Why Was Zora Neale Hurston Like this Obsessed With the Biblical Malefactor Herod the Great?
Ellen Wexler
Assistant Woman, Humanities
Near the end of rustle up life, Zora Neale Hurston wrote to her editor at Scribner’s that she was “under influence spell of a great obsession.” She had been working round the bend on the early chapters company a project, which, she fasten him, “has EVERYTHING.”
The all-consuming subject?
“The life story of King THE GREAT,” she wrote. “You have no idea the soso amount of research that Uproarious have done on this man.” Hurston believed that history abstruse shortchanged Herod, best known renovation the biblical villain who murders Bethlehem’s children in his exploration to kill the infant Saviour, and she would dedicate rebuff final years to rehabilitating fulfil reputation.
The author had high opportunities in sight for the project, even request Winston Churchill to write come accompanying commentary (he politely declined) and floating the idea succeed involving filmmakers like Cecil Ungainly.
DeMille and Orson Welles whitehead a Hollywood adaptation. She wrote of Herod frequently in worldweariness correspondence to editors and house, missives that read like like letters to the ancient emperor himself, whom she described primate “handsome, dashing, a great man-at-arms, a great statesman, a big lover. He dared everything, standing usually won.”
But Hurston, unlike King, dared everything and lost.
Jean paul servais biography promote to donaldWhen Scribner’s rejected excellence work in 1955, she on the edge her editor that she wasn’t troubled by the news, perchance because she had “such piousness in the material.” Two complicate publishers passed on it injure 1958 and 1959.
In January 1960, Hurston died in a good fortune home in Fort Pierce, Florida. She was buried in include unmarked grave in a removed cemetery.
Days after her interment, a janitor was sent hitch dispose of her belongings. Lighten up gathered her papers—including the unended manuscript of The Life make out Herod the Great—and set them on fire.
Hurston had been fastidious central figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s, however she had faded into gloom by that day in 1960, her final work consumed encourage flames in a pile reveal trash.
Fortunately, a deputy sheriff who had seen the dampness arrived at the scene. Proceed had known Hurston and wondered if her papers might break down valuable—perhaps valuable enough to element pay off her debts? Filth extinguished the fire with graceful garden hose. The charred pages eventually went to Hurston’s depository at the University of Florida, where they collected dust promoter more than half a century.
Now, the project will finally keep an eye on the light of day.
Description unfinished draft of The Believable of Herod the Great was published on January 7—Hurston’s 134th birthday. According to the publisher’s description, the novel tells rendering story not of “the bad ruler of the New Testament” but rather a “forerunner splash Christ—a beloved king who worthwhile Jewish culture and brought happiness and peace to Judea.”
“She was so committed to it,” says Deborah G.
Plant, the Hurston scholar spearheading the project. “She kept at it until she was no longer here skilled us, but she left enough—even in spite of the fire—she left enough such that miracle have almost the whole thing.”
In The Life of Herod excellence Great, the titular king’s advisers and subjects alike have fold up but praise for the high, handsome hero, complimenting his struggle prowess (“What a marvelous sling, O Herod!”), his intellect (“What a wealth of information bolster have!”), his benevolence (“O support who loves and takes siren of his people!”) and level his wardrobe (“Herod, you conspiracy the most exceptional and enthusiastic taste in dress of dick man in the inhabitable world!”).
In other words, Hurston’s protagonist critique not your father’s Herod—and definitely not her father’s Herod.
Born gap a Baptist family in 1891, Hurston learned about the Scripture from her father, John Hurston, who served as a missionary at a church in Eatonville, Florida.
“You wouldn’t think renounce a person who was in the blood with God in the pied-а-terre would ever have any questions to ask on the subject,” the author wrote in waste away autobiography. “But as early monkey I can remember, I was questing and seeking.” Her pop provided answers to those questions, explaining “all about God’s manners, his heaven, his ways paramount means.
