With her epic The Shattered Mirror, Dr. Edith Papert has covered the life of Jesus and the power of the Roman Empire with a tightly structured piece of prose. The beautifully flowing prose has historical accuracy and a spectrum of characters drawn from the New Testament. With a religious accuracy she presents a rendition of the birth, life, and death of Jesus. Her delineation of characters is careful and attractive. With a solid grounding in Judaism, Dr. Papert draws together the strands of love, hate, and corruption which colour the storyline with a rich vocabulary which leads the reader into the complex and sad events of the most known Jew of all.
There are many combinations and permutations of introversion and extroversion in the telling of the epic, so that the reader is able to understand the many reasons behind the celebration of the marriage of Judaism and Christianity which gives us a look into the meaning and implications of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. A poetic language crafts each event so that we see the large picture which is full of subtle symbolic ideation. It is truly a new perspective on Christianity, with the characters made to live close to the readers’ own perceptions of what is good and what is evil. Our minds are carried back two thousand years into the relatively unknown time of a young Jesus and His unusual upbringing. Through a clever depiction of relevant people Dr. Papert gives the readers lots of clues to the spiritual dichotomies which then existed.
The epic is divided into a series of panning movements which give us a combined overall view of justice, injustice, and the alliterative language which surrounds the story with vibrant allegory, leaving the reader with a three-dimensional view of history. The social upheaval which Jesus inspired in the Jewish way of life is carefully refined and each of the situations encountered by Jesus and His followers is left with a linguistic trademark by Dr. Papert.
The prose-poem is universal in its appeal to the ordinary reader, but academic individuals might be well advised to look into this piece of writing, because it has a ring of authenticity about it which is fully justified. I congratulate Dr. Papert for her professional presentation of a story so well known that it is not easy to reproduce it in the form she has achieved.
Alfred W. Gaudron
Poet, Librarian,
Translator of the Dead Sea ScrollsHome Next