
The Source: A Novel

“A man is never old if he can still be moved emotionally by a woman of his own age.”
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
Thus the greatest of gods was called YHWH, which had no pronunciation; he was known to ordinary Jews as Adonai, which was purely arbitrary; and he would conquer the world as Jehovah, a name which had never belonged to him or to anything else.
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
The beauty of this new device was that its curved tip sought out the stalks of wheat and brought them to the cutting edge, as if a man’s arm had been extended enormously. Entire families from the cave came to stand and watch enviously as the boy’s mother swung her arm in extensive circles, gathering the wheat to her and cutting it with an unbroken
... See moreJames A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
And the anguish that Ur knew that night—the mystery of death, the triumph of evil, the terrible loneliness of being alone, the discovery that self of itself is insufficient—is the anxiety that torments the world to this day.
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
The Hebrews insisted upon the circumcision of their men for a logical reason: it not only formed a covenant between the man and El-Shaddai, an unbreakable allegiance whose mark remained forever, but it also had the practical value of indicating without question or quibble the fact that the man so marked was a Hebrew. In war against the uncircumcise
... See moreJames A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
For the past three thousand years copper tools had been known in these regions, and at least two thousand years ago smithies in the towns had discovered that if they mixed one part of tin to nine parts of copper they could produce bronze, which was harder than either of the original component metals used alone.
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
Deuteronomy was a living book and to the living Jew it had contemporary force.
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
“The money we’ll find somehow,” he promised, and John experienced what he had not known before: men who loved beauty as an enhancement of life.
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
She was reluctant to think that the moral structure of a town could determine the kind of people who lived therein, but that appeared to be the case.