2023/03/01

The Seeker: Gerald Priestland’s search for the heart of Christianity

The Seeker: Gerald Priestland’s search for the heart of Christianity | Archive content | Premier Christianity

The Seeker: Gerald Priestland’s search for the heart of Christianity
By Justin Brierley13 November 2014
3 min read



When BBC Radio 4 announced its Man of the Year award in 1981, voted for by listeners, Gerald Priestland was the runner-up, coming in just after the Pope. What had propelled him into the public consciousness was a 13-part radio series, Priestland’s Progress, in which he investigated the key beliefs of the Christian faith.

With his tweed jacket and public school accent, it may come as no surprise that Priestland’s early experience of Christianity consisted of chapel services at Charterhouse School. But required churchgoing often gives students just enough religion to inoculate them against it. So it was with Priestland, who decided he was an atheist in his teenage years; a point of view he carried into adulthood.

The 1950s and 60s brought him a successful career in broadcasting with the BBC, primarily as a foreign correspondent. He also had the unexpected responsibility of anchoring the technically fraught opening night of newly launched channel BBC Two.

However, when Priestland suffered a nervous breakdown in the early 70s, he became open to a spiritual dimension and subsequently made his home among the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends). This was followed by a move into the BBC’s religious broadcasting, where he served as religious affairs correspondent for several years.

GROUNDBREAKING RADIO

Priestland’s Progress was conceived by Chris Rees, an evangelical Christian who worked as a BBC radio producer. It was to be one man’s exploration of the key aspects of the Christian faith, including prayer, worship, the Trinity, Jesus, and the cross. In the course of creating the 13 episodes, Priestland interviewed more than 100 people and gathered more than 48 hours of material, as well as writing an accompanying book (BBC Books).

The series was entirely original for its day. Firstly, there was the variety of people interviewed, ranging from comedian Spike Milligan to various Anglican bishops. It was also notable for ditching the usually impersonal and objective approach that was de rigueur for the BBC. Instead, Priestland took listeners on a personal journey, in which he gave his own reactions to each topic as his personal understanding developed.

The connection the programmes established with radio listeners was unprecedented. The Sunday night audience quadrupled, and the series generated the largest volume of correspondence a BBC radio programme has ever received: more than 22,000 letters. The Daily Mail ran a headline article titled: ‘The man who has got us talking about God’.

Rees recalls a well-known television personality who got in touch: ‘He said, “Thank you so much for this series. I can now talk about my faith at dinner parties, whereas before I couldn’t.” It became “cool” to talk about what you believed.’

As for the letters, Rees recalls how some wrote that they ‘had learned more about their faith in 45 minutes than they had in 45 years of churchgoing’. He subsequently met five clergy who traced their entry into ministry back to the influence of the programme.

Rev Patrick Forbes, who worked as a researcher on the series, read approximately 17,000 of the letters, passing on any that were relevant to Priestland. ‘Gerald, being the Christian he was, wanted to know of any letter that evidenced pastoral need so that he could respond in person.’

A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY

What had so captured the attention of the British public? Part of the attraction seemed to lie in the fact that Priestland himself was no expert. As a relatively recent Quaker adherent, he freely admitted that he had little familiarity with Christian theology. His own view of God was relatively nebulous and unformed.

In the accompanying book, he wrote: ‘High churchmen feared we would be too low, low churchmen were afraid we would be too high, and both were suspicious that I might convert the operation into a vehicle for my own Quaker heresies.’

Yet his journey through the various strands of Christian belief was to be an eye-opening experience for the broadcaster. He didn’t just speak to bishops and theologians, but also to everyday Christians, many of them women (which was still relatively unusual in religious broadcasting in those days).


HIS OWN VIEW OF GOD WAS RELATIVELY NEBULOUS AND UNFORMED



The style was often touching and personal, such as the interview with Christine Parkin, a Salvationist, who spoke about praying for her young son’s acute eczema. From that day on, the condition improved, although the family still lived with it. ‘But now I know it’s not only my problem, but God’s,’ she related in a moving interview with the journalist. ‘I know God is in the midst of pain and misery.’
MEETING CHRIST

As Priestland himself came to better understand the rich depth of people’s experiences of God, so a fresh understanding of the depth of Christian faith also unveiled itself to him. ‘He learned a lot about what the Church teaches,’ says Rees, ‘but on the other hand the journey was one of his own commitment and response. It was evident to most people who knew him that there had been a change in Gerald; the big impact it had on his life and his faith.’

