philip pullman - the good man jesus and the scoundrel christ

Philip Pullman

The Good Man Jesus
and the Scoundrel Christ

      Hardcover: 256 pages
   Canongate U.S.; 1 edition (May 4, 2010)

ISBN-10: 080212996X

Reviewed by Patrick Killough

(1) biblio.com 7/17/10

recommend to readers? PROBABLY * * * *

review:

Lots of people wrote about the historical Jesus of Nazareth: both canonical and apocryphal gospelers, the Jewish historian Josephus, Romans Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius and others. Each had different sources and different takes on Jesus and his early followers.

Philip Pullman in his historical fantasy THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST shows a nodding familiarity with all the usual historical sources. But he seems more concerned to address, instead of Jesus of Nazareth, an old scholarly hypothesis that yes, there was a real, historical Jesus but also a distorted, concocted Christ -- of Faith. Pullman's fantasy has Mary giving birth to non-identical twins: Jesus and a boy she nicknames Christ (Messiah). Jesus gets a lot of his ideas and techniques from John the Baptist. Christ assigns himself the task of writing the life of Jesus.

A mysterious Stranger appears to Christ and encourages him not only to chronicle the life of Jesus but to "spin" the facts from what they were to what they "ought to have been -- i. e., eternal truth inspired from Heaven replacing mere data. The Stranger has a low view of human nature and persuades Christ that Jesus is asking too much too soon of the Jews he preaches to. Rather Christ should work with others to create an hierarchical church: to enshrine the Scriptures about Jesus and to make sure that the world remembers Jesus.

The Jesus fantasy of Philip Pullman is cleverly conceived and well told. Read it for what it is and enjoy. -OOO-.

http://www.biblio.com/hardcover-book/the-good-man-jesus
-and-the-scoundrel-pullman-philip~97a05~313989835
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(2) lunch.com

name of review: "Jesus, in his purity, is asking too much of people"

rating: * * * *

review:

"Jesus, in his purity, is asking too much of people" (p. 167, "The Stranger Tells Christ What Part He Must Play").

Says who? Says Christ.

Who is Christ?

In the novel by Philip Pullman Christ (meaning Messiah) is the younger almost identical twin brother of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is healthy, vigorous, has learned the carpenter's trade from his father Joseph, talks straight talk, pulls no punches and expects the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven at any moment. Christ (a pet name given by his mother Mary; we are told that he has an official name, but we don't know what it is) is sickly, a mama's boy, very bookish and religious. Whenever the boy Jesus finds himself in hot water with parents or religious leaders, Christ's quick thinking gets Jesus out of trouble.

Jesus is heavily influenced by the preaching and baptizing of John. Both men talk straight and believe that God's Kingdom can come at any minute. Better be prepared! Christ thinks that Jesus's image of God is too arbitrary and impetuous. What God loves is ritual, law and order. The greatest virtue to Christ is the thoroughly adult virtue of caution.

A mysterious Stranger, later identified by Christ as an angel, persuades Christ to deliver up his brother Jesus to the Jewish High Priest Caiaphas for judgment. Jesus, argues the Stranger, is mere history; Christ, by contrast, is truth. Christ's task from God is to write up the doings and sayings of Jesus. He is not simply to record what he sees and hears, however. Rather Christ is to "spin" Jesus, to give him meaning. Especially, Christ is to help create a Scripture and a powerful Church to protect that Scripture. Without Church and Scripture, neither Jesus nor Christ -- the Stranger says -- would be remembered 50 years from now.

Jesus dislikes almost everything Christ stands for: especially a powerful Church. Jesus despairingly prays to a God who never answers him:

"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 not condemn, but only forgive" ("Jesus in The Garden at Gethsamane," p. 199f).

After Jesus's crucifixion by Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, Christ goes to his tomb. In the presence of the Stranger, Jesus's body is secretly removed. If people believe that Jesus has risen from the dead, there is no limit to the energy that will be unleashed. Historically, the Stranger says:

"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 not good for much, but we have to deal with them as they are" ("The Stranger in the Garden," p. 225).

