In the first part of A Brilliant Deceit and Other Essays, the author offers fresh evidence to support a thesis put forward by the famous New Testament scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) that the disciples of Jesus perpetrated a resurrection hoax. That evidence is presented in a series of short essays that contain references to overlapping observations made by Reimarus. The second part of the book isolates socio-religious trajectories in ancient Israelite religion. The author’s fundamental findings challenge the widespread notion that ancient Israel was a homogeneous culture united under the worship of the high god Yahweh Sabaoth. Instead, he argues that the Old Testament traditions are not the product of one people but two, originally and distinctly worshipping the high gods El and Yahweh. Dr. Barré received his doctorate in religion from Vanderbilt University in 1986. His writings have been published in such scholarly journals as the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vetus Testamentum, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentlische Wissenschaft, and the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. He has contributed articles to the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible and his dissertation was published under the title, The Rhetoric of Political Persuasion: The Narrative Artistry and Political Intentions of 2 Kings 9-11.