While handling a vast spiritual theme in

his Legend of the Truant Tree, Jovan

De Rocco introduces his subject as a

needed counter-ideology, which should

neutralize the Russian militant atheism

better than tanks and bombs. Therein

he finds justification for looking behind

scriptural mythology, which protects but

often obfuscates the truth.

Such was the soil out of which grew

the truant tree that became bored and

went off to see the world, and such was

the fruit that sprang from it and formed

this book. Professor De Rocco s thesis

takes substance from Mark s Gospel,

where men are seen in one instance

"as trees, walking." He expanded his

realm of study when he discovered that

Paul of Tarsus stated there are really

always two men, the First Man being of