It's strange to admit that I've read my way through a fairly large pile of books of Jesus scholarship and pseudo-scholarship, and yet have only just now read any works by Geza Vermes. Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924, his parents non-practicing Jews who converted to Catholicism during Geza's childhood but were still swept up in the Holocaust. Geza himself was ordained as a Catholic priest despite being rejected by both the Jesuits and the Dominicans because of his Jewish ancestry. In the late 1950s, however, he left the Catholic church and reasserted his Jewish identity. Most of his later life was spent in England, where he served as Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford University until his death in 2013. His book covers quote both the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph describing him as "the greatest Jesus scholar of his generation". He has two main claims to fame. One is as a translator and interpreter of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which he first examined
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson