The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

...But this is the tragedy; without the story, there will be no church, and without the church, Jesus will be forgotten... Oh, Martha, I don't know what I should do.'

' You should eat your supper', said Martha.

Part of the myth series published by Canongate, this book by Philip Pullman is already making some news. Looking at the most retold story of Jesus Christ, in a different angle, Pullman offers his version of the story. The back cover insists that "this is a story".

" I've always been fascinated by the two parts of the name of Jesus Christ, and by the difference between them. Another thing that's interested me for a long time is the way in which the Christian church began to formulate its beliefs and establish a canon of scripture: there were many more gospels than four, but why were those four chosen and others left out? When did Paul begin to write his epistles? Was what he said different from what the gospels say? Do the gospels even agree with one another? Was there a difference between Jesus and Christ? My version of the Jesus story doesn't attempt to solve these questions, but I hope readers will find it interesting " - from his website

Mary, young girl married off to an old carpenter Joseph. Joseph left the young Mary at home and was often away with his job. It was during this time a messenger came to her and told her about the divine life that is going to take shape in her womb. She was worried about the controversy, being pregnant while Joseph is away. As we all know, when the time arrived, fearing the rulers anger, Joseph takes his wife on a journey to Egypt and the give birth to Jesus in a make shift shed amongst the animals . Here is the twist to the story. Mary gave birth to twins, one was Jesus and the other Christ. The angels and the other omen pointed out Christ as the saviour of mankind. Jesus grew typical to any young boy, strong ,often naughty and hardly showing any signs of intelligence. Christ on the other hand was thin and frail, showing early signs of maturity and intellect. During the adolescent days Jesus runs away from home, and it was Christ who manages to bring him back with reasoning. The early stages of miracles were demonstrated by Christ.

However, towards baptism by John, there were changes in Jesus. He left home and spent time in the forest praying and identifying himself. As the rest of the story goes, Jesus now have a followers of himself. It was Christ who advises him on the importance of performing miracles, the need of healing the ills, the need to preach. During this time an angel in the form of stranger make an appearance to Christ and ask him to document all that is done by Jesus. Christ, follows Jesus without his knowledge and writes down all that is spoken and performed. At place where he cant reach, one of the disciple help him by recounting the events.

The rest is known to all. The growing popularity of Jesus is not welcomed by the authorities. To their dismay, Christ defeats the arguments of the Law makers at multiple times. His followers belongs to every walk of life, from whores to taxmen to the people of meagre means. Unlike the biblical story, it was Christ who betray Jesus here, Of course under the instruction form the angel. The crucification and the resurrections are then described in very realistic terms , may not be to the agreement of the believers. It was Christ , who appears in front of Mary of Magdela and to the disciples. It was his version that then discussed and spread amongst the believers.

While I am not a great fan of such novels. It leaves a lot for debates and discussions and the freedom of the writer to deviate from the known story. This book too suffers from the influence of the original. The necessity to abide by the flow of incidents that is of importance, but the need to include in his version of narration, it looses some of the initial steam in middle. However, he finishes this brilliantly. I found the passages of Jesus contemplating his actions and their results, and his doubts on the God and the role he has to play, written beautifully.

Fast read, large size print ( lesser strain to your eyes) and short chapters make it easy to finish. Very average book, except a few brilliant passage and two twist to the tale ( the twins and the concet of Christ betraying Jesus). If you are interested in these kind of books, I would recommend Nobel Laureate, Jose Saramago's Gospel According to Jesus Christ to this one.

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The Good Man Jesus and The scoundrel Christ ( 2010 )

Philip Pullman

Penguin Viking

245 Pages

Rs 499
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Other Revirews: Wiki , Guardian ,

Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen - Osho

One thing about religious and spiritual texts are that you cant make a summary of them. All these contains age old wisdom, discussed and interpreted by masters in their own way to those who are recipient to them. Hence it would be foolish to quote from these texts, but to ask those interested to read them.

I was reading Osho this time. Walking in Zen , Sitting in Zen is is the collection of 8 discourses delivered by him in the 80s on the subject of Zen in particular and other associated topics in general. These are Osho's responses to various questions and doubts by his disciples and visitors.
I am not getting into the spiritual and philosophical side of the discussion. However, this book has given me some insight on the Zen way of thinking and responses. There aren't many new learning , or any new surprise thought in these pages, which are not known. But some of the interpretation and its explanations were truly revealing , especially on meditation and on God. The language is simple and with lesser of those cliched words typically used by people in this business.

On the curious side, the topic I would now be interested and keen to explore is the contributions of the 'chief follower' or the propagator of some of the masters. The relationship between Ramakrishna and Vivekananda ( where the former's thoughts and ideas were known to people through the lectures and teachings of Vivekananda) , Gurdjieff and Ouspensky , Socrates and Plato , Christ and his apostles. Most of the earlier philosophers or people of great wisdom, did need another person to communicate to the larger mass.

As the book is the collation of his speeches, it had all those silly answers, those jokes ( some great ones, and some pedestrian, but of great relevance to the subject), which makes this an interesting read.
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Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen
Osho

Full Circle Publishing Ltd
195 Pages
Rs195
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The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

At last, I have finished reading the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It had been 3 weeks since I have taken up this book. I do not take up multiple projects ( reading some of these books are like projects, they need so much dedication and attention from you) at the same time and had very interrupted reading thanks to my travels and domestic schedules. Now that I have finished reading this let us get to the matters.

I do not want to get into another review of this book as it has been reviewed by many able people at various places. This book has already caused so much debate and I would not get into the debate of GOD affairs. However, Dawkins has done a courageous attempt to take the discussion of God hypothesis from the academics and theologist to the people. What used to remain a discussion among few is not have a wider audience.

While the book is about the GOD Delusion, I find the discussion and his 'anger' is less towards the concept of God but more towards the religion and rightly so. It is the religion and the religious community who vehemently protect their religion by violent means is under the discussion. He also points out that every war / fights in the ancient and moder worlds are always between religions or sects. ( While I prefer to look at them from an economic angle, I find this a strong enough point).

The other interesting discussion which I liked was on the morality. As a practice, morality is always linked to the religions beliefs and he proves the non existing relation between morality and religion.

Personally, I do not believe in 'God as an answer to anything unknown'. I believe that there are many phenomenon in the nature yet to be known to us and our constant effort to bring lights to these will lead us into many more discoveries.

However, I find this quote very interesting.
"You'd better believe in God, because if you are right you stand to gain eternal bliss and if you are wrong it wont make any difference anyway. On the other hand, if you don't believe in God and you turned out to be wrong, you get eternal damnation, where if you are right it makes no difference" - Blaise Pascal

In case you want to find out where do you stand, check this and decide..

1. Strong theist : 100% probability of God. I dont believe, I know.

2. Very high probability but short of 100% : De facto theist. "I can not know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that HE is there"

3. Higher than 50% but not very high : Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. "I am very uncertain, but I'm inclined to believe in God".

4. Exact 50% : Completely impartial agnostic. "God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable".

5. Lower than 50% but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. " I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical".

6. Very low probability, but not zero: De Facto atheist. "I can not for certain but I think God id very improbable, and I live my life on the ssumption that he is not there".

7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction

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The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Bantam Press
405 Pages
Dont remember how much I paid !!