With such heightened tensions around the Middle East, particularly with Israel’s almost hysterical opposition to the recent Goldstone report, it should be no surprise that a new novel, “The Galilean Secret,” is scheduled to be released this May. Its author, Evan Drake Howard, has a doctorate in theology and I think readers will find its message timely and a good read.
The story, or stories, evolves around a letter that was written in Israel in Roman times and its exciting recent discovery in our time. The letter was written by one no less famous than Jesus of Nazareth to Mary Magdalene. In the letter Jesus explains love relationships, plus giving insights into male-female characteristics that exist in every person.
Using a literary construct the reader is introduced to the political and religious tensions that mark both eras, even though the events described are separated by two millennia. Both stories vividly describe acts of passion, love, deceit, treason, and perhaps most important of all, forgiveness and love.
While Mr. Howard takes certain literary liberties, he stays fairly close to the New Testament story as understood by most mainline Christians. Some might feel discomfort with the thesis that Jesus and Mary Magdalene shared a deeply human emotional attraction. Howard treats this with great sensitivity and it becomes the basis for why the letter was written in the first place.
The stories are not preachy, but they help readers grasp the importance of all people -- Jews, Christians or Muslims – to respect each other.
The reader vicariously experiences the confusion between the teachings of Barabbas the Zealot, who sees violence as the best way to rid Israel from the Roman occupiers, and Jesus, who taught a more perfect way even though it led to the Cross.
Contrived fictional comparisons can be odious; but there is a poignant familiarity to today’s Israeli blockage to creating a State of Palestine, coupled with its justifiable fear of being destroyed by its Arab and Muslim neighbors. The fundamental question is whether this Gordian knot can be cut only by military force, or if there is a better way; one that recognizes that both sides share a common humanity along with all that that entails; mutual respect, love of family, and the will to create a society of harmony and peace.
It is into this vortex of ancient and modern violence that the story of how young people from disparate backgrounds fall in love and risk their lives, then and now, to save this precious ancient artifact – and maybe all mankind.
Perhaps the book is just silly fiction, but fiction often has a way of intruding into true life. Sometimes it is the best way to glimpse the agony of 1.5 million people destined for life in a squalid concentration camp. Or why some people suffering occupation strike out in anger.
Perhaps the greatest lesson is that, despite legitimate fears on both sides, the Israel/Palestine status quo is intolerable and mutual destruction should not and cannot, in the words of Adolf Hitler, be the “final solution.”
