Alpha and Omega

April 15, 2019
This, the latest from the prolific purveyor of alternate-world science fiction (Armistice, 2017, etc.), offers a startling premise: What if there was unequivocal proof that God exists? Two key events trigger amazing revelations in the Holy Land. In accordance with an ancient prophesy, Israel begins to raise the Third Temple in Jerusalem. And, losing patience after a horrible act of terrorism, authorities permit archaeological explorations beneath the Temple Mount. Subsequent events prove beyond all doubt that God is present and purposefully intervening in temporal affairs. The implications for humankind, and for followers of the Abrahamic religions in particular, clearly are profound. Is there a divine plan? Should Jews expect the Messiah? Christians, the Last Days? Muslims, the Mahdi? The author explores these and other questions through his trademark series of vignettes involving disparate characters and viewpoints, including secular American archaeologist Eric Katz, U.S. televangelist Lester Stark, Israeli scholar and theologian Shlomo Kupferman, Palestinian leader Haji Ibrahim, and Gabriela Sandoval and Brandon Nesbitt, hosts of a wildly popular American television show, who care nothing for religion but know what makes great viewing--and are prepared to risk death to get it. How readers will react to all this is far from clear. Turtledove is advancing an unambiguous proposition that brooks no argument. Does it therefore follow that non-Abrahamic religions are false or irrelevant? And it's difficult to reconcile the God that initially manifests--closely resembling the uncompromisingly biblical force of nature that tormented Job--with the astounding act of communion that forms the novel's zenith. Maybe the author's just overreached himself in providing answers while denying any possibility for skepticism or doubt. Like similar flaws in another, famous work of theological science fiction, James Blish's A Case of Conscience, some things might have been better left cryptic. Heady on one level and perturbing on quite another.

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May 27, 2019
Bestseller Turtledove (Through Darkest Europe) doesn’t bring his A-game to this over-the-top religious thriller. A “red heifer, the first in 2,000 years,” whose ashes could be used to make people ritually pure, is found in Arkansas and transported to Israel by Yitzhak Avigad, a fundamentalist Jew. A dirty bomb detonated by Muslim terrorists in the Tel Aviv bus station leads the Israeli religious authorities to remove restrictions from a team of archeologists digging under the Temple Mount, whose tunneling reveals the Ark of the Covenant itself, magically floating off the ground. An American journalist drops dead after touching it. The amazing find fits in with Avigad’s plan to rebuild the Third Temple, which would house the Ark, after the sacrifice of the red heifer to purify everything. This plan to displace the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque naturally raises tensions with the Arab world. Turtledove doesn’t sweat the details, and his prose may elicit some unintended guffaws (“God still packed a punch—and He probably hadn’t got fat sitting on the sidelines the past 3,000 years”). Turtledove fans will hope for better next time.