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Philip Pullman answers a question on the shocking title of his new book. Filmed at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 28 March 2010.\r
\r
http://www.thegoodmanjesusandthescoundrelchrist.co.uk/\r
Enhanced edition iPhone/iPod Touch application available on the App Store http://bit.ly/ee-Scoundrel\r
Philip Pullman discusses the app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjKDx9SGRRQ\r
Audiobook available on audible.co.uk [http://www.audible.co.uk/aduk/site/product.jsp?p=BK_CNON_000004UK\u0026BV_UseBVCookie=Yes\r
Hardback and ebook editions released 31/03/10
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – BookBrowse
Charged with mystery, compassion and enormous power, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ throws fresh light on who Jesus was and asks the reader …
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip …
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is Pullman’s story of how that transition came about. It is a fierce and beautiful book which, like …
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Goodreads
His premise: two sons are born to Mary (who may or may not have been visited by an angel). Jesus is the weaker of the two at birth. He needs more of his …
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a novel by Philip Pullman. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel …
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find Quotes: Salvation | SparkNotes
However, readers may note that his statements conflate judicial and eternal punishment—damnation. The Misfit believes that “Jesus thown everything off balance.” …
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Philip Pullman
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Philip Pullman. [This journal is in two sections. I dn’t start reading the second half until I’d finished …
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a 2010 novel by Philip Pullman. It tells the story of Jesus as if he were two people, “Jesus” and “Christ”, …
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Publisher’s Summary. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is the remarkable new piece of fiction from best-selling and famously atheistic author Philip …
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- Date Published: 2010. 3. 30.
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What is The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ about?
Published in 2010 by Canongate Books, as part of the Canongate Myth Series, it retells the story of Jesus as if he were two people, brothers, “Jesus” and “Christ,” with contrasting personalities; Jesus being a moral and godly man, and his brother Christ a calculating figure who wishes to use Jesus’ legacy to found a …
How many books Philip Pullman wrote?
Will there be a third book of dust?
The Book of Dust Volume Three is the third and final book in The Book of Dust trilogy.
What order should you read Philip Pullman books?
- Once Upon a Time in the North.
- The Collectors.
- La Belle Sauvage.
- The Golden Compass.
- The Subtle Knife.
- The Amber Spyglass.
- Lyra’s Oxford.
- Serpentine.
How do I read Philip Pullman books?
What is Philip Pullman favorite book?
I’ve still got copies of most of them. Mr Pullman’s said his favourite is probably Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, “an immensely, funny book about depression written in a very prolix, ornate style”.
Summary and reviews of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
Media Reviews
“Though he wears his scholarship lightly as befits a master storyteller, there is no doubt in my mind that Pullman has a complete grasp of the intricacies of the quest for the historical Jesus. Like Schweitzer, he thinks Jesus was an immeasurably great man who died to bring in a better world, the difference being that Schweitzer believed Jesus died trying to force God’s hand, whereas for Pullman Jesus realised in the garden of Gethsemane that there was probably no God, so any bettering of the human condition is now up to us.” – The Guardian (UK)
“I cannot imagine the ironical Jesus taking umbrage at anything in this account of His life. Pullman has done the story a service by reminding us of its extraordinary power to provoke and disturb.” – The Telegraph (UK)
“It would be ridiculous (and largely meaningless) to claim that this is the ‘improved’ version of Jesuss life. However, Pullmans retelling of the central story in western civilisation provides a brilliant new interpretation that is also a thought-provoking reflection on the process of how stories come into existence and accrue their meanings.” – The Times (UK)
“A wonderfully fresh reworking of the Gospel stories [concerned with] extricating what is ethically beautiful and of permanent value in Jesuss teachings from the religious institutions that fallibly mediate and self-servingly distort them … Pullmans imaginative and highly thought-provoking innovation … is told with a self-effacing, yet incisive limpidity. … [The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is] a work of genuine discretion – deeply involved and involving, but with a great instinct for what to leave tacit.” – The Independent
This information about The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was first featured in “The BookBrowse Review” – BookBrowse’s membership magazine, and in our weekly “Publishing This Week” newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
People not in the know could be forgiven for thinking that the central character in Christianity had a first name, Jesus, and a surname, Christ. The more informed will know that the second word is not a cognomen, but a title – Christ, Greek for Messiah, the agent of God in the Hebrew scriptures, who will one day enter history to redeem his people and bring justice on earth. And anyone interested in religion will know that the difference between Jews and Christians is that the former are still waiting for Messiah, whereas the latter believe he has already come in the person of Jesus: hence, Jesus Christ. Christianity did not stop at its appropriation of the Hebrew concept of Messiah; it went on to trump other religions by claiming that Jesus was God himself, entered into history.