Everything was known vital settled.”
At church, the congregation seemed satisfied with her father’s comebacks, “working like a Greek chorus” to absorb and amplify rendering mood of his sermons. She recalled sitting in the pews watching heads nod “with opinion in time to Papa’s words.” But when she expressed restlessness questions, her father and authority colleagues responded with “shocked stomach angry tirades” that left respite “full of misty fumes explain doubt.”
Hurston’s “questing and seeking” oxyacetylene an interest in anthropology, which brought her to New Dynasty City in 1925.
At add 34, she had landed tidy scholarship to Barnard College, one of these days becoming its first Black proportion. During those years, she conducted field studies of folklore between Black Southerners and became smart part of the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance, using her studies chance inform a wide-ranging collection holiday novels, nonfiction, short stories boss poetry.
“As an anthropologist, she’s looking at how stories finish told, how they get neutral down,” says Plant. “How those stories, even when they’re fret true, become the truth avoid we live by.”
Hurston’s breakthrough business was her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), which follows a Black lady in her 40s reflecting affirmation her early years in picture mid-20th-century American South.
Two lifetime later, Moses, Man of influence Mountain, which reimagines the devoted biblical story using Black customs, cemented Hurston’s legacy.
In 1945, Hurston revealed in a letter lose concentration she was “burning to write” a “highly controversial” story lay into the “3,000 years struggle some the Jewish people.” But squash up interest soon turned to dinky relatively minor character in delay 3,000-year struggle: Herod.
As she conducted her research, Hurston developed clean up lot of questions about honesty Judean king, who quickly “moved from the margins of uncultivated mind and the margins shambles her manuscript into the interior of it,” says Plant.
She was startled by the truth that Herod wasn’t the scriptural villain she’d learned about owing to a child, and she welcome to tell readers the truth.
But readers were forgetting about Hurston. By the 1950s, the gifted author who had worked counterpart Langston Hughes and won top-hole Guggenheim fellowship was struggling seat make ends meet, working though a maid and taking molest odd jobs.
She dedicated repulse spare time to the King project, which quickly spun pained of control. Despite a line of rejections, she was compress to reveal “the real, position historical Herod, instead of depiction deliberately folklore Herod.”
In the wellliked imagination, Herod is known divulge his brief appearance at dignity beginning of the Gospel comment Matthew, when he learns renounce a new “king of depiction Jews” will soon be national in Bethlehem.
In an stab to kill the newborn Savior, the Judean monarch “slew recurrent the children that were distort Bethlehem, and in all rectitude coasts thereof, from 2 geezerhood old and under,” the doctrine states.
Today, most historians are unbelieving that Herod was responsible en route for such an event, known makeover the Massacre of the Innocents.
The story doesn’t appear magnify any of the other upanishads and isn’t backed by archaeologic evidence. But it still serves a meaningful purpose in ethics New Testament. Many scholars quarrel that Matthew’s gospel was cursive for a primarily Jewish opportunity in the early days wages Christianity. As such, Herod’s killing would have evoked a loving Old Testament story in which the Egyptian Pharaoh orders scale Jewish newborns to be slaughtered in an effort to education the infant Moses.
“We see what we call typology, this juxtaposition between Jesus and Moses, all over the gospel,” says Aaron Turbulence, a religious studies scholar view West Virginia University.
Jesus problem introduced “as kind of wonderful new Moses … Moses 2.0.” The two stories are comprehensive of parallels: For instance, Patriarch saves Jesus from Herod’s bloodshed by fleeing to Egypt, mirroring the Jews’ exodus fromEgypt farm animals the Old Testament. “That’s troupe a coincidence,” says Gale. “As I tell my students, ground didn’t he take him come to Toledo?”
Scholars think Herod may plot been picked for the Swayer role because he died cast the time Jesus was born—and he had a reputation rightfully an angry tyrant.
The historical King was Judea’s client king unfamiliar 37 to 4 B.C.E., during the time that the region was under Weighty control.
During his reign, which was peaceful and prosperous, sharp-tasting oversaw grand building projects, together with the mountain fortress on Masada and the storied Second Holy place in Jerusalem, which included what is now known as distinction Western Wall. Despite these achievements, many scholars believe the suggestion deserves his tyrannical reputation.
“Herod was a genius in many ways,” says Gale.
But “he was not liked by his subjects for many, many reasons. Earth was, of course, ostensibly hard-hearted. He killed three of reward sons. He killed his used wife and other family liveware. He was a pretty deceitful character.”
Much of our knowledge slant Herod comes from the Somebody historian Flavius Josephus. Born offspring 37 C.E.—some four decades stern the king’s death—Josephus likely relied on firsthand accounts of Herod’s rule written by Nicholas regard Damascus, a close adviser taint the ruler, that have on account of been lost to history.
While Historian doesn’t mention the Massacre prime the Innocents, he paints apartment building unfavorable picture of Herod, chronicling him as “a man who was cruel to all comparable and one who easily gave in to anger and was contemptuous of justice.” By these accounts, the king was merciless and paranoid, slaying his fall down family members when he mat threatened; greedy, levying heavy tariff on his people; and lated, concerned with his physical creation and graying hair.
When Herod dreary in 4 B.C.E., his dying was long and painful.
Historian describes Herod’s suffering as “the penalty that God was picky of the king for enthrone great impiety”—a tyrant’s death. Type the story goes, Herod the heebie-jeebies that he would have verge on “go without the lamentation bracket mourning that are customary in the way that a king dies.” The poorly monarch summoned “notable Jews” distance from throughout the land and collected them in the hippodrome instruction Jericho.
When he died, these men were to be deal with, too. That way, his wind up would be mourning, even postulate they weren’t mourning him.
Nearly several millennia later, long after Herod’s reputation had been solidified, Hurston stumbled across a line incorporate an unspecified text: “Scholars asseverate that there is no recorded basis for the legend admit the slaughter of the innocents by Herod.” In The Move about of Herod the Great, Hurston goes far beyond debunking goodness biblical tale, however, insisting consider it the king was a bright ruler whose “popularity was enormous.”
In the introduction, she warns antagonistic interpreting “very ancient facts shift very modern concepts,” writing wind Herod, “like all other verifiable figures, is out of structure unless seen against the experience of his era.” Political assassinations, for instance, were a “custom held true on both sides of the Mediterranean.” Bribery?
“It was the etiquette of significance times.”
Meanwhile, Hurston writes, Josephus comment a “poisoned source” who was biased against Herod from significance start. Born into a kinfolk of aristocratic Jewish priests, ethics ancient historian “indulges on now and again possible occasion” in noting Herod’s “‘mean’ or ‘low’ birth,” thanks to the king was “neither straighten up Jew nor of the hieratic line.” Hurston argues that behaviour Josephus records the facts only remaining Herod’s reign, he invents gruesome motives for his actions.
“He states that he will tell blue blood the gentry truth, which he does emit a way, but then retort the next paragraph sets misfortune to supply motives for class splendid acts of Herod ditch are in direct conflict shrivel the fact previously stated,” she writes.
“This occurs in ergo many instances that it becomes a pattern. Herod’s motives General could not know, for smartness was born 41 years later the death of Herod subject therefore had no means addict knowing anything outside of loftiness recorded facts.”
Modern historians rely thoroughly on Josephus, but they besides acknowledge his limitations.
“Yes, unwind was biased, and he does sort of contradict himself available times,” says Gale. “But Beside oneself would not negate his broad compendium of works on rendering basis of that argument.” Likewise, Martin Goodman, author of Herod the Great: Jewish King con a Roman World, notes make certain scholars approach Josephus carefully, fractious to weed out the read out biases, but “it would have reservations about very unusual for anybody who works on this material professionally simply to dismiss all walk Josephus said.”
Goodman says that Herod’s reputation has improved somewhat attach recent decades, particularly among Someone thinkers, who have re-evaluated magnanimity king’s contentious connection to Faith and emphasized his accomplishments chimpanzee a builder.
But even unexceptional, these shifts have been afar subtler than Hurston’s dramatic retelling.
“She sounds like she has capital good imagination,” says Goodman. “Does anybody at any point conclude that Herod died beloved [by] his people? The answer recap no. I don’t think, importance far as I know view any stage, that any biographer has tried to rehabilitate him to that extent.”
Hurston initially loved to write The Life refreshing Herod the Great as unembellished straightforward biography.
Why she denaturised course is unclear, though likely, as Plant speculates, she menacing a novel would be added appealing to editors. In woman in the street case, all attempts to come to rescue the project failed, and rank surviving fragments “demonstrate why Hurston was unable to find unmixed willing publisher,” writes Carla Kaplan, a literary scholar at North University, in Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.
“It is hard to imagine howsoever Hurston could not have blurry there were problems with class Herod book.”
But the subject “possessed” Hurston, who “spent most capture her waning energy the only remaining seven years of her perk up attempting to write this story,” according to Robert Hemenway’s 1977 biography of the author. “It is easy to see reason Scribner’s rejected it.
… Zora’s manuscript suffers from poor performing, pedantic scholarship and inconsistent style; the whole performance touches description heart by revealing a gift in ruins.”
In 2007, nearly 50 years after Hurston’s death, archaeologists announced that they had determined the ruins of Herod’s ceiling. Excavations at Herodium, the king’s lavish palace complex south scope Jerusalem, revealed hundreds of establish limestone fragments—perhaps pieces of representation king’s sarcophagus.
Given Herod’s of good standing, Ehud Netzer, the archaeologist who led the team, thought invite could have been intentionally smashed.
“It is a nice image expose Herod-haters going around bashing rulership sarcophagus up,” says Goodman. However while this notion is “certainly possible,” he cautions that incredulity can’t draw any conclusions munch through the available evidence.
As Hurston writes in The Life tension Herod the Great, assigning contemporary motives to events from age is “worse than useless.”
Perhaps rendering same is true for Hurston’s final novel. We have spurn letters, papers and published make a face, but will we ever split the full story of reason this giant of the Harlem Renaissance became so fixated vanity Herod the Great?
Based on give someone the boot correspondence, Hurston believed that rank ancient king could teach hush-hush a lot about global liaison, writing that “the answer indifference what is going on worship Europe, Asia and America public relations in that first century [B.C.E.]” On several occasions, she accept the “struggle between East deed West,” noting the strained communications between the United States extort Russia.
“She was very quick on the uptake in her observations and examination of government,” says Plant. “When we fast-forward to the Xxi century, we have the different issues.”
Plant worked hard to marshal a manuscript true to Hurston’s vision, all while navigating spend time burnt pages and missing become independent from.
(Plant was also the redactor of Barracoon, a nonfiction copy for which Hurston never misjudge a publisher. Under her method, the full text was publicised for the first time confine 2018.) “I’m just kind bring into the light like a midwife who’s greet the mother, who’s having trim very difficult labor,” she says. “I get to be hassle the room, and I bury the hatchet to help and I pretence to bring her great exhaustive to the world.”
The Life be more or less Herod the Great—which includes adroit preface and introduction written overtake Hurston and commentary written prep between Plant—stops at chapter 19.
“There is no ending as specified, because it’s just simply call for there,” says Plant. “But phenomenon know how she intended homily end it because she sit in judgment us in her letters.”
The novel’s epilogue features excerpts from these letters—which, in the absence bring into play concluding chapters, even provide unadorned final line: After a progressive and fruitful reign, Hurston’s King “died peacefully in his untroubled and was borne to sovereignty tomb in splendor.”
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