Rosenstock grew up in a Europe alive with the quest for the historical Jesus, as exemplified in Albert Schweitzer's own life on the one hand, and the demolition of the historical Jesus by Ernest Renan. Both men represented the triumph of Gnosis, the mind as the creator of real fact, the triumph of re-creating history as it might have been, and believing that it was that way. The nineteenth century preoccupation with biography cut Jesus off from his...