Professor Géza Vermes

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a theologian, a Hungarian Jew, most of whose family died in the Holocaust. He converted to Christianity, became a Catholic priest, and then, twenty years later, reconverted to Judaism. This tortuous route to final personal belief has been accompanied by an unquenchable academic interest in the origins of modern European religion. Appointed the first professor of Jewish studies at Oxford, he's seen as the man who managed to disentangle the early history of Christianity from its Jewish foundations. It's made him one of the most influential religious thinkers of our time. But he got into studying it in his own words to have fun. His most famous book, Jesus the Jew, published more than twenty-five years ago, persuaded many people to rethink what kind of man it was who invented Christianity. He is Geyser Fermes. So you embarked on these lengthy investigations, Professor, into exactly who Jesus was in order to have.

Professor Géza Vermes1:29

Functional.

Professor Géza Vermes1:36

on the study of first century Palestinian Jewish history. I thought I had the time to have to take off a few moments and

Professor Géza Vermes1:48

attempt to place the history of Jesus and in general the Gospels into their genuine historical context.

Presenter2:01

But it all began, didn't it? Because you said that that Christmas was not quite what we all believed it to be.

Professor Géza Vermes2:06

Well, this is how it started, because I was invited by the observer.

Professor Géza Vermes2:11

To

Professor Géza Vermes2:13

help uh the writer to to to produce an article on the Christmas story.

Professor Géza Vermes2:19

And as a result, somebody invited me to write a book on Jesus.

Presenter2:24

Well, somebody rang you up and said, is there any more where that came from? Absolutely.

Professor Géza Vermes2:26

Look back

Presenter2:27

Shockers, shockers is what they were written.

Professor Géza Vermes2:29

This is what they were really saying.

Presenter2:30

Uh

Presenter2:30

And you did?

Professor Géza Vermes2:32

And I it's

Presenter2:32

Jesus the Jew had an electrifying effect and not just on theologians, didn't he?

Professor Géza Vermes2:38

Um

Presenter2:38

Uh

Professor Géza Vermes2:38

Absolutely correct. Of course, today the title is taken almost as a cliché. Everybody accepts a de facto. But when it first came out in nineteen seventy three,

Professor Géza Vermes2:52

A lot of uh conventional Christians thought that it was shocking.

Presenter2:56

Indeed. Well, let and I want to explore that with you. But let me you know, that book answered some pretty fundamental questions. Let me just put one or two of them very simply to you. Who was Jesus?

Professor Géza Vermes3:07

Uh

Presenter3:08

Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes3:08

Jesus said was a Galilean Jew.

Professor Géza Vermes3:11

We can accept roughly the time of his birth, which happened just before the beginning of the Christian era, and we can agree also about the time of his death roughly around AD thirty. Who did he believe himself to be?

Professor Géza Vermes3:31

Millet

Professor Géza Vermes3:33

There is really clear

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Evidence when you

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Peel away the accretions.

Professor Géza Vermes3:42

that he considered himself as

Professor Géza Vermes3:46

Someone commissioned by God to announce the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.

Professor Géza Vermes3:56

persuade the the Jews of his time to repent and make themselves ready for entry, and lead them into this kingdom of God.

Presenter4:06

Well, that definition as far as it goes leaves, of course, unanswered as many questions about the story of Jesus as it answers, and I want to ask you some more, but we'll come to that. Let me ask you first of all about you and music and your desert island. What's the first piece you've chosen?

Professor Géza Vermes4:19

Bosen.

Professor Géza Vermes4:19

Uh the first place um really corresponds uh to my discovery of real biblical scholarship, both Old Testament and New Testament, which consist in finding out uh what uh the real truth is lying beneath uh the surface of uh later elaboration.

Speaker 34:42

Ain't necessarily so.

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It ain't necessarily so.

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The things at your liable to read in the Bible.

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It ain't necessary so.

Speaker 35:07

Jonah

Presenter5:08

He lived in a way.

Presenter5:12

It Ain't Necessarily So, sung there by Peggy Lee. So you set about disentangling Professor Vemes' fact from fiction, establishing what was history and what was essentially just a good story. There are, of course, some fascinating elements to that good story, like the miracles. Did Jesus heal? Could he heal?

Professor Géza Vermes5:30

I am sure that that like many faith healers nowadays he was able to perform miracles, as it is said in the Gospel, if people believed in him.

Professor Géza Vermes5:43

You read in the Gospels uh that in his home town in Nazareth, where people did not really like the idea that this one of that fellow s suddenly claims himself to be somebody.

