Marcus J. Borg, a prominent liberal theologian who attracted praise and controversy by helping to lead efforts to analyze Jesus as a historical figure, has died at age 72.
Borg died Wednesday at his home in Portland, Oregon, according to his publisher, HarperOne. The publisher announced Thursday that Borg had been suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring or thickening of the lungs that makes it difficult to breathe.
A popular speaker, frequent television commentator and the author or co-author of more than 20 books, Borg was among a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar that emerged in the 1980s and offered a skeptical look at the accounts of his life in the Gospels.
