‘The Life of Herod the Great: A Novel’
By Zora Neale Hurston
Edited by Deborah G. Plant
Amistad, 368 Pages

‘Zora Neale Hurston’
By Cheryl Hopson
Reaktion Books, 224 Pages

In Zora Neal Hurston’s last years, the African American novelist and anthropologist worked on a biographical novel of Herod that drew on what she called “obsessive” research, creating a world that redeemed an astute politician-king traduced by the Christian gospels as, among other things, a child killer. Deborah G. Plant reports that scholarship supports Hurston’s Herod.  

Scribner’s rejected the unfinished novel. An earlier biographer, Robert Hemenway, regarded “The Life of Herod the Great” as the sign of a failing talent. Ms. Plant, on the other hand, sees a grand design that the author did not live long enough to perfect. Cheryl Hopson, in her perceptive and succinct biography, also regards the epic novel as evidence of Hurston’s continued creativity.

Hurston depicts Herod as a nation builder in a land that had to contend with a large empire, Rome, and its adversary, Parthia, born out of the remnants of the Persian empire. Herod had to finesse Judea’s relationships with Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavius while warding off the encroachments of Parthia’s claim that it was defending Asia for Asians. 

“The Life of Herod” has its clumsy passages, which is perhaps why Hemenway held out no hope for it, but other scenes are beautifully composed and may well signal what the novelist might have perfected.

Hurston wanted to show that Herod and Judea were of a piece: “Like a pressed flower between the leaves of a book, Judea was a very highly evolved nation of people.” The handsome Herod understood that, and made himself a cynosure with his swagger and guile that amounted to star power. He knew how to put on a show, or as Hurston puts it in the vernacular: “Herod had that something.”

He could be brash, yet he was a superb soldier/politician preparing his people for war when that became inevitable. He met the moment: “No sooner did Herod leave the tavern than he changed character. He became the administrator and man of arms.”

Yet why did Hurston, author of acclaimed novels, stories, and studies of Black communities and characters, turn to ancient history? Her change of perspective suggests what was happening in her own time had happened before and would happen again. So as he goes into battle against the terrorist Hezekiah, “Herod consulted with the ruling men of the province, and the racial elements who inhabited Galilee solemnly prayed—each in his manner—for the victory of Herod, and also, if he failed in overcoming Hezekiah, that his life might be spared.”

Herod was a multi-cultural leader — not a Jew but nonetheless of the Jewish people, as he told them on countless occasions when he opposed the priestly class that he did not believe represented the best interests of its own people. He was against the bigotry he confronted in Judea and fortified his following, turning to the “kindly, honest, hard-working husbandmen, fisherman, and artisans” of Galilee.  He favored the “flexible West against the unchanging East.”

The best scenes have considerable humor, as in the tête-à-tête with Antony. who vows to decapitate Cleopatra until he is giddied by the sight of her in a “gilded barge” looking like Athena and calling forth his exclamation: 

“What a great artist the queen is!”
“Well,” Herod observed slowly, “the execution of Cleopatra will be the most gorgeous and sensational beheading in all history, my friend.”
“I have not said that she will be beheaded,” Antony snapped. “We shall hear what she has to say for herself. That is her right. That is Roman law.”

Antony has trouble controlling his emotions and his pretense of following the rule of law is very Roman when it serves his desire — as Herod knows while he slyly plies his overlord and survives a long reign that proves him to be Antony’s superior.

The role women play in the novel, especially Herod’s mother, is notable, as well as being an accurate representation of how they ruled while seeming to be only domestics: “My weaving-women have all but finished a new robe for you, beloved son. It is the blue of the Great Sea, shot with threads of gold.”

Hurston’s Herod novel, no matter its imperfections, rules.

Mr. Rollyson’s work in progress is “Sappho’s Fire: Kindling the Modern World.”