Professor Boyd Kuhn Alvin, Ph.D., at the age of 83, died in his sleep on Monday 14 September 1963, in the City of Durban, South Africa.

At the time, he was a visiting scholar from the U.S.A., on a (South African) University of Natal scholarship and a U.S.A. University scholarship, at the University of Natal.

He was teaching a one-semester post-graduate preliminary course offered jointly by the Department of English Literature and the Department of Religion to six doctoral student candidates.

He had been invited by the Heads of those Departments, Professor Raymond Sands, and Professor Elizabeth Sneddon, respectively.

It is claimed that when Professor-Doctor Alvin died, he left behind two unfinished handwritten manuscripts.

It is very probable that Professor-Doctor Alvin had begun those manuscripts while he was our teacher at the University of Natal in 1963.

After all, in those times, there were no computer keyboards at South African Universities; only manual typewriters: Olivetti, Remington, et cetera.

It was a Graduate Class with six students enrolled at the University for a ‘Doctor of Philosophy’ degree: Aysha Khan, Binoth Singh, Dharmraj Bhagwandin, Rajaluxmi Pillay, Sarojini Pillay, and me.

Professor-Doctor Alvin’s choice of topics on which he lectured for the semester in Durban, was “The first five days of Genesis.”
The class assignment set by Professor-Doctor Alvin, due at the end of the semester, was “Genesis’s first 5 days, Chapter 1, verses 1 to 25. King James edition.” There were three rules:

Each one of us was to imagine they were a member of a doctoral committee of almighty Gods to whom Jehovah God was obliged to submit the first draft of his doctoral thesis, “The first 5 days of Genesis”, for preliminary assessment and suggestions for possible additions, modifications and deletions.

Each essay was to be about committee-approved suggested additions, modifications and deletions to Jehovah’s thesis. These suggestions were to be justified by information anywhere in the Bible in and beyond the Book of Genesis.
The class assignment essay had no minimum or maximum wordcount.

Since Professor-Doctor Alvin died fourteen days from the beginning of the semester, our assignments were to be handed in to Professors Sands and Sneddon, neither having a doctorate degree.

I handed in the following assignment, more-or-less, to Professor Elizabeth Sneddon.

[At the beginning, Creation was undertaken by a group of nameless almighty Spirit Gods.

One of them, speaking for all, said, ‘Everyness that we create shall derive all its being from our essence of almighty righteousness; that righteousness being ‘life at its best, even to the extent of killing life that stands in the way of life being its best.’

In order to keep out all evil from our Creation, we will place ‘Cherubims everywhere armed with flaming swords that turn every way.’

Evil and righteousness are non-intelligent sentient forces that have the same eternal beginnings in reality that is from before us, and is all around us, separate from and independent of us.

Evil is intentional destruction. Righteousness is intentional creation.

From the beginning, we Gods have been the only living reality.

It is a mystery to us why, from time to time, we are capable of being intentionally righteous.

It is a mystery to us how we have been able to keep evil out of us, most of the time.

This creation of ours of Light and Sun and Moon and Earth is the first sentient attempt ever in eternity to make a part of reality that excludes evil.

Our beginnings are as much a mystery to us as is the beginnings of evil and of righteousness.

And as long as life in us is a mystery to us, we dare not create life outside of us which will, perforce, be in our image.

We do not have power to prevent evil from tainting life that is outside of us, be that life in our image, or other.’

And so a God said to the other Gods, ‘Let us make a pact to never create anything in the image of living Gods in order to guarantee evil will never be able to taint our creations.’

No other God cared to enter into such a pact, since all the other almighty Gods deemed creating living realities outside of themselves demeaningly wastes of their time and divinity.

And yet, in time, unfortunately, some serpentine God dared doubly demean itself by, first, creating life beyond itself, and then by lying to itself and others “that it was good.”

That same serpentine liar God, secretly distancing itself from all the other Gods for five ‘mornings- and-evenings whispered hoarsely, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.”

That same liar, intoxicated with a feeling of egotistic superiority, said, defiantly hoarsely raucously, on a sixth day, “I will make Man in my image, after my likeness to have dominion over all my other creations.”

And it was through this living Man- creature, created by a drunk serpentine liar God, that evil, entered Creation on that first sixth ‘morning and evening’ day.

Hence, forever and forever in the natural divinity of every life, human and other, there is, too, an ineradicable natural genetic proclivity to evil.

Which of all the known almighty Gods was the culprit who made that first human who was the first portal used by evil to enter life on that first fateful sixth day?

Indeed, which God among Ashtaroth, Ashima, Asta, Baal, Beelzebub, Chemosh, Dagon, Jehovah, Ishtar, Lucifer, Moloch, Milcom, Nebo, Neith, Nergal, Remphan, Satan, Succoth, Yahweh?

Whichever one it was, in time it was driven to admit, in shame and guilt, more than once, its sixth-day wonder Man-creation proved to be a shameful failure, deserving to be annihilated:

“I will destroy Man whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”

Again, the same almighty God, repenting depressingly: “The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

And again, that guilt-ridden almighty God: “I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them.”]

All six of us passed the course; the two Pillays, with cum laude.

Thank you, Professor-Doctor Boyd Kuhn Alvin. Forever, sir, requiescat in pace.]

Years later, during a celebration at the University, Professor Elizabeth Sneddon, long retired and slightly tipsy, whispered to me that while both she and Professor Sands had passed my essay, she had her doubts about Professor-Doctor Boyd Kuhn Alvin passing it.