Speaking of The Jesus Seminar, Wills writes on page xxv:

This is the new fundamentalism. It believes in the literal sense of the Bible -- it just reduces the Bible to what it can take as literal quotation from Jesus. Though some people have called the Jesus Seminarists radical, they are actually very conservative. They tame the real radical, Jesus, cutting him down to their own size. [...]

Trying to find a construct, "the historical Jesus," is not like finding diamonds in a dunghill, but like finding New York City at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It is a mixing of categories [...]

The only Jesus we have is the Jesus of faith. If you reject the faith, there is no reason to trust anything the gospels say. The Jesus of the gospels is the Jesus preached, who is the Jesus resurrected. Belief in his continuing activity in the members of his mystical body is the basis of Christian belief in the gospels. [emphasis mine]

If Wills is saying what I think he's saying, then I have been saying this myself for a little while. In direct response to believers eager to authenticate the Bible through archeology or secular history (or rapture eschatology -- "you'll see I'm right when I disappear someday!"). If these people can only find the remains of Noah's Ark or just uncover the tumbled down walls in Jericho (they showed us something in Jericho, I assure you), or simply find the fish that swallowed Jonah, then everyone will have to accept that the Bible is trustworthy. To mix-up Paul from Romans 3:27, "Where, then, is faith? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of the cold, hard artifacts."

But the Bible already has the greatest witness attesting its credibility: the Church. I don't think that the Bible was intended to stand alone, apart from the Church. And, obviously, the Church can't stand very long without the Bible.

That's exactly what we are trying to do, and have been doing for a very, very long time, in Wills's opinion. And my question is, "OK, when we've become convinced that we've misunderstood, not individually but collectively, what do we do?"