Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Professor Geza Vermes . When he wrote Jesus the Jew in the early 1970s, it shocked the Christian world. He continued to examine Jesus through three more books, drawing on his lifetime's study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Born in Hungary in the 1920s, his Jewish parents had converted to Catholicism, but it did not save them from the Nazis. He was ordained a Catholic priest, but returned his Jewish roots and his study of the religion and culture of first-century Palestine.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Now from the Sixth Hour by Johann Sebastian Bach