One of the final interviewees for the programme was the nearly blind Bishop of Winchester, John Taylor. ‘We talked to him for well over an hour,’ recalls Rees. ‘Gerald asked, “What was happening at Calvary?” John Taylor embarked on a 14-minute answer to a question which summed up everything about what Jesus’ life, death and resurrection was about. I looked across and saw Gerald crying.’

Now, more than 30 years later, we have the opportunity to listen again to a radio series that not only transformed religious broadcasting, but also the spiritual life of its presenter.

CHRISTIANITY ON THE AIRWAVES: landmark moments in UK religious radio

CS Lewis at the BBC
CS Lewis’ wartime broadcasts gave a layperson’s guide to Christianity. They were phenomenally popular and the material would become the basis of Lewis’ classic book Mere Christianity (William Collins).

Thought for the Day
The weekday morning Radio 4 slot has been in existence since 1939 (initially titled Lift up Your Hearts). Today it features a variety of religious representatives but still refuses to include atheist voices, despite pressure from secular groups.

Premier Christian Radio
The UK’s first dedicated Christian radio station began in 1995, broadcasting to London and the South East. It now broadcasts nationally and has a sister station, Premier Gospel.

Listen to Priestland’s Progress on Premier Christian Radio every Saturday at 1pm or via Priestland's Progress.

Click here to receive your free copy of Premier Christianity magazine.
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Heaven on Earth: Quakers and the Second Coming : Dandelion, Ben Pink, Peat, Timothy, Gwyn, Douglas: Amazon.com.au: Books

Heaven on Earth: Quakers and the Second Coming : Dandelion, Ben Pink, Peat, Timothy, Gwyn, Douglas: Amazon.com.au: Books




Heaven on Earth: Quakers and the Second Coming  2018
by Ben Pink Dandelion (Author), Timothy Peat (Author), Douglas Gwyn (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

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$33.69
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Central to the faith of early Friends was the present sense of the Second Coming of Christ and the bringing of heaven on earth. Friends around the world may still be able to unite around this vision of a transformed society but how and when heaven will be fully realized are questions which have underpinned three centuries of change and division. This book looks again at the letters of Paul, the experience of early Friends, and the history of Quakerism through the lens of the Second Coming and draws radical new connections which the authors believe have the potential to give Friend and others a clarity about the Quaker tradition and the power to offer a key component in the revitalisation of Quaker faith.

288 pages
13 July 2018

===

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James Gordon
5.0 out of 5 stars Never more relevantReviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 18 September 2021
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I write as a Quaker (convinced) who left the Society in 1999, unaware: (a) that there had for much of that decade been courses run at Woodbrooke, the Quaker college in Birmingham Selly Oak, precisely on Quakers and their evolving attitude to the Second Coming (b) that, unknown to me, a book about these had been published, back in 1998. Though my main reason was that I needed to explore spirituality outside the Society, I was unhappy with Friends' apparent indifference on what to me was an absolutely key aspect of Christian belief, and indeed life, the promise of Christ's return at the end of time, initiating a new age, a new Heaven and a new Earth.

This excellent book's being republished in 2018 was timely enough, but I think most would agree it is even more so given the way things have developed in the three years since the republication.

Not only is this an abiding concern of at least a minority of Friends now, but it was such a major concern at the start of our movement in the mid-17th century, that in the early part of the Commonwealth the Society was actually known to its members as 'The Lamb's War'. Friends saw themselves as Christ's agents. It hardly mattered whether or when he came on the clouds (though it was always expected sooner than has actually happened). All changed with events in 1656, when the Society of Friends began to be known by such a name, and thenceforward organised itself as a church alongside other churches, as The Society of Friends in the Truth. During the eighteenth century Quakers became inward-looking in more than just the doctrinal sense, broadened in the nineteenth (also dividing into different groupings), and in the twentieth (especially in England) became predominantly so eclectic as to welcome even a quite substantial number of seekers from other faiths and indeed none; perhaps one-third of the Woodbrooke intake could even describe themselves as atheist or agnostic.

