The Source: A Novel

The complaisant town of Makor with its amiable gods could never have produced Yahweh; that transformation required the captivity in Egypt, the conflict with the Pharaohs, the exodus, the years of hunger and thirst in the desert, the longing for a settled home and the spiritual yearning for a known god … these were the things required for the forgin

It’s an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself. Why? We’re blind moles. Creeping through the soil, feeling with our snouts. We know nothing. I perceived this … now I don’t know where to go. Screech with fear, only. Run away.

It is ironic that I should now be imprisoned in this temple, but if it is true that each man in this life builds his own prison, and inhabits it the way crawling fish inhabit shells along the beach at Caesarea, then I have built for myself an exquisite jail, exactly suited to the kind of man I have always wanted to be.