The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

by Philip Pullman

Christ clapped his hands, and at once the sparrows came alive and flew away. The people were amazed.

He knew his spy was trustworthy, because occasionally he checked the man’s report by asking others what Jesus had said here, or done there, and found always that his informant was strictly accurate.

Christ knew as he wrote it down that, for all its unfairness, people would remember that story much longer than they’d remember a legal definition.

he knew it would be another of those sayings of Jesus that would be better as truth than as history.

‘I’m not Jesus,’ said Christ. ‘I’m his brother.’

authorised by their law,

commands us to

Perfection does not belong here; we can only have an image of perfection.

There will be hands reaching out

Gross. Sounds Catholic

So he said ‘I can see now. It’s better that one man should die than that all these good things should never come about.

‘But his legs weren’t broken!’ said another. ‘I heard it from one of the women! He died when a soldier stuck a spear into his side!’

‘I never heard that,’ said another. ‘I heard they broke his legs first of all, before they did the other two. They always break their legs . . .’

I shall leave you a sign, and here it is: just as the bread has to be broken before you can eat it, and the wine has to be poured before you can drink, so I had to die in one life before I rose again in another. Remember me as often as you eat and drink.

they even managed some healing miracles, or at least things happened that could be reported as miracles.

At first he was Jesus, simply; but then he began to be called Jesus the Messiah, or Jesus the Christ; and later still it was simply Christ.

So whatever had really happened, the story came to say that he died from the thrust of a Roman spear, his bones remaining unbroken.

Christ himself, of course, had made so little mark on the world that no one confused him with Jesus, because it was so easy to forget that there had been two of them.

he was working as a maker of nets.

‘Martha,’ said Christ, ‘this is the man I told you about. But he has never told me his name.’

That little ritual you invented,’ the stranger said as Christ broke the bread, ‘has been a great success. Who would have thought that inviting Jews to eat flesh and drink blood would be so popular?’

must guard that love and teaching night and day, to keep it pure and not let it be corrupted by misunderstanding. It would be unfortunate, for example, if people came to read some of his sayings as a call to political action;

Spirituality is something we are well equipped to discuss.’

But as Christ sat and watched the stranger eating his bread and pouring himself more wine, he couldn’t help thinking of the story of Jesus, and how he could improve it.