This is a novel, not scholarship, not history. There is some simple philosophizing. Scriptural texts are often re-expressed in colloquial language. Jesus comes across as no-nonsense, even crude. To his brother Christ, Jesus was wrong on just about everything, starting with the Kingdom of God being only for children and child-like adults. No way! The Kingdom of Heaven needs prudence, law, ritual, dogmas and powerful rulers. An imaginative, easily read, often thought-provocative novel.

-OOO-

http://www.lunch.com/cafelibri/reviews/UserReview-The_Good_Man_Jesus_
And_The_Scoundrel_Christ-74-1453443-65299-_Jesus_in_his_purity
_is_asking_too_much_of.html?gat=review
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(3) bn.com

title of review: Christ "spins, " prettifies his twin brother Jesus

rating: * * * *

review:

Posted 7/11/2010:

Worth noting at once, THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST is a novel. It is not scholarly or particularly theological. It is fiction, drawing loosely on Christian canonical and apocryphal scriptures. That said, it is imaginative, creative and rapidly retells (and spins) highlights of what early Christian writers had to say about the founder of their religion.

At some level this novel is a game of "what if." I have played it myself. What if the rich young man who had walked away sadly rather than sell all his goods to the poor -- what if he had come back to Jesus (see Mark 10: 17 -22)? In Athens, Saint Paul spoke before crowds and persuaded some that Jesus was the Messiah (Christ). Presumably, others were NOT convinced. But did they remain unconvinced? "What if" speculation on sacred texts can, at its best, be a healthy form of contemplation, I submit.

Author Philip Pullman, let me suggest, rethinks scriptures to make them solve certain problems he has with organized Christianity and to unload some of his dislikes. Pullman, through the mouth of Jesus, has harsh things to say about "church."

A mysterious stranger, who Jesus's twin brother Christ thinks is an angel, pressures Christ to chronicle Jesus's words and deeds and to create a church to preserve the memory of both Jesus and Christ. If the two brothers are remembered, confused as if one person, and if the composite Jesus Christ is believed to have risen from the dead, then it will take an organized group of true believers -- a church -- to do the necessary.

The novel rapidly reviews highlights of the life of Jesus as recorded by early Christians, both orthodox and gnostic. Jesus, like John the Baptist, is virile, a straight shooter, who tells it like it is: repent and get ready, the Kingdom is about to arrive. Brother Christ is weakly, imaginative, ultra-cautious and slowly persuaded to prettify Jesus's message of loving thy neighbor and foresaking wealth and family to follow Jesus.

Much of the fun of reading this novel is to realize that your interpretation of what author Pullman wants readers to believe is likely different from mine.

To me, the mysterious Stranger who manipulates Christ is Satan. Either God does not exist in this novel, or He has turned our world over to devils. The preaching of Jesus is mildly frightening to Satan. But if he can persuade Christ to channel Jesus's visions, commands and energy into safer channels -- scriptures, Church, rituals, garments, worldly power, then Satan will remain top dog, so far as we mortals are concerned.

A clever piece of imagination, this novel. Wise? I leave that to other readers to judge. -OOO-

recommended reading:

-- Ignatius Loyola - THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES,
-- G. K. Chesterton - THE EVERLASTING MAN
-- William A. Barry - FINDING GOD IN ALL THINGS

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Good-Man-Jesus
-and-the-Scoundrel-Christ/Philip-Pullman/e/9780802129963/
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(4) amazon.com 7/12/2010

title of review: "What should have been is a better servant of the Kingdom than what was"

rating: * * * *

review:

Before I asked the Amazon.com_Vine program for three audio discs to review of THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST, I had never heard of its author Philip Pullman. My wife and I listened to the author's excellent reading aloud of this novel during a drive from North Carolina to Ohio and back. It was easy to follow.

