The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

What an amazing book. My first by Philip Pullman. As an adult Christian, I've been more moved by Jesus the man then Jesus the Christ. It was his humanity that inspired me to be a better person - to strive to bring God's kingdom to our lives on earth and not some far away heaven. The scene of Jesus in the Garden - his doubts, his fears, God's silence brought tears to my eyes. Thanks Mr. Pullman for making me continue to question my faith as I journey through life.

What if Jesus had a brother? What if this brother was the one who inserted the miracles into Jesus's story? What if Jesus had no intention of being at the center of a religion and what if the resurrection never happened (at least in a magical sense)?

These are the "what ifs" that fantasy writer Philip Pullman ponders in his new and intriguing alternate telling of the Jesus story. It begins with Mary giving birth to two children, one named Jesus and the other called Christ. After being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus becomes a wandering philosopher (whose moral teachings Pullman clearly admires and recounts quite well). Christ is also taken with Jesus's teachings, so much so that he decides to record Jesus's story (after being cajoled by an angel whose identity we can only speculate on), embellished with miracles so that future generations will see Jesus as an icon.

The story is more interesting than I thought it would be. I've read several 'retellings' of the Jesus story and was a bit weary about this one. Would it be a philosophical stance dressed in the guise of a story? Would it be implausible and forced? It was neither of these. In fact, the farther the story goes, the more plausible it becomes. Pullman manages to find a way to explain all of the New Testament's miracles naturalistically. Even if one does not agree that Pullman's explanations ARE the way it went down, it will certainly make readers think about whether there are naturalistic ways to exlpain these "miracles." Pullman also leads readers to ruminate on the nature of religions and the myths that bring people to follow them.

For those who have ever been intrigued by The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, or even The Da Vinci Code, this book makes for an interesting and thought-provoking, if quick, read.

I really enjoyed this more then I thought I would. Basically Pullman takes the two disparate aspects of Biblical Jesus Christ and splits them into two people and has them act out the events in the New Testament. It is funny in places, we are not quite sure who is the good one and who isn't, though the title does kind of give it away. The book also works around the basic dichtomony Pullman writes about in his other work, the tension between authoritarianism and individualism. What I like is that neither viewpoint is seen as perfect, both are flawed, but for different reasons. Both characters are acting out of love and selfishness as well. So, the story is well and enjoyably told. It is thought provoking in a good way and, it is a fun read. What more do you want.

Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a set of stories about the life of Jesus. The audio book was probably a more interesting way to hear the stories. Reading this I might not have gotten through it. I really enjoy reading Philip Pullman's stories, but this one didn't seem to be a creative work of fiction... it's a retelling of the life of Christ. It offers engaging questions about the life of Jesus and the concept of Christ.

The best part about this audiobook is the wonderful reading given. I enjoyed listening to it much more than I would have enjoyed reading it for myself. Since this book is a story about telling stories, it's particularly appropriate to hear it told. The point of Pullman's work is that the story of Jesus Christ was created and shaped for a particular end, not re-told exactly as it happened. Hearing the "voice" of the scoundrel as he justifies slanting the accounts (for the good of the church to come) of course, is a persuasive reading.

A historical fiction that rewrites the biblical Jesus story - with an unfamiliar spin. Many of Jesus's miracles are seen from a non-miraculous perspective. His parables are presented with a slant that shows more clearly why the Jews and Romans would want him dead. It starts with a believable story about a local teen who cons his way into Mary's bedroom pretending to be an angel (think Leonardo DiCaprio in "Catch Me If You Can").

Pullman borrows stories from "The Infancy Gospel of Thomas" (didn't make the canonical cut) for the boy Jesus. Most of the important and familiar events from the New Testament are covered leading up to and including the crucifixion and resurrection - some of them verbatim. Much of the text, including Jesus's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, becomes a vehicle for the author's thoughts against organized religion. What sets the book apart is the skill the author uses in pulling it off. Also impressive is the narration (audio version) done by our thespian author - entertainingly acting out each part.

The author demonstrates how the story changes as it spreads and how superstition dominates the times. He adds fictional characters that deliberately change the story - so the message OF Jesus becomes a message ABOUT Jesus after his death. Closer to the original than "Life of Brian," further from the original than "Jesus Christ Superstar," this book is a winner - entertaining and unique and I recommend it highly.