Professor Géza Vermes5:56

He was unable to perform mirror.

Professor Géza Vermes5:59

So it is a tool sided

Professor Géza Vermes6:01

Person.

Presenter6:01

And what do you make of the story of feeding thousands of people with a few loaves and fishes?

Professor Géza Vermes6:08

That's more difficult, uh, but you have the same story in the Old Testament already. This is a pattern uh which uh you have and uh which is repeated in religious literature.

Presenter6:18

But if he was simply uh an itinerant preacher who who appeared to have performed miracles in some places and not in others and so on.

Professor Géza Vermes6:24

Uh

Presenter6:26

Why was he crucified? Why did both the Romans and the Jews decide that this man's life must be ended?

Professor Géza Vermes6:33

Well, if I may add before turning to the crucifixion that he was not just an itinerant preacher and uh healer. He was a magnetic uh preacher of the coming of the great moment in history.

Professor Géza Vermes6:50

and made an enormous imp.

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on those are who listen.

Professor Géza Vermes6:55

But that's, of course, why he was crucified, isn't it? Because he was so charismatic. I once invented a kind of.

Professor Géza Vermes7:02

uh soundbite. He was he had to die because he did the wrong thing uh in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Professor Géza Vermes7:11

Which was the wrong thing was that he created disorder.

Professor Géza Vermes7:19

by turning over the the the uh stalls and the the the tables of the merchants uh and money changers in the temple.

Presenter7:29

So he threw the moneylenders out of the temple, which upset the Jews.

Professor Géza Vermes7:31

Which

Professor Géza Vermes7:32

I'm not sure how many Jews were upset by it, but it was potentially the beginning of an uprising.

Presenter7:40

Hm, which would also upset the Romans.

Professor Géza Vermes7:43

Well, naturally. So that that was the wrong thing.

Professor Géza Vermes7:48

It happened in the wrong place, which was the Temple of Jerusalem, where very large crowds forgathered just around that time.

Professor Géza Vermes8:00

which was once more a kind of hot bag.

Professor Géza Vermes8:03

for revolutionary activity. And thirdly, it was the wrong moment, just before Paso.

Presenter8:10

Uh

Presenter8:11

So all of that, all of that there is historical evidence for, and we can say that is fact. There are and I mean, you must forgive me if I oversimplify, but I'm trying to get to the heart of this. There are two riveting

Presenter8:28

Facts part of the good story.

Presenter8:30

for which there is of course no evidence the virgin birth and the resurrection.

Presenter8:35

Now

Presenter8:36

Who invented them and why?

Professor Géza Vermes8:40

The virgin birth actually is a very secondary issue in the New Testament itself.

Professor Géza Vermes8:48

It appears only in the so-called infancy gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Professor Géza Vermes8:55

In Matthew it is the fulfilment of a prophecy, the prophecy of Isaiah, Behold the Virgin I will conceive and shall bear a son. But in fact, in the Hebrew text of Isaiah, not in the Greek translation, the word that is translated as virgin doesn't mean virgin at all, it means a young woman.

Professor Géza Vermes9:16

But the resurrection is much more difficult. The resurrection is obviously much more difficult, but it is even more difficult when you begin to examine the sources which relate the the story of the resurrection in the Gospel.

Presenter9:31

But that is where the Christian and you depart. That's where his faith comes in. Not not fiction, he would argue, but his faith takes over from your fact, doesn't it? He believes in the virgin birth, he believes in the resurrection, and you do not because you cannot, because there is no evidence.

Professor Géza Vermes9:48

Well, quite clearly, if somebody says, I believe because I believe, then this is a perfectly legitimate point of view. And in fact, in one of the Gospels, in the latest Gospels, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says that He's going to send the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will remind them of all the things that they had forgotten, and also teach them all the things that Jesus forgot to had no time to tell them. And if you base your belief on the the record of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian church, then I think you can be totally satisfied.

Presenter10:28

And indeed that's a faith that you espoused for some, what, thirty years or more, and and then subsequently renounced, as we shall hear?

Professor Géza Vermes10:33

Could live

Professor Géza Vermes10:35

Yeah. Well, not quite certain about twenty something, but uh that's got it.

Presenter10:40

Let's go back to the beginning of your life then. Tell me about your second record, because I think that takes us there, doesn't it?

Professor Géza Vermes10:45

Yes, but that is something totally different. It is Franz Lehar, the some bits of the Merrivido.

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Too many things to help me.

