Jesus was no Christian, and his friends made no effort to break away from Jesus's religion, Judaism. What we call Christianity began with a Jew from Eastern Turkey known to the world as Paul of Tarsus.

Paul has had many detractors, believing him to be the originator of the Christian prejudice against women and homosexuals, or the bigoted theologue who distorted the message of Jesus. This book sees a different Paul, the first of the great romantic poets, the man who made the crucified Jesus his inner light and in so doing preserved the image of Christ the Saviour for posterity.