REVIEW: The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ

REVIEW 

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ 
Philip Pullman
Viking
Rs 499
Pp  256
ISBN: 9780670084449
Hardback

Blurb
In this ingenious and spellbinding retelling of the life of Jesus, Philip Pullman revisits the most influential story ever told. He offers a radical new take on the myths and mysteries of the gospels and of the church that has shaped the course of the last two millennia.
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 questions that will continue to reverberate long after the final page is turned. For above all, this book is about how stories become stories.


Reviews
The Good Man Jesus... Hindustan Times

Blasphemy usually makes for powerful politics. Rarely does an anti-idea serve to fuel a powerful novel. And yet, as you read Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ, you realise that this slim book is not a countercultural display of fatwa-inviting heresy but a quiet, impassioned psychological novella. Based on the New Testament, Pullman’s story of the lives of two brothers has the austere beauty of Christian icons rather than the chutzpah of a Monty Python send-up.

“It’s a name and a title,” says Pullman  from his London home. “Jesus and Christ (Greek for ‘saviour’). I was dramatising this difference and made two characters out of the one we know of." He admits it’s an indictment of “those who follow the externals of faith”.

Three or four years ago, he had the idea sloshing in his head of writing about the “transcribers” of the teachings of Jesus Christ, those who took a philosophy and turned it into an organisation.” I had the idea and let it mature in my head. Then in 2003, I was in conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He told me that he knew what I thought of religion from my earlier books (His Dark Materials trilogy), but he was curious about what I thought of Jesus. That got me going.”

The Good Man Jesus... shares the same structure as the gospels. Except, as the opening line says, “This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ, of how they were born, of how they lived and how one of them died.” And then comes the single-whammy: “The death of the other is not part of the story.”