The Begotten 3: Illuminate the Negative

(Yes, I know the song doesn't go that way.)

So what about Lisa T. Bergren's The Begotten almost made me hack up a hairball? Two main things: research and a kind of revisionism. They're closely related.

Research
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a language geek. The Begotten has a large amount of Latin. Hands up, anyone who sees what's coming! I've got a long list of bugs in the text, but most of them would take way too long to explain. So let's hit a few examples.

In the prolog, an iconoclast Byzantine bishop (say that three times fast) encounters a Latin text and totally blows the translation for no discernible reason: "Abyssus ad abyssum invocat" (Bergren omits "ad" so I put it back at no extra charge). It's from Psalm 42:1, but he reads it as "Hell calls to Hell." Get real. "Abyssus" is a Greek loanword; however little Latin he may know (and he gets "invocat" right), if he read the Septuagint at all he'd recognize the reference: "Deep calls to deep."

We run into more Latin when the word for "wisdom" is given as "sapientiam" (p 174--why the accusative ending here?) and "healing" is rendered "sanem" (p 206). But "sanem" isn't even a noun: it's a verb meaning "(that) I might heal."

The Lady Daria has a habit of translating the Vulgate for us as text from the NIV. The two translations use different source texts and translation philosophies, so while they generally agree, there are amusing spots where they don't.

Non-linguistically, at various points there is concern expressed that the Gifted will be grabbed by the Inquisition for committing miracles without a license. However, this was more than a century before the Spanish Inquisition, so Cardinal Fang and the Comfy Chair hadn't been invented yet. All they had to play with at that point was the papal inquisition, which wasn't even in full swing, the Cathars and Waldensians having been reduced to occasionally recurring roles.

As a related point, Gianni supposedly has hauled away a lot of jaywalkers and other heretics in his career to date. But this was a lull period, heretic-wise: a century earlier or a century and a half later, sure, but not in the first half of the fourteenth century, so far as I can tell.

For that matter, the Catholic Church didn't mind people going around healing and such anyway; they just checked to make sure it wasn't a fraud and didn't lead people astray. Many saints did miracles. As to the teaching of heresy--well, the Lady Daria eventually shows that they may have had a point. We'll get to that in a bit. (If you're one of those rare individuals who would rather know the truth about the Inquisition than unquestioningly accept the usual myths--the Wikipedia site is helpful, but you might also check here.)

Another oddity is handfasting. It turns up at various points as an entrenched tradition in fourteenth-century Siena, but I find no reason to believe it was known then and there. It apparently originated in Ireland, migrated to Scotland, and from there eventually became known elsewhere. The sources I've checked say that it was either a quickie marriage for those who didn't want to wait for all the formalities or else simply a betrothal. It was not a trial marriage, which is implied in the book. I thought there was a clue in the Italian Wikipedia, which has an article on the topic, but the very fact that the title of the page is the English word argues that it wasn't a common practice in Italy--otherwise they would have a native word for it. The article doesn't say otherwise. Today, handfasting is mostly associated with Neo-pagans and Wiccans.

Revisionism
Remember what I said about the Church taking a dim view of unlicensed preachers? On pp 290-294, the Lady Daria gives a sermon on the topic "All You Need is Love." It certainly out-kumbayas Jesus' usual message about repentance as the warm fuzzies lead to belief and salvation. No repentance, though. Maybe they didn't need it. In any case, it sounds a lot like the fuzzy sermons you can hear in a lot of modern churches. Where are Cardinal Fang and the Comfy Chair when you need them?

Then there's the Raptured Pope Syndrome, named in honor(?) of Tim LaHaye. As Is Well Known, the more godly a Catholic becomes, the more Protestant he becomes. A sufficiently godly Catholic will turn into a Baptist or perhaps even Tim LaHaye. This shows up late in the story. It starts with Father Piero informing the Lady Daria that she doesn't need to confess to him; she can take it directly to God (pp 236-237). I'm not even Catholic, and I could present an extremely strong argument for the Catholic doctrine of confession. Why can't he? Answer: because his scriptwriter is a Protestant who doesn't seem to understand Catholicism. (Fiddly point: at the close of this section, we get an actual quote from the mysterious epistle. It refers to Jesus as the Word--more Johannine than Pauline.)

A more troubling case arises on pp 248-249: Believing that spiritual conflict is imminent, Father Piero decides to baptize a couple recruits without the usual waiting period and other niceties. Does the urgency of the situation justify the move? Consider a very similar case in 1 Sam 13:8-14. As Samuel noted in another, slightly less similar case, "Obedience is better than sacrifice" (1 Sam 15:22--and v. 23 too, as long as you're in the neighborhood). Why doesn't Piero simply commend them to the care of the God in whom they believe? This is almost salvation by works.

(For the curious: it's true that baptism in the NT was usually without ceremony, but it was also often done by people passing through the area quickly. I don't consider the preparation period necessary, but I do consider it wise. Meanwhile, flouting standard operating procedure out of panic sets a bad precedent. Piero does seem to have a rebellious streak.)

Conclusion
So what about the story as a whole? I doubt most people will read it at the same level I did, but they will still pick up good and bad ideas. The problems are annoying, but they aren't fatal. I just wish Bergren would take the time to understand the Catholic and medieval viewpoints. They weren't idiots back then, and (Thank God!) they weren't precursive clones of us. C. S. Lewis said that every age has its own errors and that it is blind to its own and misunderstands those of other ages. The Begotten proves him right, but perhaps the sequel will do better.