All of these are assertions (based on sound research - the three authors are all reputed academics) made in the book itself. It gives a very good historical account of the origins of the Society as a prophetic movement which, like other extreme dissenters of the time, believed in the promise of Christ's Coming, though they somewhat differed on its timing. They also always saw it as at least in part metaphorical, that the promises of the Lord's return (parousia) were to be interpreted inwardly, spiritually. We should be 'perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect' quite irrespective of whether the events leading up to the Last Judgement are to come tomorrow, or at some later date, or even strictly at all.

All that said, I was struck by how little mention there is of the signs that Jesus clearly told us to look out for, and which are apparent in our time in a way, and to an extent, that they have not been in the centuries since his ministry. (The discussion of prophecy of the Parousia in the book is almost entirely drawn from Paul's Letters, on which it is illuminating and helpful). Jesus tells us (Mark 13.23) to keep our eyes open ("see, I have foretold it all to you.") Later he warns us "keep awake" and specifies that he is talking to all of us (yes, all) not just the disciples he was addressing at the time (13.37). Us.

In the years since Peat, Gwyn and Dandelion compiled this definitive work, the signs have become more glaring with every year that has passed. The end of the age between Christ's two comings is now alarmingly easily identified as our own, far more so than the age in which early Friends operated, extremely much more so than when the Apostles did; even if wars and rumours of wars, floods, plagues, earthquakes and so on have always been part of human experience, they are surely particularly so today, when, so far as we can see, we are approaching actual extinction as a species.

COVID-19 has itself revealed itself as one of these possible signs, with my own Meeting no longer meeting as Friends have met for three and a half centuries; even when adversaries had burnt their Meeting House down, in the depths of their sufferings, under serious persecution (by other Christians!), they came and worshipped together on the rubble.

Not today. Today Friends find themselves falling out over such issues as whether or not masks should be worn, and have divided over how to meet, if at all, or what notice we should take of government 'advice', or even direction. Some of us await normality to return. Others resort to Zoom, or to open air gatherings, some to small groups in each other's houses.

In this context, it is I think instructive for Friends today to read of aspects of our history, many of which I was myself unaware of, even though I first discovered Friends fifty years ago, and have been for much of that time (not all) in full membership of it. It is perhaps now time for Friends to redouble, if not rediscover their earlier zeal to change the world, to be themselves the agents of the change that Christ, the Apostles, and the early Friends also taught and practised.
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Peter
5.0 out of 5 stars Very readableReviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 9 September 2019
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Excellent book. To find out more about Quakers.
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2023/02/28

The Case Against God by Gerald Priestland | Goodreads

The Case Against God by Gerald Priestland | Goodreads

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The Case Against God


Gerald Priestland

3.60
5 ratings2 reviews

192 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 1985
192 pages, Paperback
November 14, 1985 by Fount

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About the author


Gerald Priestland21 books2 followers



Educated at Charterhouse and New College, Oxford, Gerald Priestland began his career at the BBC writing obituaries. He eventually became a foreign correspondent for the BBC, covering politics in America. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Priestland converted to Christianity and became a Quaker. Upon recovering from his breakdown, he became involved in religious affairs, culminating in taking a role as the BBC's religious affairs correspondent. He published several books, including an autobiography, and delivered various lectures, before his death in 1991.
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Marija Carter
18 reviews
=
January 25, 2022
The book was written by a well-read man skilfully using his language to describe what is by definition often incredibly hard to put into words. While reading this book as an agnostic was an interesting thought experiment and I do not regret one bit opening my mind to the author’s view of the world, the full nature of which, after all, can neither of us be certain, his case was clearly tilted in favour of religion. Priestland does not conceal this fact, for better and worse. 

Personally, I had also been rather annoyed by the insistence that whatever divine there is or isn’t, is surely is “a He.” 
It seems rather absurd to insist than, despite every single observation one can readily make in nature, the creative force would be a man. The implicit insistence on this element is rather frustrating throughout this book.

===
Bob Breckwoldt
78 reviews
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April 12, 2014
Nowhere near as succesful as his other books but a great set of interviews of believers and non believers and the uncertain. All attempt, in as simple and direct way as possible, to articulate the reasons for their beliefs. Includes amongst others, Freddie Ayer, Iris Murdoch, Jonathan Miller, Michael Dummett and Shirley Williams. My favourites are John Mortimer and Michael Goulder.

Forcing each to be as simple as possible make it a much better contribution to the Philosophy of Religion than other academic but tedious works.

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===
Lay Reader's Book Reviews

The Case Against God — G. Priestland.
April 4, 2015


Excellent, like all his books, allowing people to speak for themselves, and put­ting ideas forward thoughtfully and ensuring that all the issues are stated.

I like the idea that 90% of suffering is man-made and that the rest is an incentive to scientific research because evolution isn’t complete and we’re partners in it and that religions should not seek a false syncretism but seek God in the depths. Also that doctrines are a means to an end – taken literally they are like when a man points to the moon but the observer looks at the finger. 

The book turns out to be a good theodicy and even the institutional church is ‘justified’ as being the transmitter of ‘story’ which the secular world learns from and put into practice in many ways.






===

Gerald Priestland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gerald Priestland

Gerald Francis Priestland (26 February 1927 – 20 June 1991) was a foreign correspondent, presenter and, later, a religious commentator for the BBC.

Early life and work[edit]

Gerald Priestland was the son of (Joseph) Francis ('Frank') Edwin Priestland, Cambridge-educated publicity manager at Berkhamsted agricultural chemical business Cooper's (later Cooper, McDougall and Robertson- now part of GlaxoSmithkline), and a lieutenant in the Machine Gun Corps during the First World War, and Ellen Juliana, daughter of Colonel Alexander McWhirter Renny, of the 7th Bengal Lancers.[1] The owner of Cooper's was Frank Priestland's brother-in-law Sir Richard Ashmole Cooper, 2nd Baronet (married to his sister Alice).[2] Frank Priestland's father, Rev. Edward Priestland, was headmaster of Spondon House School in Derbyshire, having taken over from his father-in-law, Rev. Thomas Gascoigne.[3]

Gerald Priestland was educated at Charterhouse and New College, Oxford. He began his work at the BBC with a six-month spell writing obituary pieces for broadcast news. Indeed, he even jokingly wrote his own obituary shortly before leaving the job for a post as a sub-editor in the news gathering operation. In 1954, he became the youngest person (at 26 years) to work as a BBC foreign correspondent, having been sent by the controversial Editor of News, Tahu Hole, to the BBC's office in New Delhi. Between 1958 and 1961, Priestland was relocated to Washington, D.C. where he covered, among other things, the successful election of John F. Kennedy and the first US human spaceflight of Project Mercury.[4] Following this, he spent most of the next four years as the BBC's Middle East correspondent, including covering the funeral of Jawaharlal Nehru,[5] before requesting a transfer back to London as a television newsreader.

BBC2 opening night[edit]

Possibly Priestland's best known news broadcast occurred on the opening night of the BBC2 channel (Monday 20 April 1964). He had the onerous and unexpected task of anchoring the evening's transmission from the newsroom at Alexandra Palace as a consequence of an extensive power failure across London.[6] The channel's output that evening was restricted to repeated readings of the news and apologies for the loss of normal service and only lasted for about three hours.

Later life and work[edit]

During the late 1960s, Priestland was back in the USA as chief American correspondent where he covered such events as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the moon landing of the Apollo program and the outraged response of students to the Vietnam War. He returned to Britain at the end of the decade but his broadcasting duties were interrupted when he suffered a nervous breakdown. In the course of his recovery, Priestland became a devoted Quaker, despite having been a confirmed atheist in his youth.

Religious affairs[edit]

From the 1970s onward, Priestland became increasingly involved in religious broadcasting and was the BBC's religious affairs correspondent from 1977 to 1982. His "Priestland's Postbag" was a controversial part of Terry Wogan's BBC breakfast programme, drawing both praise and criticism. During this period, he reported on both Papal Elections of 1978 and introduced a Saturday morning programme on BBC Radio 4 entitled Yours Faithfully. 


He gave the 1982 Swarthmore Lecture entitled, Reasonable Uncertainty: a Quaker approach to doctrine to the annual gathering of British Quakers. Priestland published his autobiography, Something Understood, in 1986, a work which he hastily altered before publication to express his true feelings about Tahu Hole, who had recently died: "He was a monster in every sense."

