PHILIP PULLMAN: 'The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ' (2010)

Philip Pullman's 'The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ', published by Canongate (2010).

The book is about the dual aspects of Christianity and it was fitting to find that some of the books had white covers and some black. Beautifully produced, the book resembles a genuine copy of the New Testament and is complete with a ribbon bookmark.

We all agreed that it was a very clever retelling of the New Testament story, beautifully written and very imaginatively told. We differed in our opinions as to whether the Christ character needed to be Jesus's twin, or whether he could have been one of Jesus's already documented brothers. We agreed that the book has probably done the story of Jesus no disservice and is more than likely to awaken interest in the New Testament.

On the back of the book in bold letters it says, 'THIS IS A STORY' and one of Pullman's purposes was to show how stories grow, change in the re-telling and can be manipulated to serve ulterior motives and unscrupulous purposes. Even the parables are not 'sacred'. Pullman's Jesus's rendition of the story of the 'wise virgins' is given a much more 'Christian' conclusion.

The book was written at the suggestion of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who reviewed it favourably on April 3^rd in the Guardian. He refers to Pullman's treatment of the Annunciation and the fraudulent Resurrection as 'easy point scoring' but says that Pullman has a 'voice of genuine spiritual authority'.

From a Humanist point of view the chapter called 'Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane' is particularly interesting. It portrays Jesus as losing his faith in God and we see Pullman's views about the existence of god and of how the church inevitably became corrupted and far removed from the central premises of Jesus's teaching. If you read no other chapter in the book, you really should read this one.

As non-believers it's great fun seeing the ways in which Pullman manages to explain away the supposed supernatural elements in the Annunciation, the Resurrection and Transubstantiation as well as many of the 'miracles'.

One of the conclusions of the book is that unless there had been a 'church' to perpetuate the story and teachings of Jesus he might have been completely forgotten. And that unfortunately, people being what they are, the church would not have been successful without the supernatural elements to the story.

So we are left to consider what the world would be like if Jesus had been forgotten.