Alternative histories of Jesus: four novels

Chagall & ChristAlternative histories of Jesus: four novels

Each of the 4 stories challenges the divinity of Jesus.  Each imagines Jesus as merely mortal; one isn’t sure but wishes he were.   The Last Temptation of Christ, probably the most well-known, I read in college.  The novel has Jesus imagining that he was a man who chose life over sacrifice. This fantasy turns out to be the Devil’s work.  I believe this misses the point of Christ’s dual nature.

The other three imagine that Jesus was fully and only human.  Judas betrays Christ because he forgets his earthly revolutionary mission and begins to imagine that he really is divine.  All miracles are explained away.  D. H. Lawrence’s Jesus is a version of the gardener in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  In it too miracles are either explained away or ignored.  The fourth book, The Testament of Mary, is in some ways the odd book out.  Originally written as a screen play, it is elegant in its simplicity.  Mary looks back on her life as Christ’s mother, and regrets that he chose the to save the world.  Better to have lived his own life, a man so talented he could have done anything.  She is skeptical about the miracles, especially his resurrection, but does not outright deny them.  They just get in the way.

All but The Last Temptation are short, novellas really.  I believe that even the most devout would benefit from reading them, for if Christ was fully man as well as fully God, then one has to say that the man side generally gets short shrift.  If he were not the son of God, the conflict between his two sides (not parts, but aspects of a whole) would have torn him apart.  It should tear us about when we think about it, but we generally don’t let it.  Each novel is fascinating reading; they were well worth my time, and I believe yours.

I’ll tell you about each book, and conclude by elaborating on the great value of the Gospels, as well as thinking about Christ as simply man, even if you believe he is more.  Here I’ll consider Ernest Renan’s influential The Life of Jesus (original 1863), which purports to be a historical, rather than Gospel based, account of the life of Jesus.  It’s not; it’s as fictional as any of the novels we examine.  I’ll explain why this is, and must be, the case.

The Books

The plot of The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis (1960) is a little confusing.  Just as gypsies are about to nail him to the cross, Christ’s guardian angel (actually an agent of Satan) steals him away and transports him to marriage with Mary Magdalene, who is stoned to death shortly after.  The widower Jesus ends up with two sisters, Mary and Hannah, with whom he enjoys a rich family life, including fathering children (pp 445-446).

Judas and other disciples confront him.  Jesus lied; he did not live up to his word to die to save the world.  Christ is torn with guilt, and at the very end awakens from his dream, accepts his mission from God, and dies with the famous words “It is accomplished” on his lips (p 496).

It is clear in the text, and clearer still in the author’s introduction, that Christ’s dying dream of living a normal human life is inspired by Satan.  His guardian angel who saves him from the cross (all illusion) is an agent of Satan.  Jesus’ experience of everyday life as deeply satisfying was a fantasy, sent by the devil.

This doesn’t seem right.   If Christ was truly all man, as well as all God, then the man part would have naturally wanted a family life, a sexual life, a normal human life.  That would be the temptation that the all-God part of him would have to overcome to fulfill his mission.   Not Satan, but Christ himself, is the tempter and the tempted.  That the last temptation is a dying delusion inspired by Satan fails as a full or honest vision of the duality of Christ’s nature.  Kazantzakis may think he is saving Christ’s authentic nature as God, but he sacrifices the mystery of the duality of Christ, the enigma that makes him so fascinating: that he is as fully human we are, while remaining God.*

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