The Source

As I've said many times before, I was a precocious adolescent reader, usually wanting to appear more intelligent and more mature than I actually was.  That being said, I really did enjoy reading these big books.  I became acquainted with James A. Michener in my childhood due to the television mini-series Centennial which originally aired in 1978-79, and again in the following TV season.  Thereafter, it was shown periodically on TBS in the 1980s, from which we recorded on VHS.  In the  early 2000s, we bought it in VHS format, and then in this decade we bought it on DVD.  Needless to say, we really liked the 26-hour epic.  When I was twelve, I finally convinced my mother to let me read the novel, 969 pages (or somewhere thereabouts) in length.  Took me six weeks to do it.  And when I was finished, I wanted more!

I read Chesapeake, followed by The Covenant, Poland, and Space, enormous historical epics that dealt with issues across the centuries and generations of its character families.  I devoured each one hungrily, reading every page, but I have to admit I didn't grasp even a fraction of meaning from any of them.  The only one my mother forbid me to read was Hawaii, because she had seen the movie in her own teen years and thought it was a little to sensual of a story for me to read.  She was probably right.  I read Texas as soon as it was published in 1985, but I kept after her to let me read Hawaii.  In the meantime, my favorite teacher suggested I read The Source.  It wasn't until the summer of 1987--when I was almost fifteen--that I finally tackled these two.  I'm pretty sure I read Hawaii first, and then in August 1987 I bought my own paperback copy of The Source.  I've read it perhaps a handful of times in the last 30 years, but picked it up again a couple of months ago for fresh look at this fascinating novel.

The Source is a tale spanning the history of humanity from the earliest days of civilization to the present day (1964 in the case of this novel).  Its setting is a small village in what became northern Israel, fixed on a trade route between the Mediterranean and the Galilee, between Egypt and Damascus, and beyond.  Its characters are the descendants of a cave dweller named Ur, joined by the nomadic Hebrews and their assorted Jewish descendants.  Its primary plot is one of religion, the origins and expansion of Canaanite paganism, Hebraic monotheism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, told reasonably evenhandedly by the likely agnostic and certainly humanistic author.  And the structure of the novel is built upon a modern archaeological dig examining the Tell Makor--an unnatural hill beneath whose surface lies the many levels of civilization that occupied the site.  In the opening chapter, the archaeologists dig two trenches down through the layers, uncovering 15 artifacts that become the basis for each successive chapter of the story.

It is an exciting and enlightening rampage through history, hitting the major cultural peaks that defined that part of the world throughout human habitation.  From the primitive farmer who intentionally planted the first wheat field, moved out of the cave into a rock hut, teased a wild dog into an unlikely friendship, and became aware of the existence of the spiritual forces it interpreted as God, to the Canaanites who turned that fledgling awareness into polytheistic rituals of seedtime and harvest, sex, and sacrifices by fire.  From the Hebrew patriarch who led his tribe out of the wilderness by the command of God and conquered the land by His power and the edge of the sword, to the many tribes who untied themselves under the psalmist and shepherd King David.  From the ancient engineer who devised and dug the underground tunnel to the community well that would give the city water to sustain them through times of siege, to the divinely inspired prophetess who foresaw the Babylonian captivity and took radical steps to perpetuate the purity and sanctity of her family until their return long after she was dead.  From the fierce faith of the Jews who began the Maccabean revolt against Syria, survived the madness of King Herod the Great, and faced the wrath of Roman Emperors, to the determined rabbis who studied the Law of Moses, assembled the Hebrew Scriptures, and wrote the voluminous explanations of the Talmud in order to preserve the Jewish people during their centuries-long dispersion.  From the desert dawn and spread of Islam to the well-intentioned but ill-fated European crusades to retake Jerusalem for Jesus Christ.  From the Spanish Inquisition, German Ghettos and Russian pogroms that drove the Jews from their adopted homelands, to the rise of Zionism that gave birth to the modern state of Israel.  All of this culminated in the explosive and miraculous war for Israeli Independence which saw the final set of characters moving into the positions where we found them at the beginning of the archaeological dig--a Catholic scholar searching for truth, two Jewish freedom fighters longing for life and love but trapped by the forces of their nation and their religion which will keep them apart, and a Palestinian with a deep awareness of his own people, their long and storied history, and how they managed to survive it.

I laughed and wept and cringed my way through 1088 pages, and walked away with an understanding of the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, and their Judaism that I have never had before.  It is at times thrilling, at times terrifying, at times a tremendous examination of both the human and the divine.  I sympathized with the ancient patriarch Zadok who truly loved his God, but struggled with complete obedience to His will; with Jabaal the Hoopoe who worked so hard to accomplish great things for his kingdom, only to be abandoned by his wife, mocked by his contemporaries, and forgotten by the king he had faithfully served; with Gomer the prophetess who preached a difficult message to an unyielding people, who made the hardest decisions of all.  I grieved with Yigal and Beruriah, who paid the highest price in defending their homeland against the Roman conquest; with Rabbi Simon Ha-Garzi, God's Man, as he was driven by bigotry from the land that he loved; with all of those persecuted Jews the world over who suffered so much at the hands of those who loved their same God.  I experienced the Crusades, inwardly protesting the merciless and ignorant Crusaders who blazed a path of destruction and death across two continents in the name of Jesus Christ, indiscriminately killing Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Pagans, for all of whom Jesus died to save.  I relived the horrors of the Babylonian, the Roman, and the Mameluke sieges of the little town, fearfully anticipating the final assaults that would result in so much slaughter.  

I didn't necessarily appreciate Michener's perspective that all religion has its origin in the human imagination.  Like those Jews and Christians of which he wrote, and yes, even those Muslims, I believe that there is only One God, and that He has interacted with mankind throughout our history to bring us into relationship with Him.  I am puzzled by Michener's lack of focus on anything related directly to Jesus Christ.  While I consider his presentation of the church's actions throughout the story accurate to their times and circumstances, I think it's unfortunate that Christianity is solely represented by the historical Catholicism that made a mockery of the true gospel, strove to exterminate the Jews throughout the world, and often joined itself to Islam and godless paganism in order to accomplish those purposes.  In the end, he reveals a legalistic Judaism that is unmerciful and completely lacking in compassion upon which the modern state of Israel was built, a Judaism that could have and should have found its fulfillment in the love of their long-awaited and ultimately-rejected Messiah Jesus Christ.  But he also revealed the hatred heaped upon the Jews as God's Chosen People, hatred at the hands of those who ought to love.

For me, the most personal and deeply moving moment of the book came toward the end, when a confrontation between orthodox Rabbinical Judaism and modern Zionist nationalism explodes in the accidental relationship of Rebbe Itzik of Vodzhe and Ilana Hacohen the Jewish sabra.  The old man wants a Judaism governed by the Law without the encumbrances of a national homeland; the young woman wants a free Jewish state without the restrictions of a religion she no longer adheres to.  In the heat of their debate, she strikes a wig from the Rabbi's wife, revealing a baldness that is imposed by a centuries' old tradition, symbolizing what she considers the invalidity of the Jewish religion.  But after the apologies are made and the girl starts to leave, the old rabbi and his wife draw her to their Passover table and demonstrate the true heart of their religion and their personal devotion to the God they serve.  That she dies in the Israeli fight for Independence and the old rabbi survives to see all of his fears of a Jewish state come true serves in contrast to make the message even more poignant.  Faith is about your personal relationship with God, not your adherence to a religious structure.

All in all, The Source is a terrific tale of the first rate, informational, inspirational, and incredible story-telling at its finest.  And one day in a decade or so, I may read it again.