Greg Doudna, an old friend going back 30 years, and also an accomplished and published Dead Sea Scrolls scholar in his own right, recently posted something on the YahooJesusDynasty discussion list that I thought might be of more general interest, especially his report of visiting Dr. Hugh Schonfield in the 1980s. He also refers to my departed lifelong friend, Olof J. Ribb, whom I mention in the Acknowledgments in The Jesus Dynasty. I also recommend Greg’s new book, Showdown, a personal testimony to his own experiences and lifelong Quest, but maybe of interest to many of wider circles. For more on this book itself there is also a Website, The Scrollery, which I encourage interested readers to visit. Anyway, here is Greg’s post in whole:
A propos of James Tabor’s mention of the impact of Hugh Schonfield’s
books: I can also attest to that. I visited Schonfield in 1985 when he
was age 83, in his flat in London. He seemed in some ways a lonely
figure, reviled from both Jews and Christians because of his
insistence in holding to Jesus as a non-divine, solely-human messiah
of the world. He openly said that Jesus and Jesus’s early followers
had it wrong concerning expectations of the end of the age, signs
in the heavens, and all of the miraculous expectations. He had no
notion that Jesus had risen from the dead or had gone to heaven.
Yet he still believed that the idea of Jesus would save the world through
what he called “the Servant Nation,” which was his idea of a 20th-21st
century equivalent to “the Jesus party” anciently. He envisioned a
citizenship of the Servant Nation that would have its own passports
and be independent of existing nation-states and ultimately gain
United Nations recognition even though without controlling territory
or having an army. He told me that during the Cuban missile
crisis of 1962 when the world came close to nuclear war he had
written letters to both Kennedy and Khrushchev and that he wondered
if that had played some small role in that crisis’s resolution without
further escalation. Sure his Servant Nation idea seemed quixotic.
But Schonfield gave it his all.

Tabor’s post reminded me of these things, and even earlier of my first
acquaintance with Schonfield’s writings, which was early 1970s when a
faculty member at a small college in Texas I was attending gave me
Schonfield’s book _Those Incredible Christians_ and recommended it.
That book struck me and changed me, much as Schonfield’s writings
struck Tabor. I was 18 at the time. I was able to later tell
Schonfield personally in his living room of the impact of his book on
me when I was 18, and he just seemed gratified, as if it was this
kind of feedback that was his greatest reward in writing his books.

I did not know it all this time until two or three months ago, but James
Tabor was personally responsible for that book coming into my hands
so long ago when I was 18, even though I did not know James Tabor’s
name at that time and Tabor was then many states away. For the faculty
member who passed on Schonfield’s _Those Incredible Christians_ to me was
Tabor’s friend Olof J. Ribb, and Olof Ribb had been told of that
book by Tabor. That was how Ribb had the book to pass on to me.

And by another coincidence, Tabor’s post on this appears the same
week, this week, that my own book, _Showdown at Big Sandy_ (2006)
is released and now publicly available, which on its pages 19-20 tells
this story of the impact of Schonfield’s book which happened
because of the unknown role of Tabor so long ago. (Description
and sample pages of _Showdown_ can be seen at the Web site.

And so the world turns…

Greg Doudna

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