Customer Reviews

Behold The Man

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Excuse me for sailing under the above flag of convenience. It's one of my jokier pseudonyms. Thanks for the kind review -- but I'm surprised to learn I've 'struggled with addiction'. I'm probably the least addicted or addictive person I know! I'm better known amongst my friends for my abstinence. I'm very boring, I fear. I know it's fashionable to have struggled with addictions, these days, and you can scarcely have any authority with your audience unless you haven't, but I'm sorry to say I come from a family of non-addicts. My mother gave up smoking the day they published the first statistics that it was harmful and I followed not long after! I enjoy a glass of good wine on occasion. I even tend to change my regular routes to town out of boredom. My point in writing Behold the Man was not, indeed, to offend Christians. I've actually had some great reviews in the Christian press and enjoyed fine correspondence with people of religion. I was interested in my character 'imitating Christ' -- making Christ's journey when he discovered that Jesus was not the historical figure described in the Bible. When I conceived Behold the Man (at Easter 1966) I had no wish to offend, no argument with believers, merely an interest in the processes which created one of the world's greatest religions.

It has been called many things, but most often it is called BLASPHEMOUS and HERETICAL. I say "Yes, but only incidentally." On the surface BEHOLD THE MAN is another time-travel story. Beneath that surface this book is a coral reef of ideas and issues pertaining to that elusive creature, MAN. MAN's need for history to determine his purpose and the ablility to tailor history to his own needs. MAN's need to Love and to be Loved. MAN's scientific advances vs. MAN's religious foundations. As grand in scope as these concepts are, they are only the beginning. This is one of the greatest books of all time and a must read for any serious student of human nature.

Imagine being a time-traveller who goes back in time to meet Jesus of Nazareth. How would you react? For Karl Glogauer, this is just what happens. But it turns out things aren't what Karl expected. The simple carpenter's son is exactly that - simple. A grinning, salivating imbecile, who can only say his own name with a moronic giggle.

This is one of the funniest books about time travel I have read. It's about disillusionment, finding yourself, trying to work out who you are, and making amends. Karl Glogauer is a man full of social failings. A victim who is mixed up, confused and uncertain. The problem is he hates himself, and can't accept the good things other people see in him.

Before I had heard of this book I had my own theory that Jesus might have been a time traveller from the future, say the 28th century. He would have had all sorts of advanced technology to make it look like he was performing miracles, such as a pair of hover boots to make it look like he was walking on water. Or genetically modifying five loaves and two fishes to feed thousands. His claim to be the son of God would have been the ultimate hoax.

The time traveller in "Behold the Man" is from the 20th century and takes on the role of Jesus rather reluctantly. He utters prophecies that are uncannily accurate (he's read it all in a book), and he "heals" those whose afflictions are purely psychosomatic. All the quotations in the bible are based on Karl's actions. The things Karl does will be interpreted down the centuries, affecting the lives of millions.

This is a wonderfully iconoclastic work, full of mocking wit. I finished reading it the same day I bought it, it's not a very long book. It really makes you think about destiny and what we're all about.

Michael Moorcock's science fiction novel "Behold The Man" has been in release for over 20 years, and I still find it to be one of the most shocking books I have ever read. If anyone ever decides to make a film of this novel, the controversy will make the flap over "Last Temptation of Christ" look like an argument over what dish to bring to the PTA meeting. "Behold The Man" tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a man striving to find his religious identity. Intermittent flashbacks explain many of his internal conflicts as a Christian, e.g his childhood molestation by a clergyman. The opportunity to use a time machine presents itself, and Glogauer decides to travel back to meet Jesus Christ and his contemporaries. Over a period of time, he meets the characters who populated the New Testament, but they are nowhere near the people portrayed in the Bible. Many of the depictions are incredibly shocking in their utter blasphemy; I found myself gasping at every plot twist. To give away any of the details of this story would be an injustice, so I will just say that you will never look at your Bible the same way after reading this book. Moorcock won numerous awards for this novel, and I place it high on my list of favorite stories. For those who have never read Michael Moorcock, this would make a great introduction to his very eclectic body of work

