Sholem Asch--The Apostle (1943)

The Jewish authors who made the pre-1960 IWE reading list are in many instances not those who would seem obvious today. There is no Bellow, no Mailer, no Malamud, no Singer (Roth was obviously too young to have his early works considered), no Kafka, no Dorothy Parker, no Salinger even. Marx and Freud did make it, as did Proust. Kafka's Prague contemporary Franz Werfel, like Asch famous for novels about Biblical and Christian themes (a genre that is itself well-represented on this list) made it, as did Herman Wouk and some of the American playwrights of the 30s such as Kaufman and Hart. Anne Frank is on as well. I suspect that a few of the other late 19th and early 20th century French, German, Austrian or Russian authors on the list who are not as well known today might turn out to be Jewish, but I have not done the research on all of these yet. What immediately strikes one about those included on the list is that they tend more towards the sober and scholarly end of the distribution, whereas the more comic and bombastic/fantastical authors are held in higher regard today. It is a very old WASPy, and more specifically old Yankee list for sure, which however, despite its shortcomings and oddities, such as its fondness for doorstop historical fiction about early American history, I think is a good one. Old Yankees, though they continue to loom somewhat sinisterly in the national imagination, are getting ever harder to find in actual life even on their native ground, and their presence in and influence on American literary culture withers more and more every year. When I was younger I used to frequent numerous antiquated libraries in New England which partook of this old time atmosphere, even the books on the shelves in many instances not having been replenished in decades. These reminiscences date back 30 years now however, and even most of these places have been remodeled and brightened up and made more accommodating to technology, many of the books which formerly furnished the rooms on shelves reaching from floor to ceiling having evidently been discarded or relegated to the off-limits storage area in the basement. But I am getting far off of the subject of The Apostle now.

Sholem Asch was born in 1880 in Kutno, Poland, which was at that time part of the Russian Empire. He lived in Warsaw for a few years as a young man and got married there, then went abroad, eventually making his way in 1910 to the United States, where he remained for the duration of the first World War and beyond, becoming a citizen in 1920. He went back to the newly independent Poland after the war, and then lived in France for a while. returning to the United States in 1938. He seems to have stayed in the U.S. until some time in the 50s, after which he spent two years in Israel, where his house is preserved as a museum, towards the end of his life. He died in London in 1957. I note all of this because the biographies of people impacted by tumultuous historical upheavals are of interest to me. He wrote in Yiddish and was a prolific author no matter where he happened to be living, writing in the neighborhood of thirty books, the majority of which look to be weighty in length, tone, and subject matter. The Apostle, which depicts the life of St Paul, is actually the middle volume of a trilogy of novels about the lives of major early Christian figures, the other two being The Nazarene, about Christ himself, and Mary. The Apostle however is the only one of these, or any other of Asch's books to make the IWE list.

I liked this quite a bit, even if it is perhaps a little overlong. It is distinguished by an earnest seriousness that seems strange to us ("us" referring to that imaginary segment of the contemporary intellectual world that is super smart and well-informed whose sensibilities are remarkably in "sync" with mine) because earnest has become to my thinking something of a derogatory word that implies futility and a certain limitiation of ability when applied to intellectual pursuits. He was thoroughly Jewish, and led a thoroughly Jewish life, socially, culturally, and so on, so I doubt it would have been possible for him to adopt any of the more drastic Christian beliefs under any circumstances, but he was able to grasp the possibility of others' doing so. To be sure there is much more emphasis on Paul's Jewishness, and the Jewish origins of the entire Christian movement, than is usually found in Christian origin literature. There is always a fashion, maybe more prominent nowadays than ever, to be skeptical that the stories and major figures of the New Testament, including Peter, Paul, and Christ himself, have any basis in reality whatever, in some instances to the point of arguing that every aspect of them is entirely fictitious. What Asch believed as far as this goes I suppose I don't know, but he treated the stories and ideas of the gospels and epistles, whoever wrote them and who and whatever they are supposed to be referring to, very seriously, which is an approach most modern Christian debunkers don't see themselves as having to do. He knows that the power of the story is important in any case.

As with other long books I have had for this list recently, I neglected to take any notes until I was about 300 pages in, when I thought I had better jot some things down for the report. And as usual, once I began I ended up with quite a lot.

