Philip Pullman's conceited approach to the Gospels

[Very long. If TL;DR then scroll down to the "Conclusion" at the end!]

When I saw the article on the Guardian website about Philip Pullman's new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, I was intrigued - but also sceptical at first, about whether there would be anything worthwhile about it; I was all ready to write a scathing comment here! I still take the view (as evidenced by the unchanged subject line!) that the central idea of the book (that Jesus had a twin brother called "Christ") is basically a conceit by the author. the question is whether it is a worthwhile conceit, and whether he does anything interesting with it. After reading the extracts that the Guardian published, I decided I would have to investigate further. So I have read the whole book before reaching my conclusions.

I've already commented elsewhere on one particular passage that offended me. But the rest of the book deserves a full review.

The first thing I noticed was that the back cover has the words "This is a STORY" embossed upon it. This, I assume, is the author (or his publisher) declaring that he is making no claim that his version is a historical account or "what really happened" - this is to be viewed as fiction. The other thing about it, that I struggled to bear in mind as I went through the book, was a similar point to the one I found helped me in reading Ayn Rand's Anthem: "read the novel as divorced from any particular [political/theological] point." In the end, I think I failed to manage this when addressing Pullman's book: the fact that he took religious figures who are documented in religious texts and rewrote their lives made it a different kind of storytelling from that of Anthem, and (since I happen to believe in Jesus as the Saviour, and as the Son of God) this seemed much more immediate when it came to the religious points that Pullman was making.

Also, since he talks about what his aims were: "it's a story about how stories become stories" and "I ... wanted to tell a story emphasising the separate qualities of Jesus and Christ", it seems fair to look at how well Pullman does this.

Pullman's story seems to work most often with its basis as the text of Matthew (which uses 91% of Mark's Gospel), borrowing sometimes from Luke and rarely from John. As it happens, the borrowing from one another evident in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) could be regarded as a later plot point (but I will get to that in due course). Matthew, according to the introductory notes in my NIV study Bible, was probably written primarily for a Jewish audience, with the intention of demonstrating Jesus' identity with the Messiah (i.e. that Jesus is the Christ).

I feel as though there are four (possibly five) natural divisions in the narrative presented by Pullman. Firstly, a possible "introduction", describing the origins of John the Baptist and Jesus and his twin brother. Then comes a section describing the two boys' childhood. Then there is the transition as Jesus begins his preaching. Then the brother Christ becomes the central character, and finally there is Passion Week and its aftermath.

The introduction uses elements that either Pullman has invented himself, or else comes from non-canonical sources - for example, the footnotes say that there is no evidence for who Mary's parents were; Pullman creates a whole chapter devoted to her birth and upbringing, and how she came to be betrothed to Joseph - none of which appears in the Gospels. Pullman basically takes the version of Matthew for the whole Christmas tale (only Luke and Matthew describe the Nativity; Pullman's version includes elements that only appear in Matthew, and he doesn't include any that only appear in Luke). This is the version where Joseph flees with his family to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. (Pullman's novel offers an explanation why John the Baptist, who would have to be a similar age to Jesus, was not also a victim of Herod's mass extermination of babies - this explanation, again, is not in the canonical accounts.)

So far, Pullman has basically put the familiar story into a modern storytelling style. It basically forms a preamble to the rest of the book. Given the style of the rest of the book, though, I feel as though it is strange that Pullman didn't use Luke's account, and didn't use the events at Jesus' presentation at the temple to set up what he wanted to do later in the book. The other point to note is that he sets it up so that the signs followed by the shepherds and presented by the Magi go to baby Christ and not to baby Jesus.

The second part of the book, dealing with the twins growing up, uses some elements that feel familiar but don't appear in the canonical Gospels; my best guess is that they are part of the tradition surrounding Jesus' life but not "official": I may have heard them elsewhere if that is the case. Of course, Pullman puts his own spin on them.