The reader is transported from a parable to a mocking indictment of what we believe. The rendering of history, where subjectivity is manifest in direct proportion to the self interest of the renderer, should not surprise anyone. Libraries are heaving with it and, in the end, everyone gets cheated, even the renderer. Who better to demonstrate the monstrous and mocking twisting of which a commentator of events is capable than a gifted scribe such as Pullman. The fairytale medium, in which passion and pain can be described abstractly, is recognisable as the medium of choice of those tyrants and shams who use simplicity to captivate the angst-driven and bereft.

While there is a challenging message in this novel, Pullman makes it a stylish and enjoyable read.

I enjoyed listening to Philip Pullman's voice again in this audiobook. The voice was familiar because my husband and I listened to the entire His Dark Materials series on tape/CD. As brothers Jesus and Christ progressed through The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, living through many scenes that closely paralleled stories from the Bible, I felt oddly like I was sitting through church, listening to a priest do a reading or even, at characters' passionate exclamations, like I was sitting through a sermon. I was sure that Pullman had a point beyond just telling the story of "what if Jesus was actually a composite figure created from two different guys?", and I kept waiting. . .and waiting. . .and waiting for that point. It didn't come till the last 20 minutes of the third and final CD, and then it was not the type of point I'd anticipated.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is OK, I guess, but it is definitely not Pullman's finest work. I have no strong feelings about it; it mostly just left me feeling bewildered.
One entertaining thing about the audiobook: it was funny to hear Pullman assign different British accents to Biblical characters. If you know the accents well enough, the types of characters he chose to give them to might say something to you about Pullman's perceptions of people from various regions.

Phil Pullman made a name for himself with the Golden compass trilogy[the best of which is the first book.His digression into an anti-religiious scredd diminishes the altter 2] In this one, Mr Pullman draws an the supposition that there are/were twins[hence the title] Actually an apologia for his lack of tolerance for Christianity[it matched well with xtians lack of tolerance for anything that diffres from their beliefs], it is rambling, lacks inventiveness and seems miles from the william Blake inspired adventures of the Golden Compass.Frankly,it is just dull.

Ok, here it goes! I really looked forward to reading this book and when I finally did I felt nothing more than disappointed; almost cheated. I don't know; maybe I got carried away by the title and expected too much, but in whatever way you put it I didn't expect so little. There's one thing that I know for sure: this is the worst work by the author that I've ever read. That's maybe because it was an order-to-write kind of book, or perhaps because he didn't bother to work too hard for it, or just maybe because it's a bit too mild for my taste.
When I've first read the title and some of the reviews in the British press I thought: this sounds fun. It really did, and it kind of is, but there's nothing more to it. If someone picks up this book thinking that he or she's about to read a heretical version of the Bible, he or she will be disappointed. Pullman just picks bits and pieces of the scriptures and rewrites them in his own way; making them somewhat more easy to understand for the reader. It starts with a bang (This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ), but there's nothing much to follow that grand opening. The author writes briefly about the birth and the early years of the twins and points out that Christ, the intellectual, used to get Jesus out of trouble every now and then, simply by quoting the Old Testament. He also says that Jesus was the prodigal son of the story, before taking a short dive into his miraculous but controversial life. As it looks the guy wasn't so popular in Nazareth because he had the nerve to go and perform miracles... elsewhere, while his relation with the priests was not exactly the best as he tended to liken them with the fool in the psalms. By the way, just in case you were wondering, it was Christ and not Jesus who met Mary Magdalene, so maybe her soul is condemned to rot in hell after all. With this and that, time just flies by, it really does, and soon enough Jesus is arrested, put to trial, condemned, crucified and comes back to life again. And that's about it.
I don't know whether the good author had a word count limit, as the book belongs to a re-imagined myths series, but I can't shake the feeling that this work is far from complete; or to say it boldly, it gives me the impression of a one-night-stand. If any of you would like to read some really subversive or even provocative versions of the Gospels you should look elsewhere; at the work of the great Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, of the recently deceased Jose Saramago (read the splendid Cain), and Robert Graves. There you can find all the knowledge and the philosophy behind the popcorn literature of the likes of Dan Brown and much more.
It's such a pity that a writer of Pullman's caliber couldn't make things work in this one but, thank Caiaphas and no matter what, we can just keep enjoying his fabulous forays into the worlds of fantasy.

