Update From Vienna
I had planned to write short reports along the way this week while I have been in Europe but unfortunately I had problems with my laptop the third day of my visit here and have just now gotten it running again. It is good to be back on line. It is strange how our computer “worlds” have become so essential to us. I just downloaded about 600 e-mails that had built up over the week, many from readers of the new editions of my book in Dutch, German, and Portuguese. I am now in Vienna for three days after having visited Holland, Belgium, and Germany. So much has happened it will be impossible to relate it all, but here are a few random notes and observations from my trip as related to the reception of The Jesus Dynasty in Dutch and German.
- My first evening in Amsterdam I was able to watch live on cable from Germany the national TV show Aspekte that ran a feature story on my book. Aspekte, which runs every Friday night in Europe, is something like 20/20 or Dateline in the U.S. I had filmed in Charlotte and in Jerusalem with the producer, Frank Vorpahl, earlier this year and this was the second segment they had aired on my book. If you read German there is a summary on their Web site of the show and both programs are archived. Most interesting was the inclusion of reactions and critiques of my work with professors and students from the Catholic University at Eichstatt. As an indication of the power and influence of the media an hour or so after the broadcast the book had climbed into the top 100 ranking on Amazon.de, the German site, where it stayed most of the weekend.
- A definite highlight of this trip was the Belgium Book Fair in Antwerp, my first visit to that historic city. Unlike the world famous Frankfurt Book Fair, which is more for publishers and professionals in the book business, this fair is for the people. Only Dutch books are on display with authors who either write in Dutch or are published in Dutch in attendance. I was one of thirty authors featured. De Jezus Dynastie in Belgium is published by Manteau. Over 175 thousand people crowd into the event. It was quite amazing to see the energy and excitement evident all around. I think the Dutch, along with the Swedes and Israelis, buy more books per person than any country in the world. Authors are interviewed by professional journalists in public sessions. I had the good fortune to be assigned to Joel de Ceulaer, a writer for the weekly magazine Knack, which is something like Time or Newsweek in Belgium. The room was packed and the interview was conducted in English, a third language after French in northern Belgium. Mr. Ceulaer had carefully read my book and his questions were probing but fair and intelligent. The audience seemed quite rapt with attention and I had a chance to carry on conversations afterward. Belgium is a traditionally Catholic country but these nortern Dutch speaking citizens of Belgium are educated and enlightened, and apparently quite interested in my topic–the historical quest for Jesus. The interest in the press was extensive and I did a full day of one hour interviews with various papers. I also had time to squeeze in a visit to the world-famous Cathedral of our Lady, where three of Rubens’s most famous paintings are magnificantly displayed, including the “Assumption of Maria.” I stood a long time in front of it, awed by the obvious power of artistic expression in the service of religious imagination. In Antwerp one sees shrines to Mary on corners of buildings all over town. I could not help feeling the irony of my attempts to bring back to our historical memory an understanding of Jesus’ mother Miriam as a Jewish mother of seven children.
- In Germany and Austria The Jesus Dynasty continues to draw lots of attention and varied reactions, heralded by the extraordinary TV and press coverage. Whereever I have spoken I have emphasized the connection of my own approach to Jesus with the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer, to whom I dedicated my book. There is an serious and thorough Blog review by Gerhard Beckmann at Die Welt website that picks up on this point. While in Munich I did a long and in depth interview with a correspondent with Die Zeit, which is arguably the most serious weekly newspaper in Germany. Here in Vienna I spent half a day with a feature writer Gerhard Hertenberger for the national magazine Profil, which is like Time in the US or Der Spiegel in Germany. Their plan is to run a nine-page cover story on Die Jesus Dynastie the first week of December. Mr. Hertenberger read me the formal responses to the book by two scholars, one Catholic, the other Protestant, that he had solicited to evaluate my book. I am honored and pleased at the serious consideration.
- Yesterday I visited the Roman ruins here in Vienna under the present street level. Here, at what is now the center of the city, was a full Roman military camp, the settlement known as Vindobona, the northern border of the Roman empire on the Danube for several centuries. The Romans under Augustus and Tiberius had finally managed to conquer the German tribes of the area. I could not help think about how Abdes Pantera had come with his cohort from Roman Syria-Palestine to Dalmatia (Croatia), not far from here, in 6 A.D. This was the height of the fighting on the German frontier. It is surley likely that during his 40 years of service he would have been at Vindobona at one time or another. He ended up in the north, on the Nahe river in Germany where he died and was buried. Among the ruins here at Vindobona were found several gravestones that reminded me of Pantera’s.
More later…