“It’s like every professor’s dream coming true,” BR columnist Marcus Borg commented upon receiving a check dated December 25 for $1.5 million. The gift, from a Texas inventor, together with matching funds from Oregon State University, will be used to endow a chair of religious studies for Borg at that institution.

Borg is the author of Jesus: A New Vision (Harper & Row, 1987) and a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars whose new edition of the Gospels, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, was published late last year by Macmillan. The words of Jesus appear in four colors in this controversial publication, representing the scholars’ judgement about their authenticity. Borg profiled this project in “What Did Jesus Really Say?” BR 05:05.