The hypothesis that the apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus's death and conspiring to say that he had risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment, torture and death, and they would all have been lost. ---- Pascal, The Pensees

As I prepared this book, I learned much more than I did when I first taught the Bible class, mostly because of my decision to translate each of the 3:16s personally ---- Donald E. Knuth, 3:16