THE FIRE GOSPEL, by Michel Faber, is reviewed in the Scotsman. Excerpt:

Although there is much to admire in The Fire Gospel, as a whole it doesn't quite ignite. Faber makes some of the Malchus material appropriately shocking (such as Jesus's last words actually being "please finish me"). The level of hysteria around the book seems a little overdone – theologians have wrestled with the lack of any mention of the resurrection in Josephus, or the meaning of the Alexamenos Graffito, or the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades, and come up with surprisingly inventive explanations without a pandemic of atheism shaking the world.

If Faber had chosen to make Theo a fraudulent memoirist, an evangelical atheist à la Dawkins, or even the author of a popular series of conservative stories about wizards, then the hype would be comprehensible. Likewise, if he'd really gone into the mental acrobatics of Christian apologists, the weirdness of Gospel narratives or the challenges of literalism, this jeu d'esprit might have been equal to his merits as a writer.

As it is, the elements of satire and provocation, superficiality and profundity pull in oddly differing directions. One minute the text is similar to Mel Gibson's The Passion, all gruesome precision of torture; then it's more akin to Life Of Brian, with Jesus loosing control of his bladder over the new disciple's face. As for Theo, who has sought popular recognition over peer-reviewed respect – by the end, his vanity is so overweening that even a comeuppance can't redeem him.

Background here.