How exactly does one explain Jesus? That is the central question of this book. But the task of explaining Jesus is complicated. For many nonbelievers, skeptics, or practitioners of non- Jesus-based religions or spiritualities, it can be very strange to refer to a particular man who lived in the first century CE as someone who is still living. Even for some believers, this idea can be a difficult thing to understand-even given the teachings of their faith. Thus, whether believer or nonbeliever or somewhere in-between, for the intellectually curious, there is need for an explanation. Explaining Jesus explores the possibilities of a secular, interdisciplinary, science-based explanation for the phenomenon of Jesus.

Memento mori is a broad and understudied cultural phenomenon and experience. The term "memento mori" is a Latin injunction that means "remember mortality," or more directly, "remember that you must die." In art and cultural history, memento mori appears widely, especially in medieval folk culture and in the well-known Dutch still life vanitas paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet memento mori extends well beyond these points in art and cultural history. In Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter suggests that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori. Bennett-Carpenter shows that documentaries may offer composed transformative experiences in which a viewer may renew one's consciousness of mortality - and thus renew one's life.