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Gospel According to Jesus Christ

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The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

Let's get this warning written upfront first...if you are a born again Christian or in any other way easily offended by an unorthodox and even blasphemous portrait of one of the most revered and worshiped figures in human history, skip this book entirely. Saramago is not exactly an atheist, but he is a skeptic, and this is a skeptic's look at the Gospels. Saramago plays fast and loose with the canonical Gospel accounts of the life of Christ to create something very different than the comfortable picture of Christ most of us have grown up with. And to my mind, the questions that Saramago raises in his book are good ones, ones that every sincere person of faith should ask. They are not questions that can break a strong faith, but they are ones that hone it and refine it.

From the first glowing chapter of this book, I was hooked. Saramago begins the work with a poetic description of the traditional icon of Christ's crucifixion. But from that moment, he wanders far from the Gospel accounts. The first half of the book concerns the events of Christ's birth and boyhood. Joseph, by not warning the citizens of Bethlehem of the murder of the innocents, incurs a bloodguilt that he cannot absolve except by his own mistaken death on the cross years later. This death of his earthly father along with the accompanying sense of bloodguilt haunts the young Jesus and sends him off on a journey to find his own true purpose in life. He spends years as a shepherd apprentice with a man named Pastor who ultimately is the Devil. He meets and falls in love with Mary Magdelene, with whom he lives without the benefit of marriage. He discovers his amazing powers healing and miracle working long before he has any idea of how he is to use them. All through this section, familiar passages from the Gospels such as the calling of the disciples, the walking on the water, and the feeding of the five thousand are presented in unfamiliar guises. Finally, in the last chapter, all of the events of the canonical gospels are condensed into a searing climax.

Saramago has a talent for grasping the logical contradictions in Christian faith, though he seems blind to the spiritual depth that lies behind these contradictions. Saramago senses the great paradox between the "all good" God and the need for the atonement of His Son. Saramago's portrait of God is almost a caricature. God is bombastic, greedy for worship and power, and ultimately vain. In many ways, Saramago's version of God resembles the Demiurge of the Gnostics or the Urizen of William Blake....a petty creator god who wants the whole deal for himself. And in Pastor, Saramago creates a devil who's biggest motivator is compassion for the plight of humanity. At times, these characters approach broad comedy. And yet, Saramago is skillful in his handling of language, so that even the most satirical moments have a bittersweet undertone.

Throughout the novel, Saramago's prose is brilliant, approaching poetry. Yet it is simple and once you get past the idiosyncratic punctuation, the lines flow beautifully. For language alone, this novel is a wonderful read. Add to that the wealth of historical detail, vivid characterizations and searching questions and this is a novel that challenges the reader to think hard and respond deeply. Saramago's questions challenge Christians, but to my mind they don't break the faith. In fact, a faith that can't stand up to a little blasphemy is not much of a faith at all.

"The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" is going to offend a lot of people and one can understand on reading it why it sent the Vatican into a terminal fit. Taken on its merits, it's an awesome work of scholarship by a writer with a deep knowledge of the life of Christ, Christian and Jewish theology and biblical literature. Saramago gives us a Christ that is all too fallible; he's human, after all, as well as divine; a Joseph whose sin of omission in saving his own child from Herod's assassins while failing to warn other parents of the imminent slaughter of the innocents was expiated by his own death on a cross that foreshadowed the death of his son; a Mary who doubted her son's divinity, and a Mary Magdalene who relieved Jesus of his virginity and remained totally faithful to him afterwards, bodily and spiritually, up to the end. Even more disturbing for some readers will be Saramago's depiction of God as a master manipulator, pulling the strings behind the scenes, needing the devil as a foil for his own glory because he knows that without the devil, his glory is diminished. What kind of God is this?

One can't help but wonder, while reading this book, what was Saramago trying to say to us? Is the book a testimony to his own cynicism and atheism, or does Saramago believe in God and Jesus Christ in spite of himself? Because his subject, Jesus as Man/God, comes out as eminently sympathetic, likeable, sometimes irritating, always fascinating; unlike the remote, other-worldly Jesus of Sunday school, Saramago's Jesus is someone we can relate to. And Saramago's God echoes the question all of us have asked from time to time -- how can a benevolent God create a world in which the innocent are allowed to suffer? It's Saramago's suggestion that perhaps God himself can't answer that one, that may disturb so many readers of this book.

Saramago's writing style has been called convoluted, but it wasn't difficult at all for this reader; his paragraphs may go on for pages, but he writes with a sweep and flow that wraps the reader up and carries him or her right along with the narrative. "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" is totally enveloping; one turns the final page and emerges slightly dazed at having been through a reading experience that blows both the mind and the senses.