Now, even if you believe that a Jew called Jesus, born around 4BC, was also the incarnation of God, it remains an interesting question how such an astounding fact was discovered. After all, there have always been delusional people who claimed to be God, so how did so many come to think this particular claim was true? Setting both scepticism and credulity aside for the moment, it is worth pondering the history of such a move. The obvious first step is to turn to the gospels in the New Testament for evidence. This does not help us much, because these documents assume, rather than prove, the truth of the claim: by the time they came to be written, the process of Jesus’s divinisation was well advanced. (Although we can detect elements of the process in the contrast between the undeveloped Christology of Mark’s gospel, the first to be written, and the claim that Jesus was the pre-existent word of God of John’s gospel, the last.)
Historians have not been prepared to leave the matter there, of course, and one of the most fascinating scholarly enterprises of recent history has been what is called the quest of the historical Jesus: given that the Jesus we encounter in the New Testament is already the object of the church’s faith and worship, can we get back to the man himself before he was identified as God, either honestly or fraudulently, depending on your point of view? As you would expect in such a controversial exercise, scholars of the quest have varied enormously in their claims. In this review I only want to look at a single, very famous approach, because Philip Pullman’s powerful new telling of the Jesus story reminded me of its tragic conclusion.
It is impossible to think about this history without using some technical terms, and the most important is the word apocalyptic, meaning to reveal or uncover. Behind it lies humanity’s ancient longing for a better world, a longing that distilled itself into the conviction that God’s patience with human wickedness would snap and, like Gary Cooper in the eschatological western High Noon, he would put on his gun belt and walk into history to restore order. Most scholars think that Jesus, outraged by the cruelty and inequality of his era, preached not only the need for, but the imminent arrival of, God’s new order or kingdom. He was clearly understood by his followers in messianic terms, and the fact that the early church was in daily expectation of his return lends weight to the apocalyptic interpretation of Jesus. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer published one of the most famous theological texts of the modern era, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, in which he defined Jesus as an ultimately tragic figure whose apocalyptic consciousness impelled him to his death. This is his famous conclusion:
“There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.’ Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions… the wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to his purpose, is hanging upon it still.”
Though he wears his scholarship lightly as befits a master storyteller, there is no doubt in my mind that Pullman has a complete grasp of the intricacies of the quest for the historical Jesus. Like Schweitzer, he thinks Jesus was an immeasurably great man who died to bring in a better world, the difference being that Schweitzer believed Jesus died trying to force God’s hand, whereas for Pullman Jesus realised in the garden of Gethsemane that there was probably no God, so any bettering of the human condition is now up to us.
The other bit of the historical quest that still has to be explained is how the Jesus of history ended up reigning at the right hand of God in heaven, while down here things go bloodily on as they always have done. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is Pullman’s story of how that transition came about. It is a fierce and beautiful book which, like the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, will move even those who disagree with it. For Pullman, Jesus was captured by cunning ecclesiastics who know humankind prefers religious opiates to moral challenges. “Jesus…is asking too much of people. We know they’re not perfect, as he wishes them to be; we have to adjust ourselves to what they are. You see, the true Kingdom would blind human beings like the sun, but they need an image of it all the same. And that is what the Church will be.”