Priestland participated in a number of television and radio programmes for both the BBC and ITV until his death in 1991. After his death he received the rare honour (shared with John Reith, Huw Wheldon and Richard Dimbleby) of having a series of annually broadcast lectures named in his honour. He expressed his love of Cornwall in Postscript: with love to Penwith, published after his death.

Programmes[edit]

Priestland presented or featured on the following BBC programmes:

  • BBC2 news (television programme) as a newsreader
  • Sunday (radio programme) as a presenter
  • Analysis (radio programme) as a presenter - 1974 to 1975
  • Yours Faithfully (radio programme) as a presenter
  • Priestland's Progress (radio programme) as a presenter[7] - 1981
  • Desert Island Discs (radio programme) as a guest castaway[8] - 1984
  • Radio Lives (radio programme) as the biography subject - 1995

Personal life[edit]

On 14 May 1949, Priestland married (Helen) Sylvia Rhodes (17 May 1924 - 14 January 2004), daughter of (Edward) Hugh Rhodes, C.B.E.,[9] of Turner's Wood, Hampstead Garden Suburb, a senior civil servant.[10] Sylvia Priestland was an artist. They had two sons and two daughters.[11][12]

Sources[edit]

Printed material by Gerald Priestland[edit]

  • America, the Changing Nation (1968)
  • Frying Tonight: the saga of fish and chips (1972)
  • The Future of Violence (1974)
  • The Dilemmas of Journalism: speaking for myself (1979)
  • West of Hayle River: (with Sylvia Priestland) (1980), new edition 1992 as Priestlands' Cornwall
  • Priestland's Progress: One man's search for Christianity now (1981)
  • Coming Home: an introduction to the Quakers (1981)
  • Reasonable Uncertainty: a Quaker approach to doctrine (Swarthmore Lecture – 1982)
  • Priestland: Right and Wrong (1983)
  • Who Needs the Church?: the 1982 William Barclay Lectures (1983); Edinburgh, St Andrews Press ISBN 0715205536
  • The Case Against God (1984)
  • For All the Saints (1985) – the 1985 James Backhouse Lecture (pamphlet – 18 pages)
  • Something Understood: an autobiography (1986)[13]
  • The Unquiet Suitcase: Priestland at Sixty (1988) – Gerald Priestland's diary for 1 year, from February 1987
  • Postscript: With Love to Penwith: two essays in Cornish History; with a foreword by Sylvia Priestland (1992)
  • My Pilgrim Way: late writings; edited by Roger Toulmin (1993)
  • Three volumes of the Yours faithfully collected radio talks, the third volume having the title Gerald Priestland at Large.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Something Understood- An Autobiography, Gerald Priestland, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1986, pp. 11-14
  2. ^ Something Understood- An Autobiography, Gerald Priestland, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1986, pp. 11-12
  3. ^ Something Understood- An Autobiography, Gerald Priestland, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1986, p. 10
  4. ^ Turnill, Reginald (2003). The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account. Cambridge University Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780521035354.
  5. ^ "Fond farewell to modern India's father". 13 September 2005. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  6. ^ "BBC Two's 50th anniversary: Disastrous launch remembered". BBC News. 2014.
  7. ^ "Priestland's Progress - BBC Radio 4 FM - 30 September 1981 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  8. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Gerald Priestland". BBC. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  9. ^ Who was Who: A Companion to Who's Who, A. & C. Black, 1981, p. 636
  10. ^ Something understood (Pbk edition) pp.78, 91 "With my exam of my life behind me, the Navy dismissed, and a job in hand, Sylvia and I were able to fix the wedding for May 14th 1949, three days before Sylvia's birthday"
  11. ^ George Wedell: Priestland, Gerald Francis (1927–1991), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011, accessed 24 May 2015
  12. ^ The last page of Something understood gives more family information.
  13. ^ The title, "Something understood", is the last two words of George Herbert's poem "Prayer", referred to on page 8 (pbk edition). Monochrome illustrations, Hardback, 1986 ISBN 0233975004, paperback edition, Arrow, 1988 ISBN 0099523809

External links[edit]

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Internet Archive: Gerald Priestland

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine



Gerald Priestland at large : volume three of the Yours faithfully collected radio talks
Priestland, Gerald
1982


