In The Biblical Manner

The passion for biblical novels began in the nineteenth cen and shrewd authors made handsome profits from exploiting Testaments. Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis? is a typical exam

SINCE then two World Wars and countless revolutions in many parts of the world seem to have stimulated the demand from time to time for so-called “inspirational” literature.

Hall Caine’s The Christian enjoyed an enormous success at the time of the Boer War and during World War II Lloyd C. Douglas made a fortune out of The Robe. Since the war The Big Fisherman, also by Douglas has proved another money-spinner.

Sholem Asch’s best period was in the 1940’5, and more recently his Moses and Thomas Costain’s The Silver Chalice have been best sellers.

It is the same with the films—Cecil B. de Mille made The Ten Command ments and the result was the most successful box office production in history.

The latest of the genre to appear on the bookstalls is Charles Israel’s Rizpah. In the Old Testament, 2nd Book of Samuel, Ch. 3, verse 7, there are two lines: “And Saul (i.e., King Saul) had a concubine, whose name was Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah”.

Mr. Israel takes 535 pages to tell the story of Rizpah.

He has read his Old Testament well. All the relevant facts are here, and more besides. If you like reading about bloody battles, massacres, the madness of a king and the love makings of a concubine you will get your money’s worth.

I felt satiated by the time I had got to page 316 or so. There have been some changes in the modern religious novel compared with the old. In the religious novels of the late nineteenth century the hero was sub jected to odious cruelties and the saint-like Christian girl was always destined to make a meal for the lions.

There were intriguing hints of un

mentionable doings “off stage”— they were only hints. In the 1? such prudery is laughed to S 2 and we get Rizpah’s doings: technicolour detail.

Her first lover was a Philisi named Torash. “Torash sm mockingly and placed her onr couch. His hands on her body swift, sure, knowing. . . . She I somehow it would be useless to i further. She closed her eyes. .. (That row of dots is ours).

“Rizpah . . he began and) single word had a warm, carea quality. Then his voice wa* before: icy, faintly mocking, have much to learn, my dear.’

And this was her first meeting; King Saul: “. . . he took her shoulders tween his hands and pulled hei him. She reached up to his touched his lips, trailed her fur across his cheek, wanting now iri surety of what would happen to f the experience slowly, deeply, brushed her hand aside with ss« impatience, so fiercely that she gae first with pain, then with the sm surfacing of imprisoned passion w fervor she had never suspected, lips caught and held, and they ' to the earthen floor of the tent. . seized his hands, held them fm instant to her breasts, then im time that followed no longer what was her body his, shoulders, limbs or heart.”

Rizpah has the vigour, grandiloquence and the feeblenea its predecessors, making nonsemn the Bible’s muscular prose. B 3 will probably sell well, although as well as the Bible itself.—ENV (RIZPAH. Published by Macm; London. 26/-.)