The book has been extensively criticized by mainstream scholars and historians, who state that the book's thesis is wildly inaccurate, that it is filled with obvious historical errors, that its main points are contradictory, and that it relies heavily on out-of-date sources written by non-experts. These scholars do not regard the book as a work of serious scholarship and instead view it as merely what historian of early Christianity Bart D. Ehrman has called "sensationalist writing driven by a desire to sell books."