Tag: Philip Pullman

by Scott Korb

Whether he intended it or not Philip Pullman has written, most recently, a religious story. And insofar as The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a religious story, as the title suggests it is a Christian one. (Though, it’s true, as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said, the Gospels—especially Mark’s—are better, even on Pullman’s own terms). In some ways, Pullman’s title, which alone suggests the book’s supposed scandal, says it all. Not Jesus Christ, or even Jesus the Christ, but Jesus AND Christ, twin brothers borne of Mary, who was, in yet another supposed scandal to Christians, seduced by a figure calling himself an “an angel,” who “in order not to frighten her … had assumed the appearance of a young man, just like the one of the young men who spoke to her by the well.”

So, enough about Philip Pullman.

By their nature, religious stories self-complicate. Take the Gospels, just for example, which all tell similar stories “according to” someone or another—Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, say, names that attached themselves to the early Christian communities who wrote and kept these Gospels in the wake of Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 C.E. Continue Reading →