Who was the historical Jesus? Here veteran movie director Paul Verhoeven's lifelong fascination with the facts and fictions surrounding the life of Jesus of Nazareth culminates in a work of brazen scholarship. Combining his passion for the subject with an in-depth knowledge of the history gained through rigorous study, Verhoeven paints a portrait of Jesus the man and Jesus the radical prophet. Verhoeven constructs a new vision of Jesus as a child born from the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as a spiritualist who performed exorcisms by screaming and spitting in the mouths of the possessed to drive out demons, and as a militant revolutionary who urged his followers to arm themselves.

After moving from his native Holland to Los Angeles in 1985, Paul Verhoeven became the only non-theologian admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of seventy-seven eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history. Their discussions are devoted to determining what Jesus actually said and did. Jesus of Nazareth was developed in extensive consultation with Rob van Scheers, Verhoeven's biographer. Verhoeven is the director of successful films such as Turkish Delight (1973), Soldier of Orange (1977), The Fourth Man (1983), RoboCop (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), Starship Troopers (1997), and Black Book (2006).

Susan Massotty is an award-winning translator who has also translated The Diary of Anne Frank, My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdolah, All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom, Wedding by the Sea by Abdelkader Benali, and The Kreutzer Sonata by Margriet de Moor. She lives and works in the Netherlands.