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The Mystery of Mar Saba and the Evangelical Prototype of a Secular Fiction Genre

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The Mystery of Mar Saba and the Evangelical Prototype of a Secular Fiction Genre "This Piece of Parchment Will Shake the World": The Mystery of Mar Saba and the Evangelical Prototype of a Secular Fiction Genre Andrew S. Jacobs Christianity & Literature, Volume 69, Number 1, March 2020, pp. 91-106 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/752350 Access provided at 1 Apr 2020 18:43 GMT with no institutional affiliation “This Piece of Parchment Will Shake the World”: The Mystery of Mar Saba and the Evangelical Prototype of a Secular Fiction Genre Andrew S. Jacobs Abstract. The 1940 evangelical novel The Mystery of Mar Saba by James H. Hunter shares with a later, secular genre of novels I call gospel thrillers a common plot (the discovery of a new gospel from the first century and a race to prove or disprove its authenticity) but also common anxieties about biblical authority mapped onto geopolitical, theological, and personal registers. I triangulate these themes with the modern professional study of the Bible, which has also produced a vulnerable yet au- thoritative biblical text and which has, in surprising fashion, resurrected for its own purposes The Mystery of Mar Saba. Keywords. biblical studies, religious fiction, popular culture, Bible In 1940, Scottish-Canadian journalist James Hogg Hunter published his first novel, The Mystery of Mar Saba, a war-time adventure set in 1930s Pales- tine.1 Featuring sinister Nazis, duplicitous Arab natives, a chiseled U.S. hero, and a biblical find that could “change the course of history,”2 this explicitly Christian novel was the prototype of a genre of novels that began prolif- erating during the Cold War Era and continue to this day. I call this genre “gospel thrillers,” as they depict conspiracy and danger attendant upon the discovery of a new first-century gospel. The gospel thriller genre has been, since the 1960s, a largely secular fiction genre.3 That an early prototype of the genre should be published by an evangelical press with strong ties to western missionary movements invites closer scrutiny of the tangled lines between “evangelical” and “secular” modes for imagining the Christian Bible as an object of cultural fear and desire. Ultimately, this gospel thriller pro- totype and its secular descendants suggest that “evangelical/secular” (or even “Christian”/”secular”) are not always helpful binaries when exploring the pervasive role of the Bible in constructing U.S. cultures.4 Instead, the si- multaneous power and vulnerability of the Bible—(re)produced by the guild of biblical studies—underwrites fears and desires about the Bible across the spectrum of U.S. popular culture. Andrew S. Jacobs is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138. His most recent book, Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2016), won the Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church History. Email: <[email protected]> Christianity & Literature 69: 91–106 © 2020 Conference on Christianity and Literature 92 Christianity & Literature The Mystery of Mar Saba: The Triumphant Bible James Hunter emigrated to Canada in the early 1900s and established him- self as a journalist in Ontario.5 In the 1920s he was a reporter on church is- sues for the Toronto Globe;6 by 1930 he was an editor of the Toronto-based Evangelical Christian.7 Rowland Victor Bingham had founded the magazine in 1905 to aid global missionary endeavors; in 1912 Bingham established Evangelical Publishers with similar goals.8 Hunter’s first two novels,Mystery of Mar Saba and Banners of Blood, were published by Evangelical Publish- ers.9 Hunter wrote other “adventure” novels, winning awards for his writing from evangelical Zondervan Publishers in the U.S.10 All of Hunter’s fiction shares the sentiments of the Bible-focused, global missionary zeal of Bing- ham’s media outlets.11 We need not be surprised, then, that The Mystery of Mar Saba’s themes and structure replicate Hunter’s white, missionary, evangelical, Protestant world-view, mapped neatly onto the political divisions between “Christian West” and “atheist East” that would congeal during the Cold War. The story revolves around a Nazi plot to cripple the British Empire through acts of terrorism and espionage in mandate Palestine; the plot is ultimately foiled by the evangelical British head of Palestine police, Colonel Alderson, and his American friend, Tony Medhurst. The villain of the novel almost cartoon- ishly captures the intersection of nationalist and biblical concerns:12 He had the square head that is associated with the typical German, thick lips, a heavy chin and a high forehead. The eyes were small, blue and piercing. In his face there was no pity, humor or kindness. It was that of a man in whom the soul had died, and from whom the spirit had departed leaving only a fleshly automaton to carry out the evil devices of the heart. Such was Professor Heimworth, noted