The blurb on the back cover of the Carrol & Graf edition is off the mark: BEHOLD THE MAN is hardly "an hilarious fantasy-adventure", nor is it a "highly entertaining satire on modern man's tendancy to over-indulge in self enquiry". Forget all that hyphenated nonsense, because the book is made of much headier stuff. What Michael Moorcock wrote is allegory, and as such he lets loose some potent imagery. The contrast between the Gospels and what the time-traveler discovers may disturb some readers. But BEHOLD THE MAN is a PILGRIM'S PROGRESS for our neurotic age, and the redemption that awaits the self-pitying Karl Glogauer is as moving as any more conventional conversion. The final paragraph beautifully sums up the unsolvable conflict between science and religious faith. Incidentally, the means Glogauer employs to fly back through time is briefly described, but the explanation is surprisingly convincing.

SPOILER WARNING!!

Many people say this book is a satire, but I disagree. This book is dead serious! If one studies theology (as I have done), one will find out that everything we know about the beginning of Christianity is built on guesses. Christianity is one of the major religious traditions in the world, but we hardly know how it started. As Moorcock explains in this book, all our knowledge of the beginnings of Christianity (including the New Testament) could be wrong. What would be the repercussions for Christianity?

The story of the book is as brilliant as it is simple. The protagonist of the story, Karl Glogauer, returns with a time machine to the year 28 AD, to find out all about Jesus. However, due to the rough "landing", he is wounded on arrival, and is taken care of by John the Baptist and his Essene sect. As the story progresses, it turns out that John has a very special role to play...

This sounds simple, but the book is a complex and multi-layered mixture of flash-backs of Glogauer's past. The book in a sense is a psychological analysis of Glogauer's struggle to find an authentic identity, to find himself. This struggle, in which religion plays a large role, is very realistic, but is as fascinating as is the SF-part of the story. This mixture of realism and fantasy makes this simply a brilliant book!

I don't believe that Christians should be offended by this book (though of course fundamentalists and literalists will be offended by it). The book clearly is a fantasy and I believe Moorcock had no intention to ridicule the Christian faith. The book's tone is way too serious for that. However, this book does make one think: what if... What if Jesus was simply a madman? What if he isn't resurrected from the dead? What if the Christian religion turned out to be a human invention? - Would it all matter to the central message of Christianity?

Truly a fascinating book...

From an avid reader's point of view, this book is unlike any other I have read. If Albert Camus, Charles Bukowski, and Kurt Vonnegut contributed their DNA to create the ideal novella - 'Behold the Man' would be their seminal culmination. It is the perfect blend of existentialism, satire, religious rhetoric, science fiction and sexual exploration, amongst other things.

From a clergy-member's point of view, this book is...unlike any other I have read, in that it poses one of the most significant questions regarding faith and belief (one that I think Christ would compel us to ask ourselves) Does something really need to have happened for the myth surrounding it to be meaningful?

One of the various underlying themes of the book forces us to examine which is more important, legend or history?

I finished the book twice in one afternoon, enthralled with the character, the interactions, and the biblical references.

One needs not have read the Bible to enjoy this book. On the contrary, one might be inspired to read the Bible, in order to consider the possibilities that this book offers.

'Behold the Man' has quickly become one of my favorite books because of it's highly imaginative story and thought-provoking message. Several times throughout the book I was ushered into a fit of laughter, followed by a very sobering moment of reflection.

For those of Faith that consider this book a blasphemous creation, I challenge you to remember that even Christ acted and spoke in a fashion considered heresy by the religious leaders of his time.

