More popular than Jesus in all of us." Adamant that he was not comparing himself with Christ, he tried to explain the decline of Christianity in the UK. Pressed for an apology by a reporter, he said: "if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry." Journalists gave a sympathetic response, and told Lennon that the Bible Belt were "quite notorious for their Christian attitude". When the tour began, it was marred by protests and disturbances. Telephone threats were received, and concerts were picketed by the Ku Klux Klan. "Daily Express" writer Robert Pitman, responding to the
Jesus in the Talmud descriptions of Jesus in the Talmud, and which would become the basis of much anti-Semitic literature in later centuries such as "The Talmud Unmasked" written in 1892 by Justinas Bonaventure Pranaitis. Starting in the 20th century the topic of Jesus in Judaic literature became subject to more unbiased, scholarly research, such as "Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen" written in 1902 by Samuel Krauss, which was the first scholarly analysis of the Judaic anti-Christian polemic "Toledot Yeshu" ("The Biography of Jesus"). In 1903, Unitarian scholar R. Travers Herford wrote "Christianity in Talmud and Midrash", which became the standard work on