Here, we see the first part of Pullman's thesis that there is a "Christ" personality and a "Jesus" personality, and what Pullman thinks are the difference between them. Jesus is presented as a big, burly, boisterous kid while Christ is presented as smaller, weedier, even "nerdy" in his devotion to studies. Where Jesus appears to live for the moment and not think about the consequences of his actions (for others, or sometimes for himself) Christ is presented as considerate and eager to help. In the canonical story reinterpreted by Pullman, it is Christ who debates the rabbis at the temple, and does so in order to absolve Jesus of the crime of daubing mud graffiti on the temple wall; in the other stories told by Pullman in this section, Christ performs miracles and with the same aim: to undo the harm done by his brother, or else to absolve his brother of some innocent childish misdeed.

My feeling is that it makes much more sense in exploring a person's dual nature to show how those two sides co-exist in one person, rather than to split it into two. With the boisterous Jesus accidentally transgressing or even upsetting things and doing damage, how much better to show the other, kinder, side by having the young boy be shown the consequences of his error and then show contrition, and put right the misdeed?

At this stage I was expecting the next phase to be something like the partnership of Moses and Aaron: Moses, when commissioned by God via the burning bush, still did not feel up to the job; he recruited his brother Aaron to the team and set Aaron as the figurehead, the guy who could do public speaking. Moses himself was the one empowered to perform the miracles. They made a great team like that. So I was expecting the miracles to be performed surreptitiously by "Christ" while Jesus mimed it.

That idea soon hit the buffers.

The "climactic point" mentioned in the Guardian's preview is presaged in Pullman's reworking of the Temptation of Jesus. In the gospel accounts, the Devil comes to Jesus and tries to make him use his powers to break the Law of God. The order of the temptations is different depending on which gospel you read, but they are roughly: "you are hungry, why not command these stones be bread, so you can eat?"; "prove you are the son of God and through yourself off the mountain - he will surely send angels to save you!" and finally, "I will make you king over all others if you will worship me". Jesus replies that life is not just physical sustenance but spiritual well-being as well; that one should not put God to the test; and that one should worship God and no other.

Pullman places Christ in the role of the Devil. Christ, sent to bring his brother back to his family, talks to Jesus about what could be, if Jesus really is the promised Messiah and if Jesus becomes a preacher. First, he says "If you are going to be effective as a preacher, you will need food - use a miracle to make bread from these stones". Then he talks about using a miracle of surviving the fall from a high building as a way to make sure that people will believe; Jesus adds to the gospel answer that tricking people into believing would not have the desired effect.

Finally, Christ describes a great Church, headed by God's regent on Earth, so powerful that even governments and kings would bow to its wishes, with a hierarchy of priests and preachers to take the religion to every corner of the globe. In short, Christ describes the Roman Catholic church as his vision for the future. To which Jesus replies that such an organisation sounds like "the work of Satan" and would not recognise the Kingdom of God when it comes. He dismisses his brother, saying, "Worship God, that's the only task you need to think about."

This confrontation brings in the second major section of Pullman's book. It also signals the beginning of something that bothers me about Pullman's writing. In the first part, describing the youth of Jesus and his brother, Jesus is impetuous and unthinking of what happens to other people. Christ is thoughtful and his passion is to help others. In the second part, this seems to be reversed - although Christ remains quiet and reserved, he is now a scheming person who puts his own desires and schemes above doing what is just and right by those around him. Jesus, still impetuous and energetic, preaches consideration, care for others and builds his ministry around this. It doesn't sit easily with me the way that this transition happens, and it seems as though Pullman gets caught between two different ideas he wanted to explore, and he changed his mind which one he was going to work with for the rest of the story. Indeed, the two different ideas he mentions in the Guardian article seem to have come into conflict with each other. In the end he went with the "how a story becomes a story" idea, but that meant that he had to compromise the "Christ" versus "Jesus" personality to make everything fit. He also seems to end up asking too much of the gospel stories to flex around his preferred narratives.

The main themes of the second section are these:

• Some early events in Jesus' ministry are deemed to be miracles, although possibly there were other explanations (Wedding at Cana, healing Peter's mother-in-law, escaping the mob at the Nazareth synagogue, banishing the "demon" from a man at a temple)
• Jesus wants his actions to be kept quiet (remains so through the 3rd part too)
• Christ watching as Jesus' reputation grows

Pullman is here setting out his stall for how Jesus the preacher becomes Jesus the miracle-working prophet of God. It is no different in kind from looking at how some vagabond band of robbers in Yorkshire become Robin Hood and his Merrie Men in Sherwood Forest, or how the military leader of a significant battle ends up becoming King Arthur. "Christ" in this part is an observer and relatively unimportant to the narrative, although his presence is important as a plot point later on. One thing to note: the "water into wine" at the Cana wedding is one of the very few elements drawn from John's Gospel.

The things that never get explained away in Pullman's book are the separate accounts of Jesus bringing people back from the dead (Lazarus in John, daughter of Jairus in the Synoptic gospels, a widow's son in Luke).

In the third section, "Christ" goes from being a passive observer to becoming the central character. Relatively early during the second section, a new character is introduced, described as "a stranger" (it is via just such a stranger that Mary learns of her coming pregnancy; it is not clear whether this is the same stranger or another). Where Pullman kind of implies that the stranger at Jesus' conception was just some punk kid lying to get to fuck the virginal Mary (i.e. it was not an immaculate conception), the stranger in part 3 is presented as being without doubt more than human: an angel, in other words. Although I would argue that, theologically speaking, this "angel" behaves more and more like the Devil as the story progresses! (In fact, this is parallel with how I feel about the character referred to as God in Pullman's "His Dark Materials"). The third section deals with the relationship between "Christ" and the angel character.

The angel commissions "Christ" to follow closely what Jesus says and does in his ministry. The point at which this tips from passive observing into active involvement comes during the Sermon on the Mount (I feel that Pullman uses a combination of Luke and Matthew in describing the Sermon, but not simultaneously: the first section draws mainly from Luke and the second from Matthew, it seems to me). Because Jesus is saying a lot of stuff, "Christ" takes some tablets and writes down what Jesus says. At an opportune moment, the stranger appears and commends "Christ" for this initiative. But where "Christ" says he does not want to make a mistake reporting it, the stranger says instead:

Sometimes there is a danger that people might misinterpret the words of a popular speaker. The statements need to be edited, the meanings clarified, the complexities unravelled for the simple-of-understanding... Keep a record of what your brother says ... so that we can begin the work of interpretation.

This introduces the main theme of Part 3. In the margin notes I made as I read the book, I have described this as the "author-voice" - it seems to me that Pullman is putting his own editorial stance into the mouth of the stranger to explain how the events became the story. But the author becomes a part of the story (and not just the teller) in this novel: it is through the stranger's words that "Christ" is tempted and pulled away from his loyalty to his brother and instead onto a different path.

One other character is introduced at this point. That character is known as Judas Iscariot in the Gospels, but here he is given the role instead of being "Christ"s informant on the doings and deeds of Jesus.

The thesis of the stranger (i.e. Pullman's author-voice) develops like this in the nex meeting between "Christ" and the stranger:

In helping me you are helping to write that history [of the Kingdom of God]. But there is more, and this is not for everyone to know: in writing about what has gone past, we help shape what will come. There are dark days approaching, turbulent times; if the way to the Kingdom of God is to be opened, we who know must be prepared to make history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor. What should have been is a better servant of the Kingdom that what was. I am sure you understand me.

...

I told you when we first met ... there is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God.

And in the meeting after that:

... it's clear that a crisis in the world is coming, and because of it you and he [Jesus] both will be remembered in times to come just as Moses and Elijah are remembered now. We must make sure, you and I, that the accounts of these days give due weight to the miraculous nature of the events the world is passing through.

...

"You know how to present a story so its true meaning shines out with brilliance and clarity. And when you come to assemble the history of what the world is living through now, you will add to the outward and visible events their inward and spiritual significance; so, for example, when you look down on the story as God looks down on time, you will be able to have Jesus foretell to his disciples, as it were in truth, the events to come of which, in history, he was unaware."

