It is important, of course, not to de-emphasize the roles of personal politics and scholarly rhetoric completely. For instance, it is no surprise that certain historical Jesus scholars are pro-Israeli in the sense that they will tow dominant media and party-political lines on issues relating to the state of Israel and the Palestinians, and perhaps unsurprisingly reflect such concerns and narratives in their work on the historical Jesus. But what I want to do here is look at the less predictable examples and how the seemingly contradictory figures end up buying into, or helping explain, dominant political discourses once their work enters the scholarly arena, with ultimate reference to the social world constructed around Jesus. One feature of Herman and Chomsky's approach to propaganda I want to develop here is the role of the individual as discussed briefly in the Introduction. Herman and Chomsky are both clear that individuals may hold different views from the dominant ideological positions but ultimately they will, intentionally or otherwise, buy into such trends. I want to push this tension to its extreme in this chapter by looking at the influential work of Bruce Malina and his personal politics, and how they work out (or not) in relation to Jesus and ‘the Land’ and how his scholarly output buys into dominant American media and party-political views on the Middle East, all of which run clean contrary to his political intentions.