Abstract
Forget remakes of deranged clowns and Dynasty; rewriting the Gospels has for far longer proven itself a sore temptation for novelists. Screen versions of the Gospel are not considered in Margaret Ramey’s study here, nor looser readings of Christ’s story. Neither, fortunately, is there an exhaustive summary of Jesus novels. Instead we have an examination of how intertextuality works in the play between novels, reader and Gospels. After setting her parameters as working within the genre of historical fiction, she takes a primary metaphor of the Gospels presenting a mosaic of Jesus. There are novelists who seek to fill in the gaps between pieces – what she calls ‘complementing rewrites’ – and those who seek to move or change the pieces – ‘competing rewrites’. Her book is then divided into two sections. The first explores two complementary Jesus novels by Anne Rice and Neil Boyd and then two competing rewrites by Nino Ricci and Jose Saramago. The second section returns to re-examine the temptation narrative in Matthew’s Gospel, performatively reading back from two of the novels as an exercise in intertextuality.
Ramey’s foremost concern is with the theology of the rewrites and how it coheres with that of the Gospels. Clearly complementary novels have the advantage. The competing rewrites are noted for anti-religious and atheist agendas, in the case of Saramago, of ‘communism, atheism and political moralism’. While the analysis of the theology of Jesus novels is evidently Ramey’s priority, of equal interest might be the political implications of how Saramago situates Jesus and God; how are his quasi-theological accounts of freedom, obedience and violence related to that political vision? Is he using the Jesus novel genre as a medium for theological or political reflection, and what difference does his use of this particular story make? Perhaps it is beyond the scope of this concise work, but while the impact of the context of writing upon the theological is front and centre, a sideways look at the philosophical and political impact of using theological material within the contemporary context would be a worthwhile consideration.
Perhaps more concerning is the question of how, say, queer, feminist or simply more imaginatively radical Gospel rewrites are viewed. Immediately, it seems, they would find themselves as ‘competing’ rather than ‘complementing’, and so treated as heterodox – hostile witnesses to an orthodox Jesus. Ramey only briefly touches on this, noting that even wilful anachronistic readings can help us better understand original texts and the dangers of oversimplification. The utopian function of fiction has a potential to disturb insufficiently built foundations of theology in a way that, as the last (and most valuable) section of the book begins to explore, goes beyond complementing or competing with the Gospels. Frank Kermode famously distinguished myth and fiction as respectively agents for stability and change. If Saramago’s rewrite is the one to open genuine reflection on violence in sacrifice and the cost of obedience perhaps that is already greater fidelity to the Gospel, and more complimentary, than a docile work of devotional piety.