Shadow of the Galilean

[wildeabandon]

I've just finished reading a rather wonderful book, The Shadow of the Galilean by Gerd Theissen. It's a social history of Judaism in 1st century Palestine drawing heavily on the works of Josephus and the New Testament gospels, interspersed with commentary on the methods of historical criticism, in disguise as a novel. The disguise is deliberately thin, the chapters of the novel alternating with a fourth-wall breaking correspondence with an academic colleague of the author, and sources footnoted throughout, but this allows the fictional narrative to be seamlessly interwoven with the historical evidence without danger of being misconstrued as fact.

The novel's protagonist, Andreas, is a young, middle-class Jew from Sepphoris, who gets arrested after being caught up in a demonstration against Pilate and ends up being pressured into gathering information on these new preachers, John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. He never actually meets Jesus in the flesh, but instead we watch as he puts together a picture of him based on hearsay and gossip, interpreting different sources in the context of what he knows about the world he lives in, and then wrestles with his conscience and sense of self-preservation in deciding how to present what he's learned to the Romans. Okay, not the subtlest analogy the world has ever seen...

But it works. I think perhaps if you had no interest in the subject as history, then its quality as a novel would be merely adequate, but it still has interesting and pathetic characters, and a solid plot with dramatic tension and resolution. And if you are interested in historical interpretation as a process, and/or the specific history of the subject matter, then it's an absolutely delightful way to approach it.

Comments

[smhwpf]

I loved that book! Read it ages ago, early 1990s I think. Can't remember who recommended it to me. Found it a really engaging way to approach Gospel criticism.