GOSPEL

It was not purposeful, but maybe appropriate somehow, that I finished on Sunday Naomi Alderman's exceptional novel, The Liars' Gospel. It is not a book I had known about, but one of those treasures I happened to have noticed on a shelf in the library and ended up enjoying immensely. Her first novel, Disobedience, also one with which I was not familiar, was recognized with an Orange Award for New Writers in 2006 and now finds the latest spot on the to-be-read list. Gospel is told from the imagined perspectives of four individuals who share their story of knowing or having met a man called Yehoshuah who raised a small ruckus in Roman-occupied Judea some seven decades before the great siege of Jerusalem and the subsequent destruction of the Second Temple: Miryam, his mother, Iehuda of Qeriot, a favorite among his followers, Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, and Bar-Avo, a leader of fighters against the Romans whose own life was spared in exchange for the execution of Yehoshuah.

What this book is not is a retelling of the story you know from the four canonical gospels of the Christian Bible. It is, on the other hand, a book that might engage you in a deeper conversation about your thoughts on that story. So often, people forget that the Bible did not fall from the sky one day, fully complete in the form and structure that we recognize. (Leather-bound, of course, King James Version. But, pardon my cheekiness.) The definitive Bible as we know it, in fact, only really came into being as late as the sixteenth century. Ignoring this not only fails to recognize the humanity of the decisions that resulted in the Bible we know today, but it also comes dangerously close to idolatry in my opinion. More importantly, though, it negates the full complexity of all the stories told within, and thus, their full effect.

I have thought for a very long time that the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the Romanized name more familiar to us than the Hebrew Yehoshuah that Alderman rightfully uses in her novel, would be a far more powerful one if readers and believers kept sight of its historical and social and political contexts. And, it is a political story, like it or not. Judea, in the time of this man Jesus, was a place near bursting with political tension. Jerusalem in particular threatened to boil over each day with a simmering rage and the country was rife with preachers and teachers and healers and rebels bent on shucking off the heavy rule of Rome and proclaiming a new kingdom for the chosen people of Yahaveh. The savior and messiah for whom the Jewish people were waiting was especially central to their collective story at a time when they felt most neglected by God. If you are a believer that Jesus existed and walked the earth, then you cannot ignore him as an historical figure whose message was a direct response to this crisis. To do so would be to deny the essential tenet of his humanity, a very necessary component of Christian doctrine.

Forgotten as well is that over the centuries the Jesus story was, and is still today, co-opted and used for all manner of agendas, both the well-intentioned and the dangerous. Even the four gospel writers that we know of had their own specific audiences. They used deliberate language and intentional imagery and they tweaked their version of the story to drive home their own individual points of view. They were storytellers, after all. Even the most unsophisticated reading of the New Testament gospels cannot avoid noticing the clear differences and distinctions between them.

Alderman's imagining of these characters and their roles in the story reminds us that it is a human story. And what sets this man Yehoshuah of Natzaret apart in her story, what made him different and unique from all others claiming to be the messiah, the savior of the Jewish people, and what made his message truly profound was this particular notion: Love your enemy. This teaching was not only new and dynamic, it was a provocative and radical kind of worldview for a people long-suffering under a brutal and tyrannical enemy.

"It is a dreamer's doctrine. Visionary, astonishing. And a hard road, in times of war and occupation. If all involved had listened to those words, matters would have fallen out quite differently . . . But perhaps the idea was too difficult, for it is not much observed . . . Easier to prefer one's friend to one's enemy. Easier to destroy than to build or to keep a thing standing . . . This was how it ended. And all the sorrow that came after followed from this."