The Life of Herod the Great: A Novel

by Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G. Plant (Introduction)

Overview

A never before published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great—not the demon the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of adventure.

In the 1950s, after the publication of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel reconsidering the life of one of the most-well known Biblical figures, Herod the Great, reimagining him in a very different light than his villainous portrayal in the New Testament. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is a forerunner of Christ—a religious and philosophical man who enriched Jewish culture and lived a life of adventure.

From the peaks of triumph to the depths of human misery, the historical Herod “seemed to have been singled out by some deity and especially endowed to attract the zigzag lightning of fate,” Hurston writes. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new.

Setting him within this vivid, colorful world little known to modern readers, Hurston’s unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling, and misunderstood leader fully into focus. Hurston had been writing to friends about how she would end the novel; text from three of these letters concludes the manuscript in an intimate way. Scholar Deborah Plant contributes "Commentary: A Story Finally Told" as an end note underscoring Hurston’s point about how reimagining figures from the past can address the troubles we experience today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063161009
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. She finished four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountains, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948) as well as The Life of Herod the Great, which she was still writing when she died; two books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935, and Every Tongue Got to Confess, 2001); a work of anthropological research, (Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); an international bestselling nonfiction work (Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” 2018); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University and was a graduate of Barnard College in 1928. She was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida.

Deborah G. Plant is an African American and Africana Studies independent scholar, author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All, and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of the New York Times bestseller Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston and the author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times, a philosophical biography. She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, and the author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston. She holds MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Plant played an instrumental role in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies, where she chaired the department for five years. She presently resides in Florida.

Date of Birth:

January 7, 1891

Date of Death:

January 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Eatonville, Florida

Place of Death:

Fort Pierce, Florida

Education:

B.A., Barnard College, 1928 (the school's first black graduate). Went on to study anthropology at Columbia University.