example, describes the imperial army clashing on Anglesey with Druids who 'poured forth horrible imprecations' and performed 'barbarous rites' at altars 'stained with the blood of their prisoners and the entrails of men'.

We do know that some ancient religious traditions encouraged scientific exploration, but if it was maths Jesus wanted to find out about - as the film claims - he really would have done better heading for India.

Arithmetic, including squares, cubes and roots, are all to be found in its sacred Vedic texts dating to 1,000 BC.

And anyway, why maths in particular? It is not as if once he began his public ministry, Jesus preached the parable of the accountants.

What all these speculative efforts rather depressingly reveal is a penchant in human nature for concentrating on the superficial rather than the profound.

Background here.