Behold the Man

It was my final year of primary school that I was first encouraged to question the Bible - in retrospect, a brave and mad thing for a teacher in a Church-in-Wales school to do. He provided a prosaic explanation for miracles such as feeding the five thousand or turning water into wine, and then letting us come up with similar explanations for how miracles may have been enacted. In retrospect it's probably the healthiest religious education lesson I ever had, teaching me to question religion's precepts.

Behold the Man comes from a similar perspective. On the surface it's highly blasphemous, putting an ordinary man in the stories where Jesus conventionally fits, and the depiction of Mary and Jesus seems deliberate provocation. And from that show more point of view it's similar to Monty Python's Life of Brian with the surface blasphemy being cover for deeper blasphemy, being a wider critique of organised religion and the myths that grow up around them, although the Pythons swapped Behold the Man's righteous anger for sharp jokes. Glogauer isn't particularly sympathetic as a character, being antisocial and driving everyone away from him by combining a messianic complex with a tendency to self pity and lack of direction One of the 'Angry Young Men' contemporary with the book being written, but without anywhere to direct his anger. The combination of an unsympathetic lead, spare prose and an author's righteous anger means the book always feels an edgy and uncomfortable read, particularly when Glogauer realises he's fulfilling his historical role. The tropes of a time traveller finding himself playing out an allotted role have become well worn, this was written at a time when they were fresher, and such books weren't quite as plentiful. The reader might sniff where events are leading relatively early on, but it's only in the last third that Moorcock turns it into a tragedy. Being sparing with it means the story's not mawkishly exploitative as it could easily have been, and doesn't come across as simply trading on the central premise.

This will certainly offend churchgoing Christians, maybe even committed folk of other religions. Otherwise it's a sharply drawn looks at how myths can accrete almost simply by the power of belief, how what originally happened is almost irrelevant. Not an easy read, but extraordinary and thought provoking. show less

This book would have had Moorcock burnt at the stake alongside Giordano Bruno if he had written in the sixteenth century. It postulates a science fiction explanation of the Passion story that sits alongside the 'Life of Brian' as one of those moments, numerous since that stake-burning, when Western liberal culture removed itself emotionally rather than just intellectually from the Christian tradition. Already it seems dated as 'shock' since we now live in times when the shock comes from the resurgence rather than collapse of faith - but crisply written and less lost in the sometimes alienating fantasy of much of his other work.

This has become almost a SF trope. The story sounds so familiar yet it is strikingly original. Moorcock was probably close to being the first to tread this path and he has probably done it the best. Not much can be said about this very very short novel (novella) that would not take some enjoyment away if you're blissfully unaware of where it is going. It deliciously crosses the line into blasphemy, or, if not blasphemy I don't know what you'd call it, and that, for me, is part of the joy in what is really a down beat story. This is a time travel story of sorts but the time travel is an unimportant device in that it is only there to make sure this ordinary man's destiny is to fulfil his role as an ordinary man. And therein lies the show more blasphemy I suppose. That, and the delightful meeting of Karl with an ordinary Nazarene family. I can't recommend this book more highly. show less

I read the novella version of this in 1966 when it appeared in New Worlds and, as a moderately Christian teenager, was awestruck that anything could quite so astonishingly blasphemous. As a boring old atheist fart, I find fascination and a sort of intellectual teasing out rather than straightforward blasphemy in this enormously impressive novel.

Karl Glogauer, a man for whom the term "negativity" might have been created, is befriended by the erratic inventor of a time machine. Haunted by rather than prideful of his Jewishness, he has for a long time been fascinated by the figure of Christ and the symbol if the Crucifixion; the chance to travel back to witness the event seems too good to be true. Unfortunately the machine is irremediably show more damaged on landing in the desert, and Karl's condition is little better; he is nursed back to health by the Essenes and is befriended by their spiritual leader, John the Baptist. John is keen to find a Messiah figure around whom -- or, if necessary, around whose martyrdom -- he can foment a revolution against the hated Roman oppressors and their toady, Herod. Karl tells John the man he wants is Jesus of Bethlehem, but when he goes there he finds that Jesus is an imbecile and is seduced by Jesus's nymphomaniac mother, Mary; he discovers it's the town joke that only a simpleton like Joseph would have believed Mary's tale of having been impregnated by an angel. It takes Karl some while to realize that John is grooming him for the role, and when he does so he accepts this resignedly as his inevitable fate.

Moorcock doesn't tell the tale linearly. The strand set in the months leading up to the Crucifixion is interwoven with numerous linked cameos from Karl's life in our own times, with a focus on the long string of disasters that make up his enormously promiscuous bisexual love life -- itself almost an exercise in flagellation, an expression of a masochistic narcissism. The overall effect of this narrational style is of a chaotic unstoppable tumbling, ever accelerating toward Karl's inescapable -- and horrific -- destiny on the Cross. In the strangest of ways, for all its rationalization of the supposedly miraculous, the novel is not so much a detraction from as a powerful extension to the Christian myth. This, however, is not how I imagine it is seen in the Vatican . . . show less

This short novel has been in my mental "best books I have read" for a long time. Originally this was a short novella that I read as a teenager. Some years later it was expanded and I read this present long novella/short novel in my early 20's. My overwhelming memory of it is that it was a tremendously original time travel story as well as quite sacrilegious. Shockingly so in some ways. Looking at other LT reviews it seems that fellow readers were similarly hit with the "blasphemous" feeling encountering it in their youth.

On a re-read the story isn't quite so shocking. But for me this is 40 years removed from my first readings. It still is a stunning story that has held up surprisingly well, despite perhaps an overly large helping of show more psychological angst that plays a large part in the multiple storylines. Karl goes back in time to find the historical Jesus and see the Crucifixion. He gets his wish. Still an awesome story that remains on my "best" list. show less

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Jungian meets girl. Jungian loses religious/philosophical argument with girl. Jungian jumps into Time Machine to prove girl wrong about Jebus. Jungian blunders into being accepted as Jebus by denizens of the time to which he has traveled. Jungian further blunders by trying to reenact what he knows about Jebus. You know, to preserve history and biblical truth. Jungian gets crucified. Jungian never sees girl again.

I'm sure this was all very shocking back in the 60s when this was published. And I can see why Michael Moorcock got noticed for Behold the Man.* But really now it's just a curiosity.

I just couldn't resist the idea of reading this on Palm Sunday. And now I have. And yes, I got some show more chuckles; on the blasphenomenal humor scale this is somewhere between Monty Python's Life of Brian and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. It's not as laugh-out-loud/thigh-slapping as the former, and not as intelligent and subtle as the latter, but it's a nifty way to pass an hour or two (at 124 pages, only those who try really, really hard to prolong the reading experience will find themselves spending any more time with it than that), provided you're not one of those types who take umbrage at, for instance, the suggestion that the real historical Jesus whom our time traveling Jungian backs into replacing was actually some kind of congenital hydrocephalic fetal alcohol syndrome imbecile, or that all of the cryptic sayings and parables attributed to Jesus are actually just half-baked, half-remembered scraps of folk wisdom, popular ethics and syncretic mysticism. Which yeah, this story does as well as any we might care to dream up as far as explaining why Christianity really seems like it stole the clothes of a bunch of earlier Eastern mystery cults and whatnot.

Not a bad read, but not one I'm going to press on people to read, either. And hey, I might even take a look at the sequel, Breakfast in the Ruins, sometime if it comes my way and I'm a bit desperate. But I'm not going to hunt it down or anything.

*And thank goodness he did. What would my life -- what would anyone's life -- be without Elric, Corum, Jerry Cornelius, Erekose, etc. etc. etc.? I shudder to contemplate it. show less

Spoiler alert. Self pitying self destructive man travels back in time to the Holy Land to witness the crucifixion. Meets John the Baptist who is convinced he is the reluctant Messiah. After much wandering finds Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, but he is a drooling imbecile incapable of fulfilling the prophecy. In order to ’show’ his ex girlfriend (who will never know, back in the 20th Century), and despite being an agnostic, he takes on the role of Christ, knowing and allowing it to lead to his arrest by Herod, his trial and his crucifixion. There is no resurrection. Provocative but seems such a shame Moorcock had to choose such a weak winger as his protagonist.