In Pullman’s allegorical retelling of the Christian story, Mary gives birth to twins, the first born called Jesus, the second born Christ. Christ, a feeble, introspective character, is Mary’s favourite, while Jesus is strong and quiet and calm. “One for Joseph, and one for me, thought Mary.” Pullman has serious fun with the interaction between the brothers. It is Christ, impressed by his brother’s oratory and moral passion, who puts the three satanic questions to him during his period in the desert. And in the parable of the prodigal son, Christ knows Jesus is fingering him as the timid, mean-spirited, stay-at-home older brother.
One day a mysterious stranger approaches Christ and recruits him to keep an account of the words and actions of Jesus – from a particular perspective. Whatever agency is behind the mysterious stranger – and it is easy to detect the shadow of the Magisterium from the Dark Materials trilogy – he gives Christ clear instructions on how to keep the record. “There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God.” This is actually a fair summary of one theory as to how the theological tone of the gospel records was gradually heightened. Christ himself is a conflicted figure in the book, but the stranger manages to overcome every scruple he has about spying on his brother and theologically doctoring the record of his words and actions.
But there is worse to come. Jesus is wrestling with God in Gethsemane about the future: “Lord, if I thought you were listening, I’d pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.” The stranger has other plans, however, and in order to fulfil them he recruits Christ to betray Jesus. Christ delivers the Judas kiss at the arrest of Jesus, and the plot moves poignantly to its conclusion. Jesus is crucified; the resurrection is arranged; and gradually the power of the story of the man who became God is slowly infused into history, controlled by the stranger and the shadowy authority he represents. There is no doubt that Pullman has an honest contempt for the institution that hijacked the poor man of Nazareth for its purposes of spiritual and material domination, but he is too honest to ignore one of the supreme ironies of history. Almost his last words are these: “But this is the tragedy: without the story, there will be no church, and without the church, Jesus will be forgotten.”
Which is why, in conclusion, I want to return to Schweitzer. Schweitzer believed Jesus had died mistaken and forsaken. This conclusion drove him from the study of theology to the work of practical love. He wrote of this period in his life: “I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk. For years I had been giving myself out in words…this new form of activity I could not represent to myself as being talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.” In 1913 he went with his wife to Lambaréné in what was then the French colony of Gabon as a doctor. He spent his life there, no longer talking about Jesus but still trying to follow him. Countless others have done the same.
In spite of the scandal of the church’s enduring corruptions, its incessant internal disputes, and its abuse of the weak and vulnerable, it still carries through time the dangerous memory of Jesus. And there are many who, though they may no longer talk about Jesus, still try to follow him. I am certain that the good man Pullman would say amen to that.
Richard Holloway was bishop of Edinburgh 1986-2000 and is the author of Between the Monster and the Saint (Canongate)
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
The Church will not and cannot be the Kingdom because the Kingdom is not of this world, but it will be a foreshadowing of the Kingdom – the one sure way to reach it.
not
FOR
AGAINST
MUST
’You’re not listening’, he whispered. ‘I’ve been speaking to you all my life and all I’ve heard back is silence. Where are you? Are you out there among the stars? Is that it? Busy making another world, perhaps, because you’re sick of this one? You’ve gone away, haven’t you, you’ve abandoned us.’……
‘The psalm says, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.” Well I understand that fool.
’Be calm, dear Christ. All shall be well. Jesus wanted a state of things that no human being could have borne for long. People are capable of great things, but only when great circumstances call on them. They can’t live at that pitch all the time, and most circumstances are not great. In daily life people are tempted by comfort and peace; they are a little lazy, a little greedy, a little cowardly, a little lustful, a little vain, a little irritable, a little envious. They are not good for much, but we have to deal with them as they are. Among other things, they are credulous; so they like mysteries, and they adore miracles. But you know this well; you said this to Jesus some time ago. As usual, you were right, and as usual, he didn’t listen.’