I read Saramago's "Gospel" more than a month ago, and it continues to haunt my imagination. Pick it up. Scan the pages. You'll probably think this is a forbidding work, written in dense, often pages-long, paragraphs, with lengthy stretches of run-together dialogue uninterrupted by paragraph indentations or white space. But begin reading, and all hesitation melts away. The writing is stately, scriptural in diction, careful of every nuance. Saramago's original Portuguese, movingly translated into English by Giovanni Pontiero, creates a convincing "gospel voice"--rendered from an ambiguous, perhaps "omniscient," perspective-to portray Jesus of Nazareth in a startlingly new, and believable, way. And into this narrative Saramago adds credible, plausibly motivated, portraits of Joseph, Mary, James "the Brother of Jesus," as well as of both the Deity and the Demon. And, of course, Mary of Magdala.

What could a Portuguese atheist (and, perhaps less relevantly, Communist) have to say about the life of Jesus? Don't presume a thing. Simply read, slowly. What will first be apparent is that Saramago respects your intelligence and the sources, and he has done his homework in speculating on how the historical gaps might be filled in: he knows the New Testament, has studied the "Gnostic Gospels" of NT apocrypha, has read his Josephus and other near-contemporary accounts of the "Jewish Wars" and first-century Palestine, and seems familiar with the scholarly Jesus Seminar findings. You will then note the expected traces of irony--sometimes fired from unexpected directions--but here deployed surprisingly to draw out the humanity of Jesus's nature and, in my view, to lure the reader into an early misreading of the author's intent. Indeed, the spell Saramago creates throughout the novel's first half issues from what seems a predictably humanistic, psychological point of view. That changes. But I don't feel I can say any more about the direction Saramago takes his story without spoiling for others what was for me a surprising and thrilling narrative transformation, with a string of unexpected, powerful payoffs.

Nor can I pretend to say with any confidence that I know which readers Saramago's novel will appeal to most. Each will find Saramago's telling of the Jesus story challenging in his or her own way. What I can do, though, is encourage you-if Saramago's stature as a Nobel laureate is insufficiently encouraging-to keep an open mind, read the book, and ponder the philosophical and theological questions raised in an unforgettable work of literary art.

2,000 years in, and a vast portion of our world's population is still enchanted by the idea that a storybook prince is the one and only conduit to God and that anyone outside of that system can go to hell. Saramago, Portugal's premier cynic and atheist, leaves his cynicism and atheism slightly beneath the surface, but only slightly. Jesus is a wonderful and extremely engaging figure in this charming, though slightly belated retelling. It is the figure of God himself who is the dubious party, calling into existence this mad sequence of events, knowing full well the repercussions over the next few thousand years. Saramago transfers the somewhat impish Yahweh of the Original Testament into the Gospels, and everything seems fairly Last Temptation-ish until the last 50 or so pages, when Saramago's acid begins to bleed through. His archaic language seems just right for the time and place, and his highly idiosyncratic use of paragraph and punctuation is peculiar at first but quite easy to get used to. The extended 3-way conversation between Christ, God, and the Devil is an astonishing writerly feat--at once humorous and heartbreaking, and perfectly sets up Saramago's unexpected finale. If you are not one who worships the Gospels as divine scripture, and wouldn't be offended by a freer, more psychological portrait of Christ, then this is a fine read.

One of my favorite novels of all time. Even in translation, Saramago's book manages to be powerful, instructive, humorous, and inspiring - and in some ways more beautiful and tragic than the original telling in the Good Book itself. TGATJC is written as a more literal and objective version of the New Testament, where the characters' thoughts and motives are the core focus of the story. Jesus is for the most part an unwilling participant in God's greater plans to 'advertise' himself, and stuggles with the revelation that he is indeed the 'lamb of God.' Throughout the book, Jesus explores his humanity through making friendships, finding love, and conversing with the devil. The true beauty of the work is Saramago's ability to heighten your sympathy and compassion for Christ by presenting him as a far less 'perfect' being, one who is much easier to identify with. The conversation between Christ, God and the Devil is definitely a highlight of the story, and many of the ideas discussed were both eye opening and rather frightening. Saramago provides some very interesting thoughts on the purpose of religion, the morality of Satan and the personal motives of God himself. This book is written in the same vein as Satanic Verses, so beware if you're easily offended by alternative presentations of religious ideology.

José Saramago is one of the all-time greatest writers of portuguese language, along with Machado de Assis and Guimarães Rosa. He deservedly won the Nobel Prize a few years ago, the first portuguese-language writer to achieve such honor. Saramago has a unique style of writing, with very long sentences, fast dialogues inserted in the middle of the phrases, little punctuation and a fluid narrative. And yet, it's not difficult to read Saramago, at least not in his original language.

