Once More, With Feeling

So Philip Pullman, he of The Golden Compass , is preparing to disgorge The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ into an Amazon shopping cart near you. It seems that Pullman’s contribution to something called the “Myth Series” is the earth-rending idea that there was a historical Jesus but only a mythical Christ—a fantasia of legends devised by the “church” to deify a Palestinian Jew in order to foist meatless Fridays upon the world.

Yes, that tired wheeze.

If you are offended at seeing the modifier “scoundrel” touching the proper noun “Christ,” Pullman couldn’t care less:

When one man said Christians would be upset to hear Christ referred to as a “scoundrel,” Pullman replied: “I knew it was a shocking thing to say, but no one has the right to live without being shocked. Nobody has to read this book . . . and no one has the right to stop me writing this book.”

Edgy, edgy stuff. Because no one has EVER posited the idea that the New Testament was a redacted collection of foundation documents collated by a gaggle of power-mad men in black.

Pullman may have hit on the one revolutionary idea that tosses Christianity onto the dust heap of blithering God-hype. Just like The Da Vinci Code did before The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity did before Holy Blood, Holy Grail did . Did.