Phillip Pullman’s views on organised religion have become well known through the trilogy ofand his views represented therein have brought a heap of criticism down on his head, particularly from Catholic spokespeople and publications. That trilogy of books represented a step change in the quality of writing for younger readers and went far far beyond the jolly hockey sticks public school bollix epitomised in the extremely successfuland series of J.K. Rowling . That Pullman received all that condemnation from various Churches and was prepared to engage in debate whilst JKR is the dahling of the meejya and kinder alike says a lot about the quality of writing and the depth of the subject matter that Pullman espouses. He has also been quoted as stating that the trilogy in a sense was a rebuttal of C. S. Lewis which he saw as religious propaganda.Pullman wroteas part of the Canongate series on myths and was published in 2010. There has been much lively debate on both the book and Pullman’s position on religion and this is all available online.Pullman posits the birth to Mary of twins, the strong Jesus and the weakly mother’s favourite of Christ. Their conception can be read in both ways – as an act of utter gullibility or as the annunciation and Holy conception. Where you stand will depend how you read it. Jesus grows up to be sturdy and strong and often in scrapes whilst his brother Christ is weaker, more homely and bookish and ready to help his brother out of the scrapes with a timely and pertinent excuse.To write a review of this book draws one into the theological debate addressed by a number of eminent commentators or, alternatively, leads one merely into a description of the plotline episode by episode. One approach is beyond the compass of this site and the other leaves the reader hardly having to bother opening the book. A combination of both, a kind ofmight work.Pullman writes the gospel of Christ and his teachings and events as a myth but leaves it to the reader to decide if this is truth or merely mythical fiction. The life of Jesus is played out through his positing of the twins Jesus and Christ, the first representing the preacher or messiah depending where you come from, and the latter as the chronicler of the acts and deeds. Christ is portrayed in different guises throughout the book – as the Devil tempting Jesus in the Wilderness, as Judas later in the book, as the PR man for the innovator, and essentially and definitely as the promoter for the Christian Church that must succeed the death of Jesus to promote the teachings. Jesus does things out of reason whilst Christ does things out of calculation. Christ is influenced and encouraged in his chronicling by the Stranger / Angel. His identity is kept shrouded and is a constant worry to Christ himself. Is he an Angel or is he the Devil? Are the scrolls of the chronicle meant as foundational documents in the story of Jesus’ mission or as tracts to condemn Jesus? Christ cannot tell, cannot decide. But the Stranger convinces Christ of the need for the chronicles to establish a future Church which will be an authority for guidance over all men and direct the teaching of the acts and the Ministry of Jesus. There is a very important division here between the work and the thoughts of Jesus and the work and the thoughts of Christ, even though Christ is devoted to his brother Jesus and the Kingdom of God to come, his belief is really just in Jesus alone and the step to believe in the imminent Kingdom of God is too much for Christ. Christ is mortal and imperfect whilst Jesus is played to be immortal and perfect.A stark contrast is set up between an absolutist Jesus who believes absolutely in the delivery of the Kingdom of God on Earth, and the pragmatic Christ who sees the Kingdom as so perfect that it has no place on an imperfect Earth and that the nearest it can come into being is through and of the Church, which is in itself an image of the perfection of the Kingdom whilst retaining the earthly toils of potential imperfection. Jesus of course utterly and completely rejects the ideas of the Church. Jesus is seen as asking too much of an imperfect humanity. The Stranger encourages Christ with…For the reason of establishment of the Church Jesus has to be seen asmortal and has to be resurrected to become God-like. And for this he must die. Without Death there cannot be any Resurrection. Christ chooses to believe that, like the saving of Isaac from the knife of Abraham, a ram will appear to spare the death of Jesus. He is duly arraigned and identified by the kiss of Christ-as-Judas and crucified by Pilate after trial by Caiphas and the Jewish ‘church’. There is no ram outlet. The Resurrection is achieved by the substitution of Christ for Jesus and at Emmaus, the transformation is complete with the descent of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and the disappearance of Christ to another lifebefore the book rushes headlong for the exit and The End.What Pullman sets us up with is a dualism of Jesus as the founding ethic of Christianity, for which there is a broad flavour of morally ‘in favour’ of, against Christ as the necessity of Church and the propagation of Christianity as a mode of conduct for humanity and the establishment of tenets for a way of life, a law and regulation which receives a degree of antagonism. One the one hand,, and on the other,. It is the Church that manipulates the events to see Jesus as God and therefore as the Messiah come to redeem humanity. This is what makes the Church, and for that to happen therebe a Resurrection, a movement beyond the mundane and sin, into the pure and the Kingdom of Heaven. And for that to happen then there must be Death. Without Death there can be no Resurrection and without Resurrection there can be no Kingdom of Heaven. So the Churchthe kingdom of Heaven through Death and the Resurrection. These are themes touched on by José Saramago in Death with Interruptions and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ . In fact the whole Jesus myth is grist to the mill for many authors. J.M. Coetzee plies his take in three books – The Childhood of Jesus The Schooldays of Jesus and Death of Jesus. Even Mikhail Bulgakov uses the trial and crucifixion of Jesus as a metaphor in The Master and Margarita Pullman’s work is quite different from these authors and works. This is like a polemic against the hegemony of the Church. Here Jesus is NOT identified with the Church, whilst Christ IS the foundation, to a degree against his will, of the Church. What emerges on reflection after reading the book is Pullman’s longing for the essential tenets of the teachings of Jesus, a longing for a better, more just world, a world where love is the fundamental, rather than the power and riches and law of the Church. There are sections which are deeply illuminating of Pullman’s moral stance here and which both question and illuminate his alleged atheism. In the scene in Gethsemane there is a whole dialogue as Jesus prays and which in the end leads to Jesus questioning the existence of God.This whole section is deeply illuminating of Pullman’s personal belief as are long sections of dialogue between the Stranger / Angel and a wavering and unsettled Christ who does not want to see the death of Love and Beauty personified in Jesus as the price for the Establishment of the Church.Above all beyond atheism, Pullman is a humanist. He believes in Man, he believes in beauty and love, but at the same time he rejects the marshalling and the contemptibility of a Church which regiments and provides dogma.This is a far better book than you might imagine it to be as you read it. It appears on the surface just to be a rewrite from another perspective of passages of the New Testament. But it is only on reflection that the quality of not only Pullman’s superb storytelling is apparent, but also his message and his beliefs. This is a bold book by a bold author not afraid to challenge.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ Summary and Analysis (like SparkNotes)
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The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Novel by Philip Pullman
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a novel by Philip Pullman.
Published in 2010 by Canongate Books,[1] as part of the Canongate Myth Series, it retells the story of Jesus as if he were two people, brothers, “Jesus” and “Christ,” with contrasting personalities; Jesus being a moral and godly man, and his brother Christ a calculating figure who wishes to use Jesus’ legacy to found a powerful Church.[2][3]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Pullman’s historical understanding has been criticised by Jesuit theologian Professor Gerald O’Collins.[4]
While Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, praised Pullman’s His Dark Materials, he was more critical of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, accusing Pullman of being a “Protestant atheist” for supporting the teachings of Christ but being critical of organised religion.[5]
Diarmaid MacCulloch reviewed the book positively for Literary Review.[6]
References [ edit ]
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Novel by Philip Pullman
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a novel by Philip Pullman.
Published in 2010 by Canongate Books,[1] as part of the Canongate Myth Series, it retells the story of Jesus as if he were two people, brothers, “Jesus” and “Christ,” with contrasting personalities; Jesus being a moral and godly man, and his brother Christ a calculating figure who wishes to use Jesus’ legacy to found a powerful Church.[2][3]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Pullman’s historical understanding has been criticised by Jesuit theologian Professor Gerald O’Collins.[4]
While Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, praised Pullman’s His Dark Materials, he was more critical of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, accusing Pullman of being a “Protestant atheist” for supporting the teachings of Christ but being critical of organised religion.[5]
Diarmaid MacCulloch reviewed the book positively for Literary Review.[6]
References [ edit ]
A Good Man Is Hard to Find Quotes: Salvation
There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?”
The Misfit has been explaining that he feels that he has been treated unfairly: He believes that the punishment he has endured outweighs his crime. As he, by proxy, murders two people, his statement seems absurd. However, readers may note that his statements conflate judicial and eternal punishment—damnation. The Misfit believes that “Jesus thown everything off balance.” By saving souls, Jesus grants some people reprieve from all punishment, while The Misfit himself is punished, in part readers later learn because of his inability to believe he will be saved. The Misfit thus feels “the crime don’t matter.” He will be punished while others will not.