After reading "Baltazar and Blimunda" ("O memorial do convento", original title), I went after everything fictional Saramago has written. In my opinion, his imagination, his talent to write prose and his skills at telling a story leave the reader no option but to be completely absorbed by the letters, the words, the paragraphs and the pages. "The gospel according to Jesus Christ" ("O evengelho segundo Jesus Cristo", original title) is another example of how good and original Saramago can be.

Saramago, a declared atheist, provides us, mere mortals, with a different view of Jesus' life. For example, Mel Gibson's movie "The passion of the Christ", chose to portrait Jesus' death, with graphic violence, torturing scenes, and many tears - and that's the usual nowadays association; people relate to violence, to dualism and manicheism. "The gospel according to Jesus Christ", instead, is Saramago's story of what Jesus' life could have been. The book portraits Jesus as a very common human being, literally burdened by a covenant with God. Philosophical and theological discussions are present in every page, not in a mechanical, boring way, but always with witty, inteligent remarks by the author. The dualism is still present, but it leaves room to discussion.

"The gospel according to Jesus Christ" is a polemic, different work, but a mandatory reading nonetheless.

Grade 9.4/10

Of all the Saramago books I've read so far "Blindness" had the most impact and, for me, was unputdownable - 100% recommend that book. I would say that this book comes second "most enjoyable".
I'm not a christian, probably closer to agnostic/buddhist than anything so it was with some tredpidation that I bought this one. Was Saramago going to ram the JC story down my throat? Was he going to ridicule it? Neither.
His interpretation of the story is most enjoyable. Obviously God plays a role and bestows various miracles but for the most part Saramago presents some very interesting and plausible ideas for Jesus' actions. Various miracles are portrayed as commonplace events and it's only through the annals of history and the interpretation by various self-serving denominations that they've been turned in to miracles.
The story flows well, and yes Saramago foregoes the use of speech marks etc. but I have to say that the story is none the worse for it - I found it refreshing for someone to break some of the rules of grammar. After all who the heck said that we have to use punctuation anyway? You may have to engage brain to determine who is saying what...so? 100% recommended even for those folks that aren't of a religious mindset. Very enjoyable.

Because this book (translated by Giovanni Pontiero) seems so different from the other Saramagos I have read (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)... well, it makes me wish I could read the original version. Really.
All this aside, the book only solidifies my previous conviction that Saramago is the best living author in the world today.
For die-hard Christian biblical literalists TGATJC will come down hard, like a spike in the foot, for sure. At times it may seem downright blasphemous.
But the "fact" remains that much of Jesus's earthly life is in the realm of obscurantism, biblically and otherwise. There is much about him that we do not KNOW! Theologically speaking, Saramago definitely presents and elaborates upon what is known as a "Christology from below" (that which emphasizes the humanity, the human nature of Christ) as opposed to a "Christology from above" (that which would emphasize the divinity of Christ). Saramago's Jesus BECOMES the Christ. It is significant that in the novel, nowhere is he called Christ, except in the title of the book.
It is a profound and engaging exploration of the self-realization of Jesus of Nazareth. Not meant to be a comparative text to the Bible, nor meant to replace the Bible. An account, written by one who is definitely familiar with the Bible, yet does not subscribe to a personal faith in its tenets. He is avowedly atheist.
Some Christian readers would be summarily offended by this book. Others, like myself, (a Christian) would not. Statistically speaking, I would not recommend it as the next selection for the Women's Aglow book club!

It is a stretch, yes. But all proper exercise begins with a few stretches.
I found it to be positively invigorating.
T.y.L.i.I.

A great book, both for open minded believers and non-believers. It tells the story of Jesus life in a prosaic way. It is a story about life, death and fate. According to the author Jesus is more a man then a God and, like any other man, many times doesn't understand God's reasons but, although he tries, he can't oppose to God's will. There is a long dialog among Jesus, God and the Devil, the three of them on a boat surrounded by mist, which is very intense. In many parts it is strongly ironical and very witty. Some description are really accurate and full of details. It is a book that, after being read, leaves the reader with something to think about.

Everyone compares this book to "The Last Temptation of Christ," but I found it closer in spirit to Timothy Findley's "Not Wanted on the Voyage," especially in its fusion of compassion with grim realism and clear-eyed awareness of what organized religion is really all about. It's beautifully written (although I'm sure the translation falls far short of the original), and the characters are so vividly realized that the reader genuinely cares about them and grieves at their tragedies. Saramago plays off the familiarity of the story to surprise us continually. And, in spite of the story's inevitable tragic ending, he manages to make a powerful statement about human spiritual integrity, vs. what a religion (as an institution) tries to make of it. (As a footnote, I'm a former Catholic raised in a strongly Portuguese community, so I know exactly where Saramago was coming from!) A very well-deserved Nobel Prize.