Unlike many literary retellings of Jesus' ministry, which are really just conflations of all four gospels with more eloquent language, Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ reinterprets Jesus' ministry and sense of self-identity entirely. He begins his story with the daily life of Mary and Joseph as a young, struggling couple; but Joseph is additionally marred by the unforgivable sin of negligence when he learns of Herod's plan to slaughter all Bethlehem infants and he doesn't warn any other parents but only takes his own family and flees to Egypt. So Jesus is safe, but at a high cost of blood.

So begins his ministry, in some sense, as he opposes the oppressive violence that is integral to power. But what does that mean for God? Jesus becomes appalled by Temple sacrifice, as a loving God would not demand blood like the corrupt Roman government does. But in this way the narrative arrives at an impasse about the nature of power: either God isn't all-loving or God isn't all-powerful. This conflict does not just make Jesus uneasy, but outright unwilling to carry out God's plan for him.

Jesus' ministry is shaped by compassion and a rejection of violence as a means of power, but it is never clear where exactly God - powerful but definitely not pacifistic - fits into it exactly. It's a beautiful and difficult book, that brings to life the human Jesus, full of doubts and overwhelmed by God's presence in his life. ( )

A book to read along with The Secret Magdalene, one for its biting wit and one for its profound understanding. Bookends, really. ( )

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a distinctly non-traditional novel
in both style and substance.

I am intrigued by religious books by non-religious people. (Well, non-traditionally
religious, and non-fundamentalist, certainly). It’s a human attempt by a thoughtful and creative soul
to cut through the centuries of accumulated baggage and try to drag some relevant human truth
out of the biblical stories. I was intrigued by his treatment of Joseph, and a
mirror image of atonement that Jesus presents for his earthly father’s sins, I
was mesmerized by a misty encounter on a boat between Jesus, God, and the
Devil, and I was stunned by the last sentence of the book. I really enjoyed the
realistic portrayal of these well-known characters, especially the “Marys”, who came
off as real women and not as story props. Well done.

I would be careful about who to recommend the book to, though. Religious folk
will be put off, I’m sure and there are certainly doctrinal problems here, not the least
of which is an abortive reimagining of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus--a wonderfully
mordant existentialist take on that whole affair.

Non-religious folk will have to have the determination to sit through “that old story
again”. Of course, I found the novel to be most compelling in the areas between
the familiar story, where Saramago has the broader canvas upon which to paint. Some
parts felt like just going down the laundry list of events and miracles, but I suppose they
needed to be there.

I really enjoyed the writing style, I have read that it is a barrier to some readers of
Saramago, but I was swept away by it. He tends towards run on sentences, and
missing punctuation, to poetic effect.

Give this one a try if you're poetically inclined and philosophically curious about
the Christian tradition. ( )

The same way Lolita is a little more beautiful because it doesn't exactly translate into perfect English, this book is spell-binding in its story of the life of Christ, through his eyes. It's blof and brave in the most glorious off-the-cuff, sarcastic way. If this were the Bible, I think a lot more people would have read it. ( )

I really liked the whole content of the story; it is something different and interesting. The only downside I find is that, it being a Saramago, the writing is a little complex at certain points making it tedious to read. In overall I do recommend it, but just take your time to read it. ( )

Saramago deftly embraces historical facts, myth and reality and juggles them in this extraordinarily fictitious account of Jesus Christ. The novel is an in-depth psychological portrait of a savior who possesses a touch of humanity so much more substantial than the Bible claims. Jesus who is at once the Son of God, the beginning and the end, men's destiny, and a young man of the earth is an interweaving of letters, irony, spirituality, irreverence, humanity, and foible.
The novel hinges on the fact that Jesus' father, Joseph of Nazareth, out of cowardice and selfishness of the heart, failed to alert the parents that King Herod had issued a decree to kill boys under the age of 3. He could have spared the lives of 27 children had he spoken up. Joseph felt the scruple of running off to save his own son but had forfeited the lives of others. The guilt he felt was exactly guilt a man may feel without having sinned or committed the actual crime himself. It was the sin of omission.

To assuage his remorse that incessantly plagued him, Joseph, as he truly believed he was acting out of his own accord and obeying God's will, made strenuous effort to beget more and more children to compensate for the 27 lives. When Jesus learned about Joseph's crime, Jesus felt poignant for his father but asserted that his father was to blame for the deaths of innocent children. Joseph's sin was illustrated to full actuality as Jesus envisaged infants dying in perfect innocence and parents who had done nothing wrong. Jesus was embittered and broken at the fact that never was a man more guilty than his own father, who had sinned to save his life.

Joseph's death, which was rather dramatic and undeserving, bore the scruple of his own conscience and arose the question of what awaited him after death. Would it be possible than everything ended with death? What would happen to the life's sorrow and sufferings, especially the sufferings right before the last breath? What about the memory if time is such an undulating surface than can only be accessed by memory, would memory of such suffering linger at least for a short period of time? Saramago has repeatedly made claims to explore the notion of after-death and its correlation to human existence throughout the novel.

Jesus under Saramago's pen is not as perfect, impure, and righteous as the Bible portraits him to be. One sees that the savior succumbs to temptation, to not receiving the cup of death, to choose to remain on earth and not to be crowned with glory. The most provocative and controversial aspect of the book is when Jesus intervened the stoning of an adulteress, which brought him to awareness that he was living in sin with Mary Magdalene, and thus living in defiance to God's will. The sin of adultery (sexual immorality as the Bible claims) brought Jesus into open conflict with the observed law.

The book is not deprived of interesting dialogues in spite of the serious overtones of theology. My favorite is the conversation in which the Devil pleaded with God to admit him into the kingdom. God curtly denied the request asserting than the good God represented would cease to exist without the evil Devil represented. In regard to the meaning of human existence and the pursuit of holiness, Saramago does leave us with an enlightening thought (with such sober dignity) that the soul, in order to be able to boast of a clean and blameless body, has burdened itself with sadness, envy and impurity. ( )