New Philip Pullman book

Grawns

My favourite atheist has a new book out.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Must get myself to Easons this week

Dades

Likewise! Big Pullman fan and this sounds interesting - and is sure to raise a kerfuffle!

Is it out yet?

Daftendirekt

It sounds like a really interesting concept.

Amazon appear to be selling it, so yeah, looks like it's out.

Can't wait to get a copy now.

mehfesto

Yup. I work in easons, out since Saturday.
I had a quick look through it: from what I gathered there are two characters, Jesus an Christ. It's all told on short stories from he bible too, but in modern language.

It's 12.99 til may.

cooker3

Alternatively buy it on the best website in the world book depository
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781847678256/The-Good-Man-Jesus-and-the-Scoundrel-Christ

It's €8.43 and most importantly free delivery, no hidden extras nothing.
If you do buy books regularly then bookmark the site. 99% of all books are far cheaper then you will get in any book store or Amazon.

iUseVi

cooker3 wrote: »

Alternatively buy it on the best website in the world book depository
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781847678256/The-Good-Man-Jesus-and-the-Scoundrel-Christ

It's €8.43 and most importantly free delivery, no hidden extras nothing.
If you do books regularly bookmark the site. 99% of all books are far cheaper then you will get in any book store or Amazon.

Thanks. I am suspicious though. This seems too good. Free delivery....mmmm.

hiorta

According to the Christian New Testament, Jesus was the son of Joseph with both descending from the House of David.

Christ, on the other hand, was the impossible product of a sexual union between a pregnant Jewish virgin and a ghost - a holy one, apparently.

So, Jesus and Christ are clearly two entirely different people.

In addition, 'god' required the coming child to be called Emmanuel but seemingly this request was ignored.

Which leaves the position that Mary either had triplets or terminated two babies, we are not told which.

cooker3

iUseVi wrote: »

Thanks. I am suspicious though. This seems too good. Free delivery....mmmm.

Yeah I thought so too when I first saw it last year but I've bought a good 20 books from them. Never had an issue.

The only thing is delivery tends to take about a week so if you want something straight away then you better off getting in a store. Other then that perfection.

(Eh I swear I don't work for them or anything)

ShooterSF

iUseVi wrote: »

Thanks. I am suspicious though. This seems too good. Free delivery....mmmm.

Used them plenty of times and they are fantastic! Can pay by paypal too if you're worried about giving them card details.

darjeeling

I heard Philip Pullman talking about his book in this morning's 'Start the Week' on Radio 4*, along with Rowan Williams. Pullman set out his opposition to religious insistutions, which he argues seize ownership of figures such as Jesus and distort their ethical message. The archbishop, ever the genial and slightly woolly academic, offered a rather half-hearted defence of the Christian church. Here's the guts of the argument between them:

Philip Pullman: [...] the way I see the dichotomy. Jesus was a good man who said good things and told wonderful stories, and was betrayed and executed. And the Christ element is the element of the church that comes in and, as it were, takes over the story and changes it and makes it into something else.

Rowan Williams: I think one of the main themes to come out of Philip's book is that [...] the price you pay for transmitting a spiritual vision in institutional terms can be very high and the question sometimes is not so much about the nature of the vision as about the price you want to pay for sustaining it. The argument [...] is about whether Christianity has paid too high a price. I obviously think not.

Philip Pullman: That's where we disagree, but you're exactly right, that's what I'm saying

Philip Pullman: The process is [...] that there's a great original visionary who says, 'A time is coming soon when heaven will be fulfilled, and earth will be full of plenty and delight and wonder' [...] and then it doesn't happen [...] and eventually the people who want to preserve this vision have to set up institutions to validate their own positions

Andrew Marr: But there also have to be rules, don't there, because all religions have a vision of the good life [...]?

Rowan Williams: That's a vision that has a shape - you can't say that anything counts [...] but the temptation is to push that [vision] more and more towards codes where you can tick boxes and present your score at the end. That is one of the things that the gospels really do try to undermine.

Philip Pullman: Bureaucracy always overcomes vision. It's a tragedy.

Rowan Williams: I think I'd say the stories [i.e the 'vision'] are stronger than that.

Elsewhere, this was the interview in which Rowan Williams made those controversial comments on the Irish Catholic church:

Andrew Marr: And what about the other great Christian church in this country, the Catholic church? You've had problems, but not on the scale they have at the moment [...]

Rowan Williams: It's been, in Ireland especially, a colossal corporate trauma [...] an institution so deeply bound in to the life of the society suddenly losing all credibility.
That's not just a problem for the church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland.

Rowan Williams: [...] for an awful lot of Christian institutions until fairly recently, the default setting would be that we've got to hang onto the institution's credibility. Well, we've learned that that is damaging, it's wrong, it's dishonest. [...] We've had to learn [that] honesty and truthfulness are the only way in which we can survive in any way as an institution.

* Warning: this program contains David Baddiel.

Galvasean

The Daily Mail gave it 2 stars.... in the same print they gave John Waters' (doesn't he write for them?) new book 5 stars....

