Why read The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ?

Book cover of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Book description

'If I vanished he wouldn't notice, if I died he wouldn't care. I think of him all the time, and he thinks of me not at all. I love him, and my love torments me. There are times when I feel like a ghost beside him; as if he alone…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jonathan Trigell

Author

Pullman sets out – and achieves, with his usual aplomb – to subvert the stories of Jesus, indeed to divide them: his Jesus and his Christ are two entirely separate figures. Pullman uses a deliberate echo of Biblical style, to show how the Bible stories are first and foremost just that: stories. To show how history became myth and then myth became faith. How the very hypocrisies that Jesus himself pointed out – people mouthing religious observances, without the accompanying good deeds – became an almost fundamental structure of the established church.

From Jonathan's list on fiction with Jesus as a character.