11




Priestland : right and wrong
Priestland, Gerald
1982


7




Gerald Priestland
BBC Radio 4
Mar 02, 1984


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Practicing Compassion for the Stranger by Nancy C. Alexander | Pendle Hill Pamphlets

Practicing Compassion for the Stranger by Nancy C. Alexander | Goodreads






Pendle Hill Pamphlets
Practicing Compassion for the Stranger


Nancy C. Alexander


Who is my neighbor? Who do I consider a stranger? Since coming to work with the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington, D.C., I have broadened my definition of neighbor to include all the world’s people – especially the poor and estranged. My responsibilities are to help bring peace to the Middle East, self-sufficiency to the Third World, and effectiveness to international organizations. Friends do set herculean goals. This work has shown me that most conflicts, from the interpersonal to the international, stem from the way that we human beings set up “we/they” situations which make the “other” – other nation, community or person – a stranger.

To me, a stranger is someone who is unacceptable as is, to be isolated and avoided. How can we transcend our proclivity to think in we/they terms? One answer is to embrace estranged aspects of ourselves. When the stranger is within us, and is ignored and repressed, then we cannot act from our center. When acting out of a divided self, our motives become unclear at best and warped at worst. If we embrace the stranger within ourselves, we gain access to great stores of compassion for the strangers in our life, and power to transform our community. But many of us feel blocked from reaching out compassionately to the stranger within. We are unforgiving with ourselves, and, as a result, unforgiving and angry with others. Loving one’s neighbor as oneself is harder than it sounds.

Part I of this pamphlet seeks to provide ways to broaden the definition of “neighbor” and learn to embrace the stranger within and without. 

In Part II, it is suggested that our culture’s lack of compassion is due, in part, to the way we have estranged the “feminine” principle, or what I term the “heart sense” in love, work and religion. If men and women reintegrate the “heart sense,” then someday, goals of a compassionate world may be within our grasp.




32 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 2, 2015
Series
Pendle Hill Pamphlets






This edition
Format
32 pages, Kindle Edition

Published
April 2, 2015 by Pendle Hill Publications

Language
English
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REVIEW: Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann – Roses And Thorns

REVIEW: Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann – Roses And Thorns

REVIEW: Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four parts–The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider–as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt.

 Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur.

Warnings: Violence, Slavery, Rape, Incest, Racism

Category: M/F

Joseph and his Brothers, originally published in German, is an epic four book series of novels that re-tell the classic Bible story of Joseph, of the famed multi-coloured coat. It’s a big, sweeping epic of a novelization, and took me a very long time to read through, but despite it’s verbosity, complicated prose, and problematic elements, it was a very fascinating read, and one I have been so very looking forward to reviewing.

WRITING

While the author of this novelization, Thomas Mann, is more well known for his novella Death in Venice, this particular work did not gain the same fame despite the author considering it his magnum opus. The forward at the beginning of the book notes that one of the reasons audiences at the time of it’s original publication did not take to it, is its “turgid and dense, almost unreadable prose.” To say its not exactly light reading is an understatement; this is very complex prose indeed, the sort of which you need to read in small chunks and then ruminate on for a while to fully grasp all of the author’s meanings and turns of phrase. That said, I found that very engaging most of the time, and really enjoyed interacting with its complicated ideas and descriptions. 

However, it did have its moments where the narrative dragged on and on and lost me, most notably for the first half of book 3, Joseph in Egypt, which is taken up with chapter after chapter of travel descriptions before Joseph actually makes it to Egypt. All in all, in order to read a book like this one you have to be willing to let the reading process be a kind of exercise in thought experiments and contemplation, rather than an exciting entertainment. 

The story this book follows is familiar if you know your Bible stories, and starting with Jacob was a very nice choice. There is also a fair bit of wit, humour, and light-heartedness in the story, particularly in character interactions if you know how to spot it, which makes it even more engaging. I really enjoyed how much reading this book challenged me, even if at times it was on the dry side.


EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT

The style of this prose, which is a very top-down view, omniscient narrator voice, doesn’t really lend itself so much to intensive emotional connection to characters. Instead of letting us have a connection to the emotions of the principle character, what this book does do instead is create a narrator voice that conveys a sense of affection and wonder for the principle character. It is worth noting that Death in Venice, the author’s more well known work, is a story about gay pining, and notes from his diaries reveal that this work was based in part on some of his own experiences. The fact that Mann was very likely gay and closeted lends a certain light to shine on how he approached writing the character of Joseph, or, more accurately, how his narrator voice speaks about the character of Joseph.