Jesus . . . thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can . . . No pleasure but meanness[.]
The Misfit explains his belief that only Jesus saves. Without Jesus sacrificing himself to save humanity, people would be punished after death. Only thanks to Jesus will they go to heaven, since all humans are sinners and otherwise undeserving of redemption. However, the Misfit has doubts that Jesus can truly save souls, or perhaps he doubts that Jesus will choose to save his soul, so he chooses to enjoy his crime spree for “the few minutes” he has on this earth. He has convinced himself that his eternal damnation will follow no matter how he behaves, so in a way, he feels off the hook for any crime he commits. Fortunately, most people do not use Christian doctrine to justify living outside human laws and mores.
“I wisht I had of been there,” he said, hitting the ground with his fist. “It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,” he said in a high voice, “if I had of been there I would of known and wouldn’t be like I am now.”
The Misfit explains to the grandmother that he wishes he had seen for himself whether Jesus truly raised the dead. The Misfit feels unable to believe simply by faith as Jesus’s followers are asked to do. Not knowing for sure whether he can be saved drove The Misfit to commit his many sins: As he’s unsure of the existence of the next world, he decides to enjoy this one. The Misfit feels unable to live as an atheist or as a weak but outwardly compliant believer like the grandmother, and his inability to believe either way torments him.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Philip Pullman
[This journal is in two sections. I didn’t start reading the second half until I’d finished writing about the first, so I didn’t know how it would turn out until I got to the end.]11 November 2015
First half, to The Stranger Transfigured
Philip Pullman isn’t the first author to ponder what might really have been going on in Palestine 2000 or so years ago. Not that he’s really doing that. The idea of Jesus and Christ being born as twins is a neat ‘what if’ conceit that he has great fun with. He is able to keep wrong-footing the reader, so that the naughty twin is the one who will grow up to be the supposedly ‘good man’, while Mary’s favourite, the one who keeps his nose clean and performs helpful little miracles to get his brother out of trouble, is to be the ‘scoundrel’. (Those childish escapades sound like some of the preposterous tales of Jesus’s early life in the Apocrypha. The simple language – and I’m not only talking about the early chapters – is a combination of folk-tale and Sunday school.)
We’re sort of ready for it, but it’s still something of a surprise when Jesus is told that he is the chosen one. It’s John the Baptist, one of many itinerant preachers at the time, who tells him when he goes to be baptised. I think it’s from roughly this point that you really need to know the stories from the Gospels if you are to have any chance of understanding the ironies. Christ sees the flight of a dove as Jesus is baptised, but pretends to himself that it’s a sign of his own special status. And what he does next sets the pattern. He imagines what might happen if a voice spoke to Jesus from Heaven, but when he describes the scene to Mary later, in his account the words really have been spoken, but to Christ himself. She believes in him, and he’s going to keep it that way.
After the baptism Jesus goes to think about things for 40 days in the wilderness. Christ seeks him out in his desert retreat to offer him some advice. If we know the stories we recognise Christ’s words as those of the Devil. Turn stones into bread, he suggests. Throw yourself off a tower (or whatever) and let the angels save you. That’s how to impress the local populace. Ah. And it gets worse. Christ is the archetypal back-room boy, planning the best way forward for the charismatic front man. (Jesus is definitely charismatic. For all his childhood misdemeanours and their mother’s preference for his brother, he’s always been the one that everybody in the town likes best.) Christ, not without powers of his own, foresees a great organisation – it’s a word he uses either now or later – ‘think of that! Groups of families worshipping together with a priest in every village and town, an association of local groups under the direction and guidance of a wise elder in the region, the regional leaders all answering to the authority of one supreme director, a kind of regent of God on earth!’
