My hope certainly is that it will help educate people.
Mark Goodacre, [pictured, right] who’s the professor of New Testament and Christian Origins in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University, is a featured expert on the series. He said recently that ultimately, viewers will have to decide whether to accept the findings as fact or opinion.
"Well, I think [the series] is going to be elements of fact and opinion," Goodacre told The Christian Post on Friday. "Take Sunday’s episode, which focuses on the Shroud of Turin; there’s been a huge debate about the authenticity of the shroud over the last hundred years. Some people are convinced that it’s the real deal, I’m personally skeptical about its authenticity. I think that it’s much more likely to be a medieval forgery, but even then, I think it’s still fascinating as an artifact from the middle ages."
Other expert commentary will be featured from the likes of Ivy League academics from Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Oxford universities who will provide theological insight. They include Erwin MacManus, senior pastor of MOSAIC Los Angeles, and Rev. Paul Raushenbush, executive religion editor of The Huffington Post, among others.
Award-winning journalist and filmmaker David Gibson, who co-authored Finding Jesus along with Michael Mckinley, the book that inspired the CNN series, will also be featured.
"My hope certainly is that it will help educate people. The best kind of education is when you get people asking questions," said Goodacre. "You get people engaging with the subject matter and they think, ‘that’s interesting, I want to know more about that,’ and they go and explore a bit more for themselves. I teach this stuff for a living, and I think the best kind of teaching is the one that gets people asking questions."