Meh. Should have been more interesting; the premise was. ( )

Philip Pullman is like me, someone who was raised as a Christian, but who no longer considers himself so, though he values its mythology, its language as expressed in the Authorised Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.

It's only in his afterword that Pullman explains the premise for his retelling of the Christian story: that if Christ hadn't 'died for us', there would be nothing to differentiate Jesus from the many and varied prophets doing the rounds at the time, and Christianity wouldn't have 'taken off'.

According to this re-telling, Jesus and Christ were the twin sons of Mary. Jesus becomes the prophet, Christ the thinker, the recorder of his brother's story. When Jesus dies, it is Christ who re-appears after three days. There was no Immaculate Conception, no real miracles, no Resurrection.

The story is told in plain unvarnished prose with none of the poetry we associate with the bible, which I found disappointing, though Pullman sticks closely to the gospel stories.

His argument is an interesting one, though it's something which his afterword explains fully, and would have been sufficient to make his point. Perhaps though, he needed to tell his tale in the way that he did, for the afterword to have the impact he required. An interesting read, but not up to the usual Pullman standard I thought. ( )

A very interesting take on the nature of story, as told through a moderately subtle shift in the retelling of the stor(ies) of Jesus. Read this for its metanarrative, not for its illumination of the Biblical characters. ( )

After His Dark Materials, this book was a disappointment. I’ve enjoyed many of the novels in the Canongate Myths series, but at least one of these (Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt), like this one, is just a straight-up telling of the original myth, rather than a retelling with a new and modern spin or fresh insights. If I’d wanted to reread the New Testament, I would have done so. Yes, there’s a slight twist on the gospels, but the essential tale is identical, and large parts of the narrative are just the gospels reworded. Pullman’s main addition is a lot of railing against the Church. Now, I enjoy a good bashing of organized religion as much as the next atheist, but at least tell me something new or put a witty spin on it or give me some new food for thought. Pullman does none of this. ( )

This is a fun book. I enjoyed it particularly because it plays around with the story of Jesus, much as I tried to do with my book, Recycled Virgin. It’s fun to see an alternate explanation for the happenings of Christianity and Pullman does this in an easy, intelligent way. It’s part of the “Myths” series by Vintage, and now I am eager to read all the others.
There is so much quotable in this book, but the one that really resonated was this one. Christ is explaining his complicated relationship with his brother Jesus to a prostitute, and how his role is only to record history:
“There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to their rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear there is no passion there at all, and if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved, and they could bear that least of all...I am one of those. I know it, and I can do nothing about it.”
Christ serves as the recorder of Jesus’ life, the one who writes the ‘truth’, as vs what happened. He also plays a key role in creating the various myths written about Jesus. He changes a few stories, enhancing one here, erasing another there. I think it is a clever way to describe what actually became of the reality of Jesus’s life- the idea of a twin brother that acts as the guided reporter is a winning one, though I have difficulty believing a mother could forget one of her children to such an extent.
A fascinating turn around the bible and a very readable one, worth sharing with those questioning faith. Some here argue that it is disrespectful and hateful towards Christians- I would note I didn’t find it so. It tells of how stories become stories, how ideas are taken and formed by organizations and how both good and evil come out of that. If you are the sort that feels that any questioning of church authority is so wrong, you’ll hate this book. For me, after studying Christianity’s roots, this story helps to explain how I can believe in a god while not believing in the churches that promote him. Jesus in this story sees god both in everything and not present- he doesn’t get answered when he talks to the big voice in the sky, but he finds joy in every cell of being around him.
For some this is blasphemy. But as Jesus points out, he never committed any. ( )