When Christ has finished describing the first 2000 years of the future history of the Church, Jesus is appalled. ‘What you describe sounds like the work of Satan….’ And so on. What Jesus doesn’t know is that it’s his brother’s vision that will be victorious, not his own, and I’m reminded of one of the most famous chapters in European fiction. In The Brothers Karamazov Jesus, definitely the one we recognise from Pullman’s story, arrives back in the world at the time of the Inquisition. An old Jesuit explains to Him that He isn’t needed any more. The Church has spent 15 centuries sorting out he mess He left the first time, in which mankind was denied what it wanted: simple answers. That’s what the Church provides, and if Jesus insists on staying He’ll have to be denounced. The people will be happy to follow the priests’ advice and will be happy to have Him executed all over again. Jesus kisses the old priest and doesn’t stay. Pullman must have read it, and makes Jesus, shown what will come if his brother has his way, apparently powerless to stop it.
When Jesus begins to preach, things become more complicated. His ministry as Pullman presents it is based on aspects of his teachings that we recognise from the Gospels. Basically, this Jesus is a ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ type of teacher: if everybody behaves in a fair way towards everybody else, we won’t go far wrong. To that he adds to the mix the idea of the all-forgiving God, and we recognise the parables he uses to make what might seem unpalatable points. If a feckless, spendthrift son returns, the father will provide a feast for him and treat him as well as he will treat the well-behaved son who has done his duty. If a man is hired for the last hour of the day to help finish a job he will be paid the same as those who sweated through the heat of the day. Why should the good son or the hardworking employees complain? They are getting what is fair.
Meanwhile Christ is keeping a low profile. He has started to observe and to keep a record of Jesus’s teachings, but sometimes alters them a little . Some ideas have made such an impression both on the men who are now his disciples and on the many people who count themselves his followers that Christ can’t really change them. (He particularly dislikes the one about the prodigal son. He had remonstrated with his father Joseph when he prepared a feast for Jesus’s return after his 40-day disappearing act, and suspects that Jesus overheard his complaints and uses the story to get back at him.) But other things he can bend a little – especially when things happen that can be interpreted as miracles. Jesus’s rousing words make a leper feel less ostracised, more able to face the world? Clearly, he’s healed. The wine at a wedding runs out, and more appears after Jesus is told. Christ doesn’t mention the words Jesus has with the steward who had no doubt hoped to profit from the wine he’s hidden, only that more wine has miraculously appeared. The sensible, co-operative sharing out of any food that people have with them – some bread here, a pocket of dried fruit there – becomes a miraculous feeding of thousands.
There are a lot of these. Christ takes the bits of Jesus’s teaching that fit his own purpose, leaves out others, and either invents miracles or confirms the truth of miraculous interpretations of events by an uneducated, gullible public. Christ ‘resembles’ his brother, but deliberately fades into the background or listens to reports from an (unnamed) disciple who is present whenever Christ isn’t. He has already begun his preparation of a version of his brother’s preaching when a mysterious ‘stranger’ speaks to him about what he is doing. Who is he? A Jewish church elder? A Greek philosopher (and therefore a Gentile), interested in this man that some are now calling a Messiah? Whoever he is, he encourages Christ to do exactly what he is doing. He tells him he is the servant of truth, whose mission is not to report historical facts, but to present those facts in a way that will bring out their true significance. In other words, says the stranger, keep up the good work.
At the point I’ve reached Christ is met for perhaps the third time by this stranger, the one who tells him exactly what he wants to hear. In the chapter The Stranger transfigured… Christ sees how he is dressed all in white, so that he seems to glow in the sun as he speaks his wise words. This is no foreign philosopher, he decides. He must be an angel. And I’m reminded of another book entirely. In James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou step-brother meets a different stranger. Together they undermine and thwart the popular, charismatic brother at every turn in the name of righteousness. As the novel progresses it becomes clear that the mysterious friend is the devil, and I’m already wondering if that’s who Christ’s ‘angel’ might be. Time to read on.
14 November
Second half – to the end
I’m beginning to wonder whether Pullman only really has one thing to say. And it doesn’t feel enough for him to keep repeating the trick of reverse-engineering a plausible narrative from the Bible stories as we know them, with Christ doing the opposite at the same time. Christ is more willing to make the necessary alterations than he was at first and we see him re-shaping events into the narrative we are familiar with. Once we’ve got the idea – long before I stopped to write about it half-way through the book – there’s a limit to how interesting Pullman can make it.
