Elizabeth Finch: A novel

by Julian Barnes

Julian deliberately refers to Christians as “Galileans” and Christ as “the Nazarene” to make their origins and beliefs sound more parochial. He sees the religion not as a development of Judaism but a perversion of it—so great a perversion that Judaism and Hellenism are closer to one another than either is to Christianity. Julian himself “reveres” the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—who were Chaldeans; further, Abraham, like the Hellenes, believed in animal sacrifices, divination from shooting stars, and auguries from the flight of birds. The foundation myth of the Galileans, the story of the Garden of Eden, is “wholly fabulous” according to Julian; also, entirely unfair to Adam and Eve, since God knew exactly what was going to happen—the divine thumb was on the scales. As for the Ten Commandments, they have “nothing unique about them,” except for the laws concerning monotheism and keeping the Sabbath. The idea of God being “jealous” is “a terrible libel upon God.” Why would any reasonable person revere a punitive, control-freak deity who despises us and visits the sins of the fathers upon their children? Julian regards all this as juvenile and half-formed: “But all these are partial conceptions, and unworthy of divinity ... the commandment Thou Shalt Not Worship Other Gods is calumniating divinity in a very high degree.” In defiance of their own Apostles, the Galileans have raised Jesus to the level of a god. They venerate the bones of martyrs, which is “peculiarly Christi...