About four hundred years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the philosopher Aristotle walked in the Acropolis above Athens. The purpose of life, he said, was to develop one’s potential and live up to what was in the human soul, the mind, and the powers of reason.

After him came the philosopher Zeno, a Cypriot, who taught that the aim of life was to avoid all feeling. Virtue stood in the middle, and no extremes of hot anger or cold contempt were to be allowed. His philosophy really caught people’s hearts and minds. God glanced at those sun-drenched teachers and said, "No, they have it wrong. I will have to do something. They are not learning it right."

Over on the other side of the world, the priests of Zoroaster were teaching that there were two gods: a god of darkness and a god of ligh…