Unless The Devil Is The Devil, God Cannot Be God
A clever and irreverent look at Christianity.
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a funny and skeptical insight at religion and a mighty frivolous God; a profound work in the form of a well known story, told by Jesus himself.
Written by José Saramago, my favorite atheist and one of the best authors I've had the pleasure to read, this is a book as current now as it may have been two thousand years ago, when its protagonist roamed all over Palestine.
Despite his atheism, this Portuguese, who won the Nobel Prize in 1998 at the age of 76, clearly demonstrates his knowledge of Scripture and Christian history.
The Gospel uses Saramago's peculiar way of telling stories, an entertaining narrative thread with quoteless dialogues, full of wit, with characters who seem to be gossiping; telling us things that we aren't supposed to know. Simple but engaging.
The book begins like all gospels, with a young married couple, Joseph and Mary, going to register for the census at Bethlehem. They and baby Jesus are living in a cave outside the town while Joseph works in the reconstruction of the temple in near-by Jerusalem.
There, the deeply religious Joseph hears about Herod's plans of slaughter of children and quickly acts to save his family, but forgets completely of warning others in Bethlehem. This event will completely change the life of Joseph and his son, and it's here that Saramago's magic starts to shine.
The author has said that the "possibility of the impossible” is the subject of his books. He's a man who never stops asking “what if...”, and Joseph's fate in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a clear example of that.
When Jesus grows he starts a journey to find the meaning of his life. He will spend some years as a shepherd apprentice with Pastor, a man who doesn't wear in black but it's easy to guess who he is, and later will meet Mary Magdalene, who will become a very important part of his life.
There's a point when Jesus seems to be happy, wishing to have a normal life to enjoy it with those he cares about, but his other father, the absolutely powerful one, has prepared something drastically different for him.
Jesus eventually meets God and discovers that he can perform miracles, more than enough to realize he's not just another Palestinian. It's a tragic and confusing moment for young Jesus.
In one of the most thrilling episodes of the novel, Jesus meets God and Satan on a misty lake. There, God explains his master plan, what is the purpose of Jesus' sacrifice. The son of God must die to conquer religious domination in the world. Millions more will have to die over the centuries in the Crusades, the Inquisition and a myriad of other saint wars (and perhaps a few thousands in planes crashing with big buildings) to fulfill daddy's stupid game.
Religion as the ultimate weapon of mass control.
One has to be God to countenance so much blood
Saramago needs a few more pages to list some of the horrible deaths that God foresees; the martyrs of religion. Satan needs just a sentence: "… the end justifies the means." Devil and God seem to be a couple of good 'ol pals pretending to be otherwise, with the former being, not surprise here, quite charismatic.
Jesus' life is terribly transformed. What a son of God's got to do? What a good man's got to do?
In his 2003 book Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, U.S. literary critic Harold Bloom declared Saramago "the most gifted novelist alive". After reading The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is hard to disagree.
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Submitted by alexis on Tue, 2006-09-05 04:23. Find more books
Christians won't laugh
But it's a great novel. I think the Catholic church excomulgated Saramago or something like that. I don't know why, he's an atheist anyway. I don't think he cared about it.
I enjoyed the devil, the guy seems to be telling always the true.