Published in 1942, The Robe soon achieved New York Times bestseller status. It remained number one on the list for a year, and it also became a popular movie released in 1953 starring Richard Burton.
Douglas was a Lutheran minister who turned to writing at age 50. His first novel, Magnificent Obsession, was published in 1929. The last of his ten novels, The Big Fisherman, (Simon Peter) was published in 1949, and it too was made into a successful movie in 1959. From the first to the last, Douglas' novels received critical acclaim as Biblical fiction in the genre tradition of Ben Hur (1880) and Quo Vadis (1896). The Robe evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of Palestine and the Roman Empire of the first century. The writing is solid except for the overuse of adverbs to describe dialogue, "he said, incredulously." The author's motivation is didactic and apologetic.
The protagonist, Marcellus, is a Roman nobleman sent to command a remote Judean outpost. He is the tribune of the troop of soldiers ordered to carry out the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and the robe of the deceased comes into his possession. At first, the robe haunts him but later compels him to seek the truth of the man from Galilee. Marcellus surreptiously retraces the path of Jesus and asks to hear remembrances of the man; in that way, Douglas retells the story of the Christ.
From Andrew Greeley's introduction to the 1986 reprint
I was in eighth grade, fourteen years old, when I read the Robe ... it had been roundly denounced in the official Catholic press ... It is a curious indication of the change in Catholicism that forty years ago Douglas was faulted for not being literal enough in his approach to the Bible and that now he might be criticized, especially by Catholic Biblical scholars, for being too literal.
Douglas' most important decision as a storyteller - indeed, one that seems to me to come close to genius - was not to permit Jesus on stage ... [B]y keeping Jesus off stage, [Douglas] preserves that which is essential in Jesus: His elusiveness, His capacity to surprise, His disconcerting refusal to fit into any categories with which we attempt to capture and contain him ... And where, if we give Him half a chance, in the pages of this book He will once again surprise us.
