Was Jesus real?

[Hekate]

123. Nah. He was a human orphan raised by Martians. But clearly a very cool guy...

I remember when the book came out. I think I was maybe starting to go off Heinlein by then, maybe age 20 — but in any case I read it all the way through and it was okay, but not earth-shattering.

Then I started meeting people for whom it was clearly earth-shattering. One evening at a party I met a guy who vowed that he was going to collect up his Water Brothers and move to New Zealand where they would found a Nest. I grokked it all right, while SMDH.

I always wondered if he ever gave any thought at all to the clash of cultures that would involve.

But back to that nice Rabbi who lived 2,000 years ago on Planet Earth. I think it’s kind of pointless to keep looking for his birthplace — it’s much more interesting to follow the tracks of his early believers, because those tracks are verifiable. Someone was the locus of their beliefs, and the teachings fit a pattern of religious and social movements from those days. Other “tracks” involve what may have been influences from the sect called the Essenes, and other groups as far away as India.