But to do justice in a review, I felt the need to put my hands and eyes and well on the American Canongate edition of the text. That proved an easy, pleasant read. I salute the author for his originality and imagination. His novel comes across as John Bunyan's THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS lite. Sceptically religious, less heavily allegorical than PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, but a post-modern secular search for salvation, if you care to think of Pullman's fiction that way.

Imagine Pullman's novel as a mosaic. Here are some of its component pieces, I think:

-- (1) There once lived in Roman Palestine a Jewish religious teacher named Jesus of Nazareth;

-- (2) Jesus walked around preaching for three years: people heard him and reacted in various ways to his messages;

-- (3) Some literate hearers of Jesus's words and observers of the deeds of both the prophet, his enemies and followers began to write down and circulate their own reactions;

-- (4) Jesus's alleged resurrection from death after Roman execution set in motion the building of an authoritative church still with us two millennia later.

Pullman then, I think, put his prejudices and value judgments to work to pull the four elements above and others of his own making into a literary pattern, a novel.

Additional elements:

-- (5) Prophets were a drachma a dozen in Roman Palestine, how come Jesus is uniquely remembered?

-- (6) His followers eventually recognized him as God Incarnate. But there is no such thing as God, thinks Pullman. Jesus was a spellbinder but a priori he could only be no more than a creature -- a man like the rest of us.

-- (7) So some talented literary figure had to have succeeded in "spinning" Jesus, playing up the attractive things he said and explaining away hard sayings such as that everybody who followed him was his only family. What might the mechanics of that spinning have been? The literary version of Jesus was so cleverly done that we will never be able to unpeel its layers and find the "real, historical" Jesus.

The end result of this mosaic-making is THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST. Whatever Philip Pullman liked about the prophet of Nazareth he attributed to a man called Jesus. Whatever the novelist disliked he attributed to a non-attested twin brother whom his mother Mary nicknamed Christ, i.e., the Messiah of Israel.

Jesus was healthy, vigorous, a man's man, a carpenter. He spoke, like John the Baptist, straight from the shoulder in punchy, attention grabbing words -- some of Pullman's invention:

-- "I'm telling you that if you're angry with a brother or a sister, by which I mean anyone at all ... don't dare to go and offer a gift in the temple until you've made your peace with them," (p. 78).

-- "You're right, friend, everything has changed. There's no need to worry about what you're going to eat or drink" (p. 81).

-- "And I won't have any talk about little sins and big sins. That won't wash in the Kingdom of God" (p. 78).

-- "You scribes and Pharisees, if you're listening -- be damned to you" (p. 156).

Christ, by contrast, is sickly, a dreamer, but also ultra-cautious, afraid of offending either the Romans or the the Jewish sanhedrin. But he prays, he studies Hebrew Scriptures. He does not put himself forward. Christ of is own volition easily blends in to a crowd. He observes. And above all Christ writes.

Christ assigns himself the task of writing down twin brother Jesus's words as he hears them himself or as one of the twelve disciples reports it to him in confidence. Then comes a Stranger. Under the Stranger's almost hypnotic, sophisticated world-weary influence, Christ begins to think better of himself. He becomes truth, Jesus, with all his might words and deeds, is no better than mere historical fact. Christ's job is to tell Jesus's story as it should have been, not necessarily as it actually was. That is truth! "What should have been is a better servant of the Kingdom than what was" (p. 97.

And the Stranger also persuades an initially reluctant Christ that one man must die for the good of the people. Invoking God's dealing with Abraham and Isaac, the Stranger persuades Christ to betray jesus by a kiss to soldiers of the High Priest Caiaphas. jesus is meant to be condemned, killed by crucifixion and buried. Christ watches unnamed followers spirit Jesus's body from the tomb. It is ordained that Christ, who closely resembles Jesus when seen in dim lights, is to meet with Mary of Magdala and with disciples on the road to Emmaus and convince them that he, Christ, is Jesus risen from the dead.

