by VorJack
I was reading a summary of José Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, Jesus is a human figure who is being used by Yahweh for His own ends. He is guilt-ridden about the Massacre of the Innocents, and about the excesses that will take place in the future in his name.
In the end, realizing that his own sacrifice will not stop Yahweh’s plans or these excesses, he laments, “Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done.”
It’s similar in many ways to Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, in which the human prophet Jesus has his message manipulated by his brother Christ. Christopher Hitchens has a good review of it at the NYT. There’s also an expansion on this review on the NYT podcast:
A humanized, manipulated Jesus is also a subplot of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, considered one of the great novels of the last century. In it, Yeshua is pictured as a human philosopher and wiseman who is able to bond with Pilate, even though Pilate is forced to send him to his unjust execution.
There are other examples. I remember a bizarre science fiction story in which a human Jesus is being tortured in hell for inadvertently wrecking monotheism. Part of his torture is to watch the actions of the church founded in his name.
Why is this such a popular theme? Why all these sympathetic portrayals of a human Jesus whose message is lost or distorted? In particular, why do we see it from atheists like Saramago and Pullman?
I’ve always figured it was an attempt to tell people what religion could or should look like in the eyes of the author. I associate this with novels like Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, too. It is a way to point out perceived flaws in religion, hint at what might have worked, and to ask people to recreate the “good parts” of religion for themselves. Basically, they encourage the same kinds of questions about religion that alternate history novels encourage about society or pivotal historical figures. I’m guessing that the occasional accusations of blasphemy are either unimportant or icing on the cake.
Despite always having been a non-believer, I remember ‘The last temptation of Christ’ to be an important book to me as a teenager. While the idea of a normal life with normal feelings as temptations to be overcome was somewhat offensive, I loved the idea of Jesus’s various inner desires(Lust, anger, jealousy, etc) as being typical human feelings. Not because some mythical deity suposedly thought that way, of course, but because the author did. It made me realize that I wasn’t an crazy, anti-social jerk. That I was normal. That meant something to me.
Maybe it’s because Christianity bears little resemblance to the Christ-figure of its own teachings — especially when considered in the light of Jesus’ Judaism.
Viral marketing gone mad — the basis for Monty Python’s movie ‘Life of Brian’.
I can definitely understand the appeal of the subject since christianity was (and to some extent still is) a big influence on western culture. For the same reason someone like Rushdi use the koran as a source. I’m not sure atheists are using religious themes more but it’s more that they are the one we remember because, by not being bound to worshiping the buybull, they have the freedom to make the story interesting. When a religious author take on the jesus story you end up with ‘left behind’.
I’ll take a guess, for the sake of conversation. Please let me know if I’m way off or remotely close.
Presumably, atheism acknowledges that religion generally and Christianity in particular will outlast them and their lifetimes. Presumably, atheists acknowledge that Jesus likely had some good things to say about justice and mercy (in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets), so if a particular atheist is inclined to forward those types of causes, there might be some areas in which to partner with Jesus and his followers.
Couple something like that with modern NT scholarship of the stripe that paints Christ as different from the human Jesus and an invention of Paul and the Gospel writers, and I think there might be an answer.
Or, could it be as simple as a first step to de-converting Christians? As in something like, “It’s okay to follow Jesus, but if you really want to follow Jesus, you’ve got to give up at least parts of what the church says about him…”
That first sentence: substitute an atheist for atheism…typo, sorry.
Don’t forget Christopher Moore and his hilarious story “Lamb.” Not a realistic portrayal, but certainly Joshua(Jesus) was the “good” person surrounded by sinners. To me, the idea of Jesus isn’t revolting, but as mentioned before, it bears little resemblance to how his followers act except when they must.
I think José Saramago’s idea really intriguing. As pertains to the other books mentioned, it’s sort of a no-brainer if Jesus did actually live (or to write a story as if he did), that he would be a real human guy and not just the glorified parts that are in the bible.
But to suppose that he was sacrificed or was set up to voluntarily do so, by his own father, a deity who would have clear knowledge of the future and how well this salvation idea would have worked out, is really intriguing. Translated into real terms, at least, the observation of so many Christians interpreting the thing they believe in in so many ways that if there were a Christian god, most of them would obviously have gotten it very wrong. God never makes sense. If he wants to love us and save us, why does he come up with so many half-baked jury-rigs to accomplish these simple goals?
This is Phillip Pullman of “His Dark Materials” fame?
Yes. You know the characters in the HDM trilogy kill god right? The god.
It may be as simple as to divide the human from the divine, if you consider that a human would be likely racked with guilt over all that happens in his name and misinterpratation of his message,or at least the part of him that IS truly human anyway. Thus it is an exploration of the truly immense divide between the human and the divine within christianity as well as some of the obvious differences between what is said,or suppossed to be said by god and christ and the actions god takes which seem to be very different from what he says,as are the actions of many whom claim to be gods followers. Also christ makes the perfect person to use to explore such themes as he is supposed to be both wholly human and wholly divine..which in itself is a heck of dichotomy and would seem to be impossible.
Actually, stories like those open a person’s mind to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the Bible could be errant.
Once you’ve conceived the idea that the Bible may not be perfect, then you start rethinking everything your knew, and from then on, de-conversion may happen sooner than later.
That’s more or less how it happened to me. I started reading alternative material, and next thing I knew, I was questioning everything.
Check out Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man. It’s a story about a man who travels back in time to see Jesus and is rather surprised by what he finds.