German Higher Critic and archaeologist.13 Within a few pages of his sinister entrance Professor Heine Heimworth heralds the triumph of the unconquerable Fuehrer and the imminent de- mise of the British Empire.14 Peter Yphantis, piously resisting Heimworth’s nefarious plans, links his Nazism, impiety, and biblical criticism explicitly: “No truer word was ever spoken than that of Queen Victoria when she said that the secret of British greatness was in the Word of God.15 That faith has been weakened as you, Herr Professor, know, through the permeation of her colleges with the destructive teaching of Higher Criticism, and the use of your text-books in particular. But so many of your ‘assured results’ are being overthrown today, that you will never succeed that way.”16 Higher Criticism, which assumes the text of the Bible was compiled quite late out of earlier sources and is therefore historically unreliable, has proved Jacobs / “This Piece of Parchment Will Shake the World” 93 insufficient for Germany’s attempts to undermine the British Empire. Heim- worth has devised a new plan, only hinted at in this opening chapter but unveiled in the course of the novel: the forgery of a first-century testimony that will “prove” the resurrection of Christ never happened. One of Heim- worth’s coconspirators acknowledges with awe, “You will not only destroy the British Empire. You will change the history of the world.”17 Heimworth blackmails Yphantis, “the greatest living authority on ancient manuscripts,” the Protestant child of a Greek father and a “German Jewess,” into execut- ing the forgery, holding Peter’s sister Natalie hostage.18 (Heimworth later attempts to force Natalie to marry him by threatening Peter’s life.) Heimworth plants the forgery in the titular monastery of Mar Saba, outside of Jerusalem, for it to be discovered by Sir William Braceridge, “one of the greatest living authorities on ancient manuscripts” who is touring “several monasteries in search for more Biblical documents.”19 Sir William makes the discovery, which he calls the “Shred of Nicodemus,” and is dev- astated to be the potential instrument of Christianity’s demise: “He looked like a man who had received his death sentence.”20 The character of Sir William makes clear that, for Hunter, the search for “more Biblical docu- ments” is not inherently opposed to faith in the biblical text: “Had [Sir Wil- liam] numbered amongst the destructive critics of the Scriptures, Alderson might not have taken such a serious view of the situation.”21 Far from being a “destructive critic”—an evangelical term of opprobrium for higher crit- ics—Sir William seeks to bolster the biblical text through new discoveries, modeled on the example of nineteenth-century “Bible hunter” Constantin von Tischendorf.22 Textual criticism, the pious emendation of the biblical text, is distinguished from higher criticism, an irreligious attack on biblical truth. The evangelical heroes of the novel, as well as its evangelical author, accept that their authoritative Bible might be supported by new finds from eastern lands. Sir William presents his findings to the Governors of the British Mu- seum back home and, after the Prime Minister (“a Unitarian”23) refuses to intervene, the Shred of Nicodemus is published: “the bomb burst on an un- suspecting world.”24 “THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY,” screams one headline.25 The godless defenders of “rational Christianity” rejoice while more faithful heads strive to prove the document a forgery. Riots devastate U.S. cities, Indian nationalists call for the expulsion of “all Christian missionaries,” and “Communism was increasing.”26 Eventually the plot is uncovered and overthrown by the hero of the tale: square-jawed, blue-eyed, U.S. millionaire George Anthony “Tony” Medhurst.27 Medhurst, a well-educated religious skeptic at the novel’s out- set, falls in love with Natalie Yphantis and undergoes a dramatic conversion experience in Jerusalem.28 Working with Dennis, his faithful Methodist re- tainer, and Alderson, the evangelical British head of the Palestine Police, Medhurst saves Natalie, proves the “Shred” a forgery, and defeats the local band of Arab terrorists—”the Hooded Ones”—organized by Heimworth and his Nazi compatriots. “CHRIST IS RISEN,” rejoices the headline in the Times of 94 Christianity & Literature London; biblical faith is restored, and Hitler’s sinister machinations are de- layed, if only for a few years.29 Tony and Natalie, united in their faith, plan a wedding in the “Garden of the Resurrection” in Jerusalem. Much of the novel follows Medhurst’s dashing heroics in Palestine, in- terspersed with strong doses of evangelical Zionism.30 Britain’s imperialist interests and her Christian commitments are intertwined in mandate Pal- estine,31 where Jews settling the Holy Land are often heralded as a sign of God’s providence.32 The defeat of the Higher Critic is also the defeat of the Nazi threat and the beating back of the anticolonial resistance of the native Arabs of Palestine.
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