Review of Pullman, The Good Man Jesus ...

THE GOOD MAN JESUS and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman is reviewed by Edward Keenan in Eyeweekly.com and gets five stars. Excerpt:

Jesus, may be the good man, but he’s also the troublemaker, a revolutionary with a conflicted conscience motivated by purity and love but prone to tempestuous emotional outbursts. Christ, meanwhile, is well-behaved; a quiet, often invisible scribe who is inspired by his brother but cannot stomach disorder. The scoundrel writes the good man’s story for posterity, shaping it to the needs not of a rebellion but of an institution that will last millennia.

Through the two, we see how revolutions of freedom lead to well-intentioned tyranny, how the aims of goodness are at odds with both popularity and longevity — above all, Pullman shows how stories are made, how narrative is (and, perhaps, must be) imposed to declare meaning, how the competing demands of “the facts” and “the truth” corrupt.

Earlier coverage is here.