Resurrection from the dead, along with baptism which Jesus had learned from John and also along with making followers that they were drinking his blood and eating his flesh -- all this novelty was the making of a dynamite new religion. What Christ had to do was spin the historical facts, interpret them and then stand aside and watch determined political Christians create a powerful church. That church would bring the world great musicians, philosophers, canon lawyers and bishops and unleash the laity to do mighty deed in hospitals, schools and among the poor. But the church (never evolving in an historical form prayed for in Gethsemane by Jesus) would also glorify its clergy and allow them to become rich, powerful and able to take advantage of innocent children.

In this novel the Stranger (Pullman? Satan?) is the mastery of history. He plays his reluctant puppet Christ like a lute. If God is anywhere around -- which he may not be-- then he has turned this world of ours over to the Stranger, believed by hapless Christ to be an angel.

Briefly, Jesus had seemed to be a threat to humanity's natural inclination to take things easy, to be ordinary -- as the Stranger likes us to be. The Stranger persuades Christ that

Let's therefore give people, instead of the Kingdom here and now an everlasting church. Let's also make them believe that if they follow the rules laid down by its priests and bishops they, too, will rise from the dead and then enter the Kingdom of God. The church will not be the Kingdom of God, merely the promise that that Kingdom is not a mirage.

I am glad that I both listened to the well-voiced recording and read the text of THE GOOD JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST. I found both clever, at times wise. But by and large this novel was not much more than a pleasant, harmless mind game. It proved neither history, biography, philosophy nor theology. But it is a good piece of imaginative historical fiction.

-OOO-

tags: jesus, christ, philip pullman, christian church, pontius pilate, caiaphas, kingdom of god

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Jesus-Scoundrel-Christ-Myths/
dp/080212996X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278534262&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Jesus-Scoundrel-Christ-Myths/
dp/080212996X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278534262&sr=8-1
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(5) epinions.com 1 review 7/7/10 texas_swede

Review title: "Jesus would have called it lying."

Written: Jul 12 '10

Product rating: * * * *

Pros: Rapidly reviews recorded highlights of the life of Jesus. Memorable portrait of "the Stranger."

Cons: Assumes that God thought little of our world: gave it to the Stranger to manage.

The Bottom Line: Excellent 3-disc recording by author. In novel, Jesus briefly threatened dominion over this world of "the Stranger" (Satan?) Stranger persuades Jesus's twin, to "spin" brother into insignificance through a church.

aohcapablanca's Full Review: Philip Pullman - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Let me tell you about my recent experiences with William Shakespeare's comedy THE MERCHANT OF VENICE and Philip Pullman's THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST.

Not many days apart I heard the author's 3-disc reading of his 2010 novel, THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST and watched a DVD of 2004's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE -- with Al Pacino as Shlylock and Jeremy Irons as Antonio.

I thoroughly enjoyed both experiences. But my immediate impulse was to pick up the printed texts and peruse each carefully and thoroughly. For I did not trust my unaided memory as a basis for a review of fairly complex stories.

So this review of Pullman's novel is based on both my hearing and my reading.

Regarding the BrilianceAudio discs: author Pullman does a superior job reading aloud the entire text that he had created.

--In particular, he gets across his Jesus as a rough-and-ready, straight-from-the shoulder he man.

--And he conveys Jesus's twin brother Christ as weak, sickly, cautious and something of a sissy.

--The puppet-master of the novel, usually called simply The Stranger (I personify him as Stranger) is voiced by Pullman as faintly menacing, ancient, cynical, worldly, worldly-wise and instinctively manipulative. And who is Stranger's puppet? Christ.

Pullman is at pains to retell, mostly accurately, in an appealing way selected Gospel and Apocryphal tales of Jesus of Nazareth in words directly from or recast in Pullman's words from the early Christian writings.

Jesus either learns to be clear, simple and straight from his hero John the Baptist, or the two mutual admirers are naturally cast from the same mold.

