The book is garnering attention for presenting Jesus as a man who promoted equality between the sexes. And no doubt Jesus was sexually magnetic to women like Mary Magdalene, Johanna and Susanna, who are described in the Gospel of Luke as traveling with Jesus and the male apostles, Greeley says.

'He was the kind of man on whom women could easily form what we today call crushes,' Greeley writes in the book. 'He did not demean them or talk down to them or keep them in their place — whatever that place might be.'

Greeley says Jesus was likely attracted to women, too.

'Jesus was not sexless; he was not a eunuch. He had the same hormones as do all male humans,' he writes in the book. 'All we can demand of Jesus because of who and what he was would be that he never exploit a woman or a woman's love. Jesus indeed had hormones, but because he was who he was, he focused his sexual energies on the task of announcing the kingdom of God.'