My reluctance to accede to declarations of the divinity of Jesus, first, because I had never met the man and, second, because I did not really understand what the word "god" really meant, seemed enough for some Christians to conclude that unless before death I changed my mind I was "damned." Many well-intentioned "believers" cited the multiple choice test—Jesus is either a "god," a lunatic, or a liar—proposed by C.S. Lewis, but it seemed to me that Lewis, another man I did not know, offered too few options. To my academic mind it appeared that Jesus, in his own historical time, had been unaware of his global particularity. He’d had no knowledge, it appeared, of the world philosophers and sages of other cultures and peoples who had lived before him nor of kind, wise contemporaries who lived in other parts of the world.