Philip Pullman: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

They passed that day in a state of half-hopeful wonderment. They went again and again to the garden where the tomb was, but saw no more there.

Later that day some of the disciples set out to go to a village called Emmaus, about two hours’ walk away from Jerusalem, to tell the news to some friends who lived there. Christ’s informant had set off back to Galilee, and was not among them. As they walked along the road they fell into conversation with a man who was travelling the same way. This too was Christ.

‘You seem agitated,’ said the traveller. ‘What were you all discussing with such passion?’

‘You haven’t heard what happened in Jerusalem?’ said a disciple called Cleopas.

‘No. Tell me.’

‘You must be the only man in Judea not to have heard about it. We’re friends of Jesus of Nazareth, the great prophet, the great teacher. He angered the priests in the temple, and they handed him over to the Romans, and they crucified him. And he was buried. That was three days ago. And then this morning we heard he’d been seen alive!’

Their talk was only of that. They didn’t look closely at Christ, because they were too excited and bewildered still; but by the time they came to the village night had fallen, and they invited him to stay and eat with them.

He accepted the invitation, and went into the house of their friend, where he was made welcome. When they were sitting down to eat, the disciple Cleopas, who was sitting directly opposite him, stopped what he was saying, took hold of the lamp and raised it close to Christ’s face.

‘Master?’ he said.

In the flickering lamplight the others stared in amazement. Truly, this man looked so like Jesus, and yet he was not the same; but surely death would change him, so he was bound to be a little different; and yet the resemblance was so close. They were struck almost dumb.

But one man called Thomas said, ‘If you’re really Jesus, show us the marks in your hands and your feet.’

Christ’s hands were unmarked, of course. They could all see them as he held the bread. But before he could speak, another man intervened and said:

‘If the master’s risen from the dead, of course all his wounds would be healed! We’ve seen him walk – we know his broken legs are mended. He’d be made perfect again, so his other scars are gone as well. Who can doubt that?’

‘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… ’

And they turned to Christ, full of doubt and confusion.

Christ said, ‘Those who see no evidence, and still have faith, are the blessed ones. I am the word of God. I existed before time. I was in the beginning with God, and soon I shall go back to him, but I came down into time and into life so that you should see the light and the truth, and testify to them. 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. Now I must return to my father, who is in heaven.’

They all wanted to touch him, but he stood back and blessed them all, and then he left.

After that, Christ took care to keep out of the way. He watched from a distance as the disciples, fired by the energy of their hope and excitement, became transformed just as the stranger had promised: as if a holy spirit had entered them. They travelled and preached, they won converts to this new faith in a risen Jesus, they even managed some healing miracles, or at least things happened that could be reported as miracles. They were full of passion and zeal.

And as time passed, Christ began to hear the story changing little by little. It began with Jesus’s name. 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. Christ was the word of God, the light of the world. Christ had been crucified. Christ had risen from the dead. Somehow, his death would be a great redemption, or a great atonement. People were happy to believe that, even though it was hard to explain.

The story developed in other ways too. The account of the resurrection was greatly enhanced when it began to be reported that after Thomas asked to see the wounds, Jesus (or Christ) had shown them, and let Thomas lay his finger in them to settle his doubts. That was vivid and unforgettable, but if the story said that, it couldn’t also say that the Romans had broken his legs, as they did with almost every other victim of crucifixion; for if one kind of wound had remained in his flesh, so would another, and a man with broken legs would not have been able to stand in the garden or walk to Emmaus. So whatever had really happened, the story came to say that he died from the thrust of a Roman spear, his bones remaining unbroken. Thus the stories began to weave themselves together.

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. Christ felt his own self gradually dwindling away as the Christ of speculation began to grow in importance and majesty. Soon the story about Christ began to extend both forwards and backwards in time – forwards to the end of the world, and backwards even before that birth in a stable: Christ was the son of Mary, that was undeniable, but he was also the son of God, an eternal and almighty being, perfect God and perfect man, begotten before all worlds, reigning at the right hand of his Father in heaven.

Then the stranger visited him for the last time. Christ was living under another name in a town on the sea-coast, a place where Jesus had never been. He had married, and he was working as a maker of nets.

As often before, the stranger came at night. He knocked at the door just as Christ and his wife were sitting down to their evening meal.

‘Martha, who is that?’ said Christ. ‘Go and see.’ Martha opened the door, and the stranger came in, carrying a heavy bag.

‘So,’ said Christ. ‘What trouble have you brought me this time?’

‘Such a welcome! This is your work, all the scrolls you gave to me. I have had them diligently copied, and it is time you had them back and began putting the story in order. And this is your wife?’

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

‘Please sit with us and share our food,’ said Martha.

‘I shall do that with pleasure. 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?’

Christ pushed the bread away. ‘That is not what I told them to do,’ he said.

‘But it’s what the followers of Jesus are doing, Jews and Gentiles both. Your instructions were too subtle, my friend. People will leap to the most lurid meaning they can find, even if it’s one the author never intended.’

‘As you explained on another occasion, you think very little of people.’

‘I see them as they are. You too used to have a realistic idea of their capabilities and limitations. Are you becoming more like your brother as time goes past?’

‘He knew them well, and he wasn’t deceived, but he loved them.’

‘Indeed he did,’ said the stranger, helping himself to the bread, ‘and his love is the most precious thing imaginable. That is why we must guard it so carefully. The vessel that will carry the precious love and teaching of Jesus Christ to the ages of the future is the church, and the church 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; as we know, they are nothing of the sort. Instead we should emphasise the spiritual nature of his message. We need to make our position hard to argue with, my dear Christ, and by talking of the spirit we do just that. Spirituality is something we are well equipped to discuss.’