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I really didn't like this book. I think it would be hard for anyone to like this book unless he's religious. I understand that it's been well-received; I don't understand why. I also understand the author supposedly wasn't religious and called himself an atheist by the end of his life, but it is very difficult to read this novel as anything but a kind of apologetics or religious meditation.
The book tries to portray the Christian narrative about itself, and about its own history, basically uncritically. Christians, and any other strong adherents to ideologies, tend to be somewhat aware, at times more than others, that what they profess is dissonant with their experience of the real world. So what the book does is take notice of the dissonance and affirms that the dissonance is actually a sign of spiritual truth. I think this is why the word "queer" is used so often in the book, since whenever it appears you could substitute the phrase "having the correct and currently orthodox viewpoint." This emphasis on the word "queer" seems to come from the same impulse as Kierkegaard's saying that faith is "absurd" (and yet we should believe) or Tertullian's credo quia absurdum: a recognition that something isn't right with the Gospels on the one hand, but a refusal to doubt on the other. It's a feeling that only makes sense if you're restrained by religious considerations.
To begin with, the premise of the book relies on taking the Gospel accounts completely literally. There's no question raised why the Romans let "Barabbas" go free when this is something completely at odds with everything known about Roman law and Roman attitude toward law. It's not addressed why a fake name, "Barabbas," is being used for the protagonist -- because the Gospels present this as a real name, it must be one for this story. I guess these things aren't so important on their own, but there are so many other problems the reader has to accept that this is worth mentioning.
"Love one another" is, like "queer," another repeated phrase. (Actually it's described as "queer" itself.) Of course in reality it wasn't a "queer" idea at all in 1st century Judea; aside from Jesus having quoted it directly from the Jewish Bible, it was a doctrine popular with the Pharisaic sect, and the sentiment appears even in pagan philosophical traditions. But the Gospel writers (except the antisemite John who recognized the Pharisees as the predecessors of Jews in his own day), didn't know or care who the Pharisees were or what they thought; they simply portrayed them as antagonists of Jesus and left it at that. Therefore this book doesn't recognize them either, and makes Jesus' teaching unique and otherwise unheard of in 1st century Judea, the implication being that this proves its supernatural origin and power. The idea that Jesus was a revolutionary teacher with no precedent or parallel is a Christian idea, but it's hard from a secular perspective to accept that a 1st century Judean Jew was completely unfamiliar with an idea like this.
A hare-lipped girl is impoverished and lives in a bad area. But she never thinks of where she'll get her next meal, and her poverty doesn't inflame any stress or petty disputes or bitterness. No, all she thinks about is God and the nature of the universe. She even dies a perfect martyr, thinking only of her guilt at not being able to testify about Jesus better. How can this be; how can she be so queer? Obviously because the message of Jesus was so unique and life-changing that it wiped away all these earthly vices she might have once had. Just in the same way, Barabbas is drawn to the preaching of these "queer" Christians, not so much because of any particular inner movement, but because Jesus' preaching had magical power in itself. The Christian claim for itself, that it did have this magic power to convert people, is simply presented as complete and true, without any criticism or nuance, though anyone can see this isn't how people work in reality and people convert to religions for a variety of internal reasons.
The girl gets stoned in what is apparently not a case of mob justice, but some official procedure. Never mind that the Sanhedrin rarely if ever put anyone to death by the time this story supposedly happened -- the Talmud says it had stopped entirely -- the Gospels say that Jews were savages that had to be put in their place by Jesus, and so the unconverted Jews are animals in this book too.
The author skips over the question of how Barabbas became a slave. I think it'd be more interesting than most of the book, if only for including some pathos that makes some sense. Instead we skip to the point when someone gets converted. This is a pet peeve of mine -- whenever Christian writers write stories like this set around the time of Jesus, they always seem profoundly disinterested in the ancient world and any facet of ancient history or culture that doesn't directly, immediately relate to the New Testament or the stories they want to tell. So it feels to me that author is drawing again uncreatively from religious tropes here when he makes a skip like this.
Then the justification for Sahak's crucifixion, and Christians being accused of arson or being persecuted by the Roman state are dubiously historical. More uncritical use and acceptance of Christian tropes until the very end.
It feels like the entire plot of the story is just a succession of incomprehensible events. The idea seems to be that the reader should relate to or understand Barabbas' mindset, and maybe the mindset of characters like Sahak; I think this is quite difficult when at each step of the way you're being asked to accept events that don't make sense outside the book and aren't sufficiently explained within it. The reader isn't given much help answering the question of why Barabbas makes the choices he makes, because instead the reader is supposed to understand intuitively that the Christian religion has produced the beginning of a psychological change in him, and yet it's one that can't be fully completed until the end of the book because it's so foreign (or "queer") to him. My problem with this is that ideologies aren't magic; people don't get captured for them for no reason, but the reader isn't given any real indication of what is happening to Barabbas to make him receptive to this process (there is some implication I believe that he feels guilt for Jesus being sacrificed instead of him, but there's not much to this -- isn't Barabbas a violent criminal? Why would such a person suddenly develop remorse...?) So I think nothing interesting can be said of Barabbas' or anyone else's psychology or mentality. All that remains would seem to be wonder for the miraculous power of Christian teaching.
And even aside from the characters' psychology, the plot outline of the book is that a violent criminal of some kind evades capital punishment, feels guilty that Jesus died for him, somehow becomes a slave, pretends to be a follower of Jesus even though it gets him flogged, then renounces Jesus, then changes his mind, and at last he learns the "real" meaning of Christianity after having become responsible for many deaths. I will confess that I don't understand what a story like this is supposed to convey. If I were still religious, it'd be quite easy; I'd say "this story illustrates the persistent redemptive grace of the Lord Jesus Christ." But without a religious angle like that I'm pretty lost.
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Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman
