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A story about a boy who barges in on his father’s dinner party wearing a new golden earring sounds more like the plot of an after school special than a sophisticated literary text. But saints’ lives are weird, and it is the odd details that distinguish one hagiography from the next. In this case, it is the boy’s piercing—not an anointed forehead or a white alb—that visibly manifests his baptism and conversion to Christianity. The emphasis on the earring turns what would otherwise be a generic and forgettable story into the memorable account of a Jewish shepherd boy who becomes the “Slave of Christ.”
The tale, impeccably translated from the original Syriac by Aaron Butts and Simcha Gross, unfolds in the late fourth century in the northern Mesopotamian city of Shigar, “while Magianism was still flourishing in the land of the Persians” (88). Eleven-year-old Asher ben Levi is the caretaker of one of his father’s flocks. Every day, he encounters a number of other boys at the local watering hole who are similarly tasked with their own fathers’ animals. While the beasts drink, the boys eat. Christians break bread with Christians, Magians with Magians, but Asher—the only Jew—eats alone. He tries to join the Christians, but they push him away, claiming that Christians are not permitted to eat with Jews.
One day, tired of being excluded, Asher points to the spring from which the animals are drinking and demands to be baptized in it. Of course, the boys demur, insisting that both a priest and a church are necessary, but Asher wins them over with a heartfelt speech. As he emerges from the waters smelling sweetly of holiness, the...