Geza Vermes is known world-wide as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and for his pioneering work, Jesus the Jew. But in addition to that he is the living embodiment of Jewish-Christian relations in the context of an honest quest for the truth. Few scholars have had such a colorful and eventful life, the course of which he describes here. Born into a Hungarian Jewish family which later converted to Christianity, he received a Catholic education and was later ordained priest after the turmoil of the War. The quest for membership in a religious order led him to the Sion Fathers, in Louvain and then in Paris, where among other things he was introduced to biblical studies and became fascinated with the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. Subsequent emotional turmoil from conflicting pressures made him ill, but a series of "Providential Accidents" which gave this book its title brought him to England, marriage, and a new fulfilled life, first in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then in Oxford, and to a public reassertian of his Jewishness. As well as telling a fascinating personal story, this book provides a vivid insider's account of developments in Scrolls research and of the lengthy battle with procrastinating editors over the "academic scandal of the century." These memoirs shed much light on the deep personal friendships and antagonisms and the complex, non-scholarly factors which accompany even committed study of the Bible, Qumran, and the Gospels.

“A seventeenth-century heroine for our times” could face death for her dangerous affair with an English revolutionary (O, The Oprah Magazine). London, 1649. King Charles has been beheaded for treason; Cromwell is in power; paranoia and self-righteousness rule; and glove maker Rachel Lockyer has been engaged in a secret affair with William Walwyn, a Leveler who advocates for independence and tolerance. But when Rachel’s “bastard” infant is found hidden in the woods, Rachel is arrested. No one disputes that the young mother buried her beloved daughter. The question that has brought Rachel to trial for murder is: why? Now drawn into Rachel’s circle is the married lover she is loathe to reveal; a fiercely compassionate mother who lost her own children to smallpox; a prosecutor hell-bent on making an example of Rachel; and the criminal investigator, increasingly reluctant to build his case against the condemned young woman—all of them brought to reckon for this one life. At once a remarkable love story and a breathtaking thriller based on true events, Accidents of Providence is “heart-poundingly vivid [and] intellectually provocative . . . historical fiction at its best” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “[A] delightfully seditious heroine . . . Proof that a historical novel can be educational and entertaining.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Wonderfully detailed and keenly researched, it is a moving portrait of a courageous woman caught between a disastrous affair with a charismatic revolutionary and the draconian laws of the land that would put her to death because of it.” —Kathleen Kent, author of The Traitor’s Wife

The story of an unmarried tradeswoman in London during the Puritan Revolution (1649–1650) whose passionate love affair leads to a trial for murder.