Book Review: The Good Man Jesus

WHEN it comes to books, I am an impulsive buyer. Sometimes, it is the title of the book that attracts me and sometimes the cover. But I usually read a couple reviews before I purchase a new book.

But I took no precautions before I bought a Kindle version of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman. I had read an interview the author had granted to a Western newspaper which the Indian Express had reproduced. He had talked about undermining the whole Christian faith with this book. So I had dismissed him as a pompous humbug.

Pullman, perhaps, wanted to provoke the Christian community like Salman Rushdie did when he brought out the unreadable The Satanic Verses. Then I realized that by using a larger type-size and leaving larger margins, the publisher, Canongate Books, had puffed up the book to make it more impressive and appealing to the buyer.

The greatest strength of the book is the title which is provocative, if not blasphemous. Pullman did everything possible to evoke a reaction that would have pushed the sales to dizzy heights. Alas, nobody demanded a ban on the book, except a stray reader of the Indian Currents who felt it was blasphemous. When I read his letter, I was reminded of a telephone call I received from a Catholic priest in Patiala who sought my opinion on The Da Vinci Code, a mystery-detective novel written by the American author Dan Brown.

The priest was disturbed after reading the book and wondered how it was going to affect the Christian faith. My answer to him was that I read Brown’s book with great interest but if I were asked to read it again, I would not even touch it. In sharp contrast, I had no problem in reading the Bible again and again as it never bored me.

Pullman’s His Dark Materials had made him a cult figure for the atheists. I understand he had left out Jesus in this trilogy. Deliberately because he was planning this book with which he wanted to knock down the Christian faith, once and for all. How far he has succeeded is a matter of opinion but if sales are any indication, he has succeeded in making some ripples, if not waves, in the literary ocean. He has impeccable credentials as a story writer.

One of my relatives from Mumbai after thumbing the pages showed me the last cover page on which was written “This is a story” in probably 72 points. My relative who is a staunch believer did not know that Pullman’s whole purpose in writing the book was to reduce the Biblical story to just “a story”. If that was his attempt, he should have shown greater scholarship and done greater research than referring to just three versions of the Bible, King James being the oldest as he admitted in an interview.

Where Pullman has shown ingenuity is in seeing Jesus and Christ as two distinct personalities. In an interview he mentions the fact that Paul in his epistles refers to “Christ” more times than to “Jesus”. He sees “Christ” as a Christian “construct” on which the whole edifice of Christianity is built. So, his attempt is to defrock “Christ” and show up Jesus as no more than an itinerant preacher who believed in the immediacy of the Kingdom of God.

He seeks to accomplish this by giving a twist to the Jesus story. Jesus and Christ are, therefore, twins born to Mary. While Jesus is “strong and healthy”, Christ is “small, weak and sickly.