Posted in Book Reviews
Just recently I’ve read two books about the early church. Both were very interesting, and I liked different things about both of them.
The first was Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (add that to your spelling list). It centers around a young man named Marcus Vinicius, a Roman soldier. He falls in love with a woman named Lygia, who also happens to be a Christian. At first Vinicius is intent simply on getting Lygia. Whether by force or by consent he does not care. But soon he comes into contact with some of her Christian friends, and slowly but surely, he is disturbed out of his self-complacency. To believe would turn his world upside down. Yet he is seized with a growing conviction that it is the truth.
The second book was The Robe by Lloyd Douglas. It is based on a very interesting question: what happened to the robe that was gambled for while Jesus hung dying on the cross? We meet a Roman soldier named Marcellus. It is he who won Jesus’ robe, and that robe and the man who wore it haunt him for months after the crucifixion. After he gets over his fear of the robe, he sets on a quest to find out more about Jesus and who he is. Traveling to Jerusalem, he begins speaking with Jesus’ close companions and gets a firsthand account of Jesus’ works.
As I said, I liked different things in both of them. Quo Vadis seemed a little more historically accurate. It also had many emotionally moving scenes. One of my quibbles with The Robe was that there was certain scenes that I felt should be a little more climactic, and they fell kind of flat. Quo Vadis was better in that department. However, in The Robe, the characters were more real to me. In Quo Vadis, the Christians were portrayed more as these sort of exalted beings who didn’t struggle with sin anymore. But in The Robe, the author wasn’t shy about showing those struggles. I liked that.
I had difference of theology with both, but nothing I couldn’t overlook. It definitely didn’t spoil either book for me.
Warnings about content: don’t read Quo Vadis unless you have a really strong stomach. Part of the plot involves Nero’s persecution of the Christians, and the author gives some pretty strong details about that. Also, the author gave an accurate picture of what some of Nero’s parties were like, and the descriptions of that, while not too detailed, could be rather obscene. Don’t go for this one unless you’re an older reader who can handle that. The Robe was pretty clean. A couple swear words, and again, a couple mentions of the sinful lifestyle the Romans led, but handled much more discretely.
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