F#cking France, start importing the Indo, I needs my Ian O' Doherty fix!!!!

sionnach

I had to share this brilliant comment on the Archbishop of Canterbury's review of the book:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/03/good-jesus-christ-philip-pullman?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:236e1262-5ae5-453c-8662-7cdee2657abd

BeatNikDub

I am about 50 pages in (started it today) and very much enjoying it so far.
Incredibly easy read I have to say and have the feeling it has been very much stretched out by the publishers to appear a much longer and substantial story than it is.

Anyway shall be back in a day or two...

By the way Fintan O'Toole will be interviewing Pullman about this book on the 17th of April.

http://www.projectartscentre.ie/programme/whats-on/911-philip-pullman-in-conversation-with-fintan-otoole

BeatNikDub

Right finished the book today.
I quite enjoyed it, even though it is a lot more subtle compared to what I am used to with Pullman.
It is very well written , very clever and with some seriously darkly humoured pieces littered throughout.
The ending is fantastic and leaves you with quite alot to still ponder, yet satisfied.

It is after all, a story, but a very interesting angle of the story of the Jesus Christ and attack at what is now the Church, and what, if Jesus did exist probably meant and hoped for rather than what we have today to remember his name (There is a soliloquay in the Garden of Gethsemene with Jesus where he protests that he fears the rich man taking over and decscribes the Vatican to a T - this is exactly what he DOESNT want).

I found myself pleasantly surprised in places by this book, it wasn't what I expected yet I imagine I will go back to it again.
Some of the dialogue is a little superfluous and found myself urging the character to get to the point, especially the whole truth and history explanations. But there is a point to it which comes nicely together at the end.

Overall an enjoyable read

Dades

I would have bought it today only Hughes & Hughes has closed down.

sionnach

Dades wrote: »

I would have bought it today only Hughes & Hughes has closed down.

That settles it, there is no God.

Daftendirekt

Just finished this. It's a great read, easy to get into with a very stripped-down feel to it. Pullman's Jesus and Christ are really likeable characters.

You'll probably appreciate it more if you're halfway familiar with the actual Biblical stories, but it's not essential.

It comes in the form of a nice shiny hardback too, double-spaced, with blank pages between the chapters to make it look longer than it is (it's pretty short). I'd definitely advice checking it out.

Dades

Finished this one this evening, and if have to say I'm underwhelmed by it.

It's an alternative Jesus story weaved around what are essentially Pullman's (and most of our) perceptions of how the Jesus myth might have developed to form the church.

But it's a quick read and interesting nonetheless (nothing will top His Dark Materials!)

ChocolateSauce

Dades wrote: »

(nothing will top His Dark Materials!)

Although I am how you might say "sitting on the fence" regarding this statment, as I can't rule out that sometime in the future he'll write something better, I will lead my life as though this statement were true.

The Mad Hatter

Galvasean wrote: »

The Daily Mail gave it 2 stars.... in the same print they gave John Waters' (doesn't he write for them?) new book 5 stars....

F#cking France, start importing the Indo, I needs my Ian O' Doherty fix!!!!

Um...aren't most newspapers available for free online now? And...the Mail?!

checkyabadself

cooker3 wrote: »

Alternatively buy it on the best website in the world book depository
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781847678256/The-Good-Man-Jesus-and-the-Scoundrel-Christ

It's €8.43 and most importantly free delivery, no hidden extras nothing.
If you do buy books regularly then bookmark the site. 99% of all books are far cheaper then you will get in any book store or Amazon.

iUseVi wrote: »

Thanks. I am suspicious though. This seems too good. Free delivery....mmmm.

Thanks a million for the link. I bought 7 or 8 books of them the day I saw this link. They arrived around 6 days after ordering and I cant fault them. No longer will I be buying from Amazon, I saved a fortune over the easons prices and around 20% and over on most of the books.

Thanks again for the link, I sent it on to everyone I knew.

regards,
Will.

johnny_ultimate

Just finished reading this, and thought it raised a lot of interesting ideas. The back cover simply stating "This is a Story" sums it up rather well tbh. This isn't about completely denying the story, but more about demystifying it. It's about how the ideas and concepts raised by Jesus may have been positive messages in some ways, but time and people can twist and alter the stories to give them the meaning they want. Best summed up in Pullman's retelling of the loaves and the fishes story - it removes the 'miracle' element of the story, while retaining a clear message about 'sharing the wealth'.

It's a simply written book, but one which basically stresses that religion is man-made, manipulating what people say to achieve certain agendas. I think it confirms that some of the messages of Jesus were ones that people should embrace - after all, you can't really deny many of the simple values preached in these tales - but these are always going to be twisted. This is pretty much summed up when Jesus speaks to a silent god near the end of the book, fearing what a future organisation may become - which, of course, basically sums up the church these days.

An atheist retelling of the Jesus story was always going to be controversial, but this is a respectful but critical examination of one of the best known stories, with a clever central idea - two different sides of one character.