I just finished reading this marvelous book, has anyone else read it? I don't want to give too much away for the sake of anyone who might choose to read it but here's a partial review by the Telegraph (respected UK newspaper);
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What Pullman has done is to take the Gospel accounts of Jesus and weave them into a story that runs along the lines of the Gospel narratives, but with one radical innovation. (The book is the latest in a series of retellings of myths, published by Canongate.) He splits the character of Jesus of Nazareth into twin brothers, one named Jesus, the other Christ. Jesus is the lusty healthy baby, born at ease with his physical person; Christ is the sickly child whom his mother favours, and it is he who is found lying in the feeding trough by shepherds and then by the astrologers from the East who have come bearing gifts to the promised “Messiah”.
From here on, the life of Jesus as we have known it is described in prose that skilfully recapitulates the simplicity of the original material, with each twin acting out different parts. Christ, the weaker twin, is the goody-goody who sucks up to his elders by studying holy texts and astounds them with his precocious rabbinical wisdom. Jesus, on the other hand, is the one who learns carpentry from his father and is favoured by the other children. As they reach manhood, their characters polarise: Christ becomes cautious, fanciful and partial to metaphysics, while Jesus is passionate, antinomian and enamoured of the world’s realities.
As the story further unfolds, we witness Christ playing the traditional parts of, first, Satan in the wilderness, when he urges Jesus to provide miracles to help persuade his followers of the imminence of the coming “Kingdom of God” and, finally, the Judas figure who betrays his brother with a fatal kiss. This last is due to the machinations of the sinister “stranger”, also described as an “angel”, who is inserted into the story as the demonic principle behind the distortion of Jesus’s teachings and the founding of the Christian Church.
Advance publicity has suggested that this figure represents St Paul, since he is also the inspiration for Christ’s “documentation” of his brother’s doings.