[Christ speaks] "Since you spoke to me of the difference between them, I have always tried to let the truth irradiate the history"

"And he is history, and you are the truth"

Thus, the character of Jesus is set about with trap and snare by his brother and becomes a pawn in a game being played out by this stranger, through the means of the character Christ. Remembering the concept of reading it purely as a story without any political or religious significance, it is actually a very gripping narrative at this point, seeing the innocent and straightforward preacher being thus manipulated "for posterity".

But what strikes me as interesting is that Pullman uses this to give himself licence to rewrite Jesus' words as he thinks they should have been - doing precisely what "the scoundrel Christ" does in the novel! In the Guardian article:

The book contains manipulated versions of familiar episodes from the Gospels, including the Wise and the Foolish Virgins. According to Pullman: "I think my version is much closer to what Jesus would have said. The version in the Gospels is so different from what he said usually."

Pullman seems to have heard something different in that parable than I do, because the parable as it appears in Matthew refers to Jesus' statement that the Kingdom of God will come suddenly and without warning so we have to be ready always - something that in the novel, Pullman (through his character Christ) acknowledges is a common feature of Jesus' ministry. Pullman's version is about the character of the Kingdom, and the need for compassion for others.

At some points, again Pullman's divided sense of what he's doing with the book seems to show through: in some of the ways he rewrites parables or events from the Gospels he seems to be caught between his concept of exploring different sides of Jesus, and his desire to present what he thinks is more consistent. This shows through when things happen that seem to have his Jesus character acting in ways that seem more like his Christ character, and vice versa. An example is the rewritten version of Mary and Martha (the gospel version is found at Luke 10:38-42). Here, the gospel version (which, in Pullman's novel is composed by the Christ character) sounds to me more in keeping with Pullman's Jesus character; the rewritten version spoken by the Jesus character seems more like the logic and thinking that is used by the Christ character. As it happens, I wish Pullman's version were the "true" version but I don't think it is!

At one point during this section, Pullman seems to take a breather to insert some of his own thoughts about the nature of story, and storytelling - here, he sets up a neutral listener character (a prostitute with whom the Christ character is conversing, after "conducting business", so to speak). I feel as though here "Christ" becomes the medium for the author-voice. The element I want to mention particularly is just one sentence from this passage:

"There are times when I feel like a ghost beside him; as if he alone is real, and I'm just a daydream."

My margin note records the thought in my head as I was reading this: is Pullman referring to himself, and the way he feels as an author next to the characters he creates? Or is he just restating the central conceit of the novel, that Pullman has imagined (daydreamed) this "Christ" character? The first strikes me as interesting if he did mean that, because I can see how it would be easy to feel as though the characters have more reality to some readers than their creator does - compare, for example, with the ways in which some people relate to soap characters!

Moving onwards, I'm trying to skip over some of the theological questions from the Christ character not understanding the point of some of Jesus' parables. So that brings us at last to the Grand Finale.

I am sure I am revealing very little of importance when I say that Jesus gets deaded.

Given that there's a twin involved, and that Pullman has abandoned the miracles that he allowed through in the first section (when the twins were growing up) it should also be no surprise to learn (if you didn't already figure it out) that the resurrection is, in Pullman's novel, faked by substituting the twin brother "Christ" for the dead Jesus. Thus, the deception (in the stranger's words "inserting truth into history") is brought to its logical fulfilment.

The idea that the resurrection was faked or that Jesus hadn't really died, and that therefore the accounts of the crucifixion have details incorrect, is not a new one. The Qur'an suggests as much, for example. Once again, I am forced to remind myself that Pullman is not presenting a theory about what really happened but only telling a fictional narrative based upon the Gospels and his own concept.

It is in this fourth section that the satanic nature of the stranger becomes clear at last: the trap has been set, and now it is sprung, ensnaring both the Christ character as its spiritual victim, and Jesus as its literal victim. My feeling is that Pullman has set this up so that the Devil wins.

"Christ" is the spiritual victim because he is persuaded to act against his conscience by the stranger and convinced that he should be the instrument of his brother's execution: here, Judas Iscariot is innocent (although he flees the wrath against followers of Jesus); it is "Christ" who betrays Jesus to the Romans. The Devil wins because falsehood has been introduced into the teachings, and the church that the Jesus character described as the work of the Devil is built upon a lie created by the Devil - a foundation of sand, in the words of a parable not included in Pullman's book.

The interesting part for me is to watch the development of the Jesus character through this section. It is implied but not stated earlier in the book that the Jesus character has not received the spiritual revelation that he had hoped for after being baptised by John the Baptist. The section develops over the course, in Pullman's telling, of the Passion Week - from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem until his death of the cross. Through a series of firebrand speeches and actions (including the famous expelling the money changers and traders from the temple), Jesus seems to be more and more intent on attracting the attention of the authorities and setting them against himself. This, of course, makes it easy for "Christ" to do the work set for him by the stranger, of setting Jesus up as a martyr.

But my reading of this whole sequence is that Jesus wants to be put to death - in a way, he is committing suicide by cop, ancient Judea-style. This is because the climactic point is Jesus' prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Here is where Jesus describes the church as something to make the Devil "rub his hands with glee", predicting that:

As soon as men who believe they're doing God's will get hold of power... the devil enters into them. It isn't long before they start drawing up lists of punishments... And the privileged ones will build great palaces and temples... and levy taxes on the poor to pay for their luxuries; and they'll start keeping the very scriptures secret... and they'll torture and kill anyone who wants to make the word of God clear and plain to all...

Jesus thus predicts the course of the Roman Catholic church through much of the past 1,500 years or so. As Pullman says in the interview:

"He is really speaking for me in that section," said Pullman. He added: "Of course I don't condemn speculative thinking, or organising people to help them do good, or setting up hospitals or giving hospitality to travelling strangers or educating people. But we have seen very recently how some aspects of all this can go wrong. People can abuse power.

"The greatest excuse in the world is that 'God told me to do it': hence the Crusades. Once you are appealing to an authority that can't be checked, you are doing something dangerous."

So those criticisms are Pullman's indictment of the Church. But, interestingly, it doesn't hold up against a comparison with Paul's writings. Pullman says in the interview that:

"I also read Acts and the Epistles and I was intrigued to see how much more Paul was occupied by Christ than by Jesus. I found this very interesting, and wanted to tell a story emphasising the separate qualities of Jesus and Christ, so I decided to make them into two characters."

So why is it that Paul, from whom supposedly we get this idea of the Christ character, speaks so clearly against all of the things described (for example, Paul makes it clear that the gospel is for everyone; speaks against gathering wealth to oneself; etc - indeed, Martin Luther's revolt against the Roman Catholic church came from reading Paul!). Paul seems to write with the voice of Pullman's Jesus character! For the record, I feel that the New Testament character who speaks most like "Christ" is actually Simon Peter, the apostle (and supposed author of 1 & 2 Peter of the Epistles).

In Gethsemane, this Jesus has a crisis of faith: he rails against a God whom, he feels, hasn't heard his pleas, hasn't communicated with him - doesn't exist, as far as he can tell. "You're making a liar out of me." he pleads to Heaven, "You've gone away, haven't you, you've abandoned us." I don't know if Pullman meant it this way - the chapter goes on to give a fair account of what I understand to be atheist spirituality - but it seems to me that Jesus, who gave up his career as a carpenter to devote himself to God and to teaching God's Kingdom, on reaching the conclusion that there is no God, would feel that his life has been a sham up to that point, and worthless. I can easily see how he might - when faced with the contrast between other people's expectations of him and his own loss of faith, might want to go out in a blaze of glory: that is, a vainglorious "suicide by cop". Pullman repeatedly through the novel substitutes "That's what you say" where in the Gospels Jesus says "It is as you say". When it comes to the trial, though - the only reason for doing this that I can find in the novel's character of Jesus is that he does not want to be acquitted: he wants to be sentenced to death. Similarly, if he is no longer preaching God's Kingdom then why would he refuse to let his followers defend him when the people came to arrest him? Only because he was expecting to be arrested and wants to be arrested, and presumably wants to be put to death.

To me, this was the single most poignant moment of reading the book, when I realised that. The second most poignant is when the Christ character realises he's been trapped and that the stranger has lied to him - but there's no way out now but to abandon any hope of any good coming from any of it (and of course, in my opinion no good can come of it; that's the elegant evil of the Devil character's trap for the Christ character).

So it passes, in the novel, that Jesus is nailed to a cross, and dies. Then his twin carries through the stranger's plan to get people believing that there has been a resurrection, even though "Christ" understands now that he has been deceived at least in one thing (and if in one, then why not others?) but that the only way Jesus can have any legacy at all (so he believes, having been deceived by the stranger) is for this plan to be carried out regardless.

The novel closes with a coda: Pullman talks about how the story develops and changes as it is repeated and spread around. Then, of course, "Christ" is given a final commission from the stranger, but one that he already is predisposed towards: to write up the "official" version of the story.

But as Christ sat and watched the stranger eating his bread and pouring himself some more wine, he couldn't help thinking of the story of Jesus, and how he could improve it.

...

There were a hundred details that could add verisimilitude. He knew, with a pang that blended guilt and pleasure, that he had already made some of them up.

The Christ character is torn between the realisation that the Jesus character's criticisms may in fact be true, but also the need to make something good come of it - and the pleasure of making a finished product of the messy raw material that life presents: the pleasure of making it into a story.

The body of faithful, the church, as he calls it, will do every kind of good, I hope so, I believe so, I must believe so, and yet I fear it'll do terrible things as well in its zeal and self-righteousness . . . Under its authority, Jesus will be distorted and lied about and compromised and betrayed over and over again. A body of the faithful? It was a body of the faithful that decided for a dozen good reasons to hand him over to the Romans. And here am I, my hands red with blood and shame and wet with tears, longing to begin telling the story of Jesus, and not just for the sake of making a record of what happened: I want to play with it; I want to give it better shape; I want to know the details together neatly to make patterns and show correspondences, and if they weren't there in life, I want to put them there in the story, for no other reason than to make a better story.

I suppose I should just leave it there. For these words could be as much about what Pullman does with the story in the Gospels, as much as it is about what Pullman's character does in the novel. But one thing I find interesting from reading my study Bible: the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are very similar, to the point where direct "borrowing" from one another is suspected: one theory is that Mark was a source used by both Luke and Matthew. Another theory says that there was a single common source from which all three synoptic Gospels drew. The neat thing with Pullman's novel is that his story describes what that source was!

***

Conclusion:

I feel that Pullman's writing here gets caught between too many different ideas, as though he is trying to say too much for the material to support in one go. He has a cynical view of organised religion and wants to put that across (which results, I think, in the Devil-like qualities of the stranger character). He wants to talk about these two different sides of the Jesus character in the Gospels, and the way in which St Paul seems to prefer one to the other. He wants to tell "a story about how stories become stories". He wants to tell versions of Gospel parables the way he thinks they should have been.

But each of these different approaches interferes with and trips over some of the others. The sleeve notes of the novel say that it "asks the reader questions that will continue to resonate long after the final page is turned." But for me, the strongest questions were always "Why did the author do it like that?" Maybe this is because I have already studied the questions that Pullman was asking and reached my answers through study and faith. But also, I feel it is because of this collision of the author's different objectives.

As atheist commentaries on the Bible go, I think it has a lot more going for it than most, and the fact that it is framed clearly as fiction ("This is a STORY") and not a real theory of what really happened, mean that I don't feel offended by Pullman's thoughts.

This is already a very long post; but I feel that I could devote a post of commentary to each chapter of Pullman's book, and probably end up writing more words about it than are in the novel! There are good questions raised, that could have great discussion drawn from them (as I said, I already know what I feel my answers are, and the temptation is to spend more time than I can spare on explaining all of them!) but I think that I shall have to let them be.