ATHEIST author Phillip Pullman, whose excellent His Dark Materials trilogy sent the Vatican into a tailspin, looks set to cause fresh controversy with The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, due to be published next Easter.
Phillip Pullman
According to Will Heaven (cute name for a Catholic Herald correspondent, huh?), the book – which argues that St Paul transformed the character of Jesus by using his “fervid imagination” to bestow godly attributes on a normal man – has already roused the ire of David McGough, an Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham,
The bishop said:
There is no evidence that Paul influenced the Gospels. No respectable scriptural scholar would have anything to do with [Pullman's] theory.
Pullman, a member of the National Secular Society, explained:
By the time the Gospels were written down, Paul had already begun to transform the story of Jesus into something altogether different and extraordinary and some of his version influenced what the Gospel writers put in theirs. Paul was a literary and imaginative genius who has had more influence on the world than anybody else, including Jesus. He had this great ability to persuade others and his rhetorical skills have been convincing people for 2,000 years.
The author also claims that St Paul’s imagination has led some to acts of evil and fanaticism.
For every man or woman who has been led to goodness by a church, and I know there have been many, there has been another who has been inspired by the same church to a rancid and fanatical bigotry for which the only fitting word is evil. The more [power the church] has, the worse it behaves – without exception.
He added:
The story I tell comes out of the tension within the dual nature of Jesus Christ, but what I do with it is my responsibility alone. Parts of it read like a novel, parts like a history, and parts like a fairy tale; I wanted it to be like that because it is, among other things, a story about how stories become stories.
Jamie Byng from Canongate Books said:
Philip Pullman has written a book of genuine importance, a radical and ingenious retelling of the life of Jesus that demystifies and illuminates this most famous and influential of stories. It strips Christianity bare, exposes the Gospels to a new light and succeeds brilliantly as a work of literature because it is convincing, thought-provoking, profoundly moving and beautifully nuanced throughout. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ throws down a challenge and does what all great books do: makes the reader ask questions.
Pullman’s most famous work, His Dark Materials, was condemned by some groups for being “anti-Christian”. The book is viewed by many as a rebuttal of C S Lewis’s Christian Narnia tales.
The Vatican also criticised the film adaptation of the first part of the trilogy, The Golden Compass, which was released in Britain in 2007.
L’Osservatore Romano published a long editorial saying that it promoted “a cold and hopeless world without God”.
It was seen to be the Vatican’s most outspoken condemnation of a film since the adaptation of Dan Brown’s thriller The Da Vinci Code.
The editorial stated:
In Pullman’s world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events.
In the trilogy the Church and its governing body “the Magisterium” are linked to cruel experiments on children aimed at discovering the nature of sin.
Catholic groups in the United States called for a boycott – with one group stating that the film’s objective was “to bash Christianity and promote atheism” to children.
Hat tip: Adam Tjaavk
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
September 12th, 2009 at 9:43 am
We all know the Catholic Church would never support cruelty to children. Wait, we know the opposite, dont we! They only see it as bashing them because they recognise themselves in the Magisterium…
September 12th, 2009 at 11:58 am
The editorial stated: "In Pullman’s world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events."
This begs the question, "Salvation from what?" That which doesn't exist but the church has every riding on people believing it does? And by the way, "Hope" is a an expression of a desired outcome. To say there is no "hope" would be to claim no one will have a desired outcome. However, when it comes to religious "hope", that's just a lie that apparently far too many people feel the need to tell themselves just to make it through the day. It's not based in reality but fantasy.
September 12th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
The Catholic Church’s reactionary nature with media drives me nuts. They clearly did not even watch The Golden Compass. Already the production company had excised anything that they thought would have killed the movie’s box office in the US, but because the third book kills god, the first movie was seen to be dangerously subversive. For what reasons? None that actually reflect the film at all. The Catholic Church somehow managed to create a lengthy editorial about a film they clearly cannot have actually watched, otherwise they would realise that to say the film contains no hope or that it demonstrates a ‘cold, hopeless world without god’ is basically the opposite of reality. The film is all about hope, and while it does not really deal with god, he very much exists in the world of the book’s setting and is a significant part of the third in the trilogy. The mindlessness is just so frustrating.
September 12th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Pullman is right in the main but possibly wrong in at least a minor part of his theory. The writers of the gospels didn't need the influence of Paul to write as they did so the gospel being a result of Paul's writing may be incorrect. On the other hand, Paul created Christianity and a sorry business that has been.
September 12th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
They clearly haven't read His Dark Materials, it is one of the most beautiful and life affirming series of books I have ever read. It can be summarised by the Italian Atheist bus campaign slogan; 'The bad news is God doesn't exist, the good news is; we don't need him'.
September 12th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
It sounds like a book I'll have to remember to check out next year.
September 12th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Firstly, what the frack is an Auxiliary Bishop? Is he strapped onto the Main Bishop as a booster so they can achieve some sort of ecclesiastical escape velocity? It's a bloody silly term, right up there with Primate of All Ireland, which always conjures up the image of a monkey in a mitre.
Secondly, when scholars try to find the historical Jesus they end up amid smoke and mirrors. Pullman is right to point out that mortal men created Christianity because – by any reasonable standard – Christ is a fictional character. As a writer PP is qualified to examine the nature of the fiction and criticise its author, Paul.
September 12th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
That was my first thought when I heard the claim that Pullman's books were bashing Christianity. The Magisterium is very non specific and doesn't represent any religion specifically, the Catholic Church just has a very guilty concience, and so it should.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
PART ONE
It should be easy to feel as much compassion for godworshippers as for paraplegics, since their brainwashing that a lifetime of masochism will be rewarded by a sadist in the sky destroys their ability to experience the joy and freedom of living in the real world that is know only to nontheists. But I keep encountering statements by the Vatican's Manchurian Candidates who do not even attempt to hide their pathological hatred of the one-third of the human race who have the sanity, intelligence and education not to need the security blanket of an imaginary playmate whom everyone who has ever read a bible with his brain in gear recognizes as the most sadistic, evil, mass-murdering psychopath in all fiction.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
PART TWO
I am aware that "insane" is nothing more than a useful metaphor for persons who are unwilling (but not unable) to engage in rational human thought. But that knowledge does not dilute my conviction that apologists for the god psychosis belong in cages with padded walls where they cannot pass on their mind-AIDS to the uninfected.
see my review of His Dark Materials at http://www.midwestbookreview.com , Reviewer's bookwatch, April 2008, Harwood's bookshelf.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
"Salvation" gives people an escape–after death–from the "cold and hopeless" world imposed by the doctrines of this misery cult..
September 13th, 2009 at 2:42 am
The church is just getting excited again. But this time they can't tie anyone to a post of flaming logs so they are very vocal instead. this guy is not saying anything new, because I've heard it many times from other buy-bull scholars. the null-brain bishop is very wrong as many scholars have said these same things. The vatican is up in arms about it because now it is being publicized and popularized.
Now if we can only get publishers to do the same for islam. Now that the church can't burn people as steak anymore, the violent ones to push hard against is the islam faerie tale as it is getting bigger-meaner-and just as wide spread.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:53 am
When I heard about the contents of Mr. Pullman's new book I thought it sounded to be a bit of a questionable hypothesis and I thought Dr. Harwood will be chiming in any minute now. Then when you did, you didn't say anything about the book. Then of course I realised that unlike the idiots in the Vatican, you would probably want to read it first.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:14 am
The fuckwits are at it again.
I have just bought a book from Borders.
Whilst sitting down to enjoy it, a leaflet fell out. Some twat called Vinny Commons from http://www.tell-me-more.org had left a leaflet called 'the greatest team ever', basically comparing christianity to football. To cut a long story short the outcome is, (and I'm not making this up) – MAN once he is UNITED with God. You could not make it up.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:37 am
"No respectable scriptural scholar would have anything to do with [Pullman's] theory". Au contraire my dear quasi-bishop. Many scriptural scholars would agree with this. The pauline influence is especially marked in the gospel of john, which is in fact a polemic for the pauline view of the late JC and his purpose. Worth noting (if you believe any of this stuff to start with) that in acts (allegedly written by paul's "travelling companion" timothy) it is described how paul and his message were rejected by the jewish christian leaders in jerusalem (ie those who had actually known jesus and his message) – leading to an agreement with paul that he would go preach to the gentiles and just leave the jews alone…
"In Pullman’s world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events". The OR (which should change it's name to osservatore vaticano in the interests of editorial honesty, but chooses not to) is entirely wrong. The hope lies within each of us. Those who insist in placing their hope in an unseen, undetectable, completely inactive deity and sit back waiting for miracles while doing nothing themselves are doomed to great disappointment.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I have never heard of the theory that ACTS was written by Timotheus. It is virtually unanimous, among scholars and theologians both, that ACTS was written by the anonymous author of LUKE. No scholar as far as I am aware has even attempted to guess the author's true identity. There is irrefutable evidence that it was not Doctor Loukos, as the theologians continue to pretend.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
But did Paul himself ever exist, or was he merely an invention of this writer (whoever HE was)? Certainly nothing that is said about his early life in the Acts of the Apostles makes any sense, and the discrepancies with the events alluded to in the epistles are legion. Not only so, but he seems to be a different person altogether in both speech and conduct. A lot of his so-called life-history is farcical, and some of it has been lifted almost verbatim from Josephus and others – a remarkable coincidence! Whether he existed or not "his" writings and ideas certainly took the ideas of an obscure messianic sect and transformed them into a set of doctrines that people of the day could embrace and believe in, thus ushering in two thousand years of what we now call "Christianity". However, to my knowledge there is no evidence for his existence whatsoever outside of the Bible, which is unbelievable for someone who was supposedly so influential. So I ask again, did he really exist, or was he invented? What is your view?
September 13th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Sorry – my last sentence was "lost" when being submitted!
September 13th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Sorry – my last two sentences were "lost" when being submitted!
September 14th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
That's odd – I thought most of these religious twats took it up the ARSE'N'ALL! (Sorry – I know it's now a VERY old joke!!)
September 15th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I do not even discuss the possibility that Paul was not a real person in God, Jesus and the Bible (but see pages 295-301). The only persons who have written arguments for such a position are pseudo-historians such as Rook Hawkins whom biblical scholars do not take seriously. I have written somewhere that Paul recognized that he had made a big mistake in joining the sect led by Jesus' brother, since only a blood relative of Jesus had any hope of ever becoming Head Nazirite. So as his only means of becoming a big frog in a small puddle, Paul invented a new, gentile religion that its detractors called Anointianity (Khristianismos). The person described by the Nazirite redactor of Revelation as "Balaam" (Rev. 2:14) was almost certainly Paul. "Those who call themselves Ioudaians and are not" (2:9) were certainly Paul's Christians.