Wandering Jew (was Re: GRGR(1): Some ideas)

[Craig Clark]

Noah Sturr <sturr at sky.net> writes

> Eugene Sue was a name I ran across four years ago as I read Eco's
> "Foucault's Pendulum".  Sue wrote a book called _The Wandering Jew_.
> (Quoting Webster's New World): born Marie Joseph Sue 1804-57; Fr.
> novelist.  The Wandering Jew, for those who don't know the Christian
> folklore, is a Jew condemned to wander the Earth until the second
> coming of Christ.  Some stories have him being the Roman who stabbed
> Jesus on Golgotha that fateful day.  Others merely a scornful person
> on that day.  In reference to the GR reference (guessing here!) I
> would assume that _The Wandering Jew_ and/or other stories by Sue
> are fairly woeful or a bit over the edge and hence "a Eugene Sue
> melodrama".  

The story (which has no scriptural basis) is that Ahasuerus refused Christ 
a drink of water while he was carrying the cross to Golgotha, and so was 
condemned to wander the earth until the Second Coming. It's been used 
frequently in SF, for example in Walter M Miller's "A Canticle for 
Leibowitz" and even in Dan Simmon's "Hyperion Cantos". Perhaps if we 
look hard enough we'll find a Wandering Jew or two in GR... Strikes 
me as the kind of legend in which TRP  would be interested.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"