The extraordinary success of The Nazarene will in a sense pave the
way for this book, which also has a Palestinian setting, and a
religious motive. The period is later - the early second century -
and the story deals with Elisha ben Abuyah, Jewish rabbi, a
dissenter whose life was torn by internal struggles towards faith.
It is a book which should appeal to the market of Lion
Feuchtwanger's The Jew of Rome, for Elisha ben Abuyah was virtually
another Josephus, betraying his people to the Romans, despised by
both sides. A childhood under Hellenistic influence; an adolescence
and early youth under strict Jewish teachers, a marriage without
love, and the beginning of a lifelong attempt to rationalize his
beliefs. The story of a failure, of the ultimate discovery that
Faith is essential to Life, and that not all elements can be fitted
into the pattern of Euclid, that reason alone cannot control life.
Semi-historical, semi-biographical, but written as fiction, with
whole periods - unknown to historians - filled in. Not a book for
the average reader, but a book that those interested in far off
periods of history which have their parallels today, and in the
search for a faith as a motive of life, will find interesting and
challenging. (Kirkus Reviews)
A spirited classic of American Jewish literature, a historical
novel about ancient sage-turned-apostate Elisha ben Abuyah in the
late first century C.E. At the heart of the tale are questions
about faith and the loss of faith and the repression and rebellion
of the Jews of Palestine. Elisha is a leading scholar in Palestine,
elected to the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court in the land. But
two tragedies awaken doubt about God in Elisha's mind, and doubt
eats away at his faith. Declared a heretic and excommunicated from
the Jewish community, he journeys to Antioch in nearby Syria to
begin a quest through Greek and Roman culture for some fundamental
irrefutable truth. The pace of the narrative picks up as Elisha
directly encounters the full force of the ancient Romans'
all-consuming culture. Ultimately, Elisha is forced by the power of
Rome to choose between loyalty to his people, who are rebelling
against the emperor's domination, and loyalty to his own quest for
truth.-Publishers Weekly
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