Scenario: Nascent Christianity Emerges Volume 2

About the Book

Palestine in the decades following the lost war against the Romans (66-70 C.E.) is ruled from the port town of Caesarea pros Sebaste, the principle location in “Scenario; Nascent Christianity Emerges.” The lives of the Jews are utterly and comprehensively disoriented - socially, religiously and institutionally. A multiplicity of contending sects, cults and schools of thought flourish – founded only in part on traditional Jewish beliefs! Plagiarizing, Marcus Flavius Agrippa (later known as St. Mark) pieces together elements from Isiac, Orphic, Dionysiac, and Apollonian mythology, fabricating the narrative life of a savior - a heroic, masculine godhead. He - himself of Jewish origin - finds himself in a highly competitive environment: Jewish orthodoxy’s solutions to mankind’s needs, the distinctly violent, fundamentalist Yachad, the much more pacifistic Ebionites, who celebrate the life, not of Jesus, but rather of his 15-year-younger brother, Jacob. Marcus’ task: displace Jacob with his own fabricated godhead. But the novel, seeks to provide a more comprehensive, authentic picture of life in the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean in the first century of the Common Era. At the center of the narrative lies the troubled love story of Primus Antonius Maecenas, the son of the Roman procurator, and Lysia Magdalena, a member of a prosperous indigenous family. Its course is tightly woven into the conflict of creeds and sects. Better acquainted with the realities of that historic moment, the reader acquires a decidedly more lifelike picture of Christianity’s origins.

About the Author

A soldier in the US Army, 1944-46, I saw no combat action in the Second World War, but served in the occupation army in southern Germany for one year. My university schooling occurred at Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio. With a scholarship to the University of Utrecht, I returned to Europe in 1953. I taugh for the University of Maryland Oversees Program until 1957 at American military installations in Germany and France (still in NATO at the time) and thereafter assumed a teaching position in the US Army Special Warfare School at Oberammergau, Bavaria. (Doctorate 1960). The Center for Research in Social System (CRESS) in Washington D.C., an appendage of Washington University occupied me till 1969 at which time I responded to an invitation to join a Bundeswehr school in the province of Northrhine Westphalia. I became a German citizen in 1975 and was pensioned in 1986, permitting me to concentrated, first upon the composition of a Mozart opera, as yet unperformed, and beginning in the late 80s, I worked on a novel, now completed, but as yet unpublished. Its title: "Scenario: Nascent Christianity Emerges;" A Novel set in Palestine in the latter portion of the First Century of our Common Era." Twenty Chapters, an Appendix and Bibliography