This autobiography of one of the world's leading Jewish religious thinkers and teachers, and the central participant in the dramatic 'Jacobs affair, ' begins with his early boyhood in a poor district of Manchester. The story covers his student life at Gateshead and London University, his trips overseas, and the showbiz world of Hollywood--all of which enhances the book's value as a historical source. For the first time, he provides an extended personal account of the 'Jacobs affair' of the 1960s, the bitter controversy over his theological writings which led to his being ostracised by many representatives of the Orthodox tradition from which he sprang.

Geza Vermes is known world-wide as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and for his pioneering work, Jesus the Jew . But in addition to that he is the living embodiment of Jewish-Christian relations in the context of an honest quest for the truth. Few scholars have had such a colorful and eventful life, the course of which he describes here. Born into a Hungarian Jewish family which later converted to Christianity, he received a Catholic education and was later ordained priest after the turmoil of the War. The quest for membership in a religious order led him to the Sion Fathers, in Louvain and then in Paris, where among other things he was introduced to biblical studies and became fascinated with the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. Subsequent emotional turmoil from conflicting pressures made him ill , but a series of "Providential Accidents" which gave this book its title brought him to England, marriage, and a new fulfilled life, first in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then in Oxford, and to a public reassertian of his Jewishness. As well as telling a fascinating personal story, this book provides a vivid insider's account of developments in Scrolls research and of the lengthy battle with procrastinating editors over the "academic scandal of the century." These memoirs shed much light on the deep personal friendships and antagonisms and the complex, non-scholarly factors which accompany even committed study of the Bible, Qumran, and the Gospels.