Jerry Bowyer | On September 30, 2019

Destruction of Jerusalem by Ercole de’ Roberti.

Brian Godawa is a screenwriter (who has written, among other films, the powerfully moving To End All Wars), non-fiction author, movie critic, and novelist. I write today about his novels, particularly the fascinating quadriology about the fall of Jerusalem and the rise and fall of Nero.

I’ve never read historical novels with this much actual history. Godawa’s novels read like bona fide novels, with narrative drive and compelling characters, but literally half of these books is detailed footnotes. You don’t need to read any of them. You can just read the whole compelling, horrific and ultimately hope-giving opus, without ever paging to the back of the book to read actual quotes from Josephus, Philo, Tacitus, etc. backing up every historical claim in the story. But Godawa wanted to make sure that he backed it all up for those of us who are naturally skeptical and want the proof.

Godawa is something called a ‘partial preterist’ which means that a lot of the predictions made in the Bible, which evangelicals in the last century have tended to assume referred to the second coming, are in fact shorter-term warnings about the destruction of Jerusalem. This is a rather common view in church history. In fact, as far as I can tell, the first commentary ever written on the book of Revelation by Victorinus of Poetovio (Commentary on the Apocalypse, which can be read for free here) interpreted the 666 as applying to Nero, not to Hitler nor Gorbachev, Obama nor Trump. That will come as a shock to many of you, so I say, read the footnotes and see if he builds his case.

If you’re not convinced, that’s okay, and we can still be friends. I’m not sure myself. But I am sure that my time spent reading these four novels was time well spent. I learned loads about the era, and I already knew a fair amount, having written a book about it myself. This series worked perfectly for me. My nightstand reading is first some math (duty), then some Bible or Biblical history (wisdom), and then a novel (fun). Godawa helped me combine stage two and three and thereby give me an opportunity to get to sleep a little earlier… except I didn’t go to sleep earlier, because the novels kept me too interested. I got genuinely engaged in these characters.

We live in a period of the scholarly historical novel. Some of them are heavy on the scholarly, but not really novels. That’s okay, I love those “Week in the Life of…” novellas which Intervarsity Press keeps publishing, and we’ll talk about some of those here in the future; but in the case of Godawa’s Chronicles of the Apocalypse, they are thrilling enough to be of interest to someone who has little interest in 1^st century history.

One little caveat: There’s this ongoing thing about the Greek word Iudaios, which is often translated as “Jews,” but I think is better translated as “Judeans.” If this is a particular tender area for you, it might grate a little. Brian and I discussed it in the audio below and he made clear that his usage of the traditional translation is not meant as animus. But we live in at time where such things can lead even friends to misunderstand each other, so I wanted to clear the air on that first.

One other thing: It’s not just about history, it’s about theology, so Godawa often opens chapters of the book with quotes from the Book of Revelation, then unfolds right after that, how the story unfolds for his characters in that phase of the prophecy. This illustrates the preterist point beautifully. Fellow preterists and the open-minded will find it interesting, but hard-core committed ‘Revelation-is-about-computer-chips-in-our-foreheads’ folks are likely to blow a circuit or two (hopefully not in any computer chips in their foreheads) when reading the Chronicles of the Apocalypse.

You can listen to our full conversation here.

Originally published on Townhall Finance.

Jerry Bowyer

Jerry Bowyer is a Forbes contributor, contributing editor of AffluentInvestor.com, and Senior Fellow in Business Economics at The Center for Cultural Leadership.

Jerry has compiled an impressive record as a leading thinker in finance and economics. He worked as an auditor and a tax consultant with Arthur Anderson, as Vice President of the Beechwood Company which is the family office associated with Federated Investors, and has consulted in various privatization efforts for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He founded the influential economic think tank, the Allegheny Institute, and has lectured extensively at universities, businesses and civic groups.

Jerry has been a member of three investment committees, among which is Benchmark Financial, Pittsburgh’s largest financial services firm. Jerry had been a regular commentator on Fox Business News and Fox News. He was formerly a CNBC Contributor, has guest-hosted “The Kudlow Report”, and has written for CNBC.com, National Review Online, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as many other publications. He is the author of The Bush Boom and more recently The Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide, published by HarperCollins. Jerry is the President of Bowyer Research.

Jerry consulted extensively with the Bush White House on matters pertaining to the recent economic crisis. He has been quoted in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The International Herald Tribune and various local newspapers. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine. Jerry has hosted daily radio and TV programs and was one of the founding members of WQED’s On-Q Friday Roundtable. He has guest-hosted the Bill Bennett radio program as well as radio programs in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.

Jerry is the former host of WorldView, a nationally syndicated Sunday-morning political talk show created on the model of Meet The Press. On WorldView, Jerry interviewed distinguished guests including the Vice President, Treasury Secretary, HUD Secretary, former Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice, former Presidential Advisor Carl Rove, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and publisher Steve Forbes.

Jerry has taught social ethics at Ottawa Theological Hall, public policy at Saint Vincent’s College, and guest lectured at Carnegie Mellon’s graduate Heinz School of Public Policy. In 1997 Jerry gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Robert Morris University. He was the youngest speaker in the history of the school, and the school received more requests for transcripts of Jerry’s speech than at any other time in its 120-year history.

Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of their seven children.