While the first book in Philip Pullman's “His Dark Materials” trilogy, Northern Lights (1995), which was made into the film “The Golden Compass,” won the prestigious Guardian Children's Fiction Award it is also a huge favourite among older readers. The trilogy, apart from being a rocking adventure fantasy, was also a sharp criticism of organised religion. His latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Penguin, Rs. 499), which hit bookstores a couple of weeks ago, explores the dichotomy of Jesus the man and the Church.
The book has been extensively reviewed abroad with Richard Holloway (Bishop of Edinburgh from 1986-2000) calling the book “fierce and beautiful” in The Observer and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, describing the book in The Guardian as a “very bold and deliberately outrageous fable.”
The book is a provocative and compassionate portrait of the life of Jesus. Pullman brings his formidable storytelling skills into play to tell the greatest story ever told — with a Pullman touch.
In Pullman's version, Jesus has a twin brother, Christ, who asks Jesus questions in the desert and also betrays him with a kiss. In an e-mail interview, the writer talks about the book.
Can you comment on the genesis of the title?
The title of a book should, it seems to me, say something about what's inside it. Since the contrast between the two figures Jesus and Christ is exactly what the book's about, I thought I should put it on the cover, and not conceal anything.
How did you come to write the book?
It has several starting points, as most stories do. I had long been fascinated by the character of Jesus, while not regarding him in the least as divine, and the idea of a book about him had been lurking quietly at the back of my mind for a long time. About seven years ago, I had a public conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the stage of the National Theatre in London, when the theatre was presenting an adaptation of my trilogy His Dark Materials . The Archbishop pointed out that whereas I'd criticised organised religion in that work, I hadn't mentioned Jesus. I replied that he was quite right, and I'd have to think about him and perhaps put him in another book.
The other spur to my writing was the Myths series of the U.K. publisher Canongate. They asked me if I'd like to contribute a book to that series, and I said yes; and it later occurred to me that the Jesus story would fit quite well.
On the back of the book, you say “this is a story”, do you want people to read it as a story or as an ideology?
Certainly not as an ideology! A story is exactly what it is. Those words aren't mine, by the way: they are the publisher's. My contribution was the full stop at the end.
What is your view of myths?
There are some stories whose power, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, is independent of the literary skill in which they are told. When you first hear the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (his example), its effect is just as powerful in whatever version you hear it. It is the events that matter in a myth, not the prose style: the message, not the medium.
Do the twins Jesus and Christ symbolise the duality of Jesus the man and the Church?
I hope so. I think they will do so, for people who actually read the book.
Do you think the book will help people understand Jesus the man?
Again, I hope so. That's all we writers can do with a book: we can't predict any one particular response. All we can do is hope.
What is your comment to accusations of heresy and blasphemy?
I regard them as unfortunate but absurd.
Would you say the book is a re-imaging of the Jesus story?
Yes: a retelling from a different angle, or a view of it through a different filter.
The review inThe Telegraphcalls the book “unchristian and not anti-Jesus”. Could you comment on this?
Well, it's clearly not anti-Jesus. I haven't read that review, so I can't say what the writer means exactly by “unchristian”. In general, I prefer not to comment on my reviews. If they are favourable, one shouldn't boast, and if they are unfavourable, one shouldn't whine.
Is the Stranger in the book St. Paul?
No. If I were forced to say a little more about who he is, I'd say he is the personification of the future church.
Do you feel that Jesus is a tragic figure?
Yes, in a curious way.
Jesus announced the Kingdom of God, and he said it would arrive within the lifetime of some of those who were listening to him. His arrest and execution was so dramatic, and the “resurrection” so thrilling that an entirely new idea about him began to develop.
He wasn't just a man: he was the actual Son of God — he was God himself, in fact — Christ rather than Jesus. Paul in his Epistles was one of the proponents of this idea, which is why he calls him Christ over 150 times, and Jesus only 30 or so.
The tragedy comes in this, as my Christ observes in the book: that Jesus' vision would never come about, and the vision that did come about, through the church, was not that of Jesus.
What were your research sources for the book?
The gospels in the New Testament, those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the apocryphal gospels that were excluded from the canon of scripture. Then I read some of the commentators, but very few: this is one of the most written-about stories in the world, and if I tried to read everything, I would go mad long before I finished.
So, I read a little about the world of first-century Palestine, as the Romans called it after they suppressed the Jewish revolt in A.D. 70; and I read the works of Geza Vermes, the greatest Jesus scholar of the present day, who knows both Judaism and Christianity extremely well. And I read the Pope's book about Jesus, but that was not of much help.
Does our understanding of Jesus as a historical figure help in matters of faith?
I dare say it would help some people. But faith is a matter not of reason and probability but of taking a leap into the unknown; or at least, those people I trust most on the subject, such as Kierkegaard and William James, say that's what it is.
Why did you choose to make Christ ask the satanic questions and also betray Jesus?