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So hello.

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Don't cut the rain and

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I can't believe

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Can you know and see if the price of the race and fish?

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We both have it!

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We are widely in Matrica.

Presenter11:54

Anita Gurra and Peter Anders singing highlights from France Lehar's The Merry Widow, memories of your childhood, Guesa Fermes, in Hungary, late twenties, early thirties, music that made you and your family feel good.

Professor Géza Vermes12:06

Uh

Professor Géza Vermes12:07

Well, you have to realize that, say, in the early thirties depression reigned, Hungarians were miserable. And they loved to remember the good old days of the pre-First World War times with balls in Vienna, Viennese walls, with dukes and archdukes and counts and barons and army officers and beautiful ladies and

Professor Géza Vermes12:41

joy. And of course that is was the extreme opposite of what life was like. Your your father was a journalist, wasn't he? My father was a journalist and a newspaper editor. And

Professor Géza Vermes12:55

In in a provincial town in the southeastern Hungary.

Presenter13:00

Your mother was a schoolteacher, you were an only child.

Presenter13:03

At some point when you were really very small, the family converted they were Jewish family, obviously, converted to to Christianity. Was that was that in order to protect yourselves from from obviously increasing anti-Semitism? Or was there more to it than that?

Professor Géza Vermes13:18

Uh

Professor Géza Vermes13:19

I'm pretty sure that that it was a totally common phenomenon in Hungary in those days. A very large number of Jews, assimilated Jews, decided that uh to adopt uh one form of Christianity or another.

Speaker 213:23

May have thee.

Professor Géza Vermes13:35

imagining that that would make life easier and I should

Professor Géza Vermes13:40

I also think that my parents thought that

Professor Géza Vermes13:43

They will make my life easy.

Presenter13:45

But you at some point in your teens decided that you had a vocation. You wanted to become a Roman Catholic priest, so it obviously was very real for you. Can you recall why or how that calling came to you?

Professor Géza Vermes13:55

Quite complicated issue because it was not simply a

Professor Géza Vermes14:01

a problem of vocational otherwise, but what am I going to do once I finished uh my grammar schooling?

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and by that time it was quite impossible t to hope that I would be admitted.

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to university.

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and as I had an inquenchable thirst.

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for learning. Uh one of the possible uh routes uh where um

Professor Géza Vermes14:32

A Theological College.

Professor Géza Vermes14:35

Next record.

Professor Géza Vermes14:36

The third record is really something there that expresses this feeling of being oppressed, of being without freedom, of being slaves, of be being continuously threatened.

Speaker 214:44

Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes14:51

I didn't know the the the Negro spirituals in those days, so this association comes from a later stage of my life, but there is nothing better there than go down Moses to express one's feeling.

Speaker 315:06

Uh

Professor Géza Vermes15:06

Uh

Speaker 315:06

Hold out.

Professor Géza Vermes15:08

Mm more

Speaker 315:08

Moses way down in Egypt's land tell Pharaoh

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My people

Presenter15:30

Yeah.

Presenter15:30

Go.

Presenter15:34

Natkin Cole and Go Down Moses. It was essentially the Church which saved you, Professor. As a priest you were protected to a very large extent, but not your parents.

Presenter15:45

When was the last time you saw your mother?

Professor Géza Vermes15:47

Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes15:48

Uh, I think it was at the end of May nineteen forty four.

Professor Géza Vermes15:53

when I was already in hiding.

Professor Géza Vermes15:58

Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes15:59

but was sent by my my superiors to to to the town where where uh my parents lived and uh the authorities arranged uh for my mother to come there and this was the last time.

Professor Géza Vermes16:14

I saw. My father had already been taken n not primarily as a Jew, but as a journalist, as a as a potentially dangerous character.

Presenter16:27

How how has that fact affected the rest of your life, your outlook on life? Ha people talk quite often when they come back from war having not died that they feel guilt. Do you feel guilt at your survival? What does it make you feel?

Professor Géza Vermes16:40

In in one way where one always uh just wonders why on earth am I still here when most of the the others uh had perished.

Professor Géza Vermes16:53

With hindsight, I would like to believe uh that this is uh because I had something t to do.

Presenter17:00

Do you feel your reconversion to Judaism is part of that duty, that somehow you had a duty to it, to Judaism?

Professor Géza Vermes17:08

Very often I I am asked, I mean, what brought you to that? Was there a sort of sudden change? No. It was a slow uh process which lasted probably something like fifteen years.

Professor Géza Vermes17:25

Then at one stage I is no longer.