Maybe that’s the reason why he doesn’t only give Christ a conscience – he isn’t a bad man, just misguided – but also brings in the mysterious stranger who can tease out the debates he needs to have with himself. Christ in his role as chronicler, and the stranger in his role as the provider of moral support, both seem to be metaphors of a sort. Christ becomes a metaphorical representative of all the men who, over generations, formed the story of an itinerant preacher into the overlapping (or contradictory) narratives we know as the Gospels. The stranger represents – what? Like Christ, like Jesus, he has the ability to see a future that readers in the 21st Century can recognise. He ends up being a boiled-down version of all the men who, over centuries, decided that particular aspects of the story, such as the miracles, needed to be built up in order for the legend to thrive amongst all the competing stories. He really is the cleric in The Brothers Karamazov, except he knows where it needs to go in advance. What, he’s a time-traveller now?
None of it is clear. In order for the fiction to work on his own terms, Pullman has to bring so many new and arbitrary-seeming plot elements that it begins to feel like a mess. Christ, who could apparently produce miracles as a child, no longer can. So he has to exaggerate whatever Jesus does to make them seem miraculous, because we saw how Jesus responded to his suggestion that he perform miracles of his own. Later, when the stranger’s agenda requires Jesus to be martyred and a resurrection staged, he has to co-opt Christ through a subterfuge. There is no Judas in this version, only Christ receiving payment for betraying his own brother. No, he says, this isn’t what I intended – and it should be a moment of tortured remorse. Unfortunately, it isn’t. For a start, we don’t care enough, despite the humanising of the character that Pullman has been piling on for chapters by this time. And the torture and crucifixion of Jesus, almost off-stage, feel almost sanitised.
By this stage I was finding it all rather tiresome. Jesus has been preaching for weeks and months, apparently convinced of the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. (We never do find out where he got that idea from, unless he simply took John’s words at face value.) Suddenly, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he doesn’t believe a word of it. For eight pages, he speaks to a God that he knows isn’t there – and this is the man who has to be turned into the iconic leader of a new church. But the stranger, whose identity never is revealed, has already set his plot in motion. Jesus is arrested, a bored and cynical Pilate lets the baying crowds have their way, and he is taken off to Golgotha to be nailed up.
Pullman has already made very clear the distinction that Christ makes, and the stranger confirms, between historical fact and the greater ‘truth’. Christ had begun to see through the sophistry of this even before Jesus’s death, but it’s after it that the stranger reappears to put him right. He’s putting him right on other things as well, notably the need for the miracle that will distinguish this particular dead preacher from all the others, the resurrection of Jesus: ‘the miracle will never be forgotten… its truth will last from generation to generation.’ ‘Ah,’ says Christ, ‘would that be the truth that is different from history?’ He’s unhappy about it, but the stranger has him trapped: ‘The truth that irradiates history, in your own beautiful phrase.’ Even though, as Christ asserts, ‘Jesus wouldn’t have recognised that particular truth,’ he still agrees to go along with the stranger’s plan. He will impersonate Jesus, back from the dead, for as long as it takes to convince the disciples and kick-start the next two millennia.
It’s a pity Pullman didn’t keep it simple. The idea of there having been a real story that became distorted by different tellers has become lost. Jesus has died doubting, and Christ is so shocked he retreats into an ordinary, hidden life for a while. But after some time has passed the stranger re-enters, re-kindles Christ’s faith in the project, and the rest is – what? History? Or is it the ‘truth’ that he and the stranger have been so glibly claiming as their own?
By this point, do we care?
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Christ got his powerful church but the things he had to do to create it and the manner in which he sugar-coated Jesus’ life in his texts and all that entails for everything leave him a bitter man
The Stranger: People are capable of great things, but only when great circumstances call on them. They cant live at that pitch all the time, and most circumstances are not great. In daily life people are tempted by comfort and peace; they are a little lazy, a little greedy, a little cowardly, a little lustful, a little vain, a little irritable, a little envious.
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