What prompted me to begin writing notes was a debate between Paul and his faction of Messianists and an opposing one led by some older school Jews regarding the necessity or not of circumcision for initiation into the new covenant ("circumcision a big deal" reads my note).

"He who cannot summon up enough courage to submit to circumcision for the sake of the God of Israel, is not worthy of admission into the congregation of the Messiah. He is a coward who cannot fight the battle of the Lord. For the Messiah is the battle of the Lord. And only those shall be admitted to the ranks who have the strength to give their blood to the covenant: even as it is written: `And in thy blood shalt thou live!'"--p.336

I took a moment to note the general awesomeness of the Jews across history, though perhaps there is some playing up in this author of their centrality and dynamism in the life of the Roman Empire.

The more the book went on and Paul began his travels throughout the Empire, Asch began to emphasize the myriad abusing and tormenting of human beings that underlay its entire operation. The first instance that pushed me to feel the necessity of making some record of my impression was the section on the bronze-working slaves of Corinth who passed away their entire lives in caverns feeding the smelting ovens and never seeing the light of day. I can't quote the whole section, but I will lift some especially pertinent sentences: "The life of these cave-workers was a short one." Regarding the mixers, whose work required a higher degree of skill which afforded them somewhat better treatment than the oven slaves: "Their beds were comfortable, but they were chained to them. For them as for the others, the cavern was a living tomb." "Most of the children taken into this work were such as had some physical defect, or some sickness, for which reason they could not be sold as house servants or prostitutes. These unfortunate discards of humanity were the dregs of the slave markets...When night came their bodies collapsed about the blocks and stalls at which they had worked all day. In the morning the overseers woke them with the lash..." (pps. 429-431) And on and on. I remarked at the time that this part was good, but Asch was just getting started with the depiction of atrocities. They seemingly kept getting worse with each change of scene.

After that I didn't make any more notes until page 654, at which time Asch dropped Sabina Poppea, the ultra-cultured wife of the manchild emperor Nero and diva superbabe of her generation, on my head. "Sabina had dreams of becoming the `Helen of Rome', with a temple of her own, in which worshipers would offer sacrifice after her death." She kept five hundred asses which accompanied her on all of her travels, as she maintained her glorious complexion by bathing regularly in their milk. On being introduced to the concept of resurrection, "Poppea was deeply interested; the possibility that she could arrange to be resurrected in all the beauty and charm which she alone possessed was something to be looked into."--p.656. However, "Any hint that worship of the Jewish God was bound up with duties, penalties, obligations, self-denials, discipline of any sort, she rejected. This was not in her style."--p.657. She capriciously punishes one of her attendants by pinching her breast with a pair of tweezers as hard as she can until the slave collapses.

     

The catalog of atrocities indulged in by the Romans never fails to fascinate. There is a section devoted to the epidemic of dumping bastards and other unwanted babies alive into the Cloaca Maxima, which is depicted here as a stream into which all of the sewage and other refuse of the capital was dumped and sent on its way out to see, Then there was one of Nero's parties, which took place on barges in a lake full of alligators:

"...in any case he (Nero) would enjoy the spectacle of the terrified slaves who, from their small boats, had to bring the dishes to the barges. The reptiles, their appetites awakened by the odor of food, swam after the boats and set them rocking. The girl dancers who had to perform on narrow ledges running round the barges were pale with terror; and the guests, reclining on couches at their tables, laughed drunkenly at the antics of slaves and dancers. The laughter rose into a shout of excited merriment when an unhappy youth or girl, unable to endure the test, fell with a scream into the water. A huge pair of reptilian jaws closed on the white body, and the water was stained red."--p.680

There is no reason not to believe I guess that the Romans really enjoyed watching people get eaten by alligators. Middle American types have always hard time understanding this as a major strain in the human character that their society has largely been able to suppress, at least in this kind of raw form. 