-- John to some Sadducees and Pharisees: "You brood of vipers! ... You'd do better to start bearing some fruit" (p. 32)

-- Jesus: "You scribes and Pharisees, if you're listening -- be damned to you" (p. 156).

There are bound to be at least as many interpretations of what Pullman is driving at in his novel as there are readers. I have five or six interpretations myself.

Here is one defensible gloss of the novel:

-- Either there is no God. Or he is mean and arbitrary and has turned over general control of our world to a mysterious "Stranger" (probably the Satan, possibly Philip Pullman) to play games with.

-- It pleases Stranger to keep the human race ordinary, plodding along, incapable of sustained greatness.

-- Comes Jesus of Nazareth. He convinces sizeable numbers of Jews that the Kingdom of God is going to arrive any day. If only they prepare for it at once, love their neighbors, give their wealth to the poor, etc., they will soon transform the world as we know it and from being as Stranger prefers it.

-- By luck or by design (i.e., by Pullman's design), charismatic Jesus has an unassuming twin brother with a bent for writing.

-- Stranger doesn't even bother tackling Jesus directly. Rather he goes to work on Christ. Stranger works on Christ's mind to tempt Jesus in the wilderness. Stranger persuades Christ to write about Jesus, his words and works, not as they actually occurred, but as they should have occurred. For nobody can live an entire lifetime as heroically unselfish and generous as Jesus demanded. The Kingdom of God is either impossible on this earth or Stranger wants to make people think it impossible.

-- Stranger persuades Christ to "spin" Jesus, prettify his message, frame Jesus within a man-made organization of politicaly minded camp followers called a "church."

-- Within a church there will be token room made by Stranger for a very few real Saints, people good for a lifetime, people who create harmless little baronies of what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God. But Christ and other politicos will build an organized church with powerful teachers and rulers. They will succeed in keeping Christians ordinary most of the time, as Stranger prefers them.

-- Through baptism, through eating Jesus's flesh and drinking Jesus's blood, through belief in Jesus's rising from the dead, through conviction that Jesus is very God, most Christians will be just electrified enough, inspired, to exert themselves just enough to think highly of themselves.

-- They wlll not expect the Kingdom of God any time soon, if ever. For Christians, church people, aren't up to such a Kingdom. But Church rulers will make lay people believe, in return for their donations to hierarchy, that lives of ordinary virtue and little sins, provided they are lived according to Church customs, will lead the faithful, after they die, into the Kingdom of God.

-- Stranger also persuades Christ to identify himself with Abraham when obeying God's command to slay his son Isaac. If there is to be a rationally compromising, therefore humanly possible, Church, instead of Jesus's impossible Kingdom of God NOW, then Christ will have to betray Jesus to Caiaphas the High Priest. And Caiphas will hand Jesus over to Roman procurator Pontius Pilate.

-- Jesus will be buried. His body will be spirited away by followers. Jesus's near look-alike twin brother, Christ will appear in dim light at the tomb to Mary of Magdala and to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and convince them that he is Jesus risen from the dead.

Bottom line: THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST is a novel. It is funning, playing a very long, harmless literary mind game. Perhaps it will be made into an electronic game and will then be critically reviewed by one or more epinionators.

The book is well written (and voiced by the author on CDs). It is imaginative, shows flashes of originality, cleverness and even wisdom here and there.

A reader's mistake would be to make more of the novel than it is. It is neither philosophy, serious history, academic theology, scholarly biography nor higher Biblical criticism. It is fiction. Enjoy it as such.

Ponder, however, the last thoughts of Christ as recorded by Pullman:

"The stranger would have called it letting truth into history. Jesus would have called it lying. ... But this is the tragedy: without the story, there would be no church, and without the church, Jesus will be forgotten" (P.245).

-OOO-

Recommended: Yes

http://www.epinions.com/review/Book_The_Good_Man_Jesus_and
_the_Scoundrel_Christ_Philip_Pullman/content_517688626820
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http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/pullman_jesus.html