Review: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Philip Pullman. Gospel fiction.

I read this book from cover to cover in the time it took me to drink a first pint of Budweiser and a quarter of the second one. Every page.

OK, even for me, that was overly fast. But it’s a short book, maybe just half the length of a standard novel. And when I’m seriously in a hurry I can sprint my way through text at around 1,100 words a minute. It helped that I had read the story before, in a different form.

What Philip Pullman has done is take the Gospels story and write it in a more modern way. A time-honoured tactic amongst writers, as also is Pullman’s twist to the tale.

He is best known as a writer of books for children. And that comes across immediately. No flowery language. Simple words and sentences you could read to your children as bedtime stories. And each chapter a story in itself.

As in the Gospels, the tales take us from a little before the birth of Jesus Christ to a little time after his Crucifixion. The anecdotes are familiar, as are almost all the characters. From Elizabeth, mother of the Baptist, through the two Herods and many of the rest of the Gospel cast. In this narrative, though, the author introduces a couple of new ones. A twin brother to the Saviour. And a ‘mysterious stranger’ who might be angel or devil. Or just a local agent provocateur.

The essential Gospels plot is unchanged. Even the individual stories within it are pretty well as we learned them in primary school. Except that the author uses his licence of fiction to interpret some of them in ways that are less miraculous than most Christian believers hold.

It is a book written well. I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen it for myself. But I’m glad it was offered to me with a suggestion of a review, because it proposes an interesting scenario. One which, given the ubiquitous PR and image management of people in business and politics today, implies that these tactics have been around since ... well, since Jesus was a boy.

The author has raised a little ire amongst some believers because of the liberties he took with the ‘original’ constituent stories. But, arguably, his versions are as plausible as any of the four Gospels which are taken these days as ... gospel?

It clearly says on the back cover, ‘this is a story’. And when you think about it, so were the originals. Fact, fiction, or reconstructed rough journalism? Well, that’s where faith comes in.

Brian Byrne.