Macherus

From Conservapedia

Macherus is a satirical novel by the American author and philologist John Bethel Camp. Published in 1926, the book explores the inner thoughts of John the Baptist during his short imprisonment prior to his being beheaded by Herod Antipas. The book takes its title from the prison in which the Baptist spent his last days.

The novel's title page presents a quotation in Greek from the ancient historian Josephus:

“

καὶ ὁ μὲν ὑποψία τῃ Ἡρῴδου δέσμιος εἰς τὸν Μαχαιροῦντα πεμφθείς, ταύτῃ κτίννυται. And through Herod's suspicion the same John was sent a prisoner to Macherus, where he died.

”

The book begins with John's subpoena to appear at Herod's court, after which he is sent to a prison cell. While in prison, John makes friends with the jailer (whose name is never revealed), who repeatedly attempts to console John by saying, for example, that there are many worse places to be than in a royal prison. The jailer is presented in an unflattering light as he tries to convince the Baptist to take pride in being a prisoner, or to give up his holy devotion in favor of the jailer's preferred brand of existential ennui. John, however, far from succumbing to the jailer's wiles, does not even despise him; John pities the jailer for his satisfaction with a lowly way of life.

Camp also gives John a wife, Freda (of which there is no historical evidence), on whom John reflects with not a little scorn — he remembers Freda as a nagging shrew who "detested the taste of locusts — a zoological anomaly unequalled in all natural history". John also cynically recalls the ordinary people of Galilee who gathered to hear his sermons as "a gabbering Gentile mob". These characterizations probably reflect the misogyny and general misanthropy of the author.

The third major character (other than John and the jailer) is Salome, Herod's daughter, who visits the prison three times. She, like the jailer, represents temptation, but in a more fleshly vein. Salome is portrayed as a beautiful and skilled seductress. She claims to be irresistibly attracted to John, and on her first visit to Macherus (as part of a tour group) she and John have sexual relations. Her second and third visits are made secretly. On the second visit John is ashamed and rebuffs her; on her third visit they make love a second time, despite her intention to tell him that she has already betrayed him to Herod. Although John successfully resists the jailer's mental temptations and even pities him, he is shown to be unable to resist Salome's fleshly temptations and in fact manages to rationalize his sexual sin by thinking of Salome as a virtuous young woman: "poor girl", he calls her, although she surely has more reason to call him "poor man".

Macherus was published in 1926, only one year after the posthumous publication of Franz Kafka's The Trial, which dealt with similar themes. Both novels feature protagonists who are imprisoned and finally executed for ill-stated or unknown crimes, and have lackadasical, lethargic supporting characters (such as the jailer in Macherus and the bureaucrats of The Trial) who counterfactually assure the protagonist that everything will turn out all right in the end. Both novels contain a distinct misogynistic tendency, as well as a female seductress who claims to find the protagonist irresistible. However, it seems unlikely that Camp, a reclusive and idiosyncratic American, could have been influenced by the European Kafka's work.