 From early on in the story we get descriptions of Joseph as being the most beautiful human to ever live, of how he was so beautiful and so charming that people routinely mistake him for a deity, of how despite his arrogance and self-obsession Joseph is an object of desire and admiration to all who meet him, and the narrator hardly feels excluded from these numbers. Thus, the reader experiences a real sense of that pining and that longing for Joseph, which is a fascinating experience and creates a kind of warmth for the character that Mann is so lovingly bringing to life in this story.

WORLDBUILDING

The worldbuilding here might be some of the most ambitious I have ever seen, and this aspect of the narrative is equal parts fascinating, and problematic. The second reason the forward cites for audiences of its day not gravitating to this work is the fact that it is, from a religious standpoint, intensely sacrilegious. However, non-religious audiences had no interest in reading Bible stories, so this book was left without much of an audience at all. Mann is undertaking here the task of cobbling together various ancient belief systems and religions into one larger mythology, blending together various notions and ways of thinking of the Divine. Joseph is, multiple times, presented as a pre-Christ Christ figure complete with lines and speeches from the Gospels, and also as a reincarnation of Osiris. 

There is a theme running through the work of repeating narratives, of time as a circle where the same figures play out the same stories with slight differences over and over again, one figure becoming another, and symbols being indistinguishable from the literal. Needless to say, none of this is particularly in keeping with either the teachings of Judaism or Christianity, and it is not surprising that religious audiences of its day found it offensive, though I believe that if you are willing to engage with the narrative from a secular perspective, it’s quite an interesting weave. 

From a modern perspective however what is an even worse problem is how deeply the thread of racism runs through the crafting of the world. Various times this or that group of people are referred to as uncivilized, less than human, etc, though each group tends to view the other through similar lights, ie Joseph’s family think ill of Egyptians while Egyptians think ill of anyone non-Egyptian etc. The narrator takes this and presents this often as a matter of fact which can certainly leave a bad taste in the mouth. The treatment of a certain villainous dwarf character, as well, rubbed me quite the wrong way.

STEAMINESS

Talking about sex and sexuality in this book is very interesting. On the one hand, there is no explicit sexual material present in the book, but on the other hand there is from time to time allusions to sex or mentions of sexuality. A lot of the philosophical waxing can meander through the subjects of sex and gender and what gender means and if God is plural gendered or sexless, and all of this is really quite fascinating to read. 

When it comes to actual sex within the narrative however, we look most prominently to the treatment of Potiphar’s wife, who so infamously attempts to seduce Joseph. Her sexuality is a subject of considerable fixation within the story, and the narrator details her transformation from a virginal maiden, a chaste priestess (as Potiphar is presented as a eunuch here) through her sexual awakening and subsequent pursuit of Joseph. These passages are… interesting in their conception of female sexuality, and describe love and lust as a force that somehow alters and changes the woman’s appearance, causing her breasts to swell and for her to take on a sensual attractiveness that is absent of beauty. This certainly makes me circle back around to the immense amount of pining over Joseph present in the narrator’s voice and the high likelihood that the author may have in fact been gay, because the amount to which the narrator seems to be disturbed by women’s sexuality is pretty interesting. There is also a substantial thread of purity culture running through the narrative of female sexuality here, as when Joseph eventually marries we are treated to a philosophical exploration of the idea that sex and the loss of virginity is a kind of death, that women are destroyed by sex as a natural part of the circle of death and life, that marriage is a kind of abduction and rape. All this very strange and problematic and yet very compelling as a way to engage with the idea that death, like sex, is a natural part of our cycle of life.

Altogether one of the most difficult texts I have managed to get through. I loved and hated this tome at various times, and find the author’s stylistic verbosity very interesting- at times engaging and other times incredibly boring. Most modern audiences probably would find this book a bit too difficult to bother with, but if you can make up your mind to let the book challenge you, even when you disagree with it’s premises, I can see why Mann considered it his greatest literary accomplishment. I certainly consider it one of my most impressive reading accomplishments!

Have you read Joseph and his Brothers? Let me know what YOU thought by leaving me a comment!
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