I read this book in college, where I borrowed it from the library. Inside the front cover, someone had written the grafitto "This book is evil, it is a parody of good". Below that, another "reviewer" had scribbled the opposite: "This book is good, it is a parody of evil". I weigh in with the latter

This book was the first contraversial book I ever found interesting enough to read. I was (as a young boy raised to believe that at least the most pregnant aspects of the Jesus story were factual) shocked that someone could be so bold as to suggest that Jesus was a drooling imbecile and that Mary was the town tramp, but I read on and realized that Moorecock was not simply trying to offend, rather he was making a fairly profound statement that I think most readers of this book tend to miss and that is this: whether or not Jesus existed has no bearing on the legend of Jesus. Jesus the man could have existed or not; Jesus the Christ would have been invented regardless. Whether or not the NT documents revolve around an obscure, itinerant preacher and wonderworker in Pilate's Palestine is absolutely inconsequential to the development of the fable.

This is an (albeit fantastic) alternate explanation for the origins of the Christ legend. Let us remove the science fiction and see what Moorecock was trying to tell us:

1. Glogauer was a normal man about whom religious fanatics rallied.

2. Glogauer never made any messianic claims or pretentions until such were thrust upon him, and even then, he tried to downplay them.

3. Glogauer was considered a great rabbi, thinker and perhaps a seer when he started his career in a recently annexed backwater region in the periphery of the Roman Empire in which the prolateriate felt they were suffering greatly under Caesar.

4. Messianic expectations were running rampant at this time, with scribes and scholars pouring over the ancient scriptures and hanging their hopes on even the vaguest of allusions to the coming of the Annointed One, who they imagined would be a combination of gentle and wise King David and the Great Alexander.

5. Glogauer the strange foreigner with an unusual accent, became associated with local carpenter Joseph of the Davidian line and then confused with his son Jesus the idiot who had occasionally been thought of as a psychic.

6. Glogauer realized the embryonic myth was beginning to take shape even then and simultaneously (or in short order) realized the futility of attempting to stop it. Starting a myth or a rumor is alot like starting a forest fire.

7. Glogauer's dying words and thoughts betray the fact that he knew that his myth would grow to epic proportions after his death, not only because he literally knew the future, but because, given the events of his life since becoming a time traveller, he knew it was the next logical step in the evolution of the myth. He was far more than a martyr, he died knowing that he changed the world, and although the actual Jesus of history might not have known that he would die a man and be reborn (in fable) as a god, his followers certainly did.

These facts conspired to make a god of a normal man. I think that with the science fiction removed, Moorecock was presenting a nice alternative to the fallacious and arbitrary Lewisian "trilemma" (C.S. Lewis "Mere Christianity"). One not need suppose that Jesus was a madman, a liar or the Christ. Moorecock is telling us in a creative and rather elliptical way that Lewis's trilemma is, frankly, idiotic; that the fourth and most realistic alternative is that Jesus was a mere man about whom a myth developed. I think that Moorecock would agree with me that at the heart of the Paul Bunyan legend is an obscure lumberjack whose skills were head and shoulders above his contemporaries. Omit the fantastic and Moorecock is telling us that Jesus was either a man, a myth or a typical combination of the two.

The book itself is well written and I have read other books by this author with which I was less satisfied. I enjoyed reading it, but I did think that the character of Glogauer was depressing and a little depraved. I have known people like him, which means that he is believable. I was not too crazy about the flashback technique that Moorecock employed the first time I read this book (I was 12 then), but the second time through I got used to it and I have recently read it a third time. This last time I approached it as I would an epic poem and the two stories being told simultaneously, and then finally at the end coming together in a spectacular passion narrative spoke to me in a way that I think that Moorecock intended.

This book should be made into a movie and if I ever strike it rich, I will be the deep pockets to whomever is so bold as to take the project on. If that never happens (as if it MIGHT haha) and someone else makes it, I hope that s/he does so without bombast and without being overtly and/or gratuitously offensive. The basic concept is offensive enough isn't it?

I highly recommend this book be read by anyone interested in a damned good book. If I was Moorecock's professor in a college creative writing course, I would give him an A-

Moorcock presents us with a bold, unabashed look at one man's need for sancuary in this early work. His wry, sardonic humor and biting social commentary make this tragic tale of an eager martyr all the more compelling. Combining time travel, religious history, and the theories of Jung, this thoughtful character novel will make you think about the basis of your own beliefs for some time to come