Good Man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ, is nothing that you might expect. I'm not much of a reader, but this story is so compelling that i could not put it down. It is Myth, a fairy tale like story that you think you know, but Pullman presents a version that really makes you think of Jesus Christ very differently. It was a delight.

this is a very clever little book, which retells (and explains) the gospel story -- from the so called virgin birth to the ministry to the resurrection to the rise of the early church -- using the conceit taken from the gospel of thomas that jesus had a twin brother to illustrate how the historical jesus, a man without any divinity who preached an apocalyptic eschatology, became the christ of theology we find in john's gospel and most christan churches.

this is a story for any christian apologist who claims that the resurrection is the most probable explanation for the rise of the early church. and it is also a story for the atheist who wants to get a sense of the historical jesus presented to us in current academic scholarship.

at the same time, pullman is very respectful with the subject matter, presenting a fair defense of the theological truth of the church, which he (accurately) uses the jesus of history to criticize.

and the books is itself a very easy read, written as though it was itself an actual gospel (and thus meant to be read aloud to an uneducated audience, if not an audience of children -- think to the parable of children entering the kingdom of god discussed in the novel)

Mary will call the twin who wiil turn evil "Christ"? Oh, brother! Does Philip Pullman know "Christ" is greek for Messiah,"The Anointed One", and that it would take a supponent woman indeed to call her son with the title of former kings, and of the mythical figure everyone was expecting at the time? Everyone in 4 BC's Palestine was waiting for the Messiah or proclaiming to be him!Read some elementary history!And trying to resolve the contradictions in the Gospels with the fantasy clichè of the good and evil twins is a rather childish trick.Oh, yeah, it's intended for children. Well,one couldn't expect a kid to read Bart Ehrman's "Jesus Interrupted", "Misquoting Jesus", and other scholarly books on the subject, but maybe Philip Pullman should have read some of them.

The story of Jesus has been proclaimed by Christians as "The Greatest Story Ever Told". Pullman in his story "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" makes the point that we can never know what happened especially when we were not present when a story was made. The story of Jesus Christ is a story. It was not sufficiently documented to be history, but even if it were to be taken as history for the sake of argument, Pullman's point was that history as told is not necessarily truth. Truth, he thinks, can be injected into history in any way the story teller wants it. When it travels far enough and is retold often enough, and is, above all, a good story, people will believe it.

Christians may likely find this book heretical and blasphemous. If the very idea that Mary, the mother of Jesus gave birth to twins, naming one "Jesus" and the other "Christ", may be sufficient justification for a charge of heresy, then to say that it was Christ who betrayed Jesus to the Roman governor must surely carry the aggravated charge of blasphemy.

However, this book is much more complex and complicated than that. Pullman did not write this book because he was an atheist with the intention of annoying Christians by disparaging Jesus Christ, God, and the Biblical account. He recaptured many of the teachings of Jesus - all taken from the Bible - and cast them in a context that made those teachings far more meaningful than they do coming straight from the Bible. His citation of the Lord's Prayer in the context that he had created would have moved many a Christian. It has many a teaching attributed to Jesus Christ that any man, Christian or atheist, will like to embrace. For example, "'Lord, if I thought you were listening, 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 wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive."

Slowly and ominously, Pullman spun a version of the life and death of Jesus, explaining the necessity if not the veracity of miracles in the story of Jesus. If miracles do not happen in real life, they had to be created. And the greatest miracle of all was the Resurrection. Pullman's account was contrary to popular Christian belief that the Roman soldiers did not break the legs of Jesus to hasten his death (a conventional practice in the art of crucifixion at the time). I will not add the spoiler here so that the reader can enjoy the book even more.

This is not a book that is proclaiming that the Bible was false, and it was made clear that the book was only a story. Pullman's is a story that we don't quite expect; but was the Biblical story of Jesus one that we do? The point that runs through it is that a good story is still a story. Its success depends on many factors, among them, the credulity of people and the desire to believe in miracles. It depends as much on the listener as it does on the storyteller. It depends, in other words, on you.

In Pullman's latest, there is no poetry, no complexity, no inspiration nor illumination. I usually love retellings of ancient religious/mythological stories, but this one is heavy-handed and stylistically inconsistent, as if the author both doubted his readers' intelligence and invested little of his own into a masterful recrafting of this tale. I can only suppose that the professional book reviewers at The Guardian, The Independent, and other big-name blurb providers have frothily praised this book on the bases of their expectations--or else of what they felt they were supposed to say. I was disappointed too, after enjoying Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy so much. Maybe I would not have expected all that I did of this book if it too were intended for children; in fact, it might even be a fine piece of literature for parents to share with young people they would raise to be freethinkers.

Rather than adding dimension or at least an interesting twist to the story or significance of a major religious figure, this book reflects a rather childishly dry interpretation of the words attributed to Jesus and a distant, erratic picture of its character by the same name. The other main character--the one called Christ--is just a nitwit, not a sympathetic or engaging figure at all; his idiotic credulity under the influence of a mysterious personage is the sole engine prodding the plodding plot along (and a book that takes only 3.5 hours to read out loud should not impress one with its slowness). It is not even fictionally plausible. The premise of Pullman's book--that Christ & Jesus are two people, twins--seems pointless in hindsight, when the author neglects to build great relevance upon that potentially promising foundation. The rest of the content is basically the original gospel story unaltered--another opportunity Pullman failed to cash in on. It is as if the author got so lost in hammering (and hammering, and hammering) home his bluntly single-pointed message that all other considerations were left by the wayside.

Oh, and that message? In sum: the story which many take to be true about Jesus and the institutionalization of Christianity could just as easily have been made up or wildly refashioned by its tellers. There, i've just spared you a great waste of time. Normally i expect stories of this genre to move me to a deepened perspective, or at least to fascinate with their recreation of the source material. Instead, i found myself turning the pages of this one as quickly as i could just to make it go away.

Let me disclaim: I have no religious affiliation whatsoever, so my dislike of this book has absolutely nothing to do with any personal feelings about the subject matter.

If you are looking for an alternative look at Jesus, look elsewhere. Might I suggest Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal?

This was terrible. Really, incredibly, indulgent. No point, no redeeming qualities, not a clever point of view. Short, lazy, boring. It's a bunch of bible passages, tweaked, a couple of theories (truth vs. history), halfheartedly shoved down your throat.

It wasn't worthy of Pullman, and it wasn't worth of publication. I'm not going to spend 2 more seconds thinking about it.

Regarding the audio: Pullman is a great narrator, too bad he was narrating such awful material. If I can avoid "Brilliance Audio" products in the future, I will. This is my second experience with them. iPod software can't find the track information online so each track shows Track 1, Track 2, etc. And there are 99 tracks (basically) on each disc. You can only load one disc at time because of this. It's very inefficient.

Okay, let's see, Satan orchestrated Christianity by manipulating two identical twins, one named Jesus and the other Christ. Naturally, there were no miracles.. The water into wine problem was solved when Jesus convinced the steward to release some kegs of wine he had hidden and wanted to sell later. Jesus shamed him into providing the wine for the wedding guests. "Take up your pallet and walk?" Why, there were many fakers by that Bethesda pool who for a few drachma would pretend to be healed. The resurrection? Here is where the twin comes in handy. After the crucifixion the devil got him to mingle with the disciples who said "Master?" They were too dumb to realize this was the twin. Now I don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus but I believe "miracles" say something important about our life that atheists miss. But to continue, Christ, the twin who survived, moved to a distant town where he married and worked as a net maker. He was also writing a history of the church admitting he was going to jazz it up with miracles and signs, otherwise who would be interested? In the bookSatan believes the teachings of Jesus are too demanding for most people - "love one another" - and uses the opportunity to create a church more to his liking: beauracratic, dogmatic, power-hungry and with a hierarchy not averse to luxury. (Success! See any history of the medieval papacy.) Fair enough. But in this book Jesus complains that God never responded to his prayers, always has been silent, which is absurd. Christianity does not ride on the worldly church,which has often been corrupt, but on the words of Jesus. To miss this, in my view, is to lose any claim to spout about Christianity. This is a pernicious book and seems to be aimed at youth. It is written in a somewhat boring , simple, slightly Biblical style. There is certainly no spirit in it, and by spirit I mean something that an atheist can express as well as believers. What can you get out of this book? Well if you just read my review - nothing.

The short 'product description' in the the store-UK advertisement for this book says that it is a "retelling of the life of Jesus", that it throws "fresh light on who Jesus was", and is a book "about how stories become stories". In fact Pullman's book does none of these things. It simply corrupts the New Testament story and the person and work of Jesus Christ, in defiance of almost all the documented sources.

This book does not deserve serious consideration. It hangs on the peg that Jesus of Nazareth had a twin brother who was given the name `Christ' at birth. Jesus Christ was therefore `historically' not one person, but two: `Jesus', and `Christ'.

For Pullman, the twins had quite different views of what God wanted of them. `Jesus' preached the coming of the (good) Kingdom of God. `Christ' wrote down accurately everything that his twin brother `Jesus' said and did, but then took his notes and, with `a stranger' and various other mysterious `helpers', `Christ' twisted Jesus' preaching into the New Testament description of the coming of the (evil) Church we now have (as Pullman sees it), and combined the `real' twin brothers `Jesus' and `Christ' into the one `unreal' Christian person 'Jesus Christ'.

Pullman everywhere corrupts the gospel story of Jesus. Here are some examples.

1) The conception of Jesus: was it miraculous, as announced by the angel in the gospel, or (for Pullman) the result of a young man's activity with Mary? 2) The marriage feast at Cana: no miracle here, for Pullman: when the wine ran out, the chief steward thought again, and found some more. 3) The feeding of the five thousand: no miracle here either; once Jesus asked about feeding the five thousand without having to go and buy food, everybody suddenly discovered that they had all brought plenty of food with them - they had merely been shy about sharing, until their consciences were jogged. 4) All the miracles of healing by Jesus? Nothing more, for Pullman, than people feeling better after Jesus was nice to them.

By always deliberately and unjustifiably ignoring the consideration that the miracle stories and supernatural teaching of the New Testament were signs that Jesus was indeed fulfilling the role of the Messiah, the Christ, `Pullman the story-teller' rejects the only point for which `the gospel story-teller' told the story: Jesus is Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah..

This peg of the `twin Jesus/Christ brotherhood' also has to support Pullman's 'retelling' of the last days of Christ, as follows:
1) It was not Judas, but `Christ', Jesus' twin, who betrayed 'Jesus' to the Temple authorities in the garden of Gethsemane.
2) It is indeed 'Jesus' who dies on the cross, though Pullman cannot decide whether 'Jesus'' knees were broken or not - all sorts of absurd 'might-be's are proposed by Pullman about this; Pullman is certain, though, (totally contradicting the biblical account) that it was the Roman soldier's lance that killed 'Jesus' (p. 235).
3) Things get very much worse when Pullman comes to deal with the Resurrection. For Pullman, 'Jesus'' friends remove his dead (and never-resurrected) body from the tomb. When Mary Magdalene and the apostles think they see the 'risen 'Jesus', it is in fact his look-alike twin brother 'Christ' whom they see and whom they believe to be `Jesus'. 'Christ' had been persuaded to take on this lying role by the 'stranger' whom Pullman had introduced earlier into the story out of nowhere. From now on, 'Christ' pretends to be the risen 'Jesus', and it is 'Christ' who is reverenced as the risen 'Jesus' by the disciples on the way to Emmaus and by `doubting Thomas' (very mixed-up episodes in Pullman), and at all further resurrection appearances of 'Jesus'.

4) Pullman does not believe that the resurrection of Jesus happened, so he has to invent reasons why the first Christians came to believe in it - far-fetched impossibilities which serious scholars have long put into the dustbin. For Pullman, perhaps the first Christians were fooled this way: Jesus didn't die on the cross, but merely fainted; so he was taken down alive, was wrapped for burial and laid in the tomb. He recovered his senses in the tomb and was freed from the now-empty tomb by his friends. He healed rapidly enough (miraculously?) to appear as `risen' to his friends!

5) Another impossibility for explaining the gospel accounts of the resurrection, is that by some sudden inspiration of faith in the minds of the Twelve (and the women?) Jesus (mangled, scourged, crowned with thorns, dead, pierced with a lance, unrisen, rotting in the tomb) nevertheless `rose in the hearts of the disciples' as the long-expected Jewish Messiah/Saviour without needing to rise physically from the dead.

6) Pullman's own fantastic story (`fantastic ridiculous', not `fantastic marvellous') of the not-killed twin `Christ' being mistaken for the killed-and-not-resurrected `Jesus', of course eliminates the story of Jesus' Ascension and the whole Pentecost episode in the Acts of the Apostles (to which Pullman never refers), because `Christ' would have been still around after the supposed ascension of `Jesus'. Pullman gets around this by saying that later on "Christ was living under another name in a town on the sea-coast, a place where Jesus had never been" (p. 239), married to `Martha'. Well, if you are persuaded by that sort of thing ...

I conclude, for now, by quoting from a booklet by John Proctor ('Jesus is Lord', 2009). " Prophet, wise man, spiritual leader, friend of sinners - many good people have fitted these categories ... But the church says much more than this about Jesus. We rank him with God and as God, and we praise him accordingly. We pray in his name and sing to his glory ... The worship due to God, texts about God and the name of God [in the Old testament] were ascribed to Jesus ... [reflecting] the supremacy, dignity, majesty and god-ness of the risen Jesus ... " (pages 3, 5).

Does Pullman's story "throw fresh light on who Jesus was"?

[See now also my review (dated 31st October) of the book "Philip Pullman's Jesus" by the Jesuit priest Gerald O'Collins. O'Collins analyses in detail the flaws in Pullman as storyteller and as biblical 'interpreter'. Buy O'Collins.]

In the interests of full disclosure, I will say from the start that I am a Christian who is committed to the historical veracity and authority of the New Testament account of the life of Jesus, the Christ. I realize that this commitment inherently colours my perspective on both the Bible and the book I am currently reviewing but of course no more than Philip Pullman's admitted and overt anti-theism colours his take on the first four books of the New Testament (and the rest for that matter). There is a popular belief out there that says atheists approach religion and the Bible on a rational, objective, neutral basis where as subscribers to the faith are subjective and irrational. The foolishness of this can be seen on the face of it. I readily admit that Christians don't embrace or examine their faith with pure rationalist logic...far from it. However they are not devoid of logic either and the atheist embraces his or her secular-humanism with every bit as much faith as the most devout saint posses.

Also, right off the start, I want to acknowledge that I am aware that the cover of Pullman's book states loud and clear that, "this is a story" as if that disclaimer preemptively answers any criticisms to his reinvention of the gospel narratives. I realize this is a fiction, Pullman's own version. However, since he is presuming to deconstruct and reinvent something as pivotal and as immense as the life of the historical Jesus, he cannot duck out of criticism simply by saying, "hey, I told you this is a story". So...to the book.

Unlike some of the reviews I've read, I was not wowed by the ingenious originality of this tale, mainly because there was very little originality to be found. In fact, much like my experience of The DaVinci Code, as I was reading I couldn't help thinking at least once a chapter how old and tired this all sounded. Like Dan Brown's shameless robbery of the central premise and many of the details of the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, Pullman turns the "de-mythologizing", pseudo-scholarship of Liberal theologians of the past two centuries into a fictional account of the life of Jesus Christ and the origins of the Christian religion. In this project he proceeds along the familiar lines of separating the supposed tiny kernel of historical Jesus (just a good Jewish moral teacher) from the vast and distorted post-Christ mythologizations of those who used Jesus as an opportunity to construct a cult to challenge the existing power structures and replace it with their own. Like a one man Jesus Seminar, Pullman seeks to sift out the probable historical events and teachings from all supposed glosses, inventions, edits, and manifold additions of post-Christ church leadership. The literary device he uses to accomplish this in a narrative work is to divide the historical Jesus into twin brothers: Jesus, a human, red-blooded, honest Jewish teacher of the golden rule with a keen perception of human nature, and Christ, his underhanded, lowlife, back stabbing, power-hungry alter-ego of a brother whom one can nevertheless identify with. I think this is the only original part of this book.

Pullman rewrites his way chronologically through the gospel story, systematically attacking one cardinal orthodoxy after another, from the virgin birth (a naïve Mary consents to sleep with a town boy because he tells her he is an angel messenger from God and she has been chosen for a special honour), to Jesus' miracles (which are just acts of kindness or bold statements that the growing excitement of the crowds turn into rumours and stories of the miraculous), to the death and resurrection (the body was taken by those who wished to perpetuate the stories of Jesus divinity in order to use them to accomplish their own political ends), and many things in between. Again, nothing particularly new here as the gospels were long ago sifted by those wishing to retain the title `Christian' but were embarrassed by all the super-natural baggage and salvation language that such a handle brought with it.

The true center of this book is the prayer of Jesus in the garden just prior to his arrest and trial. Far from the emotional struggle of the biblical account, where Jesus, knowing his vicarious death was hard upon him, desires in his humanity to avoid the pain and separation, but trusts his heavenly Father and famously declares "nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done", here Jesus' last prayer is an angry outburst of frustration at the silence and indifference of a God he has finally lost faith in. To call this a thinly veiled projection of Pullman's own feelings toward the God of the Bible would be gross understatement. It is yet one more example of the two controlling tenets of atheism: 1) there is no God, and 2) I hate him.

I must take exception to another reviewer's opinion as the prose in this book was anything but lyric and I believe Pullman himself would agree with me. Due to the nature of this story the plain, unadorned prose suited the genre better than flowery description which one never typically finds in mythology or in the Bible (but for the poetic books). From my perspective, however, the style was the only strength of this book and if zero stars was an option on the store, that is what I would have rated this book. Strictly considered, I found this to be a well written (from a technical perspective, genre constraints considered) fictionalization of some worn-out secularist liberal theological railings against the historicity of the Bible's accounts of Jesus life and works. That is to say, it was like an incorrectly balanced ledger, where all the numbers and totals are nevertheless written with admirable penmanship. But however aesthetically pleasing the handwriting might be, the sums will leave you in trouble with the tax man when he audits you.

This book is the rebellious attempt to remove redemption from the redemption narrative by a man who refuses to admit his own spiritual bankruptcy and need of the Jesus Christ he is trying to rid history of. But one recalls the age old maxim, that the Christian faith is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. For those wishing to read something from an intelligent pen that takes a very different perspective on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, try Malcolm Muggerige's JESUS: THE MAN WHO LIVES., G.K. Chesterton's EVERLASTING MAN, THE, C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity or, N.T. Wright's Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense orThe Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary.

This book is a critique of Christianity written by an athiest. Pullman has never been shy in his hatred of Christianity as expressed in his other works. This book seems an attempt to put a more formal and intellectual framework around his hate. Rather than simply attacking, he tries to pull Christainity apart in an attempt to recast it into something else.

The literary device he uses is the concept of "twins". "Jesus" is the embodyment of what the author seems to consider the salvageable aspects of Christianity while "Christ" (the bad twin) is the repository for all of Pullman's anti-Catholic/anti-Christian ideas. The great irony of the book is of course the Pullman himself by writing it is playing the role of his own character "Christ" in reshaping "jesus" for his own ends.

The problem with the book isn't that its "blasphemous", the problem is rather that its on its face stupid for someone who doesn't believe in a particular religion to lecture those who do about what form their religion should take. Especially those who actually read "dark materials" all the way to the end and know the kind of hate Pullman brings to the table on these subjects. This is a man who regularly spits poison. His particular obsessive and public hatred of C.S. Lewis and his Narnia Chronicles (grotesque, disgusting, ugly, poisonous and nauseating) is no secret.

Pullman sticks remarkably to the gospel narratives with one glaring exception that tears out any heart the book had. Jesus abandons god and dies at Gethsemane. Christ fakes the reserection and steps in afterward. In keeping with the author's fanatical anti-Catholic viewpoint, there is also the character of the "stranger". Calling him the stranger given its rather obvious who he is doesn't do Pullman much credit.

So the message in the end for Christians is that their religion is a lie made up by the evil people who founded the evil church. To be "true" to Jesus, they should rewrite their made-up religion with helpful advice from athiests like Pullman. The direction of the rewrite would be to turn Jesus into a secular philosopher with no association to god. And abolish the works of the evil "strangers" from the bible.

This book will go over well with some christians. It will go over well in particular in those churches where the bible is considered a book of folk tales and the church is little more than a democratic political club.

The ultimate problem with the book is that its always bad for people to take self-improvement advice from a person who hates them.

While the concept is interesting, Philip Pullman's book is built on a false premise...that there were two different conceptions of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He claims that one is from the Gospels, "Jesus," while the other, "Christ," comes from the Pauline Epistles, since the word "Christ" is mentioned five times more by Paul than by the Gospel writers.

The problem is that the use of a title and the conception of who a person is does not depend on how often the title is used. In the Gospels, other titles are used in place of "Christ." In Matthew, "the Son of the living God, Emmanuel,..." In Mark, "the son of the Blessed, Son of the Highest,..." In John, "only begotten of the Father, one with the Father, the Messias,..." In Luke, "the Lord's Christ, the Christ of God, the chosen of God,..." I could go on but I think this makes the point.

And there are factual errors, such as Paul wrote his Epistles before the Gospels were written when actually, for example, the Gospel of Mark was written during the same time.

So it is difficult to enjoy the book since these factual errors and the false premise are in the way.