So as a yarn with some good points, I'll recommend it with reservations and hope for an improvement in the sequel.

Other blogs on the tour:
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

The Begotten 2: Accentuate the Positive

So what's right with Lisa T. Bergren's The Begotten? Many things, most of which may seem minor. But then, most of the points that bothered me are relatively small as well: if I weren't a multifaceted geek, I wouldn't have spotted them and might not care. But the good points I spotted and did care about are worth mentioning.

Characterization and description are well handled. There is only one time (p 314) where I thought characters had switched places--based on hormones, I expected Rune to have Vito's response and vice versa. But considering the size of the cast, that's not bad, and even that case may be justifiable.

There are some minor points that may be coincidence, but if not, they're somewhat clever. For example, the main story takes place in Siena in 1339, eight years before Catherine of Siena was born there. I can't help wondering whether that will come up in a later book, at least indirectly. Second, it's ironic that Siena at that point was ruled by the Nine in a kind of counterpoint to the Gifted, who draw their gifts from among the nine listed in 1 Cor 12:8-10. (For Pentecostals and Charismatics, it's interesting that the two missing from the Gifted's list are tongues and interpretation.)

But one of the most important things about a story is how it ends. I enjoyed the ending of The Begotten (and not in the sarcastic "I enjoyed that it was over" sense), and that improved my overall view of the story. Bergren appears to understand that spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. A lot of Christian writers today try to resolve spiritual matters through human cleverness of some kind, and I even get the impression occasionally that they have to have a physical, mechanistic explanation for anything spiritual. That would make spiritual phenomena just a subset of the natural world, which would agree with what the atheists claim. The fact that Bergren affirms the spiritual is itself important.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the things that yanked on my gag reflex and present my conclusion on the matter.

Other blogs on the tour:
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

The Begotten 1: Intro

(I apologize in advance for this. For various reasons, some of which I'll explain later, I find it hard to take this novel seriously, though it's generally well written. But it does engage my gag reflex, resulting in reflexive gags.)

Lisa T. Bergren's The Begotten attempts to bring a da Vinci Code feel to a Christian novel. It concerns a Latin version of what appears to be a lost Pauline epistle--another letter to the Corinthians. The letter first shows up in the prolog as an illuminated text in progress. Though slated to be destroyed by iconoclasts, it survived another six hundred years, part of it being handed down from priest to priest. (That it was still legible demonstrates that they washed their hands first.) The epistle predicts the rise of the Gifted, a group of Christians with First-Century gifts: Wisdom, Discernment, Healing, Faith, Visions, and so on. (There are no ties among the gifts, to the relief of men everywhere.)

But there are also dark powers and semi-dark powers involved. As the story proper opens, a mysterious Sorceror is committing human sacrifice in a papal crypt, to the great annoyance of some knights of the Church. (It probably didn't sit well with the victim, either.) And soon we discover that both the Sorceror and his nemesis in the Church hierarchy, Cardinal Boeri, know about the Gifted and plan to use them for their own ends. The Sorceror hopes to turn them to the Dark Side and use their powers; the cardinal hopes to use them to advance his career (perhaps even making Pope) and return the papacy to Rome. (It was then touring Avignon.)

Anyway--Father Piero is priesting for a convent when he encounters Lady Daria d'Angelo, victim of a relationship gone sour. She's staying at the convent with her childhood associate Hasani, a freed slave who acts as her bodyguard. It's all normal enough, except that Piero has seen her before in an illumination drawn six centuries earlier.

Soon Piero, Daria, and Hasani are on their way back to the d'Angelo estate in Siena. Piero's gift is Wisdom; Daria's is Healing. No one knows what Hasani's gift is, but they keep him around anyway. Then they encounter some knights of the Church being ambushed and mostly killed by the Sorceror and friends, though Daria manages to salvage the leader of the knights, Gianni de Capezzana. (Trivia note: wines aside, shouldn't that be di Capezzana? Maybe it's Latin.) He apparently has the gift of Faith, which wasn't quite as useful in combat as ducking or common sense. He also has the gift of Warming up to the Pretty Healer While Trying to Act Businesslike, a gift more in evidence than the stated one.

Once they reach Siena, they beef up the d'Angelo security, get involved with local politics, and add a few more characters. Meanwhile the Sorceror and Cardinal Boeri show up (in separate vehicles, yes; carpooling be hanged), intent on tracking down the mysterious new healer (Daria) in the area, and through her, the Gifted as a whole. Daria isn't being quite as discreet about the occasional miracle as she could be, and there's a lot of confusion between her and the Sorceror, who also heals, though not in God's name.

Will Daria keep her secret? Will the Sorceror beat the cardinal to the Gifted? Will Hasani turn out to be brighter than the rest put together, at least in a pinch? Will the struggle between Good and Evil reach an electrifying climax? I won't answer any of these questions, but maybe I'll be a bit more serious tomorrow as I list some of The Begotten's strengths.

Other CSFF Blogs on the tour, almost certainly not as silly:
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Michael Heald
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Pamela Morrisson
John W. Otte
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise