The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
by Jose Saramago
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jose SaramagoTranslator: Giovanni Pontiero
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-09-28
ISBN: 0156001411
Number of pages: 396
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Book Review: Father Figures
Summary: 5 Stars
IGNORE THE MISATTRIBUTION ABOVE; THIS IS A BOOK BY JOSE SARAMAGO!
Sons look up to their fathers and try to emulate them. They also defy them, striking out on their own, or attempting to do so. Why should this be any different in the case of the young Jesus Christ? This amazing novel by Nobel prizewinner José Saramago asks just this question, concentrating on a time-frame largely passed over in the Bible, the adolescence and young manhood of Jesus, although several familiar events occur out of their gospel sequence.
There is something compelling about reading a story whose general outlines are well known but whose details are totally fresh. The suspense comes from waiting to see, not what happens next, but HOW it happens. It is a tradition as old as bardic times, when audiences might hear GILGAMESH, the ILIAD, or BEOWULF, and marvel at the familiar events being told in new ways. It demands the existence of an accepted canon, fixed in outline but variable in detail. And it also requires that the stories should touch upon something deeply important, the religious beliefs of a people. It may be a shock to think of the life of Jesus Christ in these terms, but the many gospels, biblical and otherwise, certainly provide variations on the common theme, and the religious implications are indisputable. When I picked up a copy of Saramago's retelling of the story, I intended just to use it for reference, but I found myself reading from beginning to end, enthralled.
It is hard to talk objectively of a religious book, since different readers will be affected by what they bring to it. This is a novel, a very free retelling of the story that will be anathema to fundamentalists. But every page shines with the belief that religion matters and divinity exists; it is not a book for atheists either. I myself come to it from a strong religious upbringing which changed in my twenties to what I can only call an interested agnosticism. I also read it immediately after two other books: Saramago's DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS, which broke my fear of this challenging author, and Philip Pullman's THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST, which tells the story of Jesus entirely in human terms, rejecting the miracles and apocalyptic elements as inventions of the Christian church. I knew from DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS that Saramago had little patience with the work of the church, and rejects a God who can allow such death and bloodshed in his name and do nothing to intervene. One chapter in THE GOSPEL has God listing in alphabetical detail all the martyrdoms that would befall the saints of the church, not to mention the horrors of the crusades and the inquisition.
But I leap ahead. Judging from the beginning of the book, which dispenses with the virginity of Mary and places Jesus and his siblings in the midst of a normally squabbling family, I had thought that Saramago would also present an entirely human Jesus. But his context is emphatically a religious one, contrasting two opposing strands. There is the complex system of observances in which Jesus would have been brought up as a devout Jew. And Mary (who, as a woman, is marginalized in religious law) receives mysterious visits from an angel who leaves minor miracles in his wake. Angel of God, or messenger of the Devil? Saramago leaves the matter open, and continues to do so. Jesus spends four years as apprentice to a shepherd known only as Pastor, whose true nature is ambiguous until the end. Even in the conversation between God and Jesus referred to above, Satan appears as a third participant, on friendly terms with God and joining in from time to time. Indeed, Satan often seems the more attractive of the two.
Saramago's Jesus will have several fathers. First and most obviously Joseph, who is treated with unusual detail here as a vigorous and competent man burdened by guilt because of one original sin -- that, knowing of Herod's intended massacre of the innocents, he used his knowledge to save only his own family without warning his neighbors. Saramago parallels Joseph's life to that of Jesus in uncanny ways, even down to his death at the same age. When Jesus learns the circumstances of his birth, he too is assailed by guilt. It is now that he meets Pastor, who becomes like a second father to him, presiding as he drops the strict Jewish observances in favor of a more humanistic morality; there is a significant occasion when Jesus refuses to kill the lamb he has been given for the Passover sacrifice. His apprenticeship ends when he meets his third and true father, God. Now fully a man, he meets Mary Magdalene and lives with her for the rest of his life. He also begins the series of miracles recorded in the gospels, though not yet understanding where his powers come from. In a second meeting enshrouded in mists in the middle of the Sea of Gennaseret, God makes clear what he wants of him: nothing less than the foundation of the Catholic Church through his son's example and sacrifice. But when Jesus realizes the horrors that will ensue, he tries to defy God by bringing about his own death, not as the Son of God but as King of the Jews -- a claim designed to force the Romans to execute him on political grounds. He fails, of course, in secularizing his role; and for good or ill, the rest is history.
Summary of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
A wry, fictional account of the life of Christ by Nobel laureate José Saramago
A brilliant skeptic, José Saramago envisions the life of Jesus Christ and the story of his Passion as things of this earth: A child crying, the caress of a woman half asleep, the bleat of a goat, a prayer uttered in the grayish morning light. His idea of the Holy Family reflects the real complexities of any family, and?as only Saramago can?he imagines them with tinges of vision, dream, and omen. The result is a deft psychological portrait that moves between poetry and irony, spirituality and irreverence of a savior who is at once the Son of God and a young man. In this provocative, tender novel, the subject of wide critical discussion and wonder, Saramago questions the meaning of God, the foundations of the Church, and human existence itself.
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