Neither Kazantzakis nor the book was unknown to Scorsese. Ten years earlier, a Greek émigré and fellow NYU student, John Mavros, urged him to read a novel that had just been published in English translation. The Last Temptation of Christ, he asserted, revealed the humanity of Jesus like no other book. “This is the right way to do a film about Christ, this is the right story,” Mavros kept saying excitedly.
