Alex is sadly unwell. This event will be rescheduled to a later date.
“The Quest for the Historical Vermes”
Géza Vermes FBA (1924-2013) was an Anglo-Hungarian scholar and public intellectual of immense distinction. Vermes’s best-selling translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls into English made him a household name in the 1960s. His interpretive work on their meaning and significance won him appointment as the first ever Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford. Vermes’s Jesus the Jew (1973) transformed public discourse around the identity of Christianity’s inspirer.
Vermes’s life was dramatic – with a narrow escape from the Hungarian Holocaust in 1944. After emigration from Hungary, despite a considerable public presence, he somehow managed to remain ‘elusive’ in personality and paradoxical in belief.
This talk, a decade after his death, aims to reflect on his importance and to probe some of the puzzles of his character and biography.
Alexander Faludy is an Anglo-Hungarian Freelance Journalist based in Budapest.
ENTRY FREE, AT LAB 006, LORD ASHCROFT BUILDING, EAST ROAD, CAMBRIDGE