PP 700-701 brings the graphic torture of the character Antonius. It occurred to me rather belatedly, that he must have been supposed to be St Anthony, though I cannot find a St Anthony whose dates and mode of life corresponds with this guy's. Nonetheless, several of the minor characters sneaked up on me as being major biblical personages, Lukas, Marcus, etc, which I did not pick up on until they began to do fairly obvious things that signified who they were. Oh yes, about that torture:

"The bones of his hands and arms and legs had been cracked one by one between the claws of iron pincers. The skin had been torn, strip by strip, from his quivering flesh. One by one the nails of his fingers had been pulled out by the roots. His flayed feet had been held over a slow fire. He lost his human aspect and was reduced to a bundle of raw, blistered flesh."

It is remarkable what these early Christians had (and were willing) to suffer to be near God while Jimmy Swaggert and his ilk (or me, though officially I claim not to really believe in any kind of divinity or afterlife) don't have to suffer anything. It is true, Paul and his early followers were often buoyed by visions of and meetings with Jesus himself. Of course Jimmy Swaggert probably claims that he has talked to Jesus too, so it's really a puzzle why American Christians get to have the easiest of earthly passages.

After Nero had most of Rome burnt down, he famously (assuming the story has not been debunked) and absurdly pinned the blame on the Jews and their Christian adjuncts and held a giant entertainment in which members of these unfortunate groups were to be killed en masse for the delight of the Roman crowds. The show was boring, however: "...the Christians did not fight (in the gladiatorial arena); they only prayed and let themselves be eaten...here and there even the dulled, brutish heart of the Romans were touched by the spectacle of so many women and children fed to the wild beasts." 

Last note, on the conditions at the Tullianum prison, the last destination of saints Peter and Paul prior to their respective executions: 

"They were not starved to death so much as eaten to death. Food of some kind was given them, but they in turn, while still alive, were eaten by monstrous rats and crawling things which bred in countless numbers in the foulness of the cells and corridors. The prisoners were chained, either to rings in the walls or to great, immovable blocks of wood. The floors of the prison were littered with human offal, with moldering bodies and bones gnawed clean, and the poisonous air ate into the lungs and skin. A thick ooze dripped from the walls..." I think you get the picture. At the time I guess I thought this was the worst of all the executions and tortures, but probably the endless parade of them over the last half of the book had softened me up, and when they brought the rats in, I was finished, you know.

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

The major words used to produce this Challenge were obviously heavily Rome or Jewish-specific, which could have produced great results, but in this case produced a list of contestants I have no interest in reading. However, I have to try one of them, so I am going to go straight with the shortest of these that I can check out of the library  

1. Acharya S--The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold......................373

2. Peter Heather--The Fall of the Roman Empire......................................................167

3. Elaine Pagels--The Origin of Satan.......................................................................166

4. John MacArthur--One Perfect Life........................................................................148

5. John L Allen, Jr--The Global War on Christians..................................................101

6. Dietrich Bonhoffer--Letters and Papers From Prison............................................85

7. Simon Schama--Landscape and Memory................................................................42

8. Saul: The Journey to Damascus (movie).................................................................33

9. Mark A Gabriel--Journey Into the Mind of an Islamic Terrorist............................19

10. James Wasserman--The Temple of Solomon.........................................................12

11. Copan and Litwak--The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas................................12

12. The Real Jesus: A Defense of the Historicity and Divinity of Christ (movie).......11

13. Makers of Ancient Strategy (ed. Hanson)..............................................................11

14. Robert Silverberg--Needle in a Timestack.............................................................10

15. Stuart Munro-Hay--The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant....................................5

16. Mark Gibbs--The Virgin and the Priest...................................................................4

Round of 16

#1 S over #16 Gibbs

#15 Munro-Hay over #2 Heather

#3 Pagels over #14 Silverberg

#4 MacArthur over #13 Makers, etc

#5 Allen over #12 The Real Jesus

#6 Bonhoffer over #11 Copan and Litwak

#10 Wasserman over #7 Schama

#9 Gabriel over #8 Saul....

Elite 8

#15 Munro-Hay over #1 S

#3 Pagels over #10 Wasserman

#4 MacArthur over #9 Gabriel

#5 Allen over #6 Bonhoffer

Final Four

#3 Pagels over #15 Munro-Hay

#4 MacArthur over #5 Allen

Championship

#3 Pagels over #4 MacArthur



Nothing much to be said about these. Pagel's book is 214 pages. She is a professor at Princeton, so the odds that she is a total crackpot are reduced somewhat, I suppose.