The Good Man And The Scoundrel

I heard a discussion on the Radio of Philip Pullman's "The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ" - I knew the premise of the book, and I wasn't going to read it. But the discussion changed my mind, and I am glad it did. My only problem is that I don't know how much my New Testament knowledge contributed to my enjoyment of the book - I could see so much of the New Testament, and of scholarly opinion, behind the story. But I suspect that anyone with an interest in religion and the rise of the Christianity of the church out of the teaching of Jesus would enjoy it.

Christianity, it seems to me, was invented by St Paul. The Gospels have a go, in their different ways, and with their different interests, at telling the Jesus story and giving an account of his teaching. St Paul makes no reference to any of this, apart from the Passion and Easter narratives, which he sets in his own theological environment. St Paul doesn't seem to give a tinker's about what Jesus said, or when or where he went about. What he is interested in is the significance of Jesus in God's plan. And that is the core of Christianity - Christianity makes claims about why Jesus matters, not about what he taught. That's how the Church has managed to overlook so much of his teaching (for instance on poverty, and the importance of being child-like, and so on) while concentrating on his role as God's instrument, and it's own role as the preserver of that message. Indeed, without that emphasis it's hard to see what the institutional church's role would be.

Pullman uses an ingenious device, Jesus' twin brother. The twin, called Christ, observes and records and improves Jesus' message in order to preserve it for the future. It is Christ, not his brother Jesus, who thinks that founding a church would be a good thing for the world. In a brilliant picture of Jesus' agonised prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest, Jesus sees the downside of a church, and feels the silence of God intensely. I recognised some of my own thinking in the words Pullman puts into Jesus' mouth. There is a constant tension between Jesus, the enthusiast for God's coming kingdom, and Christ, the one who wants to institutionalise the best bits of that enthusiasm. Pullman constructs a further tension between History, what happened, and The Truth, which exists apart from it in some timeless reality (or unreality if you prefer). And I loved the discussion between the beggars at the Pool of Bethesda. Absolutely spot on.

The book is written like a children's story, and is very easy to read indeed. But the adult nature of the thinking behind the writing can only be escaped by act of deliberate ignorance.

There is much more I could say, but it would be better if you read the book for yourself.