How did the man Jesus become a myth that would swallow the Roman Empire? My novel, Logos, dramatizes the advent of Christianity. The primary action ultimately involves the composition of the original Gospel – by the novel’s protagonist, Jacob. But I am a novelist, not a biblical scholar. The great historical novelist Hilary Mantel says, “I try to stick with the facts until the facts run out.” I began with these facts: To quote Harold Bloom, “there was an historical Jesus.” Apparently, like Tank Man or Ethel Rosenberg, and like legions of other Jews in the first century, he was murdered by the powers that be because he was rebelling against an unjust society. At the same time, a Jewish scholar and philosopher named Philo lived in Alexandria, Egypt, from 20 BC to 50 AD. Philo was a product of a momentous event in the history of the world that had happened four hundred years before: the encounter between ancient Greek civilization and influence, and ancient Judaism, the Jewish people. This was precipitated by Alexander the Great’s conquests which drove the Persians out of Egypt and the Middle East including Palestine. The modern word to describe the resulting phenomenon is Hellenization, which means the spread of Greek language, culture, and population into the former Persian Empire after Alexander’s conquest. So, in the first century, Philo lived with one foot in the secular world and one in the religious tradition of his fathers – Judaism – and he set out to synthesize or reconcile those two traditions that were equally dear to him. His focal point was Greek philosophy’s “Logos” concept. If there were such a thing as a Greek-English dictionary at that time, you might find the word Logos defined to mean: an argument, reasoned discourse, an opinion, word, speech, account, to reason. Later, the Greeks refined the concept to include the rational and intelligent principle of the universe by which it is energized and operates: the orbit of the planets, the seasons, life itself, the thing that caused it to come into being, that gave birth to it, and that still gives it life. Philo reworked Logos to mean a mediating element that joins the Torah's God with our material world - for example, angels, the burning bush, and whatever it is that makes us human: reasoning, words, compassion. Philo wrote that intermediary beings are necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world. The Logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo "the first-born of God," and the eldest and chief of the angels. It was in this context that just 50 years of the death of the historical Jesus - a time span well within living memories even then - something unique and momentous in the history of the world occurred: the deliberate and systematic creation of a myth that would ultimately swallow the Roman Empire. The participants in this premeditated myth-making are anonymous, but we can surmise a few facts: They were likely Hellenized Jews, and therefore among the intelligentsia. Likely they created the original gospel in the aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, and were profoundly affected by that event. How did Philo's Logos - which to him was always an abstraction: Philo was a lifelong Jew - become a human being and God incarnate? That is what my novel is about.