What He Was

There Will Be Time.

Jack Havig has not sought the historical Jesus because:

"'...what he was, or if he was, makes only an academic difference. What counts is what people through the ages have believed. My life expectancy isn't enough for me to do the pure research I'd like.'" (VI, p. 56)

He needs the Time Patrol longevity treatment or a timeline in which the immortality mutation of The Boat Of A Million Years is combined with the time travel mutation of There Will Be Time.

Three interesting ideas: the individual, his image and their interaction. I remember from Howard Fast's Citizen Tom Paine that Paine's life alternated between fame and obscurity. What is it like to have been famous? John Lennon appreciated being able to walk through streets unmolested - until he was assassinated. Margaret Thatcher lived in obscurity while Thatcherism continued. One theory about Jesus is that he survived crucifixion and went to live elsewhere but I do not buy it. In Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, Evey does not unmask the dead V because she feels that that would diminish him. She prefers to think of all the people that he might have been rather than to learn which particular person he had been. I do not think that this would diminish him. I would want to know who he was while still appreciating what he had been to the populace. I would seek out Jesus and Gautama if I were a time traveler.