He is the history, and you are the truth.
I’ve seen that a lot of people thought this book wasn’t quite as controversial as the title might suggest ─ they’d be wrong. Every sentence was an outcry from Pullman against religion, particularly Christianity, and anyone who couldn’t see that can’t have understood the book at all!
The only other book of Philip Pullman’s that I’ve read is the first of his His Dark Materials series, and while I thoroughly enjoyed that, I’m not a massive fan of his writing style. What were interesting characters and a very well constructed plot could have gone much further if Pullman’s writing had been a little more… formal and eloquent, I guess.
The story retells the Bible story and the life of Jesus, as though Jesus were two people─he and his brother, Christ. These brothers have very different personalities; Jesus is always very generous and rational, the more popular of the brothers by far, while Christ is timid, self-righteous, and does things only if he will somehow benefit from them in the end.
Christ is assigned a task by a mysterious stranger, who Christ believes is an angel: to write down all the words of Jesus as he preaches around the world about what he terms “the coming of the Kingdom.” Though it’s never explicitly said, Pullman hints that this book─which Christ constantly changed to make into a “better story”─is the Bible.
Here am I, my hands red with blood and shame and wet with tears, longing to begin telling the story of Jesus … I want to play with it; I want to give it a better shape … The angel would have called it letting truth into history. Jesus would have called it lying … but that is the tragedy.
I had a few favourite parts of this book. One took place at the Pool of Bethesda, a lake said to have healing powers. Christ is sitting here one night when he is stopped by a stranger suffering with leprosy. The stranger is lame, and claims that, though he comes here every night, he can never get to the pool in time before its healing powers run out and it recharges for the next day. Christ, trying and failing to conceal his disgust at the man, offers to help him over, but the leper claims that he only wants to be embraced, as no one has dared to come near for many years. Christ, overpowering the urge to flee from the stench that so repulses him, hugs the leper, who limps home. Feeling happy about the good deed he has done, Christ goes home himself, only to find that his purse was stolen by the leper while they embraced. Christ sits down where he is and weeps for the corruption and greed in the world.
Another part that I thought was particularly well done was the prayer that Jesus sends to God about half way through. He begs for an answer from God, to whom he has prayed for so long, and told everyone else to pray for, and yet no one ever receives an answer. In a passionate prayer some pages long, Jesus alludes to a psalm in the Bible: “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.”
I can imagine a priest in years to come pulling the wool over his poor followers’ eyes: “God’s great absence is, of course, the very sign of his presence”, or some such drivel. … That priest is worse than the fool in the psalm, who at least is an honest man. When the fool prays to you and gets no answer, he decides that God’s great absence means he’s bloody well not there.
Jesus, giving up all hope of ever being answered, now begins to openly criticise God. “Why did you make it all so hard to read?” he cries. “Why do you treat your people like this? The God who made water to be clear and sweet and fresh wouldn’t fill it with mud before giving it to his children to drink.”
Overall, I thought this book was quite good, but not really up to HDM standard!
Christ was the son of Mary, that was undeniable, but he was also the son of God, an eternal and almighty being, perfect God and perfect man, begotten before all worlds, reigning at the right hand of his Father in heaven.
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 that there is no passion at all … Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay.