This booklet, here in PDF format made from original typescript as preserved in photocopy of the day, dates from 1984. It bears the title Jesus Of Nazareth And God: A Footnote.
Arguably this booklet is my favorite writing. I had fun making it and now fun again making PDF files from its typescript for posting to Notes To Myself: The History Of The World at Catechesis For The Sai Era and also to Theological Geography.
Upon completing this booklet I wrote Bob Handy (then-Professor of Modern Church History, The Union Theological Seminary, New York City), who had been good to me as my professor and mentor, saying I had earned a Th.D -- an earned, not an honorary degree -- on my own and desired The Union Faculty to award me the same, with scarlet robe bearing three black bars on its sleeves, in recognition of that achievement.
Ever patient with me, Bob said I would need to undergo the ordinary process in order to be awarded that degree. I was disappointed and understanding at once. However, there was justice in my request.
I had just demonstrated in writing the essential comity of religions in the essential unity of God. A decades-long but so-far fruitless desire to that effect nested among Union Faculty and Students, and I did it, I did it Ducky, I made the connections in this perfectly orthodox little Christian theological booklet titled Jesus Of Nazareth And God: A Footnote.
By bringing forth this booklet, I also completed the Life And Thought of Albert Schweitzer, his Quest For The Historical Jesus, and, effectively, the entire biblical studies professoriate going back at least three centuries.
With Swami's help I did it.
Some copies of Jesus Of Nazareth And God: A Footnote were made in the day, but not many. I know of only one persisting, the one in my possession -- itself having an heart-ful, dramatic, and peripatetic history -- from which these PDFs are made.
The literary style is a bit cute. Playful (think leela) might serve as a sympathetic descriptor. Idiotic (think bevakooph) as an unsympathetic one. A certain shall we say off-broadway sense of humor would not speed amiss whilst traversing this volume. I predict that qualities of this work will attract or repulse a reader, and either way with considerable force. Forewarned is Forearmed.
The throw-out element of this booklet's title -- A Footnote -- is a throw-back at a professor at Union who was especially nasty to me over the matter of footnotes. He scolded me for not footnoting certain ideas in the final report I prepared, during my Senior year, in fulfillment of a faculty-approved BD[now MDiv]-level honors project I had requested to conduct under this professor's supervision. When I replied that I did not footnote those ideas because they are my own, he hotly threatened me with expulsion from Union unless I footnoted everything in any paper I wrote for his consideration. Then, he shouted at me that, as a BD-level student, I was not allowed to have my own ideas, and certainly was not allowed to put such in a paper submitted for academic credit, until I had been accepted into a doctoral program.
I have long believed that my unwillingness in regard to something entirely different propelled this professor's pique at my person. He was a scorcher when aroused, and in consequence, and unannounced, I did not attend my class graduation exercise, that Year of 1969, at The Riverside Church. I have long believed, also, that another professor, who served then as Dean of the Union Faculty, prevented my expulsion from Union. An era of ecclesial and academic structure was a wrap.
