Books: Was It Failure?

THE SON OF MAN—The Story of Jesus —Emil Ludwig—translated by Eden and Cedar Paul—Boni & Liveright ($3.00). Emil Ludwig of Napoleon and Bismarck fame now tries his hand at a more dangerously familiar story—that of Jesus, Son of Man. Unadorned with the glittering paradoxes of Kenan’s Vie, free from the sensationalism of Barbusse and the sentimentalism of Papini, clear of the pathos of the recent cinema version, Ludwig’s is a popular, but none the less scholarly, interpretation. His indefatigable passion for historical records and documentary scraps immerses him in contemporary Latin and Greek commentaries, but chiefly in the self-contradictory New Testament records which seem to him logical enough if arranged psychologically. The avowed object of his search is Jesus the human being, and in no sense the Christ of religious and theological controversy, which somewhat scornfully “he does not pretend to understand.” From the confusion of scholars’ profusion of detail, Ludwig recreates the world Jesus lived in: the peaceful hillside where he loved to lie and dream his poet dreams, the bustling village on market day, the simple carpenter and fisherfolk, and finally, in glamorous contrast, Jerusalem, loud with the pompous clankings of Roman centurions, the sophistries of Pharisee and Sadducee, the sharp bickerings of tradesmen in the temple court. Instinctively avoiding the fierce challenge of the city, Jesus kept to the hills, pondering the wickedness of priests, and the gullibility of the people. But suddenly he heard “the voice of one crying in the wilderness”—John decrying all that Jesus himself abhorred. Wakened from his listless dreaming, by John’s prediction that “one mightier than I cometh,” he started out among humble villagers, bringing them a message of love far simpler to understand than the hair-splitting taboos of their priests. His magnetism soon drew twelve men as disciples, and together they wandered from village to village, humbly enjoying the success of the master’s teachings and healings. This early, happy part of Jesus’s life Ludwig presents in glowing contrast to the last tragic months of proud ambition, and violent vituperation of the priesthood, which inevitably led to his failure and crucifixion. In diagnosing Napoleon’s career, and Bismarck’s, Ludwig traced ascent to fame through youthful virility and brilliant ability, to anticlimax due to pride and hasty resentment. Perhaps something of habit has influenced him to a similar interpretation of Jesus’s meteoric career, or perhaps from his viewpoint as a Jew he can but recognize as failure that tragic climax on the cross, which centuries of religious enthusiasts have eulogized as victory, and even the “higher criticism” of late years has diagnosed as the wise choice of One who knew that more could be done by dramatic death than by further years of heckled, fugitive life.