[Nepeta]

From the 1st edition:

"Although much of this book is based upon contemporaneous journals or the oral histories of my family, the dialogue is necessarily an approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me. For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known, and some events appear out of precise chronology. With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures, the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of their privacy."



A character is a fictional creation. Real people are not characters; to speak of composites in a work of non-fiction, one should properly say that some persons are composites.

Once you read this disclaimer, which I just did online in the googlebooks version, the possibility is obvious that much or most or maybe nearly all of what we have been told about Our Messiah is a fluffy lie.

[Greenperson]

It is said that the composite character disclaimer was added later, for the second edition. I can’t find the original edition online, anywhere. I can’t even find the entire preface/introduction for the second edition online. As for the original edition, I’d love to know how he referred to his mother in that edition. Most of the time, he calls her “my mother.” In one news article from the 1990s, the writer called her “Ann”. Remember that early on, she was called Shirley, and not Stanley.

It’s said that the book was hardly changed for the second edition, but that cannot be true because of the number of pages. He rewrote the preface and introduction.

First editions cost in the thousands of dollars and they are about as easy to locate as a 1960 Mercer Island High yearbook.