Professor Géza Vermes17:29

a priest and no longer considered myself

Professor Géza Vermes17:33

A Christian.

Professor Géza Vermes17:35

and then was looking and searching and finally said to myself the best thing is to to to realize uh where you came from and uh start from there again.

Professor Géza Vermes17:50

Next piece of music.

Professor Géza Vermes17:51

The next piece is an organ piece by Bach, which reminds me the those years spent in churches and cathedrals and listening there to organ music.

Presenter19:06

Peter Herford in the chapel of New College, Oxford, playing Bach's Fater unse im Himmelreich.

Presenter19:11

So you left Hungary, Professor, and the horrors of everything that you've been through of the past behind you when the war ended, and you went to join a French order, the Fathers of Notre-Dame de Sion. And it seems really to me there that again you took on the fight against injustice because you seem to have turned your academic guns on Christian anti-Judaism. That's where you focused your work, isn't it?

Professor Géza Vermes19:38

Well, once I have completed my my my theological studies and obtained uh my doctorate uh in uh Belgium, in uh in in Louvain.

Professor Géza Vermes19:48

I was sent to the centr uh central house of the the the fathers in Paris. And there the great

Professor Géza Vermes19:57

work consisted in unraveling the sources of Christian anti-Semitism and demonstrating how contrary such an attitude is to Jesus and to the beginning to the Jewish beginnings of the Church.

Presenter20:14

And of course that very much has happened. Certainly in the second half of the twentieth century there was there has been a a great rapprochement between the Catholic Church and and and Judaism. How would you d define that rapprochement? I mean certainly the Catholic Church takes the work of Jewish scholars much more seriously now, doesn't it?

Professor Géza Vermes20:32

Yes, I'm sure that the present attitude of Christians and Catholics to Jews is incomparable with what the situation was, say, fifty years ago. And a very large to a very large extent this was due on the one hand.

Professor Géza Vermes20:55

to the impact of the Holocaust on on on genuine Christians realizing the horror of what happened in the name.

Professor Géza Vermes21:05

of in a way in the in the name of Christianity.

Professor Géza Vermes21:10

The right

Professor Géza Vermes21:11

I I'm not claiming uh th that the Nazis were Christians.

Professor Géza Vermes21:16

But the Christians did not resist.

Professor Géza Vermes21:19

Hmm.

Professor Géza Vermes21:21

And on the other hand, it was also due to a reawakening among Catholics.

Professor Géza Vermes21:27

Of

Professor Géza Vermes21:29

proper study of the Bible, of the New Testament and of Judaism of that time. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls played a very considerable part in this, on the one hand in showing to Christians that Judaism was not the caricature that they are very often

Professor Géza Vermes21:53

taught and to Jews uh that you can't really understand certain li the writings of Judaism uh belonging to that period uh without being familiar with the New Testament. Tell me about your fifth record.

Professor Géza Vermes22:08

When I lived in Hungary up to the age of twenty two, I knew the name of Bartuker, but I was not really familiar with there with his music. I learnt about him

Professor Géza Vermes22:20

Later on in life, uh with my first wife, Pam,

Professor Géza Vermes22:24

This particular one, uh it starts off uh with uh with a Hungarian folk tune and he produces all the variations o on this and uh it

Professor Géza Vermes22:36

reaches, I believe, perfection.

Presenter23:32

Part of the fourth movement of Bartok's music for strings, percussion and celeste played by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Lehel.

Presenter23:40

Let's return to your own spiritual journey back to Judaism, Professor Vermez. One of the major turns along the way was that you fell in love, and you not only fell in love, but you fell in love with a married woman, who was in fact the the wife of a friend. It was the worst of all possible worlds.

Presenter23:58

not least for a priest who'd vowed celibacy.

Presenter24:01

You must have agonised. Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes24:03

Yes, it was a very, very hard

Professor Géza Vermes24:08

Two years or thereabouts before.

Professor Géza Vermes24:12

The conundrum was somehow resolved.

Presenter24:17

But in resolving that conundrum,

Presenter24:20

Which has obviously contradicted everything that you believed in celibacy, honour.

Presenter24:26

And contravened the commandment of adultery and coveting another man's wife, and so on.

Presenter24:32

Obviously, they all came secondary in the end to the power of love. Is that.

Professor Géza Vermes24:37

Absolutely. I mean, it l it certainly struck me then, and I mean it still strikes me now, that way, that when there are conflicting duties, I mean you have to decide which one is the more important.

Presenter24:55

But you weren't going to get any support from anything that had supported you there that far.

Professor Géza Vermes25:01

Friends Day.

Professor Géza Vermes25:03

Even within the chat.

Presenter25:04

But the church as a body rejected him.

Professor Géza Vermes25:08

Well, officially, yes.

Presenter25:10

How much did that hurt?

Professor Géza Vermes25:13

Well, it hurt uh no doubt uh but uh I was preoccupied otherwise at that moment uh that to to to

Presenter25:22

You were enough, you were enough.

Speaker 225:24

Uh

Professor Géza Vermes25:25

in love and facing

Professor Géza Vermes25:28

an apparently impossible situation. I arrived at in this country.

Professor Géza Vermes25:35

with not very good English.

Professor Géza Vermes25:38

Stateless, jobless, penniless.

Professor Géza Vermes25:43

And I took on myself the the a duty in those circumstances and

Professor Géza Vermes25:51

Hooped at it somehow.

Professor Géza Vermes25:53

A solution uh will be found and uh

Professor Géza Vermes25:56

Thank goodness a dissolution came along.

Professor Géza Vermes26:00

Pretty promptly.

Presenter26:01

Indeed, it was the beginning of your life in this country where you've been ever since, and nearly fifty years as an academic, Newcastle, Oxford.

Presenter26:08

And so on. Let's have your record number six.

Professor Géza Vermes26:13

Not

Professor Géza Vermes26:15

When you read the Gospels, and when you read in the Gospels the story of the death of Jesus.

Professor Géza Vermes26:25

You encounter there one of the very curious peculiarities in the New Testament.

Professor Géza Vermes26:31

Words in the original language of Jesus.

Professor Géza Vermes26:37

The New Testament uh has survived in Greek. Jesus was not a Greek speaker, he spoke Aramaic.

Professor Géza Vermes26:45

There are a few Aramaic words preserved in the New Testament, but the longest bit appears

Professor Géza Vermes26:54

In the the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' last cry on the cross.

Professor Géza Vermes27:04

Which

Professor Géza Vermes27:06

is preserved not in translation, but in the original language.

Professor Géza Vermes27:13

Last heart-rending cry of the men of faith.

Professor Géza Vermes27:19

who suddenly realizes

Professor Géza Vermes27:23

that he has been abandoned by go.

Professor Géza Vermes27:27

Hence

Professor Géza Vermes27:28

Most Christians will overlook this passage and see it in the light of resurrection and

Professor Géza Vermes27:35

The happy ending of this story.

Professor Géza Vermes27:38

But I think Bach in in his divine genie.

Professor Géza Vermes27:43

Somehow I realized.

Professor Géza Vermes27:46

What was at stake?

Professor Géza Vermes27:48

And

Professor Géza Vermes27:49

could feel.

Professor Géza Vermes27:52

What Jesus Fed

Speaker 327:54

From the six thou there came to pass A darkness o'er all the land

Speaker 328:11

And we know if

Speaker 328:23

And about the night far, Jesus cried our Lord.

Professor Géza Vermes28:28

Uh

Speaker 328:32

One son.

Presenter28:53

Robertier and John Shirley Quirk and the recitative Now from the sixth hour from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion.

Presenter29:00

We've not mentioned at all, Professor, the Dead Sea Scrolls, on which you are, of course, an expert. I think the the oldest living expert, because you first wrote about them just after they were discovered back in the late forties. Just remind us for a second, if you will, because it's such a wonderfully romantic story as to how they were discovered.

Professor Géza Vermes29:18

Well, it was by providential accident, as I d that I liked to call these events. Namely, an Arab shepherd looking for a lost sheep discovered jars hidden in a cave not far from the Dead Sea, and inside the jars there were fairly well preserved very ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts.

Presenter29:49

Hmm.

Presenter29:50

And the greatest manuscript find of modern times, endlessly exciting.

Professor Géza Vermes29:54

Pidgey.

Professor Géza Vermes29:55

It is certainly the greatest Hebrew manuscript I find of all time.

Presenter30:00

Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes30:00

Yeah.

Presenter30:00

But nothing there relating directly to Jesus. They belong to another, a different Galilean community.

Professor Géza Vermes30:09

They certainly they have nothing that uh to do uh with Jesus. The very large majority of them were written in the pre Christian times, and uh consequently there is no question of uh looking for Jesus.

Presenter30:26

Jesus therefore remains.

