This book, ' Dr Theissen remarks, 'means more to me than any other of my writings. The ideas in it go back to my student days, and my dissatisfaction then over the attitude of so many theologians. I kept on asking myself, how they could go on working, day after day, when they could not even give a convincing answer to the insinuation that God is an illusion. I resolved either to find an answer of my own or to give up theology altogether.' This is...