The Gospel According to Jesus Christ     by José Saramago, Translated by Giovanni Pontiero Original title: O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo Original language: Portuguese Country: Portugal   Published by Harvill Pub. Date: September 2, 1999 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 341 pages ISBN: 1860466842 List Price: £8.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £5.59 Published by Harvest Pub. Date: September 1994 Pub. Place: USA Format: Hardcover, 396 pages Dimensions: 1.47 x 9.30 x 6.34 inches ISBN: 0156001411 List Price: $14.00 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.20

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This book assumes an honourable place among works of fiction exploring or using the life of Christ. It doesn’t attempt the eyewitness feeling of Henryk Panas’ The Gospel According to Judas; it lacks the visionary intensity of the account in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita; nor is it concerned with the inner or spiritual meaning of events like Michel Tournier’s The Four Wise Men. Although there are elements of all these in Saramago’s version, its substance is very different: an unflinching anatomy of religion, and Christianity in particular, as mass psychosis.

To this end, Jesus appears as a sensitive, sane and fully human man who is already questioning aspects of Judaism, especially its reliance on sacrifice, in his early life. As Saramago comments on the Temple in Jerusalem, ‘Anyone witnessing the scene would have to be a saint in order to understand how God could condone this appalling carnage if He is, as He claims, the Father of all men and beasts.’ (p68)

Saramago treats Jesus, and his contemporaries, tenderly and with great compassion. The account of Jesus’ and Mary Magadelene’s meeting and first lovemaking, for example, is simultaneously erotically charged and very moving. There are also nice touches of humour: ‘Jesus told the adulteress, Go, and sin no more, but deep down he had grave doubts.’ (p267)

With God, however, Saramago is merciless. His God is a psychotic despot who ‘does not forgive the sins He makes us commit,’ (p117) and for whom ‘No salvation suffices, yet condemnation is final.‘(p203) When Jesus points out that ‘Being God, You must know everything, Up to a certain point, only up to a certain point, What point is that, The point where it starts to become interesting to pretend that I know nothing...’ (p279)

In two momentous encounters, the first in the desert and the second years later in an offshore fog, God tricks and bullies Jesus into becoming a martyr and victim in order for Him to become not merely the god of the Jews but a universal god:

‘...My son, man is a piece of wood that can be used for everything, from the moment he’s born until the moment he dies, he’s always ready to obey, send him there and he goes, tell him to halt and he stops, tell him to turn back and he retreats, whether in peace or in war, man, generally speaking, is the best thing that could have happened to the gods, And the wood from which I’m made, since I’m a man, what use will it be put to, since I’m Your son, You will be the spoon I shall dip into humanity and bring out laden with men who shall believe in the new god I intend to become, Laden with men You will devour, There’s no need for Me to devour those who devour themselves.’ p284