Elijah the Tishbite

By Victor Sasson

Elijah the Tishbite is a drama about one of the most zealous, charismatic, and fearless prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Elijah, the ultimate anti-establishment man, often risked his life denouncing King Ahab and his foreign wife, Jezebel, who brazenly sought to establish her Sidonian Ba’al cult in Samaria.

The play dramatizes major episodes succinctly narrated in the book of Kings. Among these are Elijah’s despair at his people’s wavering faith, his flights and wanderings, the devastating drought ravaging the country, the contest between Adonai and Ba’al on Mount Carmel, the heinous conspiracy and murder of Naboth the Jezreelite, the rise of the revolutionary Jehu, and the assassination of Jezebel. The play also touches on Jehu’s eventual liquidation of Omri’s dynasty and the measures he had to take to eradicate idol worship in the Northern Kingdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532057168

Victor Sasson

Victor Sasson grew up in Baghdad. He is British-educated, with degrees from the University of London, and a Ph.D. from New York University. A biblical scholar, specialist in Hebrew and Aramaic Epigraphy, he has also published fiction, no-fiction, and poetry. His three verse plays, Shylock of Venice, King Caliban, and Elijah the Tishbite, were published in 2012, 2013, and 2018, respectively.

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Copyright © 2018 Victor Sasson.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-5715-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5716-8 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 09/25/2018

Contents

Preface

Dramatis Personae

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

BY VICTOR SASSON

Novels:

DESTINED TO DIE

CONFESSIONS OF A SHEEP FOR SLAUGHTER

DR. BUSH AND MR. HIDE

KING JEHOASH AND THE MYSTERY OF THE

TEMPLE OF SOLOMON INSCRIPTION

THE SECOND COMING

Plays:

THE MARRIAGE OF MAGGIE AND RONNIE

SHYLOCK OF VENICE

KING CALIBAN

ELIJAH THE TISHBITE

Poetry:

COLLECTED POEMS

Non-Fiction:

ESSAYS FROM OCCUPIED HOLY LAND

MEMOIRS OF A BAGHDAD CHILDHOOD

This play is fully protected, worldwide and in whatever form, by the author’s copyright. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, radio, television, recitation, public reading, translation into other languages, and any method of reproduction, whether photographic, digital, or by any information storage retrieval system, are strictly reserved.

All inquiries should be addressed to the author, who is the copyright holder, at:

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PREFACE

The Prophet Elijah is the ultimate picture of an anti-establishment man, the man who challenges a wicked and ungodly authority at the potential risk of losing his life. Did such a person exist or is he a mere figment of a storyteller’s imagination: a fanciful embodiment of an ideal zealot in the service of true worship? At times, I tend to think that he is just that sort of person, designed to show us that we must confront an evil government, at all costs. Even his name betrays something of a made-up character. Eli-yahu, Hebrew for My God is Yahu (=Yahweh) – in contrast to those who prophesy in the name of Ba’al. And yet Elijah has become such a dynamic figure in the Jewish faith. With all the miracles attached to his name, he must have existed, nonetheless.

I had at first aimed to write a drama about King Jehu. Sifting through old files in early June 2016, I found a rough draft of several scenes about Jehu written two decades earlier. I realised, eventually, that the real hero of those chapters in I & II Kings can be no other than Elijah, and so, I had to focus on him. Jehu, nevertheless, plays a very important role in this play, as he indeed does in the biblical narratives.

Some of the biblical episodes about Elijah are sketchy. A modern editor would reject them outright for any possible publication. Western literature and its literary pundits require ‘detail upon detail’, particularly in a novel. And yet, the terse biblical accounts of many events narrated are so vivid and memorable.

Bernard Shaw, whose major plays I read when I was much younger, claimed that it is much easier to write verse than prose plays and, hence, the large dramatic output by Shakespeare. He tried to illustrate this by writing a verse play himself. The underlying fallacy in this reasoning is that whereas Shaw’s plays deal with a variety of social issues in good prose, Shakespeare’s output displays poetic and dramatic powers far beyond the reach of Shaw. Moreover, Shakespeare’s classical and biblical allusions, coupled with the vast store of knowledge and references, etc., make Shaw’s above-mentioned quote rather banal. (Regarding the Shakespeare authorship question, I have touched on it in my preface to my play, King Caliban). At least one of Shaw’s plays which I read a few years ago, left me dramatically unsatisfied as a reader. Saint Joan, a drama about the well-known Joan of Arc, lacks enough dramatic force, even though the story - and this is admitted by Shaw himself - has potential for great drama. The play does deal with important issues, but a stage play should possess a compelling force as drama even when read and imagined in private. Shaw’s response to one reader that his plays are just words, was that Shakespeare’s plays are also words, just as Beethoven’s music is just noise! In a televised interview, the philosopher Bertrand Russell branded Shaw ‘a controversialist’.

I wrote this play over a period of six months, beginning in