Presenter30:28

wonderfully elusive, which is probably why the the Jesus industry, as it's become known, is is endlessly uh fascinating. Um do you must feel as a scholar they're very cheated by the fact that Jesus never seems to have written anything down, this incredibly important man, and he's not left a scrap of leather nor linen.

Professor Géza Vermes30:43

Yeah.

Professor Géza Vermes30:46

Of leather or linen. There are two.

Professor Géza Vermes30:49

Statements about Jesus' writings.

Professor Géza Vermes30:52

One is a bit in uh the the Gospel of John, uh which you don't find in any of the ancient manuscripts, where Jesus writes in the sand.

Professor Géza Vermes31:03

But of course this is not the best material on which uh your ideas can be preserved.

Professor Géza Vermes31:11

The other is a legend that Jesus wrote a letter to a king in present-day Iraq.

Professor Géza Vermes31:19

Otherwise, Jesus did not write if he had done so.

Professor Géza Vermes31:25

A lot of nonsense uh that has been said about it uh would have been uh eliminated.

Professor Géza Vermes31:32

Record number seven.

Professor Géza Vermes31:35

My first wife, Pam, died.

Professor Géza Vermes31:37

And I see.

Professor Géza Vermes31:39

I am now remarried to Margaret. And the next piece is a part of Beethoven's Kreutzel Sonata, which reminds us

Professor Géza Vermes31:54

little songbirds uh competing with the with each other. And as we have the dawn chorus every day at home, I live uh at the edge of a seven hundred acre wood.

Professor Géza Vermes32:05

Uh this di perfectly fits into our everyday life.

Presenter33:04

Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazi playing part of the second movement of Beethoven's Kreutze Sonata for violin and piano No. nine.

Presenter33:12

You don't go to the synagogue, Professor Vemes. You don't care any more for organized religion and ritual, do you? So where and how do you communicate with your God?

Professor Géza Vermes33:24

I like to pray when I am alone, and I like to pray in the middle of the wood.

Professor Géza Vermes33:29

Basically, this is the little small voice about which uh the the the the Old Testament prophets uh spoke.

Presenter33:37

And does he does that voice, that still small voice, does it tell you?

Presenter33:41

What to do or does it just tell you

Presenter33:44

Obviously, because you made that large choice earlier in your life, it it it tells you perhaps what you ought to do, but leaves you to choose.

Professor Géza Vermes33:50

Uh

Presenter33:51

Uh

Professor Géza Vermes33:51

The main thing is, I think.

Professor Géza Vermes33:54

to follow

Professor Géza Vermes33:55

what you feel is your duty at the moment.

Professor Géza Vermes34:02

to face up to problems as they come.

Professor Géza Vermes34:05

And to realize that real religious attitude is to cope with the burden of the day.

Professor Géza Vermes34:14

Last record.

Professor Géza Vermes34:15

The last record is really for a nice sunny evening.

Professor Géza Vermes34:24

to relax and to enjoy oneself.

Presenter35:26

Andres Segovia playing part of Granadas Tonadias, and an image of you, Professor, sitting on your lonely beach at sunset. What about if you could only have one of those records to put on your wind up grammar phone? Which one would it be?

Professor Géza Vermes35:40

Well, I think I will go go for the the Matthew Passion, but the whole of it.

Presenter35:47

And what about your book? You've got well, you've got the Bible, Old and New Testaments. You've got the complete works of Shakespeare.

Professor Géza Vermes35:54

What else do you want? First of all, m may I have the Bible in a bilingual Hebrew English and Greek English edition with the authorized version?

Professor Géza Vermes36:05

Okay.

Professor Géza Vermes36:07

And the boo the one book where I had difficulty with this, and at the end I decided to go for the complete works of Flavius Josephus, the first century Jewish historian.

Presenter36:23

It was a w

Professor Géza Vermes36:23

Work gonna go on on this island, I can tell. Well, I hope so. Oh, I hope so. And what about your luxury? Well, that's uh something to do with work, too.

Professor Géza Vermes36:34

It is also something to do ver with a poem of my father's, at the end of which he advised me to pursue beauty.

Professor Géza Vermes36:45

Oh, my life And the end after all these storms

Professor Géza Vermes36:50

You will find peace.

Professor Géza Vermes36:52

In

Professor Géza Vermes36:53

a comfortable arm chair, smoking a good cigar. Well, I stopped smoking a long time ago, but I both were a comf comfortable arm chair and my desk.

Presenter37:07

Packing them in there. All right. Professor Gezer Fermes, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Pleasure.

Speaker 237:22

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.